Thankfulness

I realize it's a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, but this morning I had a real moment of thankfulness. In lieu of anything else to blog about at the moment (that you don't already know-applications, applications, ummm...is there anything else right now?) I figured I would write about this.

I work about 56 miles away from where I live. The commute is about 1:25 each way, which could be worse. Luckily it's a pretty drive and it gives me time to pray in the mornings (although I would still love to have a 15 minute commute and just pray NOT in a car). As this is my first year in this job, we're still figuring out how winter is going to work-especially now that winter has really just gotten here. Today was the first test case of how this might roll.

Yesterday the weather was calling for a winter weather advisory-not so bad and something I could reasonably get to work in. The plan was to get up around 5, check the weather, shovel whatever snow there was, and get on the road by 6:30ish in time for the 9 AM staff meeting. My "boss" is overly cautious about me going in on bad weather days, but I really do want to be there unless it's really bad, especially for staff meetings. So this morning I got up at 5:10, rolled over, checked my handy dandy iPhone, and it had changed to a winter storm warning. I looked at the weather report, emailed the office administrator, and tried to go back to sleep (although I was kind of awake by then but eventually got back to sleep). R, however, was not so lucky. He doesn't have the choice, really, to stay home when the weather's bad. I mean, he could stay home but that would involve using vacation, sick, or personal time-and he doesn't have much of that, especially in December. For him it's a matter of "do I take the train-which costs time and money-or do I drive-which costs concentration and more time." He tends to drive (I would take the train, but that's just me).

I realized just how thankful I am to be in a compassionate working environment. This isn't to say that R's place of work isn't full of nice people-it is-he just has a more traditional work setting that requires you to be there and if you're not, it costs you. I keep thinking of ways this could be better. I mean, seriously, in urban environments where people have long commutes (R's is about 1:30 each way), when the weather is bad they spend a good deal of their concentration on the morning commute and would likely go into work mentally worn out-and it's only 9 AM! There has to be a better way around this. Ideally it would be not living so far away from one's place of employment, but that's not a possibility in this case.

So anyway, I'm thankful for having a place to work, particularly one that doesn't make me drive in when the weather is crazy.

In other news, I'm planning a beer post sometime soon. And I finished a couple of books. And my applications are almost halfway done. And Christmas is on the way! And Advent is definitely here. : )

The kittens are going insane so I'd better go. Cheers, everyone!