Too Lazy to Rewrite It

An excerpt from my recent e-mail to Ma:

Great to hear from you! The card did arrive, and thank you much! It’s going to be all I can do to remember that my birthday is in a week. I’ll make sure I spend some part of your gift on a dinner out or something. Yep, me, a gin & tonic, and a crossword puzzle—Happy 31!

My company started laying people off on Thursday. The fresh-out-of-college guy who I share a cubicle with got fired, sadly. The other four unlucky souls cut across the office populace. Not sure what criteria were being used or how I escaped, but the lightning was close enough to smell, for sure. My cubemate worked on the project I’m working on (the one I started on the second day), so in the short term there will be a lot of pieces to pick up. Both of the projects I’m working on are on their downhill slopes now, though, so I’m just hoping there’s something for me to jump on when they’re over. We’re not the only firm to lay folks off, so it’s not like there’re other jobs locally…

I started volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, so this Saturday was my first day out. It looked like the weather was going to be reasonable, but then the sun left, it spitted snow for a while, a little rain, then the sun came out again… it was like Massachusetts in March. The arrangement at this project site is good, because the house is sponsored by the local girl’s college, so there’s liable to always be about a half dozen or more cute women on site. Sadly my hammering-arm strength and comfort level on ladders are probably as bad or worse than the average college girl, so I won’t be impressing anyone. I met a woman who graduated from NC State’s architecture school a couple years ago, so there was much to talk about. She’s involved at the AIA and with NCSU, so I’m liable to see her again soon, I hope.

We had an appreciable snowfall last Tuesday, on Inauguration Day, and by appreciable I mean 4-5 inches. Probably a record around here. I was told when arriving here that snow would send everyone here into a tizzy, and I’m glad to see it didn’t, really. No completely moronic driving. School was cancelled and many offices closed, of course, giving hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians the chance to see our first black president inaugurated. I, on the other hand, did not see a cancellation notice posted for my office, so I went in. Only about fifteen people showed up, so it was a pretty relaxed day and we watched the inauguration on a really poor streaming feed on someone’s computer. Apparently an e-mail had gone out that the office was going to open at 10am, but I didn’t get it in time and was there at a normal hour. Then another e-mail went out saying the office would close (i.e., admin staff would go home) at 3pm. Then I was introduced to what is really peculiar about NC snow storms… the folks here won’t drive in snow, for sure, but they REALLY won’t drive when there could be ice on the roads. School was cancelled again the next day because—egads—there might be patches of ice! The gym was closed every morning for three days! I drove every day and maybe had two instances where I didn’t feel completely safe. So, I hope this is a once-a-season thing (generally its once or none at all) because things grind to a halt when people stop showing up to work for a few days.

Otherwise, just continuing to study for my exam. The stupid testing agency has managed to not send me an important form for several months now, preventing me from scheduling the exam date… great excuse to study more, bad for an ambitious schedule to get all the exams done ASAP.

I think I’ll excerpt this e-mail for my blog, so I don’t have to write all this again! Hope you don’t mind. Well, off to 60 Minutes, Simpson’s, some popcorn, and then more reading about daylighting. Fenway is curled up in the good seat of the couch wondering why I won’t keep the heat above 65… I will kick him for you at the next opportune moment.

Much love,
Paul