Long story short, I got a new job.\u00a0 Actually, I got the old job, but with a new company.\u00a0 Anyway, long story, but I have a new crew that I’m working with, and on my first day back, three out of four of us decided to go out for lunch – the fourth guy was already eating his sammich by the time we got decided, so he stayed.\u00a0 After all, we were just going to lunch – no big deal.<\/p>\n
I drove up to the 8th St restaurant row, planning to hit Ted’s Bulletin, which is a decent place for lunch, if a little loud.\u00a0 By the time I found us parking, it was later than I’d planned, and also freezing.\u00a0 One of my co-workers offered to pay for parking with his parking app, which he did, before remembering that he needed to tie the app to my car, which he then tried to do, eventually succeeding, but not until we were even colder than we’d been when we got out of the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having based my parking decision on expedience rather than proximity, we found ourselves walking briskly toward the restaurant when the other of my coworkers made a sharp left into an Irish place called Molly Malone’s.\u00a0 He told us he’d based this less on any particular reviews of the place and more on “getting out of the cold.”\u00a0 We agreed that made sense, and followed him in.\u00a0 He had a steak sandwich, my other co-worker had a soup and salad, and I enjoyed a shepherd’s pie, which was delightful.<\/p>\n
As we were eating, a small group came in behind us and went upstairs for lunch; as they were going upstairs, one of them waved to all of us and said, “How’s everybody doing today?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the President of the United States.\u00a0
\nAnd the Vice President of the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the time we had finished our lunches, the Secret Service had set up a rope line\u00a0blocking the door.\u00a0 Since we couldn’t leave even if we’d wanted to, we stood by the rope\u00a0line for a bit.\u00a0 Then we\u00a0met and shook hands with Barack Obama and Joe Biden.\u00a0 For the record, the President has enormous hands – I can palm a basketball, but I need to make an effort.\u00a0 For him, it must feel like a softball would for me.\u00a0 Joe Biden, on the other hand, has a more firm grip.\u00a0 Make of that what you will.\u00a0 They were both funny and gracious, and looked just like their pictures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We still can’t quite believe it.\u00a0 So, how was YOUR first day at work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Long story short, I got a new job.\u00a0 Actually, I got the old job, but with a new company.\u00a0 Anyway, long story, but I have a new crew that I’m working with, and on my first day back, three out of four of us decided to go out for lunch – the fourth guy was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3782,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions\/3782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}