Corben drove down with me and helped me move in and then flew home on Aug. 25. We took three days to drive down to California. We spent the first night at a campground in Yuba Utah. The next night we were in Vegas where it was 107- way to hot for me. Corben wanted to stay at one of the casinos but they were to expensive to to his disapointment we stayed at a Motel 8. The next day we finished driving to Costa Mesa. It wasn't to bad of a drive.
I started work on August 26. I was worried about traffic so left home an hour early which turned out to be way to early as I was a half hour early. The next day I was 15 min early and today I finally got it right by leaving a half hour before work. The company I am working for is called Marina. They do mostly commercial landscaping jobs that are drawn up by outside designers and they bid to get the jobs. I am in the estimating department. What we do is when a job comes up that we would like to install we get the plans and do what is called a take-off where we use a program to count up specific types of trees, shrubs, plants, grass, sprinkler systems parts, etc. This is the part that I am getting to help with. Once the initail take-off is done it is passed on to one of the senior estimators who gather prices for each item and put togehter a bid price which we then give to the company who is looking to have their landscape installed. Then we wait to see if they choose our companies bid. It's interseting to listen to the other estimators talk because they speak of a $50-100 grand job as small when it seems like alot of money to me. I am learning lots, making a few mistakes, but learning never the less. They seem to think I'm doing well for a novice.
I almost forgot, my computer screen is HUGE! It's not actually a computer screen, but a big screen TV, and everyone has one just like it, at least in my department, though I am the only one without a regular computer screen on the side. Oh well, I'm not complaining. I don't know what I'd do with two screens, I'm just trying to get used to having a gianormous screen.
Traffic was my biggest worry and I have found that I don't actually mind it as much as I thought I would. Yesterday I got stuck in rush hour traffic becasue there was a wreck. I made the discovery that though it's not any better or worse that SLC traffic jams, it's less stressful becasue people are better at letting you merge in unlike in Utah where they speed up simply so you can't get in.
