Mondays

Why, yes.  We ARE reading our archives, sumthin' we do quite often when we are bored at loose ends.  And seein' as how today is Monday there's this, which, like the post immediately below, is also from six years ago:

I awoke this morning and noticed it’s a Monday…right off the bat. That may sound somewhat strange to those of you who remain in the traces and are slaving away in an office, a cube, or whatever/where ever your place of business may be. The fact it’s Monday isn’t lost on you, I’m sure. But it’s unusual for me, because one day is pretty much the same as the next. That happens when one is retired.

What’s even more unusual is I felt a brief twinge of something… something very much like a longing… that I wasn’t heading off to a workplace of some sort this morning. About which… is the first time I can recall feeling that way in a long, long time. What I mean is… how, exactly, does one miss…

• getting up at oh-dark-thirty (normally between 0400 and 0430 hrs),
• tossing down a cup (or two) while checking my corporate e-mail to ensure nothing blew up while I was sleeping,
• hitting the shower,
• pouring your third cup in a travel cup,
• getting in the car,
• driving six miles to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station,
• riding 45 minutes into The City, while reading most of the WSJ in the process
• walking three minutes from the Montgomery Street BART station to Starbucks to buy the first of about four cups,
• riding the elevator eight floors up to “the office,” arriving about 0615 hrs
• spending anywhere from ten to 11 to 12 hours or so doing “really important stuff” to keep the inter-tubes free for commerce,
• returning to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station from which you began,
• driving home, stopping somewhere along the way to pick up dinner,
• arriving home somewhere around 1930 (or later),
• eating dinner while doing another two hours (or so) of work you didn’t have time to do while AT work,
• watching a little teevee,
• going to bed, and…
• doing it all over again the next day

Rinse, repeat, for a little over two years. There were variations on this theme. As an example, I lived in Berkeley for the first year I was in SFO… so the BART ride was shorter (much shorter) and I walked from my apartment to BART and back. Same, but different. How, exactly, does one miss this kinda…umm…stuff? Am I crazy? That’s what I felt I was missing this morning, Gentle Reader.

―:☺:―

Circa 1991

Official "Employee o' the Moment" photo, c. 1988

April, 2002

Today’s Pics: Keeping with the theme of “Missing the Working World,” three pics of YrHmblScrb at his place of business. Well, two pics at his place of business, and one where I’m less than 20 minutes removed from the office and enjoying a beer in the rooftop bar of the Mandarin Hotel in Singapore. That bar had a magnificent view of the city, but let's not digress.

Note the difference in corporate cultures… as if you could miss it. The first two photos were taken when EDS was the most buttoned-down of all button-downed companies in America (before they gave in to the “corporate casual” movement sometime around ’96) and the third was taken in my company’s Site Operations Center (SOC). I was the SOC Director.

Wanna guess which company I liked better? You might be surprised at the answer, Gentle Reader.

Well, I lied in that post.  I don't miss the working world at ALL... but I kinda miss the money.