Anya came to visit with her parents October 6th. It was John and Rachel’s fifth anniversary. A lot has happened in the last five years.
Qwest moved my office from an industrial type building at about Broadway and Mineral in the south part of Denver. The ceilings were high with exposed girders sprayed with cement to cover the steel. The desks were grey as was the carpet. Cubes were but an L-shaped corner to set a computer and a couple pieces of paper. There were no windows except one very small one in my friend Marilyn’s cube next to mine. I could peak around the corner to see if the sun was shining or the snow was falling fearcly.
The compute down to Mineral was trying. I had bought myself a shiny red Jeep with seat warmers and 4 wheel drive, but the ride was still an hour of tedium through six lanes of packed traffic. On snowy days the ride expanded into two hours with white knuckles gripping the steeing wheel. By the time I came home I could barely park the car in the garage from exhaustion and stress.
Bosses make a difference too. John Baker was one of the worst bosses I have had. He enjoyed pitting us against one another always bringing out the worse of all personallity quirks on our team. There was no love lost on my part when he found another job. Our team was assigned one of the best bosses then and life at work became barable.
I was happy when the work team moved to downtown Denver. My boss assigned me a very nice office with big windows. I could look down 18th street at the the Episcopal church a few blocks away. It was always a peaceful way to transform a stressful day into a workable retreat.
I road the bus which stopped about a half a block from my house on the corner. This saved on parking downtown and gave me an opportunity to take up reading novels. I’m not a fast reader, but I have certainly finished a lot of books in the past five years.
For several years I had a wiondow sill full of paper back books. I set up a book exchange for the many of use who travel to work by bus or light rail. It makes the ride go faster. This past year, with the merger with CenturyLink and unknown status of the building, I donated all the books to the local library for their annual book sale. It was fun to share books for all those years. Many of my co-workers sure had a lot of interesting books. The hardest, longest book was Cenntenial by Mitcher. The most interesting were the two Pillars of the Earth books by Ken Follet. Page turners were the series starting with the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. Very sad to know that the author only had time to finish up three books before he died of a heart attack climbing up many flights of stairs on the fateful day the elevator was broken.
I still read every day. Today I’m reading Racing in the Rain. Makes me pay more attention to my dog Jack. I just finished Sarah’s Key, which reminded me so much of our visit to Auschwitz in Poland and the things we saw walking through the buidlings.
My time at Qwest, now CenturyLink is coming to an end after 14 years as I volunteered for the lay off with the merger downsizing. Last day is scheduled for January 20, 2012. Time to retire and do something more interesting.
Last week we received notice that our team is moving back to the Mineral building. This will be a disappointing way to end my career here. Whatever. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.
When our office moved downtown five years ago I took the opportunity to give my three year old jeep to John and his new wife, Rachel as a wedding gift. I never replaced the car and enjoyed not having any associated car bills for licenses, gas or repairs for the past five years. I’m sure not going to buy a car for just a few months to drive to Mineral when our team moves. I guess I’ll hitch a ride or take the 2 hours three bus ride down there.
We were so pleased John and Rachel found each other and enjoyed sharing their lives together even though they were firmly settled in Boston. Anya, their little girl was born in 2008.
Anya has been the joy of our lives since the day she was born. Now at 2 years, almost 3 on the first of November, she is a cutie to play with. She has grown up so much just in the past few months since we saw her on the 4th of July in Boston. She is busy telling you things about her toys, singing and playing songs with you and painting some pictures for our refridgerator.
One the best joys was Anya dancing with Stan and I at the polka club. She put on a pretty new dress with a bright pink skirt adorned with sequens and big pink heart on the front of the dress. She held our hands and skipped to the music as we danced around the floor to Hey Calvalier played by one of our favorite bands, Alan Polovka. She was big hit with that curly sandy blond hair and her bright blue eyes. Many of our polka friends came over just to have a chat and to find out about this cute little girl.
A grandmother’s delight for sure.