It was great to be back in the office. Everyone made me feel welcome and comfortable. Many of the people I worked with last summer are no longer at the office, so it was surprising not to see all of the familiar faces. My department is really small right now but I like it. Even though I'm working for an international company, I feel like it's just a local accounting firm.
I have my own "cube" with three sides to it. There's a desk that goes all the way around and has a bunch of drawers of varied sizes. My chair is ok...I think I'll bring a pillow for my lower back, though. There are two overhead compartments that kind of look like those on an airplane. I have THREE monitors - two landscape and one portrait. I also have a laptop, so I'm good on screens if anyone asks.
I can see the mountains from my desk chair which is awesome. Last year I sat in a middle-of-the-room cube so I didn't have much of a view. Now I get to watch the sun rise and can see the snow creep down the peaks.
I've been doing training this whole week, so I haven't been thrown right back into work yet. Basically I get to my desk, start training simulations, and do that for a solid 8 hours. It's a great time. Some of the work is just a refresher regarding the software I'll be using - I definitely feel like I have an advantage with that kind of stuff after doing the internship last summer. Other training work is much more difficult. It's like reading my entire corporate tax textbook over again, except in a more condensed form. That's what I'll be doing all next week, too, because of course I did all the easy ones first. Bad idea.
I've always had abnormal first days of work. I wake up thinking I have the morning under control and in less than two hours, something always happens that throws me a curve. This time was no different. On Sunday, Garrett and I drove the route downtown that I'd be taking every day to work so I could become familiar with it. I knew I had a parking pass to someplace called the EasyPark and we found the sign for it right next to my office. We drove into the garage to make sure our car would fit and I felt ready to take on the next day. Nothing was going to throw me off THIS time!
So Monday morning, I get all business-casual-ed up and head to the office. The commute was a piece of cake and I realized that leaving 45 minutes early was probably not necessary. It took me 12 minutes to get to the parking garage. I knew from the day before that there were two entrances, one shorter than the other, so I picked the one closest to the doors to my office building. I got my little ticket, drove up the winding ramp, panicked because there were a hundred cars trying to navigate and I had no idea what I was doing, accidentally immediately went down the exit ramp, then popped back out on the street on the other side. It was like a really lame and embarrassing fair ride.
Determined, I went into the taller entrance and began the process again. Knowing I had time to waste, I drove around slowly and picked a nice spot by a light. I called my mom, hoping to not look like a strange person that sits in their car alone for a half hour in a dimly lit parking garage and instead simply needed to make a phone call. As we were chatting, I was fiddling with my parking pass and noticed the bolded words PARK STRIP at the bottom. I remembered from the summer before that people called a certain area the "park strip", but I assumed that was because there is a giant park - about 6 blocks long - right next to our office. So it's essentially a strip of park. The words lit a lightbulb in my head that perhaps people parked at the park strip. Maybe there was a parking lot by the strip of park. Do you follow? I wasn't sure I did.
I still had about 15 minutes so I retreated from the parking garage, somewhat shamefully. Luckily I had my mom on the phone with me to help maintain some confidence in my abilities. Downtown Anchorage is full of one-ways which are convenient when you know what you're doing, but I did not. I wound my way around a three-block radius from my office trying to find a spot on the supposed Park Strip just to give up and park where I did last summer: 6 blocks away in free parking. As I was settling into my spot and chatting my mom's ear off, she interrupted me to inform me I was late for work. On my first day. And I was still a six block walking distance from where I needed to be. So I was that girl speed-walking a mile to work on a Monday morning in ill-fitting slacks.
In other news, here's our couch:
Here's the forever shedding dog:
Here's my I-was-late-for-work-on-the-first-day picture for my building access card:
And here's how Remy has chosen to landscape our backyard:
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