The meeting

On Sunday at 3pm, I abandoned my parents in the middle of furniture maneuverings and went to my new office building. It's made of uneven reddish stone in a pseudo Medieval revival, with crenelles topping the tower and facade, tall, narrow windows with crossed iron bars and a big gate of the same before the heavy wooden door. Or at least what I thought was the door. A couple of phone calls got me to the sleek, modern addition (where the office actually was) that managed to maintain the squared off look of its predecesor.

The other research assistant was wearing a strapless black dress made of eyelet, my boss an old t-shirt and loose plaid shorts of cotton. He joked that my peer was dressed down compared to the usual attire, since Monday was evening gown only. We spent five minutes with him tracking down and e-mailing the new employee forms that had taken two days, plus some advance work, at my last job. Eventually the co-author showed up with mussed hair and a lumberjack flannel shirt. The two bosses together got super excited over the fact of an interest being shared between both research assistants that could then be exploited in a new project. We spent three and a half hours covering all the projects I'd be on in a very disorganized fashion. Boss kept saying, "we need to give her a better big picture," and then kept devolving into details of a story already familiar to the others in the room.

The only indication it was Easter was that the coffee shop they normally frequent was closed, and we had to go to Bruegger's.