Tuesday, July 28, 1998

        I left fifteen minutes later this morning, and it took me the same amount of time to get to work as it did yesterday. So I guess, theoretically, I could start out fifteen minutes later yet tomorrow and still get there on time, but I imagine that would be pushing it. The traffic is worse coming home. Last night I got to experience something that I'd forgotten about--the syndrome where all the traffic stops in the lane of the highway where the accident isn't.

        I was driving along when suddenly traffic came to a complete stop, and I thought, oh great, this is probably how it will be every night, and we crept along until I saw emergency vehicle lights in the traffic on the other side of the highway. I thought that it must have been a coincidence, but as we approached that part of the highway, the traffic suddenly opened up and moved on. Obviously, everyone had been slowing down to look, even though it had no effect on our side of the highway at all.

        Tonight was better, but I left earlier, too. I guess it will be different every day

        I was busy all day today, making changes to a website that someone else had designed. I'll eventually be doing sites from the beginning, but right now they're having me work on fixing things and making corrections and changes that the client has requested. It's painstaking work, and there are lots of things to remember--the code has to be written a certain way to conform to the company's standards--not just written so that it works, but written so that the code itself is clean and understandable.

        And it's hard learning the directory structure and the way things are done, and all the new systems . . . I love it, though. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon it just sort of struck me, like a bolt of lightning--well, maybe not like a bolt of lightning, more like a small electrical shock or something--that I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to be doing--it was, finally, the moment that I'd been looking for for so long--"They're actually paying me to do this!"

        Several people wrote that it was nice to see the place where I work, and the people that I work with. I had never really thought about how important it was it until my mother-in-law mentioned once that Bob's grandmother wanted to be sure to come over to our house when she was visiting because she had never seen it before and she wanted to be able to visualize it when she was thinking about us.

        Since then, I always try to take pictures of the places that I talk about, the places where I spend a lot of time, because I do think that it makes a difference. I'm less interested in people's vacation photographs, for instance, than in pictures of their homes and families. And I do think it's especially important with the people that we only know through online friendships. It makes our friends seem much more present when we're able to see in our mind's eye what they're talking about when they talk about their offices or their homes.

        When I was out walking at lunch I wished that I had remembered the bring the camera, because there are a lot of great things to see in the neighborhood. I'll do that sometime this week, and then you can see what I see when I walk, too.

        I knew I would love being down on the Plaza again, and I do. It's great to be able to walk outside and have places to go. At my old place, you could go outside and walk, but it was just to walk--there was no destination. Here, I can walk to somewhere--to the bookstore or to pick up lunch, or just window shop, but it makes a difference knowing that I have a purpose.

        Being down there brings back a lot of memories. My first full time job was as a secretary at an engineering company on the Plaza, and after I'd worked there for a few months, I moved out of my parents' house into my first apartment. It was a tiny studio apartment right across the street from where I worked--it had a two burner stove and my parents bought me a little half-size refrigerator. The first thing I did when I moved out was get my ears pierced, and the second thing was to get Doña. Another secretary at the company had a cat who had just had a litter of kittens, and I said I wanted one. When the kittens were six weeks old, she brought me Doña, and we had her for almost twenty-five years.

        I wanted to walk down to the mailbox a little while ago and mail some things, and I asked Bob if he wanted to go along. I don't suppose he did, especially, but he came with me, and he asked if we should take Pyewacket. I said, "Sure, do you want to carry her?" and he did. The mailbox is just about half a block away, and she was very good. A little stunned, I think, to be outside somewhere other than the back porch.

        We walked down, and I mailed my stuff, and we walked back, and when we got back to the house, we saw a toad. They tend to sit on the sidewalk up against the side of the house, just beyond the reach of the porch light. I guess it's a good bug-hunting spot. Bob set Pye down in front of the toad, just to see what she'd do, and she went up to him and sniffed him, walked all around him and inspected him pretty well, then he hopped away and she went right after him.

        Bob scooped her up and brought her in, not wanting her to hurt the toad. She remembers him, though. She's been sitting just inside the front door, howling to be let out again.