walking to work…

A few months ago I opened up a branch office in Lake Fores intending to stay home a day or two per week to save a few bucks on gas, and have a home office like millions of people in America. And I loved it.

Even though all my employees are now outside consultants who draw our company plans on AutoCAD I still design by hand with ink pens, magic markers on trace paper and vellum…many of the newer and younger project manager clients I have have hardly seen plans drawn by hand…they’re used to seeing computer-drawn exhibits that don’t have a very good conceptual or preliminary design appearance…most of these new people love to hold, roll up and feel the plans…it’s good to be an old timer sometimes… after my clients approve the designs I meet my ‘employees’ at Starbucks so they can begin transferring the plans to computer.

We’ve had two storage places ever since we sold our five bedroom home.The kids moved away and came back and moved away again and came back again…some came back then went away to college or got married…one traveled to Europe and came back…we sold the house when the last one left…I thought about not telling them where we were going to be living but I was out-voted by the mother…
we moved into a two bedroom mobile home in a great location, with lakes and ponds and a tennis court right across the street near a community club house with a swimming pool where I take the grand kids to swim on weekends…I Jacuzzi on weekdays… some of our daughters had a hard time with us living in this senior community…they think of us as trailer-trash. After all I've done for them.

I’ve been going to the storage place once or twice a week to pick up things that I need but often bring them back the next day because my office space is our master bedroom with a bed and dresser, and a drawing board with a computer and printer on it… there’s a TV in there too so I can draw plans, watch golf and baseball games and write proposals, send and receive e-mails, and Google a lot of stuff…it’s a good place to do a lot of reading (have I mentioned I have a Kindle now?) while most of the family watches the 56 inch TV in the living room…Mine’s a 21 inch TV that works quite well from three feet away.

I love my new work space, but I don’t like sitting in the room all day, so as the new office janitor I do a little vacuuming, and then yard work or washing the car…
hopefully the economy will pick up soon but I am not going back to Riverside…working here for the past few months has been encouraging… there’s plenty of office space available now within a mile or two…I’ll be able to come home for lunch to keep making my wife nuts like I’m doing now. I’ll find a place close enough to bicycle to work or, wouldn’t it be nice, to really walk to work?