A Day in the Life

My days have recently been a lot busier.  I am now employed with Cricket Communications.  If you live in an area with Cricket, you should check out their wireless plans.  I started on Monday and thought I'd share what my day now looks like.  Gone are the days of sleeping until 9 or 10am and not having anything of consequence to do all day.

Crossing the border is the biggest party of my commute to work.  I had to be at work at 9am on Monday and was really worried about not making it on time.  I tried to go to bed early, but it was hard to get to sleep.  I woke up about every 2 hours because I was so concerned about oversleeping.  I got out of bed at 3:45am and left the house at 4:45 am.  I only had to wait in line for about 2 hours.  (Can you believe I say "only"?)  Not including the wait at the border, it takes me about 45 minutes of driving time to get to work. So I got to work at about 7:30am. I had to wait around a little bit, but it was better than being late.  That's a bad way to start your first day.

My first day went well. My new manager showed me around and introduced me to people. I am in the income tax group. Some people might think it's boring, but I'm actually really excited to learn how to prepare and file corporate tax returns. My manager and the other guy in the income tax group took me to lunch at an italian restaurant near the office. I had the lasagna and it was really good. I left the office at about 6pm and it took me a little under and hour to get back. There was no wait at the Mexico border. Unfortunately, Jose had already left for something and I got in bed before he got home. I hope we don't have too many days like that.

Yesterday I left at 5am for work and I got there in just under 2 hours (just about an hour wait at the border).  I ate in the company's cafe for lunch.  It's a really nice cafe.  They have real chefs there that really seem to care about how the food tastes and there is a lot of variety of things to choose from.  I got home last night at about 6pm.  Jose had dinner ready by the time I got home. That was pretty awesome. It's nice not having to cook. Unfortunately for me, Jose may have a lead on a job.  If he does start soon, we'll have to figure out our schedules and I may have to start cooking.

Today it only took me 1 and a half hours to get to work and I arrived at 6:45am (only 45 min of border waiting).  My office has a gym so I decided to take my gym clothes and work out if I got to work early . The gym is small, but there were only 2 other people there, so there was plenty of room for the three of us. My plan for the next few weeks will be to take my workout clothes with me.  Then if I arrive really early, I can work out.  And if the border wait is long, then I can skip the workout and still not be late for work.

My schedule will probably be like this for the next few weeks. When I get a Sentri pass, my time to get to work should be a lot more predictable and consistent.  The delay in the Sentri lanes is rarely more than 15 minutes, so it should only take me about an hour to get to work.  That is about how long it took me to get to work when I lived in Chicago. Although I never enjoyed the commute in Chicago, that experience has prepared me for my cross-border commute now. If I had never commuted a long way before, I don't think I would've been able to handle even three days of this commute. I haven't felt really stressed yet.

Even though I'm a little shorter on time, I'd still love to hear from everything. Feel free to leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.