And so here I am...

... shaking my head over the coincidentals of life.

I'd just discovered the blog of old and excellent bud Kristen Fox (well okay it was a week maybe two afterward) when I got a call from one of the technical temp agencies I'm signed up with -- seems there was this company in south Raleigh, near Cary, that needed a tech writer starting yesterday, would I interview.

It's Christmas time and I've been broke for what seems like forever. So sure, I'd be glad to interview, and would take the job at the less-than-$25 an hour wage they could afford. As long as it wasn't that much less. It was an hour-long commute and gasoline-by-the-gallon was hopping in an out of bed with $2 bills.

The address was familiar.

"I used to work down there," I said.

The directions were familiar.

"It sounds real close to where I used to work," I said.

So I drove to Raleigh the next afternoon. I used a new (to me) exit from I-440 and turned toward Centerview. And, by golly gum gee, there it was! The four-story concrete and glass office building where I first met Kristen, and Jack, and Dan, and Marguerite, and Paul, and a host of other really great folks. I worked there for nearly five years -- fourth floor, in three offices (one after the other), two with windows.

It was disconcerting to see how big the little maple saplings got in nine years.

When I worked there, we were in the top two floors. The American Kennel Club took the second floor, and various offices were on the first floor.

After I left, the AKC took over the entire building, and has all of the outside doors passkeyed except for the front, where a receptionist is stationed behind a big wrap-around desk in front of a two-story dark wood background, the darkness providing sharp relief for the handles of the doors at either side of the desk. That was different from the open foyer I remembered.

My handler and the interviewing manager met me there and escorted me to the fourth floor. How odd -- the last time I'd left this building, I was escorted out, per company policy, and now I was escorted back in. The offices on the side where I'd worked were almost all gone, replaced by a cube farm.

In a room I think was once my manager's, they told me what they needed, I told them I could do it, and they hired me on the spot. The AKC is revamping the website and adding some functionality to a web application that member clubs use, and I'm writing the help for the application. I started the next day, which was Thursday a week ago. They should have hired me five weeks ago.

There are dog pictures everywhere, and dog statues and dog magazines.... Dogs can come to work with their full-time company employed owners, if they pass a test. Just the sort of place where I'd like to work, being as I am a dog-lovin' person. I always have at least one, and sometimes it's a difficult one.

I'm enjoying the work, although rocked by the sudden shock to my schedule from self-directed to gone from sunup to past sundown, five days a week. I've had to squeeze out a few things, move several activities to the weekend, and take a hiatus on a few more -- blogging being one activity that suffered. (Not that I was all that regular to begin with.)

It's dream-like, that feeling of walking through a door from the elevator hallway into a wide-open cubicle warehouse, knowing in that there should be offices with doors and walls to the ceiling. I was interviewing one of the programmers and looked out the window, and realized we were sitting "in" my old office -- or, at least, looking out of the same window. The smokers still go out on the triangular balcony, which still has that crack running along the tiles and the discolored place at the corner where the water blows in. The room on the other side has the obligatory break room furnishings now, fridge and sink and coffee pot, and a linoleum floor instead of a waiting room couch and chairs on carpet. And the door locks down at 7 pm.

How very odd.