Just like that my first day with Philips Design has come and gone. After spending most of my night restlessly tossing and turning, I got up around 6am to begin my Monday. Just so you know, waking up at 6am here is about 3 hours earlier than I've been used to during my days at Griffin. Spoiled...yes, but I'll survive! Anyways, I made my first full length commute to work since we lived in Birmingham, and this time it was fighting Atlanta traffic on I-285. Despite having a few miles of bumper to bumper driving, the commute to the office was fairly easy (I know, I may have just cursed myself for future commuting).
So, I arrived at the office bright and early only to be welcomed with a mostly empty office since everyone usually didn't get in until 9am. The receptionist was really cool about it though and made small talk while blowing up my "Welcome" balloon (yes, I got a gold star balloon tied to my chair). After a walk-around tour of the office and greeting the early risers, I grabbed a cup of coffee and settled in at my new desk. Slowly the office filled up with everyone else and then I was off for another walk-around tour to meet those I didn't the first time. Needless to say, my morning went by really fast. Next thing I know, it was 12:30 and I needed to grab lunch asap before the planned 1pm meeting/workshop...but with the office around the ultra-busy Perimeter Mall area my options were slim due to time. So, what did I settle for lunch on my first day...a gas station Philly Cheesesteak sandwich and Harvest Chips. After choking down two bites of the nastified sandwich, though, it was all about eating those chips and heading back to the office.
Now today was not only my first day, but also the first day of the design workshop for our Atlanta office. The global creative director is in from Eindhoven along with a few others from the global offices for the 3-day team-building workshop. I'll spare you all of the details, but 5 hours later we finished up the workshop and headed down the street for some tapas/appetizers and drinks. I stayed for a little while as we all had some good conversations about things from kids to politics to anything else. Fun times, but I had to call it an evening, so I said my farewells and finally made my evening commute back to Jilly Bean. Good ending to an extremely long day. And now I'm going to go crash. Goodnight!
