The next chapter begins...

Okay not actually, but it made me laugh :)

I, of course, did not sleep last night.   Why would my brain give me a shot at starting a new job rested?    Sheesh.   Regardless, I got through Day 1 ;)    Yup, that’s right, my new job started today and it’s a bit of a surreal experience.   Same company.  Same building even (for the moment).  And I think it’s those similarities that make the differences stand out.

First off all, walking in – I need to take a different elevator bank.  Absolutely no big deal (in fact it’s actually a shorter trip since there are much fewer potential stops before my floor) but I still feel slightly wrong going there, and definitely disoriented coming out.

Once on the floor – same size, same building, similar layout.  But not quite the same.  Neither locker nor desk were even close to where I expected them to be.  Win on the locker location though – very happy about that.   And desks are flexible as per my last role, so I can move around after this week if I want.  They have a coat rack by the lockers which is a nice plus J   Lol the little things.

And walking around – going to get breakfast in the morning, the hot water tap is on the other side of the kitchen.  Such a minor thing, but made me think about a mindless task early in the am.   And knowing almost nobody – I’m not particularly social by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm used to saying hi to most people I pass throughout the day, knowing the people who usually sit near me, etc etc.  I’ve been there for more than three years now – there’s a basic familiarity there.   Whereas here, I’m not even at “hi in the halls” stage of knowing anybody.

Or almost.  The people on my team seem awesome; one made a point to come say hi this am.   Another I met with later in the am and we chatted for a bit.  And new boss seems a good fit – I’m excited to be on his team and it looks like there'll be interesting work.   So that's kinda the point.  My project team is scattered all over, but I met them in an all-day session last week, so that at least covered ice-breaking ;)    Sadly though, since none are in the building, it didn’t help alleviate the stranger in a known land feeling.

Same company, same building, different culture.  More formal both in dress and policy L    No work from home and hours seem to be of the 9-5 variety.   Really struggling with both these things, esp given that my aforementioned project team is scattered so I won’t be seeing them face-to-face anyways – which to me is the only advantage to coming in the office.   Ah well, fingers crossed that gets updated in the near future – until then, I’ll be watching my fitness and health slide down L   Ugh.   No stairs.  Literally sit at a desk for 8h, and spend 3h commuting with a few thousand other people.   Not the best recipe for wellness I’m afraid.   Also, they’re doing construction on the floor below so the noise combined with lack of sleep led to a substantial headache by midafternoon *sigh*

But the job itself is definitely a step up in interest and difficulty level.  Starting a little soft, at well under 100%, with a well-established program, which is less challenging than I might like, but at least it’s a super-interesting area.   Chatting with new boss I'm pretty convinced the potential for both interesting AND challenging is fairly substantial here, so I’m looking forward to that J

And all the people so far have been awesome.   Which is huge.   The rest – that’s just details ;)

Now on to day two...

New Year, New Job ;)

So now that it's been officially announced at work, I can announce it here too -- I have a new job!  Woohoo!  lol starts on the 29th.  The super fancy title of Senior Manager, Transformation -- which is a lateral move for me, but I'm still pretty excited about it as it should definitely be more interesting and enable some career growth.

It's a comparatively tiny department, unfortunately much more formal in both dress and in complete lack of work from home.  *sigh*.  To be honest, I'm dreading having to go back to commuting every day.  Really hope it's worth it ;). But I really like the people I've met so far, and the job has the potential to be really cool.  So yeah, pretty excited.

Also, unrelated, I've started volunteering with Triac -- which arranges professional mentoring for newcomers to Canada.   These are people who were professionals in their own country who are either unemployed or underemployed, having trouble finding employment in their field in Canada.  Things like cultural expectations, unspoken rules of job shopping, interview skills, etc.  I met my mentee a few hours before my job announcement came out on Friday :).  It was an interesting day.

I'll miss moments like this when I can't work from home anymore :(

Skiing: the art of catching a cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk.

