Rain Soaked

R.I.P. to a Great Employee

Yesterday the weather perfectly matched the mood for the day.  Thank God I was able to squeeze in a lunch with my favorite son because without that the day would definitely have gone down in the loss column.

We had about three inches of snow overnight, enough to coat my mountainous driveway.  This was followed by a driving rain which made the snow too heavy to be moved by the snow blower.  I was able to use the techniques honed over the weekend to quickly move the snow out of the way by pushing instead of lifting since it was sitting on a bed of water. 

It rained, heavily, almost the entire day.  Lunch was the lone bright spot as my son hosted me (his turn) for lunch in Marlborough.  He provided a detailed account of his recent Panamanian adventures as well as his incredibly busy work schedule.  He returned last week from a week long conference in Virginia where he apparently really wowed some of his superiors with his work ethic and analysis.  I was so proud of him that tears were forming in my eyes while he was recounting this.  I abruptly realized this would definitely be out of character and squelched that potentially game changing demonstration of emotion. 

Last evening I made my way through the rain and some really adventurous back roads to the town of Webster, Massachusetts to attend a wake for an employee who died suddenly over the weekend.  I usually don’t do well with this type thing, even though I’ve had a lot of practice.  It was extremely jarring to see the body laid out in the casket looking very lifelike and remembering I had been talking with the lively living version just a few short days ago. 

There were a number of my employees at the wake as well.  I had just finishing talking with the husband of the deceased when one of them cornered me and said she needed the next day off from work.  She was so dense that she didn’t pick up on the look of complete contempt I was trying to transmit.  To their credit, the other employees sitting around did look appropriately embarrassed for her.  She didn’t get the day off.

I made it home in time to finish work on the latest puzzle.  This one was huge and I had to turn it sideways to fit on the table.  It consisted of a series of small pictures of trees and was more challenging than I thought it would be.  I also had a long conversation with the spouse in exile.  She said she was very proud of me for going to the wake – I guess I am bad at that kind of thing.

Tough Large Puzzle