vertigo in centro swingstatum

Can be induced merely by climbing (puff puff, pant pant) from the third floor to the fourth floor of a glass and steel office building. Look out the window. You can see the horizon.

It's so flat here that most of the time there is no visible horizon, so there's that building next door, and the one behind it, and the clouds. Now I look out the window from the vertiginous height of the fourth floor (facing southeast) and I see the ridge that rises slightly beyond two water towers, probably the rise that separates Alumni Creek from Big Walnut Creek east of Methodistville. Not exactly a birdseye view, but still a different view.

All due to the move that's part of a reorganization that's part of a merger. My department has been subdivided while being shifted up one flight of stairs, so I have new officemates as well as a cube by the window. We have yet to meet our incoming K-5 editors who either migrate from the Big Apple or join from somewhere else. For now, most work processes are continuing unchanged - if we can find each other in the new physical layout.

My biggest immediate challenge is conditioning my heart, lungs, muscles, and energy systems to walk up four flights instead of three. And I ain't taking no elevator, nosir.

Time passes. I walk - no, I stride - up the four flights every day without undue effort, albeit without boxes full of files, and I'm adjusting body and soul to the new space. Pictures are finding their way onto the walls of my cube - not all that were in the old cube, only those I can't live without - and I know where to find a pen or paper clip or dictionary when I need one.

In short, it's good to be up and running again and able to function in the rarefied air of southern Delaware County with the morning sun streaming in.