...I miss my old office. I can't believe that I'm saying that I miss my old 7'x7' that I was moved into for my last 10 months (after they took away my 8'x11' in a fit of building to meet fire regulations) at the place with the red envelopes, but I do.

Now, let's get something straight. I realized the other day that I don't miss that place at all. I think The Idiot did me a favor by doing things that made me feel rather apathetic to the company as a whole. I just don't care what happens over there anymore other than an interested party with good options in the company.

Here's what I do miss... I miss having walls around me. Really. I can't believe I'm saying that but I do. I have a wood table in the middle of everything that has one plant on it and gets the daily mail dropped on it because we haven't figured out another place for it yet. I'm not up against any walls, and the cords trailing to my desk are definitely a hazard waiting to happen. But that's true of almost all of this space here.

Yes, we are truly a dot com start up. So there *has* to be wires untended trailing across the floor space.

I miss having a place where I can hang up pictures of my kids and the cross stitch stuff. I miss having my own white board where I can doodle and lay out data maps. I miss having someplace where I can pin up database structure of the tables that I query the most. I miss having something to query because I don't have the login to the database yet, although I have MySQL installed (oh goody! a new program to play with). I miss my widescreen monitor, although I am working on a very nice widescreen laptop at the moment (it's a loaner... I should have my own shortly).

I miss having a little privacy to softly sing along with my iPod - I only get that for the first hour or so that I'm here in the mornings before everyone else comes in. To take a private phone call I have to go outside since 8 of us share the same big main room.

The upsides are that I see all my coworkers throughout the day and we hear everything that we have to talk about in terms of the company. Everyone benefits from the shared information which is why I tend to keep the iPod turned very low and sometimes only with one earphone in place. That's when we're not playing music from someone's computer hooked up to the speakers in the middle of the room - and I'm going to get hooked into that when the laptop arrives. It's every person for themselves - if it's quiet then you can take over being the DJ.

On the other hand having this constant share of information, share of music, and being able to look around the room to see if the person I need to speak to is actually present is a good thing. That and the whole left side of the room we're in is windows. So I still have my window to the outside world and won't lose my mind as a result. And these guys don't like turning on the lights and prefer to work with the natural light that comes in from the windows. That I like a lot.

I like the fact that they feed us. Free food from the deli, whatever we want that's on the menu. And sodas and gum and chips and stuff that isn't good for you, although there's yogurt and orange juice in the fridge now.

But with the time change I definitely don't like the commute home. It's too dark at 5pm. But that's better than getting up and going to work in the dark like I used to at 5am...

...now I just need to figure out the holiday schedule.