"Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city"

This week marks an new chapter in my employment with Articulated Man. As of Monday I have my own office situated in downtown Santa Cruz. The office is actually part of a larger office space housing the venerable Stone Soup literary magazine. It's amazing how many people I've mentioned this to know who/what Stone Soup is. But truth is the office culture doesn't provide much opportunity for me to interact with them, so it's really just me.

The space is roughly that of a Haggett Hall double room, sans beds and hexagonal shape, so it's not exactly spacious. But, there is more than enough room for a desk, some shelves, and most importantly, my still relatively new bike that I'm always worried will be stolen when I lock it up on a bike rack. I think all those years on the UW campus have put the fear of bike theft into me. On the plus side, it has windows overlooking one of the major streets in town and on Wednesdays it looks right over the Farmer's Market.

I made the move for several reasons. First, Sarah is back from Holland and will be spending more time around the apartment when she is not at school. While I love her dearly, two people shouldn't occupy such a small space 24 hours a day... a little separation does, in fact, make the heart fonder. More importantly, I feel like I've been drifting at work recently. Not that what I've been doing is uninteresting, but that I haven't been really focusing the way I feel I could be, or the company deserves from me. The hope is having an office will provide a dedicated place to concentrate and dig into what I've got to do.

Making the switch isn't going to be easy. Before the relocation, my morning consisted of getting out of bed at 8:55am, stopping in the kitchen for a bowl of cereal, and then the arduous 30 second commute to my desk in the living room to be "at work" by 9. Now things are a bit different. I'm up before 8am to check email and make sure there are no emergencies. Then from 9am to 10am I'm exercising, showering, and biking to my new office. Then I'm at the office until 5pm or when I get done with what needs to be done. It's quite a bit more regimented, which was sort of the point.

Currently I'm working off my laptop, which I bought three years ago as a note taking device for law school, not as a web development platform. So far it has not been up to the challenge. The hope is some added RAM will fix things, but expectations are not high and I'm mentally preparing to relocate my desktop over there until I have a better solution. I did get a fancy new monitor and keyboard, so that's exciting.

For those who made it all the way to the bottom of the post, I have a little treat for you. Starting this week I'm going to be doing a little more political blogging than I have been, probably going through until the elections. Handful of topics have arisen that I feel the need to talk about, and since Sarah hears from me every day, I guess it's time I blab to you all.