Please Pack Your Things

I packed up my office and left today.  Even did it on my terms.

The day of our big office relocation is finally here, and there was to be no messing around.  Everyone I've talked to is 100% on board with the move, despite the longer commute for a lot of people in our group in particular, but the lack of windows, and forever service calls were just too much.

On Monday morning, we'll be in shiny new'ish' digs in Waterloo (a building given up when a local former tech giant had to go through some re-structuring a few years back).  Apparently people in our own office were involved in the design, before my time, so at least there will be people that can be answerable to any complaints we have.  Given what I've seen, I don't think there will be many.

I actually watched the final 4 months of construction on the building from a research site set up by a long time buddy of mine for his PhD thesis which I helped along with instrumentation and data collection.  It will be a welcome return to a nice area of the city.

That's not to say that downtown Kitchener hasn't really been revitalized over the past 5 years.  And many of us are going to miss the quick 5 minute walk to a number of homegrown great restaurants; but there are plenty of other great restaurants within walking distance if we're willing to extend our lunch breaks, and driving distance if we're lazy.  We've also been told there is a regular food truck schedule featuring some of the great restaurants in town.  We won't be lacking for choices.

And there will be daylight.  All day long.  Through windows.  I think many of the people that don't get to go out and do field work regularly may be dazed and squinty for the first few weeks in the new office.  I have suggested sunblock samples also be given out.  We'll see what happens.

And to my end, I'm trying to treat this all as a big refresher to get reinvigorated about my work, before I go ahead and pack up my things and leave for real.