What a day

What a day, what a day, what a day.



I went to sleep two nights ago filled to the brim with buckets of anxiety.  Would I make friends in St. Albans?  Would I be up to the tasks of my new job?  Had I forgotten to pack anything (the answer to that last was of course yes).

I needn't have worried.  The house I'm sharing (with five other guys) is a wonderful place, with an excellent kitchen ("The thing about this house is that we're all really good and enthusiastic cooks, so you might end up getting fed a lot" - Damien, shortly before I burst into tears of happiness), a frankly ridiculous shower (glorious pressure, bath with jacuzzi, and a radio and TV!??!?!?!), two games consoles rigged to a widescreen TV in the lounge (including an XBox hacked by Tim, on whom more later, to stream from his emasculatingly prodigious collection of movies and TV), another lounge in a detached cottage at the bottom of the garden (with another TV, bathroom, foosball table, and with plasma TV and sofa on the way), unlimited broadband, and a fifteen minute walk to work (past at least three pubs, and the headquarters of CAMRA).  I am well-placed, to say the least.

The guys here have been really friendly and welcoming.  Damien's unsettlingly-attractive Irish drawl seems detemined to draw me out of my shy-nerdy-shell, Nick's jocular ruggedness makes it impossible to feel uncomfortable, and hol-ee crap it already sounds like I have a crush on these guys.  Dial it back there, Jack.  I blame GoldenSun72 and SPN (DEANGIRL4EVA).

Ahem.  Yes.  Anyway.  That's Damien and Nick.  Chris is a bit older, I haven't really spoken to him much yet, but he seems to be very welcoming and nice.  And then there's Tim.  Tim, who enjoys hacking games consoles in his spare time.  Tim, who plays AirSoft (like Nerf but serious and with BB guns) around four-story abandoned malls and has offered to take me along next time.  Tim-who-I-want-to-be.  I think I'm going to like it here.

The astute among you will have noticed that I've only mentioned four names.  The fifth, Kieran, has remained in his wing (the house was until recently a five-man-house and a separate self-contained flat, but council regulations forced the landlord to knock it through into a six-man house, but all the facilities were retained in his area) since moving in on Saturday, so no-one really knows what he's like.  That's right, boys and girls, not only do I like it here, but I'm not the least sociable in the house.  Who'd'a'thunk it?

Today, as my first day of real work, was fantastic.  I was told to turn up at 9:30 as they'd need to be setting up my computers (yes, that's plural :) :) :) I has a shiny new PC AND a shiny new Mac!), so, being the worry-bucket that I am, I set my alarm for 7:00, got ready by 7:45, and then sat around worrying until 8:30 when I set off for the fifteen minute walk.  I dropped into the café next to work for a hot chocolate to kill time, got into work at 9:20 (so as to at least take advantage of my neurosis by appearing early and keen), and was promptly whisked off for a morning coffee at the same establishment.  Luckily the shop owner didn't mention anything, and just shared a private smile with me at my awkwardness :)

After coffee and a brief induction (alarm codes, network protocol, that sort of thing), I set to on the tutorials that MB had provided for me.  It started off with some basic HTML stuff, covered most of the pre-5 stuff, and then went to CSS, which was reasonably new to me - I'm familiar with the concept, and have seen some of it, but never actually deciphered it (since this is, of course, meant to be a blog accessible for non-techies - CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, a technology whereby web pages can be formatted in a simple, easily-extensible, and intuitive way).  Actually, t'wasn't anywhere near as difficult as I'd thought, once it was gone through step-by-step.  I'm actually quite looking forward to tackling some more advanced stuff tomorrow!

Midway though the day, Mark (Anders, my boss) took me out for lunch, and to show me some of the sights of St. Albans.  It's really well supplied with restaurants, shops, and pubs - including a Wagamama's, yum yum :) I can see that Soph and Mum will be very keen to visit me and take advantage of the shopping streets!

When the working day was done, .......well, I'm sorry, but if I have this in my head, then you're sure as hell going to as well:

Ahem.  So.  After my assigned work hours were completed, I was actually sad to be leaving as I was enjoying the tutorial I was working through - stayed an extra half hour to get it done, in fact!  Hopefully that enthusiasm will last!  I walked home, grilled a pizza while watching some TV with Nick, Damien, and Tim, and then Damien got all enthusiastic about getting his old NES working on the TV that's currently out in the cottage, so Tim and I joined him out there (with my pizza yum yum) to play some retro games, drink wine, and play foosball for a few hours.  Glorious abandon in suburbia.

I came inside to a chat message from the ever-cheering Nick Eames, who (among other things) reminded me of the fact that I'd be able to attend his birthday party after my attempt at grading to Green on Saturday in London (for which I don't actually hold out a great deal of hope, but meh, it's worth a shot!) - it's all coming up Jackson!

Sadly, this blog post doesn't have one whit of the style, grace, beauty, or poise of the writers that originally inspired me to start keeping a diary and/or blog - but I've fallen so criminally behind on my physical journal, I thought that at least if I were to get some record of such an epoch-making day in my life, it wouldn't be completely lost.  Hopefully I've succeeded.  Now, to bed, though I'm always happy to be called if anyone wants to talk (caution: Jack may be grouchy if woken.  Interact at your own risk.)