Fridays Are Odd Days

 Fridays are odd days for me. I come in to work on Fridays and at the very start my brain is already focused on the end of the day and "Beer O'clock". It's hard for me to keep myself motivated. The only thing that keeps me going is that doing something makes the day go faster. I go around looking for someone who needs help. I find things that needs finishing. I clean up things just to kill time.

I avoid starting anything new on Friday, if possible. I avoid it because it could delay the end of the day. I also avoid afternoon meetings, if possible. I add "meetings" to my work calendar covering the entire end of the day. That way no one can schedule a real meeting for me after 2:00 on any Friday. 

I used to think I was alone doing these things. But most of my coworkers say they have the same feelings on Fridays and even confessed to being unproductive on Fridays. I try to avoid being unproductive. I just try to not miss leaving on time, or better yet, leaving a bit early. That first weekend beer is always soooo good!

I wonder if everyone is the same elsewhere in the work world. I am sure there are some people who are just workaholics and gung-ho all the way into Friday evening. I've known a few. I have also known some folks who are worthless on Fridays, all day. I just wonder if the Friday afternoon bug is a universal thing everywhere. I feel like it probably is.

No matter what, I am ready for the weekend to start Yessir! Less than an hour and it will be Beer O'clock once again. TGIF!!!

Hello Again Mr. VP

 This morning I had a contractor onsite for some work. When he was done his work I escorted him outside to leave. As I headed back toward the doors I heard someone calling to me. I didn't recognize him at first. He was an older gentleman, moving with some effort toward me, asking if I was an employee here. When I told him I was and asked how I could help him he introduced himself to me and started telling me he needed some help.

I instantly recognized him once he was closer and told me his name. He had been the Vice President of the company when I started here back in 1987. He and the other big cheeses had sold the company 25 years ago and gotten their golden parachutes. He retired shortly after that a wealthy man.

Quite a blast from the past for me.

I told him who I was an that I remembered him. He claimed to remember me, but I doubt that. The thing that really got me while we spoke was how very old he looked to me. He said he was 83 now but he sure looked and moved like a much older man. When he left the place decades ago he was in good physical condition. Someone who was decisive and capable. Now, not so much.

He had an issue that our HR helped him with. Then we stopped outside and spoke for a while. He said he has slight dementia and has some bad moments at times. He said his wife has very bad dementia and is in very bad health. We spoke about all the people we once worked with and where they were now. It was nice to reminisce with someone from the old days. 

All the while we spoke, I kept thinking how old and slow he was. How he was not anything like I remembered. It was kind of unnerving. 

Sometimes it is odd when you meet up with a person you haven't seen for a long time. In this instance, a quarter century. The drastic change was a lot to take in. 83 years old doesn't seem that old to me but he sure hasn't aged that well. It makes me wonder what I'll be like when I'm that old. I hope I'm not so frail.

Before he left I decided to let him know about an incident that I instigated way back in the early 1990's. I let him know that the one day when he drove in and there was a little red truck parked in his private VP parking space, that it was my doing. That day I had played a joke on one of my coworkers, the guy I referred to as G in all the old G stories on this blog. I had noticed that G didn't lock his truck door so I snuck out and pushed his truck into the VP parking spot (it was a manual transmission). Then I waited.

Sure enough there was a call over the intercoms companywide that whoever was parked in the VP parking spot was to go out and immediately move their vehicle. HR was investigating! Old G was hot when he found out it was him. Plus his original spot was taken and he had to park farther away. 

That was fun.

When I told the old VP he instantly remembered that day. He had a good laugh. I told him that was how us 20-somethings played pranks on each other all the time back in those days. He got a smile out of it today. Back then, he wasn't amused. Not at all.

As he left I watched him and wondered about all the people who have come and gone from this place. I wondered how many of them would look at me with the same reaction I had with Mr. VP. This is the kind of encounter that will keep you thinking for a long time after. 

 Today is Friday. I am meeting an old friend for drinks after work. She once worked here and called herself my "work wife". She left a few years ago but we still get together regularly to catch up. I miss her being here, for sure.  

She and I were close with another co-worker. He was the Site Engineer here. He also left a few years ago. We became so close that we had a routine on Friday of going to our own happy hour. Sometimes significant others came along, but that was rare. We called ourselves the Three Musketeers. So original, eh? It was such a regular thing that the bartender became used to us being there at the same time every Friday and she knew us by name, knew a lot of our personal stuff too. She would have our drinks ready as soon as she saw us coming. 

We also began hanging out together socially. I became friends with her husband and with his wife. Still am to this day although she and I rarely see each other. I spend a good deal of time with engineer guy and his wife though. 

