Bristol Road Trip

I wish I could do this every day!

Well my trip started this morning, thankfully what seemed to be after the main morning rush hour, so traffic was pretty light. I actually go lost leaving New York, for reason I will explain later, but I ended up getting lost in Yonkers (ha ha), but did the guy thing and didn't ask for directions, and ended up getting back to the highway I needed to be on. Hooray for having a good sense of direction (a rental car with a compass is also a plus). I ended up getting to Bristol a little early and stopped up by Building B where all the .com peeps are and making rounds and saying hi to everyone who hasn’t quit.

I was really looking forward to being able to expense my lunch; of course this just happened to be the one-day out of the year that the cafeteria in Bristol was free. This was due to Marriage Madness that was going down on campus. (For those of you who haven't turned into old men, there is an explanation of this here.) Anyway, I got my free lunch, and got to see the Gin Blossoms perform live. If you're saying "What? They're still together?" you're not alone. I said the same. I was actually more shocked when they announced a song as their "new single." Sure guys, good luck with that.

Anyway, my purpose for going to Bristol was a 4-hour orientation follow up meeting. I thought it was going to be a complete waste of my time like my first orientation meeting (because those are so useful when you're already worked for the company for a year and a half), but it was actually pretty good. The best part was when they asked about the pro's and con's of the hiring process. Oh wow was that a can of worms. I think almost everyone in the room hand good stuff to lay into HR about. My own personal disaster of getting hired coming just before I started blogging. They also gave out good practical career advice on how to do things like get raises. Very good all around.

Unfortunately, people weren't available to hang out with after work, but at least there was some interest from people. I can't get New York people to do tat unless I request that from everyone like a week ahead of time. I do miss working with people who you could jsut ask "hey, want to get a drink after work?" and actually get people to participate.

The drive back was very smooth, and I did it by reverse following the directions that got my lost on the way up to Bristol. I discovered the reason I got lost was that out of nowhere Parkway names just change, for no real apparent reason, which is why I got confused and lost. But at least it was a simple drive.

Now if only I knew people in NY I could go out and be social.