Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Earl, Jamie and I have situated ourselves for the evening in the lovely town called Pine Grove, Pa. I don’t really know much about this place except that there is a nice Hampton Inn, we are close to an older McDonalds and we are at milepost 100 on Interstate 81 in Pennsylvania.

We are on our way to Florida for a week with our first night at the House of the Mouse being Sunday night.

This is how everyone should start a new job: work two weeks and then get a week off for vacation. My new company has been quite understanding about my existing plans. Speaking of which, the job is going along fabulously and I am LOVING it.

Earl has kindly done the driving tonight. I hopped in the backseat after dinner and promptly fell asleep; I woke up in Scranton, Pa. That’s quite the place to wake up.

Tomorrow we continue our trek south. I’ve heard that there may be wild weather between here and there. This could be quite exciting.

We picked up a carton of orange juice at the local convenience store. It’s your usual (in the states) half gallon sized orange juice and it comes in a waxed cardboard carton. We usually use the returnable glass bottles but we were lazy this time around. The carton has a plastic spout drilled into the side of it.

I am curious about this.

For decades there was a marking on one end of the carton that had two little circles and it said “press here to form spout”. The task was as simple as implied; push in the correct spot with your fingers and the cleverly folded waxed cardboard will pop out into a convenient spout that allows you to accurately pour into the vessel in which the liquid is going to be contained. (How’s that for fancy writing!)

I fail to understand why we have gone from this cardboard spout setup and have decided to include a piece of plastic in this formerly easily recycled container. Has the dumbing down of the American public resulted in the failure to comprehend the instructions of “press here to form spout”, complete with two little pictures? Were people trying to do this on the wrong side of the carton? Will some lack of plastic throw of the delicate chemistry involved in the unnatural preservatives contained within, thereby nullifying the impossibly long expiration period? Was the simplicity of the carton not sexy enough? I miss that simplicity.

I’m going to remember the glass bottles next time.

One of the things that I didn’t expect to happen so quickly with my change in work schedule is my becoming a morning person so quickly. Did you know that every morning the sun rises in the east like a big ball of, well, sunshine and bathes the landscape in glorious light bringing the, well, light of a new day to all that are fortunate enough to behold it?

Wow!

My commute involves driving east in the morning and west in the evening so I get to do this whole ‘bathed in light’ thing in both directions of the commute. When augmented with my lunch break I have to say that I feel quite nice.

I have never been a morning person. I think it’s because I have always subscribed to the fact and insisted that I was a night person. My friend Dave from old work says it’s all in your head and I never bought into that, but I think he may be on to something. I now get up each morning at 5:30. I used to get up at 7:00. Now, I set my alarm each morning for 5:30 in an effort to make sure I get to work on time. But here’s the thing. Starting on Wednesday, I awoke before the alarm. Yes, I woke up at 5:24. Now, I don’t know if there is a plane flying over at that time or if Tom is ramming around the house or if it’s my own circadian rhythm getting in sync with my desires but ’tis true, I am now waking up my own at 5:24.

It is Saturday as of this writing. I went to bed last night around midnight.

I woke up at 5:24 this morning. I tried to nap and I did for a little bit but I couldn’t sleep past 7:00. As a result of this two thoughts come to mind: I have either officially become a morning person or I am getting older. I have always equated getting up early with older people because that’s what they do.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s pretty nifty seeing the sunrise each morning.

So I’m sitting in the Jeep during my lunch hour. The forecast I caught on the way into work this morning said we’d be getting snow showers. It’s currently around 45 degrees and sunny. This sneak peek at spring has done much to accentuate an already brilliant day.

My body is slowly acclimating to the new schedule. I found it a little bit easier to get up at 5:30 a.m. than yesterday- though I went to bed relatively early last night. Let’s see how I do after Daylight Saving Time strikes in a few weeks.

The second day at the new job is going along well. I work in a busy group so I’m doing all I can to go at it on my own when others are busy. They hooked up my phone today and gave me some other doodads for the cubicle; the model phone I now have is the same that I had back when I enjoyed working at the other job except in black. Apparently I’m lucky to have a brand new phone. Everyone has been very nice and very helpful. I am already feeling comfortable with my coworkers. I think this will be a good gig.

I’m still working out my daily routine and trying to figure out when I’m going to blog and take care of household business and all that. Towards the end of my tenure at my last job I was in the habit of just shuttling back and forth between the office and house at lunch time, but my commute now longer allows that so now I’m finding other ways to amuse myself. While today is quite nice, I’m excited for when the weather breaks and I can drink in some sunshine during my lunch hour.

Technology allows us the opportunity to maintain with those that have become part of our past. I’m exchanging e-mails with my friends back at the old job and of course updating folks via Facebook and Twitter and all that. It’s good to use technology for these purposes. That’s what social networking is all about – reaching out. It’s like letting your fingers do the walking, but with pictures.

Speaking of which, I’m going to try to do a little bit of night photography tonight if the weather conditions permit. I’m really enjoying the new camera. It’s a good creative outlet.