What Holidays Did You Get? When Are You Leaving?

It was unclear to me, starting a new job, whether I’d get off Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas, or neither.  Turns out I get both, which is kinda neat.

But my question is this – regardless of which days you get off, there’s a last work day before the holiday vacation begins.  When do you leave on that day?  Do you work a full day, a mostly full day, or just a half?  Do you have a boss that wanders around at noon saying “Ok everybody, get out of here” or do you have to sneak out when you think it’s safe?

It’s a new job for me so I have no idea what “they” do, but I’ll pretty much plan to work until somebody tells me to go home. 

Inside The Chevy Volt [pics]

Amid record losses, plunging sales, a stock that has sunk as low as its 1950 price, and awkward merger talks, the 100-year old carmaker is hoping that its new Chevy, due in 2010, can reenergize its image and its bottom line. Volt design director Bob Boniface says his team wanted to make sure the car looked better than other electric-car concepts...

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Commuter Christmas Gift Ideas

What can you get the commuter in your life?

* An MP3 player if they don’t already have one, but they probably do.

* Good pair of earbuds / headphones.

* Content.  Books on CD, iTunes gift certificates.

* Backpack or shoulder bag, for walkers.

* Good pair of shoes / sneakers?

* Outdoor wear – gloves, hats, etc…

* Old fashioned (paper) books for those on the train.

The eBook readers (Kindle, Sony) are becoming popular, but personally I still find them too expensive given the dedicated nature of the thing.  You know how many books you have to read in order to justify a $300 device that does nothing but read books?  At least my iPod can play music, do email, maps, games, etc….

At times I’ve gotten dedicated handheld things for playing sudoku or crossworld puzzles, but honestly they never did it for me – just get a book if you’re gonna do that. 

Anybody else got some good ideas?

My Lost(??) 3 Hours

You’d think that moving from a 90 minute commute each way to a 5 minute one would save you three hours, right?  Not really.  What it does is simply change how you spend it.

Now, for instance, I have breakfast with my family, help take the kids to school, get some errands done in the morning.  Then at night I can still be home in time for supper, give the kids a bath and so on.

But! I used to fill my commuting time listening to podcasts, and that’s gone.  I’ m falling way behind.  I caught myself the other day thinking about the time I’d “lost” with this new job and thought it was funny.

I’ll live.

Earning More, Commuting Farther

It's only reasonable. If you need to take in the big pay check, you'll be more willing to hit the road for a little longer. I can speak for personal experience, having dropped my commute from 90 minutes each way to about 5 minutes. Sure the salary's a bit less, but the mental health improvements are amazing.

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So, Happy Now?

Over the summer, gas hit $4/gallon.  With that came all the ripple effects – like food at the supermarket going up in price because of the cost of driving the trucks to get it there.

Well gas is what now, $1.60/gallon?  Less than half?  Now what?  I’m happy that it’s not a freakout moment every time I need to fill up the tank.  But….what else?  Is the world going to get better now? Food prices going down?  Did you sell your car over the summer, and are you going to buy one again now? 

Be Right Back

So, I started my new job today.  The one with the 5 minute commute.  Some fun observations:

* Planned to leave the house at 7:45, leaving 15 minutes to get to work.  Went on a coffee run for the wife, didn’t really get out of the house until about 7:55. 

* Driving the expressway to Boston every morning is…different than driving through a nice quiet downtown area where I pass no less than 3 schools.  I swore frequently and wondered why all these old farts insisted on driving 35 :).

* Got to work, realized I’d forgotten my bag.  Drove home, got it, came back, was still so early I had to wait for someone to let me in.

* To do direct deposit paperwork, you need a cancelled check.  So over lunch I went home, got one, synced my iPod, picked up a USB charging cable for my phone, grabbed a bite to eat, and came back for my 1pm meeting anyway.

* At the end of the day a coworker came over to hang out, and I had to consciously not freak out that I was going to miss my train.  Because I don’t have a train anymore.  Because I can leave at 5, or 5:05, or even 5:20 and it won’t be the end of the world.

I think I’m gonna like this.

What Would You Give?

So I'm happy to report that I've received a job offer for a company that is - get this - about 5 minutes from my house!  The hiring manager even told me with a laugh, "The bad news is you're going to run out of content for your traffic blog." (We'll worry about that when the time comes...:))

It was fascinating to get such an opportunity.  I'm pretty sure that never in my life have I had such a short commute.  It's life changing. I'll literally be getting back like 2 hours out of every day of my life.

So, here's the question -- what would you trade for a commute like that?  What if it's lower pay?  How much lower?  What if you won't love the work?  The people?   Not saying any of those are an issue here (on the contrary I quite liked the people, and the pay is fine), but it's an interesting question.  I think that the longer your commute, you'd better love your job that much more to compensate for it.  But is the opposite true?  If the commute is short enough is it ok to hate your job?