My brain at work

I discovered today that one year away from P0rtland is long enough for my brain to begin forcing out what it considers non-essential information, such as which bus line to take back to my sister's place.

My sister lives just up the road from my old place, and one of the things I liked about my place was that four bus lines stopped at the end of my block. So I dropped off my rental car this afternoon and took the train downtown, where I transferred to a bus to head back to my sister's place. And this is when my brain decided: "Hey, let's get on this bus, because it's a route we used to ride a lot."

This particular route follows the exact same path as the one I should have taken ... right up to my old stop. Unfortunately, it then veers off in another direction, which I slowly came to realize after 2 or 3 stops. Luckily, I was able to get off less than a mile from my sister's place. But today appears to be the beginning of monsoon season in Portland, so I had a bit of a damp trek up the hill.

So, not really a big deal, I guess. I just hope that more crucial information hasn't been pushed out of my head while I wasn't paying attention.

In other developments, I have to face the cold, hard truth that my vacation is ending tomorrow, and I'll be jetting back to the East Coast. On the bright side, we're heading into the time of year when you don't have to go long between holidays. Christmas and New Year's are coming up, and my company also observes the MLK and Presidents' Day holidays.

Under our new 4-day week, though, the bosses have become a bit of a stickler for hours, which became a bit complicated with us working 10-hour days but the company still doling out vacation in 8-hour blocks. For Christmas week, for example, we're working four 8-hour days to compensate. Instead of working three 10-hour days. I might understand the company not wanting to give us a "free" two hours off, but we have enough days throughout the year where we might work an extra 30 minutes here and an extra 20 minutes there -- and most of us aren't eligible for overtime -- so I think it's somewhat petty.

And I think I better stop right there, or I'll get rolling on a whole bunch of other work-related things that have grated at me a bit recently, but that the 4 of you who read this probably could not care less about.