Well, my first day at Amazon was...inauspicious. I got up on time, took a shower, had a cup of tea and a bagel, and hopped on the bus. Got to Amazon a half-hour early, and immediately ran into the first problem - my name wasn't on the orientation roster. No problem, they wrote me in, I got a temp badge, and was ushered off to the badging office to get my photo taken - except the badging office also didn't know who I was. So off to orientation, where there were laptops arranged alphabetically at a series of tables - excepting mine, of course. So, I sat down, we played a little Amazon.com trivia game (everybody wins, hooray!), and then Jim Mullins, my recruiter, showed up. Apparently, several months ago when I asked to have my start date changed, he changed it in a few places, but not everywhere - e.g., my manager knows I was supposed to start today, but the people who set up my computer do not. So, he's got to change some things around, and I'll be able to start early this week at the earliest, and have to do orientation some other time. I guess it could be worse, at least someone knows who I am and I've already passed my background check.

Upon leaving, I figured it was a golden opportunity to see what the walk to my apartment is like - so I set off, and discovered that the walk, about 1.3 miles, isn't *too* bad, but getting up First Hill is about 8-10 blocks of steady incline, which wears on you after a while. I made it to my apartment in about 20-25 minutes, which I figure isn't too bad. The walk to work would likely take about 5 minutes less. I went to my apartment to see if my mailbox key or parking permit might've been dropped off in my apartment, and to see how my stove repair was coming along. Alas, the key and permit weren't there, but what was was a brand new stove! Nothing fancy, but a new gas range and oven, all shiny-new, and all the burners worked. So that's a plus.

Then I took the opportunity to walk back to my temp apartment, which is about another 1.5 miles. I took a little detour past the Seattle Public Library and picked up my library card, for which I'd applied online a few days ago, and now I'm back at my apartment.

With nothing to do all day.

I need to get a tire patched on my car, then maybe I'll go up to Fremont - I've heard it's nice, and there'll probably be less tourists on a Monday afternoon.

That's all from me, I hope your days went more smoothly.