Anywhere But Here

I'm now fully moved over to my new office, which is located in the same building where I used to have my chaplain office. I've come full circle, as one co-worker put it. I can't print what I told him. Walls are still bare, but I hope to have that changed in the coming week or so. And while I'm enjoying my new space - bigger office, a tad more job security, and a newly remodeled building - I find I miss my old space.

Drink Man has been giving me grief about how I'm going to turn into a 400 pound narcissistic jerk (a combination of two of my colleagues in my new department). But that's not the big issue. The main problem is that it is just way too quiet here.

I don't mean just quiet, as in "Gee, I can hear the air conditioner over the usual office noise." I'm talking quiet, as in "Gee, no one has made a peep in the last hour - is anyone alive in this building?" Sometimes it feels like an odd Twilight Zone episode, where the main character has discovered that time has stopped but he's still moving, or that the whole world has vanished, leaving him at his desk, alone. Plus there's this oppressive cloud that seems to hang over this place. People are nice, but it's hardly the atmosphere of joking and kidding that exists in the other building.

Plus my work load has dropped dramatically. Today the main doctor is in the ER, and we do not have patients coming in. So there is nothing for me to do today. Maybe two phone calls, some chart work, but that will take up at most 30 minutes. The rest of the day will be spent either trying to be proactive and prepare for tomorrow and Thursday (the only busy days we have in this department), or surfing the net and trying to get past the blocks set up on our system. Happy, happy.

But there's good things going on, as well today. The big news is that I have a buddy from high school rolling through my area this afternoon. We lost track of each other following my freshman year of college. He managed to track me down on Facebook just a month or so ago, and is now moving from Nevada to Virginia. And since we're on the way, he's crashing at our place tonight before moving on. I'm pretty excited about catching up, although discovering just how much we've aged over the past 20 years may be more than I can handle!

Then there's my guitar lesson later on tonight. I'm really getting into this, although I have found that it's a lot harder than it looks. Seriously, I'm regretting making fun of all the garage bands that formed during my high school years. This is probably my karmic retribution!

Drink Man and I went guitar shopping last week. I'll post a pic of the one I picked out later on. Turns out it's not one of the three I mentioned last time. Go figure.