The Last Two Weeks

I want to go ahead and give each of you an update on my new job – you have been there with me through the interview process and in the weeks before I started so having been officially on the payroll for two weeks I thought it would be appropriate.

First and foremost, my day begins at 4:50AM by either the alarm going off or my automatically waking up. My body has already acclimated to that time and I generally am awake before the alarm goes off. I am ready and out the door by 5:45. I remember to pick up my breakfast and snack from the kitchen each morning, (there is no cafeteria in my office) so I usually take a piece of cheese and a banana and some cherries to eat throughout the day. There is a Starbuck’s about 1 mile from the office and I pick up a non-fat venti latte then head into the office. With all that I am still at my desk by 7AM.

The last couple of weeks I have been working between two (2) offices and learning as much as I can. My first presentation was due this past week and it went well and was received positively by my Management – that made me feel great. I am working on a video conferencing managed service and really have no statistics as to what are the number of meetings, the success rate, the issues, etc. With that in mind I will just need to build a program from scratch and from that understand what the trending is.

I generally leave my office between 2:30 and 3PM enabling me to miss most of the traffic on the way home. I can be home within an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Now my total commute is about 107 miles. My car a burgundy Honda CRV was a 3 year – 36,000 mile lease; but, with my commute I was closely approaching 21,000 miles at the end of the 2 years. Last weekend my Honda dealer was having a promotion for those of us with CRVs and two years on our lease – I was able to get out of my current lease and into a 2011 blue pearl Honda CRV for 3 years and 18,000 miles/year. The additional 6,000 miles per year should keep me within the lease and I won’t worry about going over. I was able to pick up the new car this past Wednesday.

Getting home by 4:15 I am still able to run to the cleaners, post office and grocery store before they close and I can even catch the 5 o’clock news or watch a show that I had DVR’d the night before.

Now I have to admit that I cannot stay up late – one night last week I was in bed by 8:30. Most nights it is 9PM; but, I have to admit that if I am watching a show I generally have fallen asleep by 9:15. I now basically DVR any shows I am interested in as I know that I won’t be able to stay awake for the whole thing.

What I am looking forward to is that even in the wintertime my commute will still occur during daylight hours. I appreciate that I can work a couple of days from home. Last week it was Monday (a holiday) and Friday. Fridays will be a given work day from home; and, that second day will depend upon what is happening for the week. This week Monday I will work from home again; and, if I have no meetings on Thursday then I will work from home on Thursday too.

Those of you who have known me for years realize that I am highly organized so on Sunday afternoons I am upstairs in my bedroom pressing and deciding my clothes for the week. Each evening I lay out my jewelry, shoes and intimates and my suit is hanging up with the requisite blouse and belt to reduce the time I need to get ready in the morning. I also make sure that my briefcase has everything in it that I need and all I need to do is pick up my food from the refrigerator.

So, my day may begin early, but it also ends early. I still have time to enjoy the news each evening, water my plants and to read a book or catch a show (as long as it starts at 8 and ends at 9). Since I never watched Letterman or Jay Leno – I am not missing anything by not staying up for it.

Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who touted, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”? Well here is to being healthy, wealthy and wise.