Boulder to London

I spent the past week working on my first project!  We met with the client on Monday and used the rest of the week to prepare a report stating our findings.  Things are a little different in this line of work than my previous roles.  As I am learning, no finding is ever certain…it can be reasonable, based on valid assumptions, found to have solid underpinnings, etc.  Let’s just say we had to reword most of the sections that I prepared to soften it up a bit.  In any case, we met our goal of having a copy ready to go to the partner for review on Monday.  I enjoyed all aspects of the work from meeting with the client to preparing the report.  This was a small job, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy the new gig.

I left the office on Friday and hopped my usual bus to the train station.  When I got off the bus and tried to enter the train station, I found myself in pedestrian gridlock.  I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I navigated my way through to the front to try to get up to the main platform.  There were a couple of security folks there telling people to go the other way, so I fought my way back through and entered through the other side of the station.  Once inside, it was a mess.  All of the monitors that usually tell you when the trains are leaving were black.  I heard an announcement stating that what I thought was my train was delayed and would be leaving from platform 18.  I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but clearly something wasn’t right at the train station.  I made it out to platform 18 with a group of agitated travelers and stood at the door of the train.  We stood there for maybe 10 minutes before we heard another announcement informing us that our train would now be leaving from platform 16.  Unfortunately, this isn’t like being at the airport and moving one gate over.  We all had to walk down the train platform, cram through a small corridor and work our way through the crowd outside before reversing the pattern at 16.  Everyone was in a hurry and people were starting to lean on each to get out faster. 

I arrived at the platform late and had to negotiate with the people packed in around the door to try and squeeze a little to let me in.  They made a little room and I was able to get on.  As we sat at the platform for another 10 minutes, 5 more people came with the same plea.  I think most of them got on.  At this point, all I knew is that all of the trains had been delayed for some time and that this was the first one leaving the station.  Some people weren’t sure where it was going, but everyone was glad to be getting out of there.  The doors finally closed and the crowded train slowly rolled down the tracks.  At this point the conductor got on the horn and said that there was a fatality on the tracks earlier in the afternoon causing the delay.  He then came back on and made a comment about based on how crowded we were he was going to authorize the declassification of the first class cars to all passengers.  Everyone laughed, but no one moved as we were all packed in pretty tightly.

The weekend was pretty low key.  I got a work out in and went for a run.  I can’t believe how out of shape I am.  I did get my gym membership though so I should be able to start going before work.  I also spent a lot of time online since we just got our internet service turned on yesterday.  I set up a Facebook, which was actually quite fun.  I’m not sure why I hadn’t done it in the past.  Maybe I’m actually a slow adopter of technology.  I played around on that for most of the day before catching up with my brother on Skype.  The great thing to note about the weekend was that things felt pretty normal.  We’re actually getting settled and have most of the hard stuff taken care of.  Now we’re just exploring the hood and having fun.  Melisse gets back from Spain next Friday and she’s bringing Maggie with her, so it will be fun to show our first visitor our new digs.

Hope everyone has a great week!