Adjusting

The red light on the government-issued emergency announcement box in my room is blinking. It's interesting that these rooms are equipped with the radio-like units, complete with a label warning against unplugging or altering the device. Yet, there's no handbook explaining what the signals mean. I'm assuming that because the red light has been blinking since I got home from work, and there haven't been any fires, explosions, terrorist threats, etc., I'm safe.
It's still a bit unnerving.
Today was my first day at work. I spent the first couple hours filling out emergency contact sheets, W-4 forms (which I hate, I never know whether to fill in a 1 or a 0), laboratory policy sheets and many others. I then had the quickest physical of my life. I sat in one of the lab's medical offices with a nurse for no longer than 2 minutes, while she scanned at the one-page medical history sheet I had filled out.
I met some of the people I'll be working with and got a short tour of the building and the immense amount of technology that surrounds it. From the top floor of Wilson Hall, named after the lab's founder Robert Wilson, you can see the Chicago skyline on a clear day. You also can see the facility's equipment, from the vats that store antimatter to the outline of the tevatron, a particle accelerator made up of underground tubes and magnets with a four-mile diameter.
I still don't understand how everything works. Today's quick tour was way over my head, but I hope to catch on soon.
Other than that, I've been pretty bored. I spent my weekend checking out the on-site marvels -- a herd of nearly 50 buffalo and beautiful bike and running trails -- as well as the off-site marvels -- the mall, and after days of searching for one, a video store.
But at $4.75 a DVD, I also learned that I won't be renting many more movies from that Blockbuster.