Working in the big city: week in review

Today is the start of Speed Street in Charlotte. Basically the main uptown area is shut down and vendors set up booths for the enjoyment and commercialism of the Charlotte population. We'll probably check it out on Saturday with Cameron. In the meantime, I've decided to work from home today and tomorrow to avoid the hassles of traffic and parking. So while it hasn't officially been a week working from uptown I still wanted to share my thoughts about the changes in working at the headquarters and commuting uptown.

• Commute. My commute in the afternoon is much better than the morning. The reason being that I do Cameron's drop off. And of course the daycare is 4 miles in the exact opposite direction of where I need to be. So I am averaging about 45-60 minutes once I leave my house to when I arrive at work. That extra 15-30 minutes makes a big deal in how I feel in the morning. There are 3 ways I can get to my office from Cameron's daycare according to Google maps. And the commute time only varies by 1 minute for each route. There are lots of lights, idiot drivers and general frustrations that I remember from my days of commuting in Boston.
• Parking. I pay $115/month for parking now vs. $0 when I worked in the suburbs. Plus there is the extra hassle of navigating the parking structure. I've found my "spot" that will allow me to use walkways (once they open) when it rains out. Until then I brave the weather and the rain to walk the streets to my building.
• Dress. I work in the headquarters so most people wear suits. I don't mind as I have quite a few (although many of them need to be taken in - yay!) and it does make it easier to wear a kind of a uniform. I plan on working from home every Friday per usual but I have a feeling more business casual is acceptable on Fridays.
• Eating options. There are a lot more eating options within walking distance uptown. This has it's pluses and minuses. I went out to eat 3 (!) times this week. I tried to be good and stick to Weight Watchers but I have a feeling this week's weigh in will not go well.

My boss was in town from NYC this week so I got to spend some quality time with him. My project also utilizes Accenture and they have an office right outside of the uptown area that I can take a free trolly to. It's nice to be able to meet with people in person. Most meetings in my last role were conference calls and there is about 10% lost in translation when you can't look people in the eye.

Has anyone else made the transition from suburb to city while working? How did it go for you?

One other thing I would mention is that BigFinance has started blocking blog sites. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh. I'm devastated. If I don't VPN in I can get to them but this means less flexibility to write and post my own blogs as well as respond to the ones I read. I think that this may be the biggest transition of it all!