Now that I’m riding the bus for about an hour and a half each day – 45 minutes morning and evening – I have been getting a lot of reading done. I’ve already read Silas Marner, and am working my way through Age Of Innocence. I have a whole list of classics I’ve never had time to read I would like to get to. As much as I dislike being away from home so much, I kind of enjoy my downtime on the bus, and it’s nice to have time to read without feeling guilty that there’s something more important I should be doing. On the bus there’s literally nothing else to do!

Watching the other passengers, I’ve seen how they spend their time. I’ve seen a lot of iPads and Kindles, lots of people hauling big heavy books along with them as well. Some people surf the web on their iPads or phones which are connected to the web via data packages. At first I was thinking it would be pretty nice to be able to do that – I could do all my email and blogging and stuff while on the bus. But looking into the price put an end to that – there’s just no way I could spend that much money on entertainment! I’ve bought cars for what that would cost in a year! I’m pretty happy with my low-tech flip phone which doesn’t do much other than make calls, and it’s on a cheap by-the-minute plan, which is just how I like it.

So I bit the bullet and spent a bit of my hard earned money on a Kindle Fire. Super neat little device, works on wi-fi, can do a little surfing. Best of all, I immediately loaded up about ten classic books I want to read – like Age of Innocence, Robinson Caruso, Treasure Island, Little Women, and some I’d like to re-read – Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights – all for free! FREE! There’s plenty more too, I just didn’t want to get greedy.

I’m looking forward to hitting the bus on Tuesday with my new toy. Hopefully that will make the commute just fly by as I get absorbed in another world. Sometimes I like to sneak in a little reading at lunchtime too. I think this little device is going to make life away from home a little more pleasant.

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Part 2 of my ‘where I work’ post will include: where I work!

This is the historic Postal Building in downtown Portland. Built in 1901, it is on the register of historic places.

It is a lovely building. The offices are all around the outside of the building, and there is a big open atrium in the middle, with a glass skylight in the roof and an elevator in the middle. I try to take the stairs whenever I can for extra exercise!

Our breakroom has a view across the street, where we can watch the goings-on at the offices in the Dekum, another historic building (1891) with a really neat exterior with lots of carved details.

We can also see creepy Santa from there, he’s motion activated and turns his head to follow people, and dances.

Luckily creepy Santa retired after Christmas!

When I get off work it’s dark out, but it’s in a pretty populated part of town, so it feels pretty safe. I only have to walk 3 blocks to catch my bus.

I walk by this neat gearhead bar with a cool old Indian bike in the window.

I was catching the bus for two weeks before I turned around and noticed this was next to the bus stop – uh oh, hold on to your wallets!

That’s the total of my adventure so far. I have been hit up by panhandlers a lot, and the only problem came when an aggressive panhandling lady asked me for change from behind me (at first I didn’t even think she was talking to me), and I wasn’t going to turn around and acknowledge her, so I just kept walking, and instead of going after someone else she followed me for a block and a half! I pretended to be deaf, while she was shouting obscenities at me. Luckily she went away finally, I never even saw what she looked like, she was behind me the whole time. I hate situations like that, but it hasn’t happened again. I guess I just need to stay alert and try to walk with the other commuters. When I get off the bus I just try to go the direction the majority of people go and head to work. It’s only two blocks, so how much trouble could I have?

I want to take my camera back soon when we have a nice day of weather, and go out at lunchtime and take pictures. The entire area around my office is historic building, including an historic carriage house building, which I see from the bus. I want to walk over and get a closer look at it sometime.

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At 8am I head off to the ‘park and ride’. Today Dave drove, but usually he stays home.

Onto the freeway. Our home in the country is a half hour from the nearest P&R…

Where I catch a bus. Vancouver’s C-Tran has very nice buses, at least on the express route.I suspect the in-town buses aren’t quite this nice.

If I get the Express we go straight to Portland, but if I get the ‘Sort of Express’ we make a few stops along the way, and then we cross the Mighty Columbia into Oregon.

The Fremont bridge is the first big bridge we see – it’s at the North end of town. The bus goes over it on the way home in the evening, though sometimes they surprise me and take other routes to get around the traffic.

It was pretty foggy, couldn’t see much of downtown Portland,

Finally we cross the Willamette River and into downtown.

More tomorrow, because Blogger is being a bear about loading pictures for some reason today.

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Well, I survived a whole week of work! I didn’t think I would ever say this, but so far I really like work. I am still in training, but I really like what I see. The company is well organized, and very disciplined. They have well laid out policies and people have well defined jobs. I’m a software tester/specialist, so I’ve been primarily learning about the systems and layouts, and hanging over one of the other tester’s shoulder and watching him work, and I really think I will have no problem handling the work, once I figure out where all the databases are located! But for now I’m just soaking up everything I can and learning, learning, learning.

As far as the company goes, I would say they are nicer to their employees than any company I’ve ever worked for. They brag to their customers that they have only a 5% turnover in employees over the 20 years they have been in business! I can see why. They have bonuses, a generous time off policy, free coffee and cocoa, free pop, bowls of fresh fruit, and a friendly atmosphere. This week they had everyone trying on shirts to order company logo shirts – everyone gets three, and they wanted us to pick our favorite colors and try them on to be sure they’d fit so we would actually wear them 🙂 You might not expect the friendly atmosphere, because the business is very strict in some ways. Because it is a high security company, everything is in lock down, everyone has security passes and they are used to unlock doors between offices, and everything is tracked. The email is for company correspondences only, and all conversations are saved, same with IM. Phones must be on vibrate in the office, but can be checked and used at breaks and lunchtime. The internet is for business use only, and I’m sure it is tracked as well. There is no private use of the internet, even during breaks, because it would look bad for a customer tour to come through and see Facebook up on a computer!

