So Long, Farewell, Auf Weidersehen, Goodbye...

Me Receiving A Desk Set From Lieutenant General Flowers - I wanted a Commander's Coin, but I settled.

After lots of fits and starts (and delays, and turnbacks, and…)  Ok, let’s start again.  I’m finally doing it.  My paperwork is in, and it’s official – my last day with the Corps is April 30^th.  Right now, they’re planning my retirement party for April 25^th – not sure where or what time, but the date is pretty firm.

I just realized that I’ve had the same phone number (three different offices, two different buildings, but the same phone number) for over half of my life.  That’s definitely the longest constant in my life by far.  (It also explains why I get all the weird phone calls – not sure where they’re going to be sending them now.) 

I’ve been going through and cleaning out my desk, throwing out the detritus of a long career.  Date stamps that only went up through 1999, dried out Wite-out bottles, rub-on letters, 410 business cards of a 500 business card order (somehow, I just never seemed to be the business card handing out type.)  Enough pens to sink your average battleship, only half of which ever worked properly (and the half that didn’t work always ended up in my hands when I needed to take a message).  A bottle of WD40 and a couple of rolls of duct tape.  My carefully collated list of NAICS codes and size standards (let’s face it, no one uses the notebooks anymore, but I started here before this stuff was available online – pre-AOL, even.)

There are some things I’m taking with me – the nameplate that my Grandfather carved for me from a chunk of wood from Zion Canyon, various moose memorabilia that my friends have given me over the years, my Group W Bench sign, many coffee cups… which is odd, considering that I don’t drink coffee, but I think they automatically populate in any office environment.  I’m giving away more stuff – passing down my quilted art to Patty, some vases to Jim, my snark sign to Farrell.  I’m not sure who is going to inherit my Mt Hood keyboard – whoever calls dibs, I suppose. 

But mostly, I’m throwing out and getting rid of.  Heck, I’m even getting rid of my “Let go of the banana” sign.  That sign has gotten me through a lot of tough situations – it was a reminder that you can trap any monkey by putting a banana in a box with a hand-sized hole, as long as the monkey involved (and yes, I was usually the monkey) didn’t remember that some rewards just weren’t worth the pain of sticking around.  Which sort of wraps this whole thing up nicely – it’s been a wonderful home, but it’s time to let go of the banana and head off to other pursuits.