Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson – In celebration of my trip to London, I decided to re-read Bill Bryson’s book about his roadtrip through the English countryside. I rememberd laughing out loud the first time I read it and I wasn’t let down this time around. There were passages that demanded I read them out loud immediately and were then repeated by SB and I for days afterwards. It was a perfect selection for our trip, accenting the newness of the country for me, with Bryson’s local flavor.

Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener – Recommended by my Mom. At first I fought this book, but it won me over in the end. Being a huge fan of Nick Hornby, this book’s main character felt like a half-veiled copy of Hornby’s character from High Fidelity, for the first fifty pages. After that, Danny (aka Steve), took on his own personailty, his own brand of slackerly denial of adulthood. Wener’s character seemed to have a deeper heart, a stronger devotion to his friends, than Hornby’s character and thus in the end was more loveable.

The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe both from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis- As a kid, I enjoyed reading this series, first with my Mom and then on my own. In honor of the new movie, I thought it was time to brush-up on my Narnia. I had never read The Magician’s Nephew, a short novel written by Lewis after he was well into writing the rest of the series. It feels like an add-on, like an unneccsary explantion of a world that stands on it’s own. The Wardrobe was by-far my favorite book as a kid, and I enjoyed it on this reading too. It seems to lend itself well to the big screen. I look forward to now seeing the movie.

This morning, as I shivered down the damp sidewalk, after finishing my night shift, I noticed this man erratically bounding down the sidewalk towards me. He was moving fast, swerving around the sidewalk and holding some sort of shiny wire in his hand.

I crossed the street, towards my car, sensing him approaching from behind. I slowed to get a better look, as he tried to enter centenial olympic park through a closed entrance. He veered back onto the sidewalk and rushed past me. He was holding, a tri-pod, with a small digital camera attahced to the top. He was intently looking at the sky, the skyline and the countless christmas lights in the park. The sun was rising fast, his time limited. The photo potential of the moment was high.

I wondered if he had awoke early just to capture this photo, if he was a tourist from one of the nearby hotels or if he was a regular commuter, coming to work early, to get the perfect photo.

I have a confession, I started a new job right after we returned from London but I haven’t been ready to blog about it. Blogging about work is a tricky business, especially when your work is the web. But there’s so much I’d like to share…

The job is here in Atlanta, close to home, working on a huge web site, with a large team of web, content, design, you name it, specialist people, all in the private sector. These factors have made for a vastly different job experience than I’ve been in for the past eight years. Those years were in an intimate, small scale environment, with equally small budgets. The biggest difference, however, is the schedule. I now am part of a team that is staffed around the clock.

Between being the new person on the team and it being the holidays, I have been assigned third shift for at least the next month. This means I work from 11pm to 7am, five nights a week, Sunday through Thursday.

I just completed my first week of overnights. The first night felt like torture, like extreme jet lag. I spend my nights working closely with the Hong Kong branch of the company. However, if I’d really gone to Hong Kong, I’d be seeing more daylight.

Now I’m on my weekend, but because my sleep schedule is reversed, it doesn’t feel like much of a weekend. Last night I stayed up until 5am, trying to be quiet while SB slept and puttering around my room. Today I slept for a large part of the daylight and now I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself. I am not a morning person, so this schedule reversion is probably easier for me than for others. Darkness does not trigger sleep in my body and as I learn how to adjust my eating schedule, this should get even easier.

This past week I have been riding the train home every morning. It is filled with sleepy eyed commuters, lunch bags in hand and surely teenagers, wishing for their beds. As we glide above the city streets, I finally feel a sense of urban life about this otherwise suburban city. The sunrise peaks, just as I reach my stop and the intense pinks and purples of the early light, even make the cold trainstop look beautiful.

I have many concerns about this job, about this life, about this city but I wanted a change, I wanted something new and here I am, living an adventure.

Photo Source: 8th Floor Productions

Certain aspects of Atlanta life make me feel like I’ve stepped back into the 70′s, to a time of orange and brown color schemes and strict racial divides. This train system was designed in 1974. The era is reflected in the harsh brutalism inspired train stops and the retro train design.

When we moved here, we wanted to live by the train, to take the train to work and across the city. No one, no one we talked to ever rode it or knew anything about it. All we heard was wary concern and assurances that we wouldn’t want to use it.

Today, I rode it for the first time. I couldn’t believe how ugly it was, inside and out. Aesthetics aside, it was clean, efficient and quiet. At 6:30pm it had a moderate, nice, amount of riders, not too crowded but busy enough to be entertaining. I just kept thinking, if the trains, the stations, the whole thing were infused with more beauty, more people would feel good about riding it? As it is, it doesn’t have much feeling of civic pride.

To continue my racial education, the train seems to be ridden almost exclusively by African Americans. I’m not sure why this is the case, since there are plenty of white people living by the stations. The train system feels extremely segregated, much like our street and neighborhood, with whites on one side and blacks on the other. It makes me feel so sad and frustrated.