The Working Girl Blog #34: A pleasantly slow day, or Trying to have lunch in the park To see all of Bobbie's "Working Girl" blogs, click on this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs

I've been having several busy days recently. But, I guess all the hard work the team has put in is starting to pay off, as most of us do not have much to do. Well, actually, we have lots to do, still, but we are in the boring part of the project now. Tomorrow, or maybe Monday, we are expecting some people from the client company to visit and check our work, as well as to run several test scripts (preparatory to us going to their HQ to do the UAT and, eventually, the parallel run). We had emailed the scripts to them yesterday, and they looked it over and sent back some modifications that the test team is looking at now.

I myself had little to do, and spent most of the morning chatting with the guys and reviewing the test reports. We had a couple of major bombs but most of the problems were cosmetic, which the programming team was taking care of. Whew. Could've been a lot worse.

Now the atmosphere in the office is so much more laid back. What little pressure there was was mostly on the documentation team, as they had to contend with the red ink and chicken scratches I covered their hardcopy drafts with (my penmanship leaves a lot to be, ummm... desired).

Anyway, as I told everyone in the chatroom, the temperature was in the high seventies (I was trying to be metric so I said high 20s/low 30s). I had this idea of getting away a bit - I wasn't indispensable in the office at the moment, (hah! indispensable - what a laugh) - sitting in a park and having a sandwich or something. As I didn't know the neighborhood real well, I tried googling for a nice street park, and it wasn't too helpful. So I went to Sammi, told her what I wanted to do, and she said that there was one about a ten minute drive away. I asked if I could, like, walk it, but she said it was better to drive.

Well, in for a pound et cetera. I went to the cafeteria and bought a sandwich, a little hot chocolate in a cup with a lid, a banana and a box of juice to go.

I borrowed one of my guys' newspapers and went.

It was a bit chilly but I resolutely left my jacket in Cricket (I DID bring my pepper spray, though - a bit of big-city paranoia, I guess), looked for a relatively clean bench, sat down, and had lunch. I guess I still have a touch of that stubbornness that the Cabots are known for, 'coz I was shivering juuuust a little bit, but I decided o remain resolute and enjoy my lunch, damnit!

When I was down to the juice and the banana, and trying to vainly read my newspaper, I looked up and across the little path and saw a girl, like me also in office clothes, and also shivering a bit. She had an apple and a book to my newspaper and banana.

We caught each other's eye, and after a few moments, we burst out laughing. We started chatting and it seemed that we had the same idea. She worked at a bank in the opposite direction from my office. After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes more we decided to go back to work. We threw our trash away, walked to our cars (yep, she also drove to the park, heehee), and exchanged phones.

I guess for girls, it's much easier to make casual friends. Though I wasn't that gregarious when I was a guy, I knew it's not that easy for guys to be casual-friendly with strangers. Well, whatever it was, I'm glad I now have a new, casual lunch-in-the-park friend.

   

To see ALL of Bobbie's blogposts, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
To see Bobbie's stories in BCTS, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot