random thoughts – Day 1,828 – (Wednesday) –felt like old times

I got up with a fresh energy this morning. The sun was shining. The air was crisp. There was a plan. 

A colleague picked me up on her way in to the office. I hadn’t been onsite since February 12 and it was starting to feel like forever. It felt a tiny bit like one of my favorite days from age six until 22 -- the first day of school.

The day’s schedule included our team meeting, Medicare informational webinar, delivery to an art gallery, chocolate chip cookie competition in the sales suite, and an end of day social hour in finance and accounting. 

It was nice to see people. The prolonged broken wrist remote work was beginning to lose some of the luster of peace and quiet and taking on an undercurrent of solitary confinement and it was nice to get out of the house for a day. The team meeting was cancelled due to an absence of updates, but the rest of the day proceeded pursuant to the entries on my Outlook calendar.

It felt like the pre-pandemic times. All the folks hired during and after the pandemic have heard about the many food and social events we used to have and are finally getting a chance to experience some of it. Next week is the popular baked potato fundraiser. Pretty soon it will be the final gathering of all of us. That one will be bittersweet. Part food and beverage, part games and prizes, part funeral. 

The Medicare seminar was at least the third one I’ve attended and the convoluted crap of Parts A, B, C, and D all feel like a big F-you, but it’s finally starting to make sense. I still hate the whole idea of it. 

The canal, 1:14 pm.

The treat after suffering through the webinar was a walk outdoors with a couple colleagues. Two of us needed to deliver our four-by-four art pieces for the upcoming fundraiser event and three of us set forth. From The Brush Gallery, we swung by City Hall so I could drop off my city census form. We crossed the canal and proceeded down Merrimack Street and Kirk and walked a bit downtown. 

The cookie competition was amazing. There were 19 banker bakers who baked chocolate chip cookies which were lined up with numbers. Bankers from the downtown campus swarmed the suite hosting the event. We chatted, we tasted cookies, we voted. Winners for “best tasting” and “best looking cookie” were announced later in the afternoon. The team members who organized it and those who baked did a great job.

The finance and accounting social hour events have been happening for a couple weeks, but I haven’t been on site to attend. Today was a great chance to spend time with folks I haven’t seen in a long time and some I had never met before today. There were beverages, tortilla chips, salsa, and a bucket-sized bowl of cookies leftover from the competition. It was a great day to be onsite.