Natter 68: Bork Bork Bork
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Aaaah, alright then. That's a different story.
Last night was the first night in over a week I'd slept more than 3 hours. When it's your last week on a ship, no one ever lets you go to bed. It's been rough. I saw 4:00 more times last week than I really care to.
My commute is about 80 minutes door to door. I live a ridiculous distance from the city centre. Leaves a lot of time for reading, though, and because I got on at the third stop, I'm pretty much assured of getting a seat at least.
My shortest commute was walking across the street. My longest was a 1 hour drive down a mostly country road and then back at night.
For my school-year job, my commute is 20 minutes getting there, 35 getting back (thanks, rush hour!) For babysitting this summer, it's going to be about 25 minutes each way, but there's going to be a bunch of extra driving because I'll be picking up kids and things. Also there's my apprenticeship at the vintage store (20 minutes) and the warehouse where I get books for my flea market booth (25 minutes). And it takes like 45 minutes on the Metro to get to Eastern Market on Sundays.
In conclusion: I am kind of busy!
When I was working downtown, my total commuting time in a day when I was taking Emmett back and forth was about 3.5 hours.
Even when he was younger in the city getting him to his preschool and then to work was a 90 minute each way deal. It really ground me down.
I don't know if I've ever had a commute less than 40 minutes. Work and home always seemed to be far apart. Living in Boston, working in Cambridge. Leaving in Echo Park, working on the West Side. Living in the Haight; working downtown, or in Oakland.
There was a brief period when Emmett was little where his daycare was a block from the Muni stop, so it was incredibly easy to drop him off and pick him up. But then his daycare was at my job downtown, so I usually had to carry him in my arms on a crowded Muni train (where people would offer me a set about 25% of the time).
He's actually soloing on BART this Wednesday to come back to my house from Albany, which will be a huge boon over the coming year. I'll still drive him over to Albany, but he'll be able to BART home on many days.
I have a 40 min drive if traffic is good, an hour or more if it's bad.
How long is everybody's commute? How long is a normal commute?
In DC, it was about 30 minutes in the morning and 40 or so (occasionally more) in the evening. It wasn't too bad. When I first moved to Seattle, it was about 40 minutes each way, but that was walk-bus-walk, and I enjoyed that quite a bit. Now it's "roll out of bed and walk upstairs to the computer", which saves SO MUCH TIME OMG.
So, in semi-related news, there's a job a level above me at my company that involves only working from home, and not hardly any travel. I've done most all the stuff required in previous jobs. Normally, you kinda get picked as things come up and as you start on a new project (and sometimes people would do this job for a while and then as the project finished, go back to a regular job like mine). Now they're making it an official job, and making people apply...and it's open to everyone. I don't think I want to apply right now (I still like the travel, and just started this new project, and the work you have to do isn't mostly my favorite) but it's totally something I could see doing in the future. I'm just worried if I don't apply now, they won't HAVE openings in the future..argh.
Apply. If it is offered, you can always not take it, but learn whether they think you would be a good fit and if not, what you can work on so that if it comes up again, you can strengthen up on anything lacking. And even if they do offer and you decide not to accept, you can suss out what your strengths are and build them up, so even if it doesn't come up again on your schedule, you can lobby for a job like it either with your current employer or another.
Depending on which office I'm working in, my commute is either 45 minutes or about an hour fifteen. The long part of the long commute is the walk from the subway - 8th ave to 11th.
I had mac and cheese in a park with tom, trudy, debetesse, and debetesse's friend. Now I'm on a train back to my parents' in nj.