A new journey begin

Today is really our first day as retirees. I was asked yesterday what will I do... and in the same phrase a person was saying "You will probably sleep in". Well not quite, I like to get up early. I was not getting up early for work but because my perrfectly tuned body :) was ready to start the day. Most of the time, I didn't even need an alarm clock!

So today I woke up before the sun rise, got my coffee going, and went outside to take a picture of the sun rising - this is how dedicated I am to this blogging venture. But as you can see in the picture, the sun was in a little fog, and I thought, how appropriate since this is how I feel, I  too am in a little fog...
Don't get me worng, this is not a dark cloud, it is more like I don't see clearly what is ahead but I am more than happy to find out!

Now let's get back to yesterday... My plan was to get to work, send an email to my EX-colleagues to thank them for having put up with me for so many years, go around and shake hands, hug and share souvenirs with everyone. A good thing I was not in management, because, my plan was not one that was well thought of. If you think about doing something like I was, DON'T pick a Friday... I missed a lot of people that I wanted to see...

When I arrived, I sat at my (now) ex-desk, and was putting final words to my email, Ghislaine came to say goodbye, we ended up both with tears in our eyes. After she left, I was thinking that it would not be an easy day...

In the elevator, I saw Claudine, we were talking about my retirement, but her floor came up and she left, I wanted to go back later but I forgot, if you ever read this Claudine I am sorry that I missed you but I am sure we will see each other at the "boulangerie" some time.

Shortly after, Christianne called and invited me to have coffee with QA at the cafeteria, I couldn't pass that opportunity to say goodbye to a group of people that kept pointing out my soooooo many mistakes for so many years hahaha. It was good to share a last coffee with you, Christianne, Peter, Isabelle and Michel. I missed Charbel (not :) ) and Johanne, and the ex QAs like Marie and France.

Around 10nish, Luc my ex-chief came back to the section to say goodbye, I was so glad to see him.  He now works for another department. One story with Luc that Elaine always reminds me of is that at a divisional picnic, we were playing a ball game, on the pavement. I felt down and kissed the pavement, Luc came to me and had a look of horror in his face when he helped me up. He took charge and was walking with me toward one of the building. I was bleeding a little but I was not feeling like I really hurt myself... On our way, Luc told me that in the building there was a shower and that WE should take a shower... hahaha I hit my face on the pavement but I was conscious enought to know that I would not get in the shower with any one, not even my chief :)  Now Elaine, you had a lot of chuckles about that, what I might have forgot to tell you is that in French the pronoun (On) which translate as (We) in english, excludes the person that uses it. So it was not an indecent proposal, ouf!!!

Just before leaving the building, I saw Éric and Robert (my boss and the chief), I teased them about NOW I could tell them how I really felt about them, but, the truth is that they are the best persons that I had the opportunity of working for. I really enjoyed working with them and I was lucky to end my carrer with such great people.

Before noon, I dropped my employee card at security and that was it, I was out of the building and into a new journey.

I picked my up wife who was also having her last day, she was waiting at the door with her BFF Nicole and Dan.  She received among other things, a lawn chair for her retirement.  There is a plaque on it, Retirement 2012.

We went for lunch at a Shawarma place in a shopping center.  There was a long line up, I got in the line up, while my wife when to get something... I was in the line up for maybe 2 minutes when a women started to talk to me. I thought it was my wife, I turned around and it was someone I didn't know. She kept chatting and also complaining about the line up. She looked at her watch and told me that it had been 5 minutes... I told her I didn't care because I had plenty of time, I had just retired half an hour ago. She told me that she retired 3 months ago, and the funny thing is that she retired from the same department, she was working 2 floors above me. Us retirees should stick together hahaha

After lumch we went to do some grocery and got back home to pick up stuff we were bringing to the campste. We said goodbye to our daughter, got in the truck and drove away. We both were anxious to be on our way, but having eaten Shawarma for lunch.. we were thirsty and didn't think of bringing a bottle of water. The camping is an hour away from home, usually, we don't do any un-necessary stop, but, now we ARE retired so I stopped to get a bottle of water. My point is that it is a change of pace folks, I took a consious decision to stop just to teach myself to slow down, there is no fire to attend to (this is just a way of speaking because in the future, there will be a lot of fire and it won't matter if it is Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Friday...