Surprise!

[liralen]

One of the more direct ladies at work invited me, last week, to lunch today, and she said other people could have their lunch. The one other lady in the meeting said, "Oh, I'm busy then... so you go ahead..." I thought it a little odd, but I'd be okay with having lunch with someone willing to just say goodbye that way.

So I met up with the lady, and since I had errands, we decided to drive separately. She met me right at my van when I pulled in, and then walked with me in. The hostess asked if we were part of the big Xilinx party and I said, "Uhm... I don't think so...." and the lady said, "Yeah. That's us all right..."

And there were nearly four table's worth of people. Three of them all lined up together, the fourth on its own... but... wow.

I was... flabbergasted. Sure... the prospect of a free lunch is rarely turned down, but... on the most part people were really glad to see me and talk with me and to say goodbye. I was amazed.

It was good.



Lunch broke up in time for me to scramble to my 1:30 meeting, where I got to talk with my favorite HR lady and we went over the time I'd set aside, but it was well worth it. I needed it and we worked through some things that I really wanted to work through.

Then I had to write up some hard stuff about raises and compensation and things. I barely got it done before I had to run off for Jet's Teacher/Parent conference. Jet joined us for the latter bit and that was fun and funny, too. Mrs. Bauer said that he's really very quiet in class, but she'd met us at the Christmas Walk and saw Jet chatter away there. She said that was the most she'd ever seen him say in one sitting, so she was pretty impressed with how he knew when and where he could talk all he wanted and where he shouldn't.

One cool thing was that Jet had written a whole page of stuff, and we couldn't quite decipher it and Jet had forgotten what he'd tried to write down and couldn't quite read it. But in the midst of the conversation, John suddenly said, "I know what he wrote..." and said, "'I went to Noodles and Company and had buttered noodles with seasoning. I ate the whole bowl and then we went home.'" Wow. Whole, detailed sentences, and he definitely got the gist of the exercise, which was to describe something he'd done.

He still couldn't *read* what he'd actually written, which was more like "I wnt to Ndlsincmpny nd hd bddrdndls wv sesng..."

But John looked at the very neat little picture with us on seats at a table with other tables around us and realized it was a restaurant dinner... so he managed to decipher "bddrd" as buttered and we were off. :-)

But she really likes having Jet in the classroom as he's polite and happy and willing to help, and she has noted that he's pretty smart. He actually got an "Advanced" grade for three-d shapes as he was able to remember all the shapes he was taught, including "rectangular prism" for box... yeesh. So that was cool.

His birthday is Friday, so he's bringing Zebra cakes to class tomorrow or Thursday. And we're going to be gone when it's the class's Valentine's Day Party, so he did all his Valentine's early. He was sad about missing the party. So that's the main problem with pulling him from school for any period of time. Ah well...

From there I ran Jet home in the van as John had taken the bicycle. I then zoomed to the mall to mail the scarves and then zoomed to Hobby Lobby to get blackwingedboy's hat yarn. Something soft and warm and dark and quick, so I just got some bulky Wool-Ease which can be machine washed, no problem.

Then I came back to work to tie up loose ends and do this...

Whew.

And a few people have wished me good luck and a good break from now on. So it's been really cool.

It's been a really good day. And now I even get to go home and play Crash with Jet. Whew.