special delivery

Whenever we would travel to Lincoln on school trips in high school for clubs, I would take the time to break away from the rest of the group and try to pass myself off as someone with a job in town, not a visitor.  I believed that the ideal job would be delivery person or messenger because then I would get to have missions and assignments that would allow me access to all sorts of offices and I'd get to meet a lot of different people (plus as a bonus, I would still get to work on my own). 

I have a few friends who left Portland for a time to go become bike messengers in New York.  I think one of them was there for a week until she broke her arm after getting doored by a taxi.  While I don't think that I could ride a bike successfully while in a hurry in New York, I can see why they left to go try it.

Today, I played the part and biked to the Fed Ex offices on Swan Island for a phone that was supposed to get delivered to my house but they came during the day when nobody was home.  Swan Island (I'm not even sure if it is a legit island) is in North Portland and is NOT bike friendly.  It was a fun experience getting there but biking around the actual roads of Swan Island is frightening because there aren't a lot of cyclist or pedestrians but there is a lot of fast moving trucks with deadlines.  I survived though and made it in time.  I don't think I'd want to do it anymore though for a living.

What else?
However, my actual job has gotten a little uncomfortable.  A new hire is having some personality clashes and flat-out inappropriate dialog with people.  I attribute it to her being from the East Coast.  I typically hate broad generalizations but there are distict personality types for those who are East Coast vs Midwest vs West Coast and probably more regional ones beyond that.  I'm Midwest turned West Coast which means I have a good work ethic but I can slow it down in order to not make everyone else look bad. :)