Fringeville Edition #42, November 20 2011

I am now unemployed for the second full day. Let’s recap, starting from Friday the 18^th:

Friday

I went in to work earlier than usual, because it was the last day there. I wanted to get as much done as possible to ease the transition for the folks I left behind. The plan was to work until 1PM. Maybe 2PM.

My wife was skeptical. For good reason: She’s had 16 years of me saying, “…I’m leaving early…” only to have me show up at home god knows when.

It was a wild, hectic last day. There were many wonderful moments. I left behind folks I love. They knew how to warm my heart. They gave me a Buffalo wing kit and a wing-themed goodbye cake.

They also made sure I had something to wash the wings and cake down with: A nice bottle of Fat Bastard Cabernet Sauvignon.

I picked up the missus after work, and we headed over to Bo Brothers in Wyoming where a proper send-off awaited me. There were chicken wings in abundance and variety. I sampled them all. I enjoyed several Yuengling drafts, some scrumptious pizza and a couple of mugs of Guinness (yes, the missus had the keys).

Things are hazy after that until Saturday morning,

Saturday

I woke up surprisingly refreshed.

I took the missus and my daughter up to the Bear Creek Café for lunch. The food, as always, was terrific. We landed my favorite table in the back with a view of the creek. It was a wonderful lunch. As an aside, one of my litmus tests for grading restaurants is the bathrooms. (I can’t call them “restrooms.” I don’t nap in there. It’s more like the drive-thru at the bank than anything. I make a deposit and skedaddle.) If the bathroom is well-maintained, I assume the kitchen is as well. The bathrooms at the Bear Creek Café are cleaner than those in most houses.

Back at home, I spent a carefree afternoon watching Penn State beat Ohio State. I watched TV for the rest of the evening and shuffled off to bed, wondering if all my weekends were going to start this way. For the past 32 years, I’ve worked weekends regularly. How would I adapt to having weekends off for a while?

Sunday

Shortly before waking on Sunday, I dreamed people were coming up to me at my desk at work, asking for help. My screen was blank. I told each in turn, “Sorry. I’ve been deleted. I don’t exist anymore.”

Well, that woke me up. I certainly did exist. And I had things to do. And I started doing them, nice and early, to the annoyance of my wife, the sane one, who was trying to sleep.

I did bookkeeping. I emptied and filled the dishwasher. I cleaned the fridge.

All the noise forced my wife out of bed.

“You’re going to drive me insane now, aren’t you?” she sighed.

I cooked breakfast as an effort to apologize. Then I decided to do about a dozen other things, and here I sit on Sunday evening still whacking away at things.

I’m just not good with free time…

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JimboBillyBob