Festivity

It’s rare that I can label a day that began with one of the monthly board of advisors meetings as fun but yesterday definitely broke the mold.  I blame Christmas.  It seems to put everybody in a better mood, at least around here.  The head political guy even singled me out for praise in front of the assembled Voices of Inappropriate Worth (from prior blog rants).  It was still two hours of unmitigated posturing, so ….normal.

The Board Meeting

The union invited me to their annual Christmas luncheon in the drivers’ lobby.  Each year they cover over the pool table and everybody brings in a dish to share.  In other words it was keto torture day but since today is a vacation day from the diet I rescued various cookies and cupcakes for destruction today.   

It was funny to see the mix of older and younger drivers. The older ones are very comfortable around us management types and we were having a good time while the younger guys looked on in horror.  I thought one new guy was going to faint when he was introduced to me.  I found out later the older drivers tell the newbies scary stories about the horrible bosses just to mess with them.   They told this guy that if he was ever called to my office, to just pray.  You could tell it was severely comprising his preconceptions to actually put a human face on the supposed boogie man.  A couple of the older drivers were trying to get me to call him to my office later in the day just to mess with him, ahhh, Christmas Spirit!

The Union Layout

My Christmas partying for the day was not yet finished. The head political boss invited the management team over to the Union Station bar, Luciano’s (appropriately named after the famed gangster).  That turned out to be the highlight of the day as we watched through the huge windows all the other Worcesterites stuck in traffic while we had a round of free cocktails and then maybe a few more. 

We’ve had a lot of pressure and stress over the past year so it was fun to have everyone gather around the bar and tell war stories.  It was a very good time; the well endowed secretary of the political boss even bestowed a big Christmas hug upon me.  I don’t know what I’d done to merit such attention but who am I to argue; just another reason to love the Christmas season.

Luciano's Last Night - Secretary on Left

My wife has made some pointed remarks about the various and sundry Christmas parties I’ve attended over the past few weeks and why spouses were not included more.  I struggled to understand her question but she swings a mean machete so I am always on my best, well at least good, behavior.  She took off last night for her weekly line dancing class with the Panamanian mafia gals. 

They followed that up with an evening at a local restaurant which saw her home around 11pm.  When she was gushing about how much fun she had celebrating Christmas with her friends then I knew she understood about all the parties at work. Well, hopefully.

 

I saw an interesting photo (below) in the local paper taken a couple weeks ago.  Just at the beginning of my street there's a farm with a small pond that always has a lot of ducks, geese, and other wild life roaming around.  Apparently that abundant amount of game has attracted a new neighbor, namely a bald eagle.  The write up surrounding the photo mentioned while the photo was being taken the eagle was dining on either a duck or a goose on top of the ice.  Very cool (well except for the duck), I'm going to have to keep an eye out for the eagle.

Bald Eagle Neighbor