1) Free coffee & at least a dozen different types of tea. And I don’t mean just plain ol’ drip coffee, either. There’s that too, of course, but there’s also an espresso/cappucino/latte-maker that is freakin’ awesome.
2) The soda machine only costs 25 cents. And it has both Diet Coke AND Diet Dr. Pepper in it. Hell yeah.
3) I met my career manager on Monday (more of a mentor than a boss), and he’s very nice. His name is Maurice, but everyone calls him Mo. I asked him if anyone calls him the Gangster of Love. He said no, but some do call him the Space Cowboy. So he’s cool. 🙂 He took me to a very nice lunch (company tab) and filled me in about lots of work stuff I didn’t know. He also told me that when I travel for work, if I’m going to be gone for a long time, I can take Teenie with me & the company will pay for it. He said that a lot of times if he’s going to be somewhere longer than a month, he & his wife will drive down with their cat & dog and all stay in the hotel together. (His wife is a writer, so she has flexibility to travel whenever/wherever she wants. Must be nice.) So that’s good, worrying about pet-sitters is honestly the one thing that had been making me not want to travel. But Teenie is a really good flyer, so if she can come with me, the problem is essentially solved.
4) I’m going to Vegas tomorrow, for an employee meeting for the western region. It’s only for one night, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I’ve never been to Vegas, and I’ve wanted to check it out for quite some time. Mo warned me to plan on getting (a) very drunk, and (b) very little sleep. I told him that I had no plans of getting drunk with my co-workers and he said “Oh don’t worry, you will. You know that expression, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? That’s true for these meetings. You probably won’t even go to bed that night.” So THAT part sounds totally awesome – although somewhat scary, since I can’t remember the last time I stayed up all night. And my flight back to Seattle doesn’t leave until 8:00 on Friday night, so Friday is going to be one looooooong day for me.
On the other hand, I have to share a hotel room with someone I don’t know, which is a bit awkward. And there are some things on the agenda that the HR ladies have been sending out, with phrases like “team activities involving creativity and fun!” that sound like absolute hell to me. I am not a fan of those “let’s get a bunch of grown-ups who don’t know each other to stand in a circle and play a game” types of exercises. One of the events is bowling – which, if there’s going to be alcohol involved, I’m going to have to politely decline from participating in, because I’ll end up seriously hurting someone, most likely myself. I do have weird carpal tunnel-esque issues with both of my thumbs (years & years of typing), so I think I can use that as an excuse. Oh well, damn near any event is tolerable as long as there’s an open bar.