I had some gear to drop off, some people were planning to be there, and I had an all-team talk to give, so I decided to join some of the team at the office.

Back when we thought this would last a few months, and there would be some kind of hybrid partial week return to the office, I had plans of being in two or three days a week. Alternating with the wife, to then allow us to generally have the home office to ourselves. That plan fell flat with every postponed return and shifted deadline, but the interval still survived.

In November, they quietly announced that our personal spaces were available. The common areas and critical spaces had been opened before. Some of the team had seen this and have been quietly going to the office on occasion to collaborate. This slipped out, so I figured I might peek in, drop off the stuff, and give the chat to a partial audience.

I did give my chat in a conference room, with the Keynote on the big screen, but I was alone in the room. The others in the office hadn't heard me when I said where I was going, and didn't see me in the immediately adjacent meeting room. Since they hadn't been to the office, mostly "ever," they didn't realize which was the "normal" conference room in the area for such things. The one with the bigger screen and table and overhead sound system; the smaller of the two we have like that, since the larger is on the other side of the elevator bay.

I had visions in my head of the casual banter between things, like before, and there were a couple moments, but not the bevy I had oped for. In the back-to-back Zoom world I live in at home, there's seldom time for a bio break or coffee refill between meetings, and those facilities are each within 20 or so feet of my desk! The same happened in the office. Done with one Zoom, start another. No coffee between, although I did dash down the hall (a distance longer than my yard) to the restroom, and I stepped across the compound for a weak sandwich and chip lunch (I was late enough from meetings they'd shut down the grill, but the grab-and-go still had stuff).

I realized I'd need to be purposeful with my schedule to support some in-person time in the office. The rest of the team sat at the pod tables in groups of two to few, and bantered and worked, much like the before times. That was great to see. They were all accepting of my little intrusions and brief visits, and very cheerful as a bunch and as individuals. It did make me miss that bit of interaction more than I thought it would make me.

We ducked out a little early for some team bonding at a nearby watering hole. Some good banter, and then I got tied up doing some Slack on my phone until I had to bolt to fetch the kids. I left a little extra time for that since I'd only seen the traffic as I crossed the freeway, and didn't want to find that it was worse than expected. It's a good team; my newer team, just shifting a couple weeks ago.

On the drive home, I also recognized I didn't miss the drive home. Even though it's a short 5-10 minutes each way to fetch the kids from school, that seems to be enough for me. That's in clear weather. Really brutal, cold weather is coming. The drive out was a small jumble just where I get on the freeway, as the next intersection a mile away is the main artery from this side of the city to downtown. Getting past that is a small delay, as everyone jockeys to merge off our highway, and then clear sailing until any other freeway intersection, which aren't as jumbled as this, often with little or no slowing down. The drive home was mostly full-speed, although the lanes were full. Some slower bits near bigger intersections, and a larger slow down by that highway's interaction with the same artery, but going the other direction in the evening. It's about 25 miles from my house to the office. It took about 35 minutes in the morning, from parking-to-parking. It's a little longer to the kids' school first, but took about 45 minutes to get from the office to their school, and then the 10 or so home from there. And...that was in clear weather. Dark, but clear.

I might wait until after the holidays (or after winter passes) to go more often than once every week or so. We have the last Fridays of the year out of the office, and I might take some extra time off around there. While at the office, I showed the team that with 4 days of PTO, there's a 10-day spread from leaving work on 23 December before returning on 3 January next year; some hadn't thought of it (or at least acted like it so I could feel like I shared something new). My kids are out of school starting 20 December (really, their last day is 17 December, so they get a 16-day winter break), which is going to be a lot of time tucked into our house. I'm not a winter person any more, but we'll probably try to get tot he parks and sled a few times during that span.

Maybe we'll take some longer trips to visit all of the area grandparents. We're both children of divorced parents, so our parents don't live together. None of them live in the city, really, but three of them are within an hour or so driving. Kids with snacks and iPads can endure even the longest trek to my father-in-law's house, and the second longest to my mom's, with my mother-in-law's barely outside the city. We've done combinations of nearly any two in one day for reasons, but we'll have plenty of time to do more than one trip during this school break.

Everyone's healthy.