This is Your Life!

The vase I got from my 30th anniversary party Again the colors here aren't true. The walls are sage and the vase is sage and turquoise

Recently while packing, I came across in my work papers the transcript for my surprise 30th anniversary party at work (again misplaced but they are 'somewhere').

This was one of the nicest things ever done for me.

I knew that they were going to have cookies and coffee for me when I was lured to a lobby. But then, the lobby was set up like the old TV show This is your Life complete with screens, the music and an announcer. The announcer would read a letter from someone in my past. As he continued, it would be obvious whom they were speaking of and I would say the name and that person would emerge from the curtain. There were 5 guests in all though one could not attend. The four who did had long since left the company. It was very touching.

Although the show itself stopped production in 1953, the premise and the music seemed very familiar so I must have seen it on reruns. I was reminded again of this last night falling asleep to a This American Life podcast in which they played the highlights of  3 episodes. One was the life of a Holocaust survivor. They managed to find fellow survivors who were with her and her brother who had been lost up to the show. It was very touching.

Setting up their version of my work life took a lot of work on the part of my boss and my co-worker. Steve had supplied the names of the possible guests. Then there were speeches on my accomplishments over the years. I had a knack for predicting 'winners' which is why I guess I survived while many of my old friends had left. One of the guests was the man whose funeral I attended just 5 years later after he lost control on his bicycle going down a steep hill (which always flashes before my eyes when I am descending the steep hills of Northern Michigan). He had started his own successful company. When we were lab mates, we were always making sports bets. The bet I lost was that I could beat him in a mile run. I really should have made it a longer distance. Lots of our co-workers turned out for the race. I overdid the first lap and couldn't run in my usual time. I had run my first marathon just 2 weeks earlier (excuses, excuses). He was very fast for short distances but really had no endurance. I am the opposite. So I had to buy him drinks and be his lab slave, stepping and fetching and Xeroxing things for a week. It was OK. I won the other bets.
Below is me and my friend after our race. Boy did I need a hair cut.

In less than 2 years later, my co-workers and I were scattered to the winds. The company shut down our site.

The Days of Forty are more like the few minutes of forty so far. Not enough to completely melt things but I did run on a partially thawed dirt road yesterday. Today might be warm enough for a brief bike ride (have been running a lot). I have scheduled some fun things with people for the next 3 days. A certain someone still isn't speaking to me.