eddyfate

I managed to upload some of the Fanfest 2007 pictures I copied onto my computer (I hit Flickr's limit, so I'll upload the rest in December). These are all taken by the amazingly prolific Ned Coker, as my own camera was evil to me the entire trip.

Fanfest 2007

I'm safe and alive here in Georgia. My plane flight was fine (if stuck on the runway near the end), and kristnitori kindly picked me up, fed me, and chatted with me until I needed to go to my hotel room about midnight.

I slept a few hours (five, I think), and went to the office early enough to catch breakfast (and to have my favorite bomber jacket die). Since I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for Iceland, I worked from my laptop and focused on getting things like my paperwork done, my remote access bits sorted, and planning out the details of my living arrangements for the next few weeks. I also sat in on the regular Monday meeting and did a little bit of proper developer-type work as well.

I have to say, my first day didn't go at all as I expected it to, and that's in a very positive way. There's an energy about the office that's a good blend of professional and creative, and some of my concerns about moving from a much more structured work environment to this one seems to have been less of an issue than I first thought. Everyone here has been really cool, and it was nice to actually meet some people like oakthorne who I had only conversed with online. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but I'm looking forward to the challenge more and more.

I'm also really enjoying my first experience with Stone Mountain, GA. It's got all of the good bits of what I liked about Tennessee and Florence, KY. There's a lot of trees around, and you can see bits of the mountains as you drive around. There's a huge national park very close by (as I discovered as I got lost trying to drive 500 feet from the office to my hotel and back). It's really a very pretty area, but urban enough that I don't feel like I'm a million miles from nowhere.

My schedule is going to be a little crazy for a while.

10/30: Check out of hotel, fly to Pittsburgh, then Boston, then Iceland.
10/31-11/3: Go to meetings, demo card games, see lots of stuff, try not to take out a loan to buy a sandwich, fly back.
11/4: Fly back, check into long-term housing.
11/5-11/9: Work a full week for the first time in three weeks.
11/10: Have a full day to myself that doesn't involve something work related.
11/11: Retreat with developers to talk about stuff.
11/12-11/13: Company retreat
11/14-11/17: Back to the office to work some more.
11/17 or 11/18: Fly back to St. Louis
11/18-Thanksgiving-ish: Work remotely from home. Make the house sell as quickly as possible.
After Thanksgiving-ish (exact day depends on whether greebotrill can go to an Anthropology conference or not): Drive back to Stone Mountain with a car and more stuff. Go back into long-term housing and see how December shapes out. Repeat as necessary, but with more car.

This week is a lot of pitching ideas and coming up with plans, but I expect I'll have a /lot/ of work to do during all that time up there. It helps that I have friends like kristnitori around to help out and a very supportive work environment, but I really do hope that the rest of my family can move up here soon after the new year starts.

The last few days have been pretty hectic.

Friday was my last day at my old job at the Washington University School of Medicine. I had my farewell lunch on Tuesday, but I had another final lunch with the rest of the staff on Friday. (I also had one last student lunch I had to cater that went utterly sideways, as a final reminder that my old job wasn't all good people.) During the course of the week there was a lot of "you don't really have to go, do you?" but in the end everyone was supportive and asked me to stay in touch. I got some pictures of my old co-workers, and a $100 gift card from Target, which will help me immensely, as the CCP offices are right by a Super Target. Friday night I had dinner with some of my friends at El Maguey (our favorite Mexican restaurant), and got some amusing gifts from naamaire to help me out, like ghost erasers and vampire pencils.

Saturday was dedicated to getting the last things ready. I bought a new Virgin Mobile phone on a pay-as-you-go plan with a Stone Mountain phone number, as well as an plug adapter for my laptop in Iceland. We filled our truck with the rest of the books I couldn't sell and dropped them off at Goodwill, along with some old clothing of mine. I helped clean out the basement, throwing away a lot of old junk that we didn't need or hadn't missed in years. Then I packed most of my clothes (barring costuming and formal wear) into two suitcases, along with a few books. I then packed up my laptop and accessories, a few DVDs, and my iPod, and spent a few hours snuggling with greebotrill and the pets while I let the cold I've been fighting overtake me for a while.

Today I will likely help out in cleaning up the house a little for the open house. Then from 2-4, while the house is being shown, we'll drive around with the animals and find something to do. Then we come back, drop off the animals, and grab my bags before I fly off to Atlanta. krisnitori will pick me up from the airport, and she'll take me to my hotel room. I'll be there for a couple of days, where I work and repack my bags to fly to Iceland on Tuesday night. Needless to say, my contact will be between "spotty" and "non-existent" for the next week or so.

I'm going through a ton of emotions right now, but all in all I'm looking forward to the challenge.