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I am still really enjoying my job (yay!).  I am also REALLY looking forward to next week when I get to start working my regular hours (W-F 8-4:30) instead of full-time hours.  Going to Seattle for a day on the long weekend meant I got shortchanged on rest while most people took time to recharge, and I'm running on fumes at this point.  

I saw First Position with Shellie last night -- LOVED IT.  There were parts of it that literally gave me chills.  Those kids are amazing.  And unlike Center Stage, it did not make me miss ballet.  It was a real look at how much it can suck.  But I still really felt proud of the kids in the film, and I definitely recommend it.  It was amazing.

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It is SO NICE to have a gym and locker room in my office complex.  The gym itself is kind of crappy -- small, old equipment -- but it's functional, and the locker rooms are very nice.  The nice thing about it though is working out in the middle of my workday.  Everyone in my office does it like that -- use the full lunch hour for a workout, and then microwave something and eat lunch at your desk.  Most days I prefer to work out in my own gym, but this is perfect for days when I have evening plans and don't have time to squish a workout into my schedule.  I always stress when that's the case, but now I can just go during my workday without it sucking up any of my free time.  That's honestly like one of the top 3 reasons I had reservations about going back to work in a traditional office -- the stress of having such limited time to get in a workout each day.  

I'm glad I had that option today, because by the time I got home, I basically just wanted to get in my pajamas and veg.  Maybe I would've had more energy if I hadn't worked out at lunch hour, but still, it's nice to get it out of the way and get a jump start on my weekend.  Z has the car in Eugene for the weekend, so I got to try public transit from Lake Oswego for the first time.  Lake Oswego is basically the rich suburb, so there aren't many bus routes there.  I had to walk a mile to catch a bus to take me to the commuter rail that takes me to the stop near my house.  It was kind of an ordeal, and I wouldn't want to do it in shitty weather, but it wasn't too bad. It took about 75 minutes.  If I had been five minutes behind in my walk, though, it would've taken another 30 minutes, so I'm glad I hustled to catch the 4:45 bus.  It was also my first time riding the WES (commuter rail).  It's nice.

I had a small triumph at work today.  My boss was out to lunch and the woman who is training me was gone for the day, and an urgent phone call came in about a wreck.  It's normally something my boss deals with, but given the urgency, I handled it myself, and then sent emails to my boss and other concerned parties to give them a heads up on the situation and the fact that I'd skipped some steps to get it moving.  When my boss got back, he wrote back with "good decision!!"  Simple little praise, but I saved the email, 'cause it made me feel good :)  I'm just now thinking about how weird that is, since the start of the thread is an email about a triple fatality crash...

There are times at this job where really horrifying things come in -- in my case it's just insurance claims that tell the stories, but the adjusters often have to deal with photographs and lawyers and whole legal battles involving gruesome crashes and whatnot.  It has been nice to see that the people I work with are not unemotional about these things.  I was a little afraid that taking this job would make me insensitive about tragedies, or that I'd be working with other people who look at crashes only for the bottom line.  While that is the job, everyone is still in touch with their humanity, so that's been nice.  That said, I have had a lot of morbid curiosity in my down time, and sometimes I go through all the files that are in litigation or that have really enormous cash payments (usually because someone was killed), and I find these cases very interesting.  They are of course very sad and it's not like I enjoy the facts of the incidents...but it is compelling to see how the police and investigators and adjusters and lawyers all break down these cases -- and not just the really horrific ones, but also the simple fender benders where the parties each tell a different story, and we have to do our best to find the truth.  I feel like it's actually pretty easy to tell who's telling the truth most of the time, but I also know how frustrated I'd be if I were a claimant in a my-word-against-hers kind of case.  Anyway the point is it's all very interesting.  It also does play into some stereotypes...maybe this is just selective memory on my part, but it sure seems like in most of the cases where the other party (not our insured truck driver) is at fault, it's a female driver.  Then again, in most of the cases, it's the truck driver's fault.  Just because they're professionals doesn't mean they're good drivers.  The most important thing I've learned so far on the job is to stay the fuck away from commercial trucks while driving.  Or walking or biking or being a parked car anywhere near a loading dock.