I am the snow plow queen!   And not in any useful way -- like as in being able to effortlessly remove snow from your driveway.   No, my talents lie more in the completely talentless skier category ;)

So let's recap -- since I'm not riding right now, I'm once again in search of a hobby.  But preferably one of the once/week variety as opposed to the all-consumingness of riding (cause let's be honest, I've proven I can't do that on any casual level).  I'm not quite sure why skiing popped into my head but I did some googling and found reasonably affordable lessons at Glen Eden on Tuesday nights.  Perfect.  Timing works with my work and teaching schedule, location is half hour from home, and while not cheap, is still less than I'd budgeted for riding.  And, better yet, Laura was in for joining me.  Sweet.

However, then reality reared its ugly head and let us know lesson spots were already taken.  Being the adventurous sorts we are, we deemed this sort of irrelevant and decided to go anyway.  Lol I figure it's been almost 20 years since I've skied and Laura is slightly better off at closer to 10 but figures just as long since any regular skiing.  So really, lessons probably would've been a wise life choice ;)

For perspective -- once upon a time we used to do family ski trips; I suspect inspired by the fact that Mum loved to ski.   So when I was a kid/teen I was a reasonable intermediate skier.  I was never brave enough to be interested in even trying the moguls or black diamonds (although I believe my brothers played that game), but I could certainly handle anything blue easily, ski consistently in parallel and under control.  I was never good, but I was competent.

Tuesday rolls around and off I head to Glen Eden.   It's quite the hike from the parking to the skiing but sobeit.  I was moderately amused that the baby hill still has the fence at the bottom before the road.  I vividly recall crashing into that fence on a day trip with school when I was in grade school ;).  Lol it still serves its purpose.  Got through the rental area with no line and no issue -- yeah perfect timing!  Skis are now significantly shorter than they were twenty years ago.   Lol I knew that intellectually, but the reality hadn't quite sunk in.   Also, ski helmets are now a thing (probably for the best!), and they're actually incredibly comfortable; I was quite pleasantly surprised, although I did have issues with the helmet pushing my goggles down *sigh*.  That's a bit of a pita.

So through the tiny tunnel, up the stairs and good to go.   Except Laura wasn't there yet.   So I read the ski map and took a picture and generally just appreciated that it was absolutely perfect weather and didn't seem to be particularly crowded.   Any other day I would've just skied till she got there, but for the first day, I figured it might be best to wait.

We did Escarpment and Quarry all night ;)

Soon enough, it was time to go.   We headed over to the chairlift and made it on with no drama.  Woohoo! And even better, we made it off with equally no drama :).   Win!   Lol first hill of the day accomplished (seriously -- when you haven't skied in forever, the getting-off-the-lift hill counts!).   There's a nice green route that goes across the hill (almost as much XC as downhill since there is definitely a slight up section!) and then cruises gently down the far side.   This was our objective.  And with a  whole lot of hesitation and some confusion, we made it!   Lol.  Mostly we just didn't go down any hill steep enough that your skis could point out over it ;).  Seemed a wise life choice.  We did miss the turn back to the original chairlift so took a different chairlift up -- but this one put us half way through our lovely green route so the next trip down was shorter.   Just as well as we were still getting our ski legs ;)

No.  Not now.  Not next week.  Not even on horseback.  Just no.

Over time and multiple runs though our confidence started to grow and we weren't nearly as painfully slow getting down.   Even had some moments of picking up speed :).  However, this does make the run significantly shorter *g*. I'd forgotten just how small Glen Eden really is *sigh*.  Ah well -- it'll keep me amused for this year.   We spent the whole time on that run and by the end were starting to feel a little more okay.  Don't get me wrong -- embarrassingly bad.   Snowplowing most of the way, and the few feeble attempts at making my skis align in a parallel fashion had them more than hip-width apart.  Nobody was going to be mistaking me for any degree of competent!  Lol BUT there was no falling, diving, starfishing, somersaulting, or splits.   So the complete lack of gymnastic displays we're calling a win.   Of course, Laura raised the valid point that it's only once you start to feel confident that that kind of stuff comes into play ;).  So we'll see next week.

