Picture if you will. A person sitting in the seat across from me on the train, who moved to this seat because "it's in the quiet-car, and those people in the other car wouldn't stop talking".
Picture this person ranting about this for five to ten minutes.
Irony, thy name is... whatever the hell this woman's name was.
Effective 5 pm this past Friday, I became officially "unemployed". At least until 9 am tomorrow morning when I start work at the new place.
So how have I been whiling away the time between jobs?
Two words: Rock Band.
My co-workers got me, as a going away present, the Rock Band "special edition" which came with all the instruments, and mic, etc. I had told a few of them a story where D (who hates video games) had implied that she'd have a lot of fun playing Rock Band.
And so they made it happen.
Yesterday morning, we ran around to find the various other bits of the puzzle we needed to make it work, and by dinner time, we were jammin'.
And by that I mean, "I was jammin' on the guitar, D was doing all the vocals." We experimented briefly in flipping that around. My singing sucks, and D's hand-eye coordination -- for a game like this -- is functionally non-existent.
I downloaded a bunch of songs from XBox Live, and while we're still only playing on "Easy" level, D seems to get way more happy than might be considered safe by belting out the lyrics to Celebrity Skin.
I started up again this morning, trying to unlock all the songs (so I didn't have to use the well-published cheat-sequence to increase our song variety). D came down later, and insisted that I stop solo'ing so we could become a band (last night we'd just been randomly jamming). By the time D came up for air, we were lamenting that it was 4pm and her weekend projects were going to get pushed to the weekdays, probably...
Man, is this fun. We haven't even cracked open the drum-kit yet, because it's just the two of us, but I could totally see how people have parties where it is the centerpiece.
There's been a bit of change in Derek's world these last few weeks.
At the end of the day on January 25th, I'll drive home from Vassar for the last time. Starting on the 28th, I begin work at a company down in Manhattan, answers.com, with the title of Data Center Manager.
This has probably been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. I don't feel it's exaggerating to say that I enjoy my job, co-workers, the environment, and pretty much every aspect of Vassar more than I have any other position I've had in my entire career. But, that said, there's a number of reasons why working for Answers is "the right thing to do". I'm extremely confident in the decision (which, it's no secret, D and I deliberated on in various forms for several weeks), and looking forward to the challenges to come.
Of course, it's just my dumb luck that -- two days after my projected start-date -- is the day that Amtrak is planning as their strike date. My planned commuter route? Yeah, Amtrak. Go figure.
