So like I said, I was feeling sick starting on Thursday night.  By the time I woke up Saturday I knew it was pretty bad, so I did my best to do nothing all weekend despite the horrific state of my house currently.

What I did do was get an early access code to the Mass Effect 3 Demo and played that a couple of times, and took some long naps.  I could say a lot about the ME3 demo, but let’s just say the Kaidan fangirl in me was very happy and seeing so many old friends was awesome.  For the last year or so I’ve basically kept away from all things Mass Effect as much as possible because I love that game so much that I didn’t want to get excited for the release until it was almost here.  So now that we’re a month away I’m in full-on Mass Effect mode again.

Anyway, so last night I was fairly worried about missing my FIRST DAY AT WORK from being sick.  So I went to bed early and woke up feeling… meh but like I could go.  I armed myself with hand sanitizer, a box of Kleenex and a bottle of water and went in.

I was slightly worried for a few minutes that something would go horribly wrong since it was raining, traffic sucked and I missed my exit (sort of), and then my phone was having issues when I wanted to check the address, but in the end, I made it to work okay.

I had to kind of wait for Eric to get there to do much of anything useful but he’d set up my computer to only have OS/10 on it and showed me how to install Bootcamp to dual boot to Windows 7.  Now, I haven’t touched a mac in a long time.  We had an iMac for awhile at my old job which we booted up once every few months to do one thing on and shut it back off.   I’m not sure I even ever used it.  Before that back in ’96 I checked my email on a very old mac (it still had a black and white monitor) for one summer.  Before that, I used an Apple IIe quite a bit in elementary school.

I have had two ipods though and used iTunes so um.. yeah there’s my Mac experience.  I’m going to have to learn OS/10 and the inner workings of a Mac (which I can’t imagine are too far removed from a PC, which I can put together from ordering all the parts off Newegg in about an hour.

So basically a lot of today was learning things by doing them for myself, they purposely didn’t set me up much ahead of time because setting up new users will be one of my new responsibilities.  I got to know the mail service, and did a lot of stuff I already knew like the fresh Win7 install, updates, Office etc.  Had a minor problem with my TechNet subscription but called tech support and hopefully that’ll be fixed tomorrow.

Went to a team meeting in the morning that I was pretty lost on, my whole job was to wave and say hi and I tried to spend the rest of the time figuring out what everyone else was talking about.

I should also point out the structure of the new office.  All of development and IT, around 15 people, is in one big room.  We all have nice big half-moon shaped desks and a rolling filing cabinet/desk drawer with padding on top so someone can use it as a chair when they come to your desk.  Also super nice expensive chairs (I miss my chair from my old job, though.)  My desk is in a corner (sort of, its more like the room just juts in suddenly and keeps going, but there’s privacy enough, only one guy can see one of my screens I think, and that’s fine with me.)  The bosses have offices but their doors look like they’re always or at least usually open.  There’s also a separate conference room.  And a kitchen, stocked with drinks and maybe snacks, not sure on the snacks, but I did get a fresh bottle of water from there in the afternoon.

Also, I may be the only woman in the entire room.  There’s one desk that was unoccupied today that looked like maybe a female sat there normally and I did hear someone say someone named Danielle I think was out today so, I may not be totally alone.  Another woman named Amber came by to see me and said it was great to have more women in the office.

I miss my office, but I’ve only had it back for a month when I left, anyway.  I can see some advantages of having it like that but it did get kind of noisy at the beginning and end of the day.  The middle was pretty quiet.

The boss took me, Eric and another guy out to lunch and that was great!  It was a good welcome to the team.  In the afternoon we had another meeting and I did more installation stuff and filled out paperwork.

A lot of paperwork.

My hand still hurts from all the paperwork.

All insurance stuff, and the healtcare plan and all looks really good. There’s some stuff I don’t understand that I’m going to call and talk to someone in finance with tomorrow.

So, I’m not sure if I mentioned this before and I’m too lazy to go look, but I have this job because a former co-worker, Eric, emailed me and asked me if I wanted it.  Eric and I worked together for over 5 years after I started work at my old company and he is without a doubt one of my favorite people I’ve ever worked with.  And realize that I had great relationships with like, most of the people I’ve ever worked with.  But Eric and I worked closely together and he’s pretty introverted and I can see why some people wouldn’t “get” him but we always got along great.  When he left I honestly missed him quite a bit and we always kept in touch a bit via facebook and stuff.

So working alongside him today was just like… nothing had really changed and it was 6 or so years ago again.  And it was awesome.  We have basically the same positions relative to each other work-wise now as we did way back when.  And when he was leaving for the day and grabbed his stuff and told me to go home I was like… Okay.  This is good.  It feels like someday this place could be as comfortable to me again as our old place was.

Also amusing… it was after 10am before I logged onto IM and as soon as I did my 3 closest co-workers at the old job immediately IMd me to ask how it was going, and one of them needed me to tell them how to do something.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to go back to the old job at night for an hour or two to make sure things are progressing smoothly.  I might just call my old boss and ask him to check to see if that’s necessary.  I did sign the paperwork to stay on as a consultant before I left, but I don’t want to just go back there just to go.  I think it’s too early for things to have gone to hell.  Yet.

Hopefully they’ll find someone to replace me soon so I can just spend a few hours training them, grab a few hundred bucks in extra pay and be done there completely.

Sooo this is it, probably the last official day I’ll ever have at this company.

Typically, there are huge emergencies and problems with a major client.  I haven’t been dragged into it yet, though.

Also, I’m sick…ish.  Congested, runny nose, slightly sore throat.  If this were a normal non-quitting day, I’d have stayed home in bed.  But, there’s too much to do.  Gotta clean out my office, fill out some paperwork, exit interview, they’re supposedly taking me out to lunch, say goodbye to people, possibly negotiate a contract salary if they want to keep me on for a bit (and after yesterday, I think they will), and other stuff.  Except for housecleaning I’m probably going to stay home all weekend and rest.

Other than that, I’m feeling… okay.  Kind of sad.  Kind of excited.  Kind of nervous.  And I didn’t sleep much last night so in addition to the sick, I am also tired.

I’m sure there will be tears later on today.  I really love most of the people I work with, and some of them have been here almost as long as I have.  The person who’s been here longer than me’s wife had a baby yesterday so he won’t be here, which is sad but the baby was a preemie and is in NICU atm, but should be fine.

But it’s weird, knowing that people who have been in your everyday life for 1 to 11 years aren’t going to be anymore.

I even went to Starbuck’s this morning to get my occasional drink (tall hot chocolate with a half shot of espresso) to say goodbye to my favorite barista.

Cutting the sadness a bit is the anticipation of the FemShepFriday trailer, and whatever else Bioware might have in store for us on FemShepFriday!

True story: I have loved Bioware since Baldur’s Gate, but when they started doing press and stuff for Mass Effect I spent quite a few hours trying to just answer the “Can you play as a female!?” question and never found an answer, so I figured, no, and became disinterested in the game.  I ended up not playing it until it had been out for two years, and even then, begrudgingly because I thought I’d have to play a dude.  And I bought it on sale for like $10 instead of brand new on release day like I usually do with Bioware games.

As soon as I loaded up the game and saw, oh hey, you CAN play as a female, I just started wondering WHY was that answer almost impossible to find when they were marketing the game?  Once I started playing, I was instantly in love with the game and I’ve played ME1 at least a dozen times and ME2 eight times all the way through.  I’m so glad Bioware is finally giving FemShep and Jennifer Hale the recognition she so richly deserves.

Anyway, it’s my last day of work.  I should go do some work, I suppose.