Today was my last day of work. Today was also my move-out from my townhouse. Only one of those events merited a card.

In honor of my departure, a group of my colleagues got me a really nice card and gift:

The notes in the card were all touching in their own ways:

One stood out:

The nod to the xkcd “Sandwich” comic really amused me.

I had the best coworkers in the world.

Meetings at my company generally start five minutes late. If you show up at the scheduled time, you’ll just be sitting around for five minutes shuffling your papers until everybody else meanders in a twelfth of an hour later.

That tardiness really irked me when I started. It still does, but since I’m leaving in a week, apathy has set in heavy, so whatever.

Unfortunately, things were a bit worse today. I hurried back from lunch to get to a one-on-one transition meeting, in which I was to impart my hard-fought knowledge on my replacement. I showed up to the conference room at the scheduled start time to prepare a bit before the expected arrival of the other half of the meeting, five minutes hence.

Well, those 300 seconds came and went, and the meeting still consisted of me, a whiteboard, and an empty chair where my coworker should have been. The dilemma: is it correct to leave, or is it better to stay?

I stalled for a while by drawing on the whiteboard, checking the missing person’s cube, drawing some more, checking my mail, checking my e-mail, checking my mail again, and finally just sitting in the conference room reading EE Times. It’s not that I didn’t have anything else to do, but I didn’t want to abandon hope that the other person might soon show up. In hindsight, I suppose I could have left a note for the person to come find me in my cube, but that didn’t occur to me at the time.

And so I kept waiting.

Finally, my one meeting invitee rolled in, 55 minutes late. Wow. I mean, that takes skill.

I’m not sure what’s worse: the fact that she was nearly an hour late to a 90-minute meeting, or the fact that I waited.

It turned out that she had lost track of time while at lunch, so her egregious tardiness wasn’t intentional. She was extremely apologetic, and we ended up having a good discussion, one that will continue next week. In other words, it all turned out OK.

Still, 55 minutes?

For the past few months, the question I have been asked most often by my family and friends has been: “Have you told them yet?”

Until last week, the answer was “no.”

I feared that when I told my employer that I was leaving to go to grad school, I would be turned into a lame duck, ostracized, or worse.   That’s why I waited until three weeks before my departure to reveal my plans.

Happily, the news went over well.  Each person I told initially had an pained expression, somewhere between “shock” and “deer in headlights.”  After a brief pause, their faces softened into smiles, and they congratulated me and told me I’d be missed.  Whew!

Now that my office knows, I can write about my decision here on my blog.   Therefore, for those of you who don’t know, I am happy to announce that I will be attending Stanford University starting in September.  I will be working towards an MS in Management Science and Engineering.

Three more weeks in Minnesota.  I’m nervous, but I’m also really excited.   It will be an adventure.

“Ice cream!”

Screeeeetch!

I’d never seen a Honda Insight turn so quickly. But then, perhaps one never had a sufficiently compelling reason.

Vince and I pulled into the ice cream shop’s parking lot. We were returning from an extended-weekend backpacking trip on Minnesota’s North Shore, and we had intense cravings for food that wasn’t dehydrated or in bar form.

Over the previous 2 days, we had backpacked over 33 miles: 15 on the first day, 16 on the second day, and 2 on the third day. That might not have been so tiring were it not for the extreme, repeated elevation changes and the unusually warm weather. On the other hand, the high peaks provided excellent vistas, and the lack of rain kept the trails pleasantly dry.

Our path took us from Brighton Peak north to the Cascade River. We passed through cedar, birch, and pine forests, next to beaver ponds and rock cliffs, and over rocky rivers and mellow streams.  At night, the stars shone brightly, accented by flourishes from the beginning of the Perseids. It was tremendously relaxing.

Despite the beauty of nature, it was great to get back to get back to good ol’ civilization, where we nursed our blistered feet and rested our tired legs.  And ate ice cream.  Deliciously cold ice cream.

The simplification of my life through the divestiture of material possessions continued today with the departure of my prized toy.

Goodbye, Bimmer.