First day in the new job

Today was my first day at the new job.

Man my feet hurt.

I walked 8 blocks from the bus stop to the office, I walked what seemed like miles around the Pentagon doing check-in stuff, I walked from the Pentagon back over to Crystal City, and I walked from the office back down the 8 blocks to the bus stop again.

...Wearing new leather uniform shoes.

...I have blisters the size of Rhode Island.

Other than that though, the first day wasn't too bad.

I hitched a ride to the Dulles North park-n-ride with my next door neighbor and took the Loudoun County commuter bus in to Crystal City. I left the house at 0553 and arrived at the office at 0708, so 1 hour and 15 minutes total door-to-door. It broke down about like this:

13 minute car ride to Dulles North
50 minute bus ride
12 minute** walk to my office

**Update 10/11/08: I figured out there is another bus stop that's a lot closer to my office, like 3 blocks away. It only takes me 8 minutes to walk slowly on my blisters, or 5 minutes if I walk at a brisk pace.

The Loudoun County commuter bus was pretty nice. It's not like it was an hour wasted driving my own car in traffic. I got to read and write emails on my Blackberry during the bus ride in. (Aside: I forgot how dark it is that time in the morning). This afternoon on the way home I read a book. I look forward to making a dent in my "books I wanna read" list.

When I got to work this morning, I admired a beautiful sunrise over Washington, D.C. from the windows of my new office. Then I dove into the bureaucracy and started plugging away at my three different check-in lists and sat through boring security indoctrination videos.

So who the hell is BOB anyway?

I've had the same gosh darn cell phone number for four years now, and all of a sudden I've started getting phone calls out the wazoo for somebody named "Bob." I've started asking the callers who Bob is and how they got my phone number, but they evade the question or hang up. Today I came out of my office to find I had two missed calls from the same phone number, and no sooner did I turn on my cell phone than the phone rang - a NEW call from the SAME number I had already missed twice, and of course it was someone looking for "Bob."

I suppose I need to start screening my cell phone calls. I'll put a message on my voice mail explaining this is NOT Bob's phone and not to call back.

Somebody help me out. What's the difference between a catapult and a torsion catapult?

Did you know there is an annual pumpkin launching contest in Delaware? It's called the World Championship Punkin Chunkin, and it's being held Oct 31st through Nov 2nd this year. The competition is divided into several classes - pneumatic ("air"), centrifugal, trebuchet, catapult, human-powered and torsion catapult to name a few.

Looking at the pictures of last year's event, these contraptions are HUGE. Then again, I suppose they would need to be in order to fling a 10 pound pumpkin as far as possible.

It sounds like a pretty fun event that the boys might enjoy watching if it wasn't way over in Delaware.