It's hard to be in the workplace and have people you like to work with and become close to them, then they leave. There is a hole in the daily grind that cannot be filled. To this day, we all agree that the bond we had made work much easier. Even when things got hard, and sometimes things got really hard, we were able to be calm and cool together and accomplish good things. 

The unfortunate flip side is that now none of us have found anyone in the workplace that we can feel that reliance upon. I have been on an island since they left. Other people have replaced them place but it's not the same. They both have stated the same thing. They feel much lonelier at work without the dynamic we shared.

So, I'll meet up with her tonight and we'll have a nice time. We'll talk about life and tell each other how much we miss being together. Then we will mosey back to our separate worlds until the next time. It's a bittersweet kind of deal, feeling the excitement of seeing someone you miss and then feeling the loss when time is up. Again and again, we do this. It's kind of an odd thing that we humans do to ourselves, isn't it. 

I have been trying to do a post that would summarize the differences between where I am now and where I was during the initial years of this blog. After a few attempts I realize that isn't really possible. Everything comes off lame, contrived. So, I'm just going to write stuff. Things from the past will eventually come up and that way I will update the life changes.

It's funny reading thoughts from the past. Apparently back then, 20+ years ago, I had a serious Starbuck's addiction. It was a recurring theme then. Today, not so much. Starbuck's is still good to me, but I rarely go there. I do still have a morning coffee but only one in the wee hours and it is simply a way to ease into the day. I sit in the quiet and watch the sunrise, listening to the birds waking up and slowly sip coffee until it does its magic and I have to run to the bathroom. LOL

TMI? Maybe, but truth.

Speaking of truth, one important thing I do want to write about is this: 

One mistake I made (and this will come up many times I'm sure) is that I didn’t keep the original blog a secret. I allowed Nicci (the now ex-wife) and other family and friends to know about it. That resulted in my posts being very restricted. I couldn’t be 100% honest due to the repercussions. So many posts are not what I really wanted to say. Some are as close to false as I would allow myself to be. Rereading those posts, I can remember the feel of how I held back, how I posted half-truths and only alluded to things I wanted to say. I remember the frustration of wishing I hadn't let certain people know about the blog. Over time, I'm sure this led to the burnout I felt. Now, after all this time has gone by, I won't have that handicap. I won't let anyone know I'm posting again; except any blogger friends I may be able to contact. Lesson learned.

Something else I noticed from the old days were many posts about "reality TV". The truth there is that I never liked those shows. It was obvious they were not reality. Just a show. That stuff was part of life because of the relationship I was in. Not anymore. I cannot stand those types of crap and since I have my freedom, they are never part of my life.

The only truth I did see in my review of those "reality TV" posts is that I still think Jessica Simpson is a babe. That was real. I honestly don't know what she is doing these days but there was a certain charm about her that I still smile about when I think of her. 

Anyway, gonna stop blabbering on about the past. Time to return to the present..... *sigh

Welcome Back!?

After several years gone by, 16 to be exact, I started wondering about the Yankeebob blog and if it was still out here on the internet. Somehow over the years it slipped my mind that it even existed. What a sad thought. 

 So I looked and found that it was still here. Nice surprise. So for the last couple weeks I have been rereading the entire blog. Every post, every comment. In doing so I have gone through a myriad of emotions. Good and bad, melancholy and happy. Sometimes laughing out loud. Sometimes shedding a few tears.

Reliving the blog posts made me think to check out my old emails in the account I used for the Yankeebob blog (I never delete them). In those emails I found a treasure trove of memories from my Blogger Friends of the past. That really led me down an emotional path. I realized that I missed the friendship and camaraderie that developed via blogging. I missed the interaction with the people a lot and it made me wonder at how I could have left that fall by the wayside. There were some close friendships made and lots of private moments shared. I feel very sorry at losing those connections. I feel kinda dumb about it, to be honest.

I have a lot of impressions I want to document. A lot of feelings I want to document. So many subjects I want to cover that I cannot do it all at once. Things like the emotions the blog made me relive, the truth behind so much of the content, the stages of life I remember with each post and what was really happening. Mostly I really, really want to try and reconnect with some of my blog friends. After reading the conversations on the blog and the private emails we exchanged, I feel like I have lost so much by not keeping up with the special people I met on blogger.

I plan on trying to do some posting in the upcoming days to document my reactions to being back at Yankeebob. I want to do some writing before I forget how it made me feel to relive everything again. What I have initially learned is that posting here was an awesome idea because it documented stages in life that I have forgotten about. Rereading it helped me remember where I was at the time and what I was going through. The blog did its job because that is what it was designed for anyway, eh?

Maybe, by some miracle, when I restart good old Yankeebob, maybe someone from the past will take notice. Wouldn’t that be some kind of special!

To be continued……..