Tinker Friends

Good Afternoon All.  I just came back from lunching with my friend......my work friend.  There is never enough time to say all the things we need to say in one hour.  We just jump from one conversation to the next trying to get in a month's worth of news in 60 short minutes. 

Today was a little different because after lunch I decided to go visit the "old" office, my pre-retirement home.  Everything has changed, yet nothing has changed.  The walls are the same old walls, but they seem darker somehow.  Maybe that is because I have a lot of windows now in my post-retirement home.  There are rips or tears in some of the wall coverings that were there five long-short years ago.  Nothing has changed.

The maze to the old office is exactly the same.  Some of the faces have changed in those cubicles lining the maze, but the turn to the right, turn to the left, turn to the right, turn to the left, turn to the right, turn to the left, etc. is exactly the same.  I could walk it in total darkness.  I'd still like to know the story of the plastic wrap over the heads of a couple employees in their cubicle.

The same old people, with a couple of new faces, are still playing cards during lunch.  Some working during lunch, some sleeping, some just surfing the Internet.  Nothing much has changed with the remaining folks that I remember from five years ago.  Change of workloads maybe, new grand babies, a little weight lost or a little weight gained on some...........basically the same-o same-o. 

Here I am writing my blog this afternoon, not writing a letter to maintenance about why or why not they are doing certain things.  "Remember........in that last meeting you said you were going to do this.....AND now you are doing WHAT?"  Writing a blog post trumps writing a nasty-gram any day of the week; however, nothing tops my Tinker friends.

It was a lot of fun to visit for a few minutes, but what was more fun was driving off base knowing I no longer a part of the big Tinker picture.  I am grateful that Tinker gave me career opportunities that I could not have gotten elsewhere, but I am even more grateful that retirement is my life now. 

Nothing tops my Tinker friends, even five years later.  I love you.