I brought Patrick home with me today. He seems to like it here, and since I'm not sure whether my new department is going to be the kind of place where he can sit up on my monitor and survey the territory, I may just keep him in my room.

I packed up most of my stuff from my filing cabinet and desk today. It's amazing, in five years, how little I've kept at my desk. I don't have a lot of paper files, and I don't have a whole lot of doo-dads around me (mostly because I've been sitting up front for the past three out of those five years), so all it took was one small box to get everything.

I still have a shopping bag full of CD jewel cases (left over from when I transferred my teetering stack of music over to a zippered case) and one or two more items, but then that's it. Tomorrow marks my last day in the design department.

I printed a new name marker for Lara (both our names have been on the marker since we started sharing a desk). I altered the "Welcome to Design!" file in our shared drive so that my name and picture are no longer on it. Everything else will have to be handled by the IT department and the operations people. I assume I'll keep my same phone extension, and I work off of a laptop, so that comes with me. I'm eminently portable, actually.

I wandered around the building a bit this afternoon, trying to figure out where I might end up. There's an empty room with four desks set up in it, and I thought that might be where I'd stay for awhile, but now the desks have sticky notes with new consultants' names on them, so I suppose that's not it.

Most likely, I'll wind up sharing an office temporarily wih another member of my new team until Jan gets her new office space, and then they'll build a cubicle near that, so I can be at her beck and call. That works for me. The Administrators in our office have high-walled, very private cubes (some even have glass offices, but I don't think I rate that just yet), which would suit me just fine.

One more shift! I can hardly believe it.

Of course, my last shift had to fall on the first day of Daylight Savings Time, my least favorite day of the year.

I don't mind the loss of an hour's sleep (I can always go to bed to avoid that), it's just that the change of an hour throws me off-schedule for days on end. The first day is the worst. I always feel like I'm playing catch-up, somehow. I also wonder just who will show up an hour late because s/he "didn't know" about the clocks "springing forward."

I'll appreciate it in the summertime, when the sun doesn't set until close to 8pm, and I can go running after work with daylight still shining. It's just the one day that gets to me.

I was very worked up about seeing Sin City tonight, but unfortunately, Laurie wasn't in the mood for it. She said that she'd rather wait until next week, when we could catch a matinee without all the people who show up on opening weekends.

I was a little disappointed. I actually like the crowds (as long as they're not too obnoxious). Sin City is supposed to be one of the most cartoonishly-violent films out there, and I think and appreciative audience to screech and yell at the screen would be kind of fun.

Instead, we opted to hang grab some takeout and go to her house to watch some TV. We called On the Border and were told that our dinner would be ready in 35-40 minutes. This was at 8:05pm.

We left her house at around 8:30pm and got to the restaurant at 8:45. The rather surly woman behind the counter said that my order would be ready in another "10-15 minutes." I said that we were told a much shorter time frame for our food, and she pointed at a couple of other people waiting in the take-out area and said, "He's been waiting, she's been waiting, so you're after them," and walked into the kitchen.

Laurie was idling the car outside, so I called her to let her know it'd be awhile. One of the people ahead of me was brought out his food by a manager-type, who gave him a coupon for a free appetizer as an apology for getting his order out so late.

The surly woman came back with two other orders, but didn't apologize for their lateness, which either meant that they weren't late (which means they were made ahead of mine, after I'd called in my order) or the folks there just didn't care about waiting around.

At 9pm, the woman came out with my order. "Here you go," she said, without an apology or a smile or a "what can you do?" kind of shrug. I told her that I was promised a meal within 35-40 minutes, and it had been just about an hour by the time my food got to me. If I had to wait sitting down in their restaurant for a meal to arrive, I would have expected something to be taken off the bill.

She said nothing, just walked back into the kitchen. I waited for a moment, and the manager-type arrived, apologizing for making me wait. He asked if I had paid cash or credit for my order, and I told him cash, so he ran back to his office to get the cash register keyes.

When he came back, he apologized once again (the surly woman was back, but all she did was glare at me), and handed me back a rounded-up amount of money. (I think the bill was $21.65, and he gave me $22.00) I thanked him and brought our food out to the car.

"So what happened?" asked Laurie.

"We have a free meal, and I made 35 cents," I said.

I wasn't forceful. I didn't yell at the woman at the counter. I simply stated what I thought about some poor service and I was accomodated for that. This is the kind of thing I would never do a year or so ago. Now I've done it twice (the last time was at the vet's office) in less than two months.

I don't feel bad about this at all. I'm used to letting people step all over me in an effort to "make nice," especially service people. I waited tables and worked food service and did retail for more years than I can count, so I know just how difficult working with the general public can be. But if you don't want to play by the rules (be nice, make every effort to accomodate someone if you've screwed up), don't stay in the service industry. Honestly, there are enough jobs out there that don't involve trying to give a pleasant experience to someone else.

Anyway, the food was good, and it was free, so I don't have any real complaints. I just never thought I'd wind up being so assertive.

The big news today, of course, is that the Pope died.

I have mixed feelings about it. I haven't been a Catholic since my confirmation (I promptly stopped going to church once I was confirmed, a decision that my Catholic parents respected, because according to church law, you're an adult once confirmed, and can make decisions about your own faith after that time). I'm a devout atheist; I find the wonders of science and nature and randomness to be far more awe-inspiring than the idea of a diety who set everything up with a plan in mind.

I don't knock anyone for their religious or spiritual beliefs. I have good friends on every side of the religious spectrum, from atheists to Christians to Jews to Wiccans and some people with no religion but a devout faith in something beyond the scope of what we can measure with science and logic.

I was brought up Catholic, and for a brief time in my pre-adolescence I thought of becoming a Franciscan monk like my cousin Michael (I think that had a lot to do with a comic book on St. Francis that he gave me). However, I soon discovered that the church thought I was a "sinner" for who I was, and there will never be a living person who can convince me that I wasn't born gay.

Yes, there are religions and belief systems out there that include homosexuality, but I lost all interest in trying to find comfort in that way. I'm the son of a science teacher, and I find science to be far more spiritual than religion. To think that we were created out of a series of random events is astounding to me, and somewhat comforting.

At any rate, I was surprised to find how saddened I was at the fact that John Paul II had died. I was 10 years old and in CCD when John Paul I was elected, and then died a month later. It was pretty traumatic in my extremely Catholic family (not my immediate family, though my father was the principal of our CCD and my mother taught there, but for the extended family, who remains devoutly Catholic to this day). I remember when John Paul II was elected, and how charismatic he seemed. He was very young for a Pope, and very dynamic.

I didn't like his positions on a lot of things. I think the Catholic church is stagnant on so many issues (women priests, priests marrying, contraception), but he took a stand on a lot of human rights issues that made some changes in the world. Overall, I believe he was a good man and a good leader to his faithful, and I understand the mourning of his loss that's going around the world.

I do hope that when the College of Cardinals convenes to elect a new Pope, they go with someone closer to John Paul I (who advocated reforming the bans on contraceptives, and was always smiling and referred to himself as "I" instead of "we") than John Paul II. The world changes, and with it so should its beliefs.

But I'm not a Catholic anymore and don't have any investment in the matter; whoever they choose will be about who they feel fits their belief system best.

Mostly, I'm glad that the suffering of John Paul II is over. Watching him attempt to fulfill his duties during what must have been a terribly painful end of his life was terrible to see. I'm sure that this dynamic fellow, who continued to do things such as ski after he was elected Pope, felt defeated by his own body.

Rest in peace. You will be missed by billions.