Even with these restrictions, people are really happy there, and very hard-working. Everyone has their nose to the grindstone. In IT, as in all IT offices I’ve ever worked in, things are a little more relaxed than down in production where they are trying to meet performance goals. In IT the productivity is measured differently, and sometimes a 15 minute report ends up taking two hours when things don’t turn out to be as simple as they appear. But still, not like any office I’ve been in before. These folks are hard working, well paid, and happy to do it. I haven’t heard anyone say anything bad about the company.

And I have to say, it’s contagious. I was really dreading going back to work, but I’m actually enjoying it. It’s kind of nice to be away from the farm and around new people and new situations. I really enjoy trouble shooting and problem solving, and so software testing is right up my alley!

Years ago, I traded money for time at home, and I quit my job and came home and we tried to make it on the toy business and starting a little farm. The farm didn’t work out, and the toy business got pummeled in the economy, so I had to go back to work. But it’s hard to go from complete freedom to 8 hours a day away from home. But that’s the way it is, and most of the rest of the country does it too, so I just have to get used to it. Only seeing my husband and dogs for a few hours before bed, and an hour in the morning is pretty tough. Luckily they expect this job to transition to telecommuting eventually, so I’ll hold onto that hope!

The commute adds a little over an hour to each end of my day. Half an hour to drive to the bus stop/park & ride, and then 30-45 minutes on the bus. I like riding the bus though, I can’t imagine getting downtown any other way. I just sit back and nap or read a book, and they do what they have to do. In order to get around the traffic as much as possible, the drivers talk to each other over the radio and figure out different routes to take. I have been on the bus reading and looked up and found our bus in some surprising places, but the bus always gets us where we’re going, and pretty much within the right time, so I have no complaints. Since these are commuter routes, there’s no shady characters like I used to see riding the buses downtown when I was a kid, just regular working folks, relaxing and reading their kindles or iPads. I bring a book.

So I’d have to say my overall impression is ‘so far – so good’. I can’t believe I’m working in Downtown Portland! I spent a year looking for a job, and most of the time I restricted my search to Vancouver, because I didn’t want a long commute. But I’m glad I extended my reach a bit. I’m getting in some reading on the bus rides, and I’m kind of star-struck being in the BIG CITY! There are skyscrapers there, for Pete’s sake! Bicycle messengers, bums, Pioneer Square, every sort of person you could imagine, all the lights and colors and sounds. I’m looking forward to taking my camera along and getting some pictures soon! It’s like a whole different world!

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Finally, something good to say! I have to say I’ve been feeling a bit depressed lately, as our financial situation was getting worse and worse, and I sent out resume after resume (my goal was to send out at least one resume a day to something I reasonably thought I could do – even if it was minimum wage) either to hear nothing back, or to get an interview that went nowhere – and I’ve been doing this since the beginning of the year. Our lives are suffering from deferred maintenance in nearly every way, from a leak in the porch cover roof, to the shredded canopy over the trailer, to our own needs we can’t afford to meet – like simple trips to the dentist or annual exams. In fact we’ve been lucky just to afford gas and food to keep ourselves going. Starting three years ago when we had to cut back by giving away the sheep and goats, and then clearing out my fish room to save on the electricity and water, to giving up the chickens this year and finally giving Jack away, we have been tightening our belts tighter and tighter, and eventually there’s no more room to tighten. We have hung onto the trailer all this time in case we end up needing to live in it with our dogs and cats, since I’m sure no one would rent to us and our remaining menagerie, and I would rather live in a trailer with my dogs than give them up. When you’ve given up all you can stand, you have to draw the line.

So I’m relieved to say that Friday I got the call I needed. It started Tuesday with a call from a company I had applied to in Portland. She gave me a quick interview on the phone, which I stumbled through like an idiot, answering simple interview questions like ‘what would you like to be doing in 5 years’ – to which I drew a blank, because all I could think in my stressed out state was ‘working’! When I got off the phone I thought, well, I blew that opportunity, but later that afternoon she emailed me to come in for an in-person interview on Wednesday. Wednesday I went in and met a guy who questioned me about my experience, and this guy was pretty IT savvy, so I felt comfortable, I was more in my zone. I thought that went well, and he invited me back for another interview Friday with the head of the department I’d be working in. So I came back on Friday and had an interview with the first guy, the department head and the president of the company, and then we moved to the HR/operations supervisor and talked to her for a bit. It took an hour and a half, and I was almost afraid to get my hopes up. Everyone seemed really nice and the company sounded great, stable, the job itself sounded interesting and right up my alley – a combination of design and testing and troubleshooting, and these are some of my favorite things when it comes to software. So they said they’d call and let me know one way or the other that day.

So I went home and moped around the house the rest of the day, waiting for the phone call, afraid to so much as walk out to the garage for fear of missing it. Finally 5pm came and went, and I thought that was it, I’m not going to hear back from them today. Then 6pm passed on by, and I really figured it was over. So by then I’d settled down on the couch to catch up on some CraigyFerg, when the phone rang, and it was my new boss telling me I’d got the job! They were worried I’d get burnt out on the commute, but I have no problem with it. There’s an express bus that goes downtown from the North end of Vancouver,and drops off just a couple blocks from work – it doesn’t get much easier than that

I’m oh so happy to finally have someone give me a chance! Ten years ago I left my last computer job on friendly terms, and came home to work on our toy business and our little farm. I had a chance to try out my dreams of having a CSA and raising chickens – and now I know all sorts of reasons for why it really doesn’t work in our situation. I’m ready to go back to a stable job, where I can use my software skills I spent all those years building up. And this job even wants people to telecommute once they get the hang of the job, so maybe I won’t be spending all my time downtown. I think it’s the perfect job for me. I can’t wait to finish jumping through the hoops to get started.

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