That's enough office for now

Wordle 384 3/6

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Again, writing a lot of this Thursday during the day.

I took the bus to work. Partly to see if there were any changes there, but mostly because I'm meeting a friend for a happy hour after work and would feel irresponsible biking home after drinking. 

I used to bike more often than I took the bus, but yesterday felt more typical than Tuesday. The bus requires less preparation and there was more certainty to it. I just got up, got dressed, packed my bag, had breakfast, brushed my teeth, checked the schedule, and left. Simple. It could have been any day from 2016-2019 if I was assured that T. could get the kid to daycare or school alone, or any day at all from before the kid was born. 

The bus ride had changed. The view was a bit different. Franklin Park was redesigned and MacPherson Square had more homeless camps (and ducks, oddly) than I remember. Also, the bus turned near the end a couple blocks later than it used to, probably because the new Black Lives Matter Plaza is too narrow for it. And I guess the bus was less crowded than usual, but it's hard to say. 

I had one meeting in the morning, but it was fully remote and I would probably have preferred it that way even if there was an in-person option because I like my note-taking system.  

The magic has worn off going to work. The office setup is better than at home, but it's not a massive, breathtaking difference, it's just a second monitor and a faster connection to the network. Maybe I could just go in once a week on a day with nothing scheduled and archive my email then? Maybe just once a month? I was lazy about some things but I made it a point to get that done before leaving today. I'm afraid I can't think of a way to replicate the second monitor, though. I mean, literally, I could just go out and buy one, we might have something that would work in the basement, but when I think about how I work in multiple places at home and none of them are very roomy, two monitors at home would have to wait for that addition to the house we've been talking about. 

My time-killers are more safe for work here than they are at home, because even though there's literally zero risk of someone looking over my shoulder, I'm still physically in the office using a government-owned computer. Obviously I'm going into more detail here than usual, and there's Unfogged and the more SFW parts of Reddit and similar sites. For my career, this is neutral or maybe good. Personally it's boring. 

Back in the old days, there were perennial complaints and running jokes about a mysterious smell in the office. Mold in some wall or some part of the ventilation system? Who knows. I rarely or never noticed it at the time but I'm noticing it now. 

When getting lunch, I walked by a cafe and thought I saw someone I recognized from the old days. I haven't seen him personally since the pandemic started, and considering how quiet Tuesday was, this would be the closest contact with anyone from the old days since April. However, that wasn't enough incentive for me to actually go inside the place and find out for sure. I went to another cafe I like more instead. 

I resisted getting a pastry with breakfast or lunch. (I had a soda in the afternoon but I feel like that doesn't count. Sugar aside, the caffeine helps in a slow afternoon.) I only have so much willpower, though. They're so tempting. In the short term, maybe I really should have indulged because after all this is a temporary thing. In the long term, it's a good thing it's temporary or it really would be bad for my waistline. 

I find I'm paranoid about misplacing my ID card. In the old days it would have been a momentary annoyance. If I do it now, with so few people around and not knowing any of them, I'm screwed. 

The happy hour was fun. It was just me and this 40-year-old, so it's not like I haven't seen him in a while, but his office is near mine and we haven't met during or after work in a while, so that was nice. It was in a pseudo-British pub, so there were a lot of beer choices. I had a fish and chips.