Commuting is not the favorite sport of The Kat™. Driving is okay; I like to drive. Riding is better, of course, because it allows for the knitting, but one cannot always ride. Sometimes one is forced to be pilot, navigator, and Occupant In Charge Of The Radio And Heater, all rolled into one. Oftentimes the occasion for being forced into such an arduous role is the necessity of getting oneself to the place where, glory be to FSM, one is paid just for showing up and twiddling numbers for a few hours.
In other words, I have been driving myself to work for the past week and a half.
Others may rail against the accursed and demented drivers they encounter on their daily commute. Still others may glorify that concept called Work From Home Wednesday. Not for me the cursing nor the working in pjs; no, The Kat™ serenely navigates the traffic and courageously weathers the elements in order that people who live in various attractive venues around the world and have way more money than might be good for them can rest assured that their tax returns will be correct, elegant, and done on time.
Last week was my first week back at work, and so it involved a certain amount of settling in: moving the box of office stuff from home back to my cube, unpacking and installing all the accoutrements of cube life -- pictures, back massager, fan, Ikea vases, radio, handy snacks, various mugs and insulated tumblers. One of the necessities was to purchase a bus pass so that I might consider myself honorable and righteous and Green, but for some reason I didn't accomplish this until Thursday. Since I leave directly from the office on Friday afternoon to drive back home to WI, taking the bus the next day was right out.
But I was looking forward to beginning my bus commutes this week. The morning ride, on the express bus, is almost too short to bother getting out my knitting (although I always do it anyway). But after work the last express bus leaves at 5:10, and no tax accountant in the known universe can leave work every day during tax season at 5 p.m. (Right, Carrie?) I shall take the local bus home -- that's about 45 minutes of excellent knitting time, w00t.
And then fate intervened.
I told you last year about all the little things they do at work to keep us entertained and racing happily on our little treadmills: dinner brought in on Wednesday nights, happy hour every Friday afternoon, contests, a multitude of drawings for little and not-so-little prizes. Last year I won a firm-logo-adorned brush to clean my monitor (again, w00t), a snazzy highlighter with integrated post-its (Be still my heart!), and a $50 gift certificate good anywhere Visa is accepted (Yes!! Now we're talkin'!).
My luck continues to hold. Last Friday I won free parking in our [downtown Minneapolis] building for this week. Hee hee! Valet parking! For a week!! I feel just like... a partner in the firm. They all park there.
Frankly, though, I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. First, I was gonna start my bussing-to-be-green-and-knit campaign this week; now, I continue to burn gas and clog the freeway. Second, when I do drive I park in the ramp next door to our building, so valet parking in the basement doesn't really save me any time (although it certainly is cheaper than the $11/day I'd pay next door!) -- in fact, it probably takes me longer to leave at night because the exit dumps me on a one-lane, one-way street that is permanently backed up with traffic and that goes the wrong way and so takes me way out of my way through downtown. Third, and worst of all, it eliminated that 45-minute bus ride at the end of the day when I was going to knit ::pout::
Stop grumbling, Kat™, it's unseemly.
But something happened this morning that made me smile. I handed my keys to the valet and he handed me this:
* * * * *
But that lovely rose has gone to a better place -- the desk of a co-worker who just stopped in my cube to show me the first ultrasound of her baby-in-waiting. She's been worried since her first prenatal appointment three weeks ago when the midwife couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat, so worried she hadn't revealed her pregnancy to anyone else at work except me. Today she is just... glowing. So I gave her the rose. She deserved it. And she got the best Valentine's Day present one could hope for.
