First Day in VT

Getting a good night sleep the first night in a hotel is always hard for me.  I fell asleep watching TV and woke up on and off in two hour intervals the whole night long.  I had the right game plan of leaving the hotel an hour before I was due to work.  I spent a few minutes of that hour cleaning off my car and calling home while the windshield defrosted.  The 24 miles of highway were fine.  The side roads to town weren't that bad.  My moment of confusion came to the parking situation.  I had the instruction of parking in the back.  At the gate, I needed to speak into the intercom and the guards would open it up for me.  So after driving around the block and getting turned around a bit, I arrive at the gate and tell them who I am and where I am working.

     "Ma'am, you need to go up to main street, in front of the building."
     "But I'm working there, not a customer."
     "Ma'am, you need to go to the front of the building."
     "I was told that I should go to the gate and let you know where I am working."
     "OK."

The gate opens and I drive in. I am looking for my numbered parking space and I realize that the numbers are too low.  As I keep going, I realize that there is another parking lot that you get to from the front of the building, but not from the lot I'm in.  Light bulb.  The guards weren't telling me to park in the front of the building, they were telling me I had the wrong gate, I needed the one with the access at the front of the building.  Oops.

With that snafu over, I walked in to the Agency at 8:30, right on time.  The Agency is the smallest in the Bureau.  Contrast to the one I normally work at which is the biggest.  Everybody was so nice and welcoming.  It was interesting for me because I had wanted to apply for their vacant Manager job but the family vetoed.  I'm getting a taste of what it would have been like, had I applied and gotten the position.  As it turns out, they just finished interviewing and at the staff meeting today, the Director announced the hiring decision.  I know that man who got the job.  We were both contractors in 2007, and hired to the Government shortly there after.  I can't remember if he started at the end of 2007 or if he came after me in January in 2008.  Anyway, he has been willing to relocate and has working in DC and another Agency in the Northeast.  Good for him to get this position.

I ate lunch away from the office.  I sat at the counter of a pizza place.  It is the kind of place where the wait staff knows everybody and what they order.  Two of the waitresses were on the lookout for a few folks that hadn't gotten in yet.  They were taking friendly, no money wagers on what the ladies would eat.  Apparently one of them switched up her order for the first time in recent memory and everybody was in a tizzy.  I pulled out my book and escaped into a mystery, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.

Artwork on the side of the building.

At the end of my work day, I asked how I could get down to the lake.  Turns out Lake Street is the way to go.  May be I should have figured that one out by myself.  I got down to Lake Champlain to find that there wasn't any place to park.  The street is lined with no parking signs and the seasonal park is closed and not plowed.  I pulled over, kept the engine running, and my blinker on and snapped two pictures.  Those are all I got today.

A hint of pink in the sky

The drive back to the hotel was easy.  It is nice that this commute is against traffic.  Most people are headed in and out of Burlington and I am going in the opposite way.  I have to be up and out earlier tomorrow.  I'm opening at 7:30.  I hope my badge works in the gate mechanism and that I can get into the lot without the assistance from the guards.

And to my art challenge, here are a couple of my bed-size quilts.  I chose these because the fabrics were important.  In the log cabin design, many of the patterns have buildings, or architectural or geometric motifs.  In the tulip quilt -- the centers are all the same pink floral, the yellow petals are all floral and the green leaves are leaf patterned fabric.  I'm including the shoe quilt because I like it and it is older, so I don't think I've posted on it before, either here on on Facebook.

The shoe fabric was the inspiration piece