magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I made the walking/MetroNorth/walking commute into the office again today. I listened to NPR on the way in, and as I was exiting Grand Central they cut live to a press conference where the strike mediators were explaining that the union leaders were going to propose to the executive board that the strike be ended. The board still had the right to vote it down, but it seemed like the trains would soon be running again, if not by the evening commute, then at least by tomorrow.

The office was quiet again, between the strike and the official 1:00PM close, but I actually had plenty to work on. Enough in fact to keep me busy until about 7:30 while the other four or five people in the office all filtered out in the early afternoon.

And although the senior designer whose project I was working on suggested that I call a car to get home instead of all the walking, and despite the fact that by this point the strike was officially over, I ended up doing the reverse commute of this morning anyway, as the trains wouldn't start until sometime after midnight and the wait time for a car in midtown was up to three hours. Which was fine, really, because walking is good for you, and by 8:00 on a day when a lot of people had half days the MetroNorth as an alternate commuter train was not all that crowded.

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At home this evening I was hit by a bout of tears that I can only attribute to seasonal affective disorder. I think that although the days have been painfully short as of late, work had been keeping me busy enough not to really notice. Things slowed down this week, as the days reached their shortest, and it hit me. At least we're on the upswing now.