My only oops was when I did this once as I was starting to get brave *sigh*.  BUT, I recovered it ;)

We ended before we were really done because we wanted out before the school finished.   Next time we'll go earlier and give ourselves a little more time.  Also, I think both of us were ready to try a more interesting run -- it might be for the best that we ran out of time before doing so ;).  Next week, blue it is!  I'd like a little less dramatic snow plow, and maybe to pretend my skis are both controlled by the same brain.  I feel that'd be a good goal.  Except I think I'm working late next Tues so next week may be a fail *sigh*.  Adulting sucks sometimes.   But we'll see.

Today I expected to be very sore, but wasn't at all.  I did, however, sleep incredibly well last night.  A sport that I come home from grinning and excited, sleep unbelievably deeply, and wake up not sore?!?!   That's all kinds of awesome.

So yeah -- it was perfect weather and uncrowded.  Not sure how long fair weather me will last in real winter.  But for now, it was a blast :)

The girls who lived :)

New Year, Similar Randomness ;)

So I definitely had a blank moment trying to remember my work password on Tues. That tells me that I did actually completely disconnect over break. For the win. Better win – I remembered said password before locking myself out ;)

I have been slightly amused watching people in the office today as at about 10 to the hour about half a dozen or so within sight stand up and go for a walk. I’m gonna go ahead and guess Santa delivered each of them a shiny new Fitbit ;) But that’s exactly why it’s good so more power to them :)

Work is deserted this week – it’s an odd vibe. People are still relaxed from vacation and half are still away, but also back already into heads down mode. So very quickly I get back into doing stuff and then suddenly somebody I need something from isn’t here and there’s that abrupt reminder that only a couple days ago I too was still on vacation. Amazing how quickly you fall back into the routine.

So I decided not to continue with the part-board I had on trial in December.   Which mostly tells me I'm not as dedicated to riding as I once was since it was a good deal and involved all kinds of lessons (which I really miss).  But after 3h of commuting in a day, driving out to the barn and back 4 days/week was just pushing my commitment capabilities.   That and I'd like to see my husband once in a while ;)

However, with that gone, I find myself, once again, in search of a new hobby.   Am still super disappointed that adult gymnastics got cancelled.   Realistically probably for the best.  So instead, she who hates winter, is going to embrace it and take up skiing.   Yeah -- adult gymnastics suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea eh?  lol.  I haven't been on skies in, oh about twenty years.   So Laura and I decided we'd sign up for weekly lessons.  Yup -- I'm not going into this insanity alone ;).  Except, lessons are sold out.  Fail.   So being the brilliant souls we are, we've decided to just go at the same time.   That starts next Tues (hopefully the deep freeze will be over by then -- I would pick the most wintery winter we've had in ages for this).   Stay tuned *g*

And continuing the exercise trend, Nicole and I have taken up 21 Day Extreme.  I tried this once before and failed horribly because I had a very low tolerance for the person leading it, but the workouts were good.  So hoping with an accountability partner it may happen.   I was destroyed by the first workout.  Didn't seem particularly hard as I was doing it, but it's now four days later and those muscles are *still* sore.  This has also encouraged me to do entirely too much research on recovery supplements ;).   That first day was plyo -- so essentially entirely butt muscles.  Followed by upper body that completely spaghettied my arms; fortunately they weren't too bad the next day although definitely still feeling the chest muscles.  Pilates was easier than the core workouts in Core de Force so not terribly impressive.   Leg day today...   Well suffice to say I won't be going down many stairs tomorrow ;).  It was my favourite one so far.   The one thing I don't like is that they use the same set of weights for all exercises.  Easy enough to alter though, I use several sets in each workout depending on which muscle is involved.   Cardio, and a couple full body ones still to go.  Then rinse and repeat.  We'll see.

Also, according to the iReaditNow app, I read 136 books last year ;).  Only writing it here so I'll be able to find it next year and see the difference :)

Think that's enough babbling to ring in the new year.  Hope it brings everything you hope for.