Day 1: a day of firsts

I guess it's good that it rained all day today. Last Friday, when I lost my job, it was beautiful and sunny outside. Great day for blowing off work, taking a bike ride, or mowing the lawn. But today, the weather was miserable, and that fit in well with my to-do list. Rather than be distracted by the sunshine, I was able to focus on a few important tasks:

1. Going back to bed.
2. Going to the gym for the first time in two years.
3. dusting off the resume.

These were three things I have not done in years. For example, typically I annoy the crap out of my wife every morning by setting the alarm for some obscene hour simply because it seems like a good time to get up and get things done. After all, if I wake up early I've found that I can put an entire coat of paint on the bathroom wall before the kids get up in the morning, whereas once they are awake they become enough of a distraction to make that same coat of paint take about three weeks to apply. But today was different. Today I woke up without the alarm at my normal time, but after a quick performance of my morning constitutional I crawled back into bed. That lasted approximately three minutes before Jessica bellowed from down the hall that it was time for her to be seen. Well, it was the thought that counts.

Later that morning, I took on a new responsibility, that of dropping Jessica off at preschool. There were all the moms, with their pitying looks of sorrow on their faces, looking at me as if I was a tiny kitten that had just gotten one ear entrapped in a box fan. Hmm...I may have to work that in the future, I'm just not sure how without getting in trouble with my lovely wife.

After dropoff, the administrator at the Temple roped me into helping him return some tables we'd borrowed for a fund raising event over the weekend. As I stood in the rain under cover of the van's open tailgate, waiting for him to come outside, I had an odd feeling. It was the feeling that I didn't have to BE ANYWHERE right now. Woah. That's new.

From there it was off to the gym. Health clubs take on a whole different attitude in between rush hours. Gone are the corporate yes-men getting in their morning exercise before donning their blue shirts and ties. Gone are the doctors who have been there since 5am swimming. No, after the rush hour ends, the gym becomes inhabited with a completely different clientele. Old people. Lots, and lots of old people. Frankly, that's not a bad thing. With my scrawny frame these people look at me as if I'm some sort of greek Olympiad. At least, that's what I will keep thinking to myself.

The afternoon was spent attempting to summarize the last 14 years of efforts into two pages of text. I started by digging out my old resume. It blew my mind to see that the last resume was written before including an email address on it was accepted practice.

Tomorrow's events should be just as entertaining for me. On the list of firsts will be my first cell phone purchase in 14 years (I've always carried a company phone), my first visit to a career center, and an afternoon spent shoveling out a decade and a half of stuff from my office drawers. And it's going to rain again tomorrow. Perfect.