Farewell

I handed in my keys to the office yesterday and today I went back for my farewell luncheon. I'll go in briefly on Monday to help with the final bank reconciliations and then I'm done working there forever. I was laughing a little when I handed in the keys. I told them "this is the third time I've done this. Please keep them this time!" :) I handed in the keys to this office when I moved out to the satelite one. I handed in those keys when I quit the organization and now I'm handing them in again!

The luncheon today was wonderful. As someone who's Love Language is "encouraging words" my love tank is definitely full :) We had a wonderful "afternoon tea" catered at the office. It was attended by all the current staff and a few past ones that I have worked with as well as the bookkeeper (who came in special for it) and our current Board Chair and the past Board Chair. Some of them spoke publicly around the table and all shared best wishes with me privately. An unexpected monetary gift was presented to me by the General Manager on behalf of the Board and I will be using it towards my education expenses.

I also *finally* turned over the scrapbook I started for the office over five years ago. I've been putting off finishing it but with this hard fast deadline, I finally buckled down and completed it. I have a companion one for myself (the main one is 12x12, mine is 8.5x11) that I'll be keeping. I have been with this organization, on and off since I started as a volunteer for work experience while I was still in high school. I was 17 then. I celebrated my 18th birthday that summer and recently celebrated 29. That means I've been there for over 11 years, over a third of my life and ALL of my adult life. It's been an amazing journey full of wonderful people and many fond memories. I know they are sad to see me go and on some level I'm sad to be leaving. But, as I've said ad nauseum, I'm ready to move on :) It is nice to have such a wondeful send off though. It sure makes me appreciate the time I've spent there and be glad I've been able to be part of such an amazing team for so long.

Daddy Daughter Bonding Time

I have had a random sound in my car for about two months. Something is rolling back and forth when I accelerate or brake. I looked everywhere I could think of but I couldn't locate the sound. I had identified the area it seemed to be in but I couldn't figure out how to stop it. Last night I finally took my dad for a short drive to see if he had any idea. He identified it as being in the same area that I had suspected and then proceeded to take the interior of my car down to nuts and bolts to find it. It was brutal. We had the whole center console removed, which required loosening the glove compartment and the casing around the steering wheel...and we STILL couldn't find the cause!!! We ended up peeling back the carpet, cutting into the airflow tubes with an exacto knife and shoving a long magnet down the tube. After well over an hour of work where major parts of my car were strewn across the driveway, we finally located the culprit. A double A battery had rolled under the drivers seat and entered the air vent. From there it somehow got up into the tube and was rolling back and forth. The picture is what my car looked like just before we started putting it back together.

I was ready to give up about 30 minutes in but Dad is tenacious and it was driving him crazy too. I am SO thankful that we got that cleared up because my car and I will be spending PLENTY of "quality" time together in the next month so I'd perfer not to have it drive me crazy. Of course after we put everything back together we ended up with four extra screws so I may have some rattling I didn't have before. Let's hope not because Dad's not coming with me to fix my car!!!

Happy 29th Birthday to me

So now I am officially the age that everyone seems to want to "hold" at. I'm interested to see if it's an age I'll pine for. On some level I suspect it will be. It's shaping up to be an interesting year. Full of lots of new starts and adventures. I've had a few people ask "what are you doing to celebrate turning 29?" and my response is "leaving the province!!!"

For my actual birthday-day, it was really low key. A quiet Saturday at home just like I wanted. My last in fact. I only have two more Saturday's in BC and they are both chock full of plans.

I did go out for dinner last night with Deb, Sue and Shannon which was wonderful and tomorrow after church a potluck is planned. Monday is shaping up to be a "family day" with my parents, Robert and Aaron.

So that's it. My deep thoughts on turning 29 :P I doesn't really bother me but I'm pretty sure it's because I have so much going on. If I was just slogging on at work with no end in sight, I'd be going crazy. As it is, I'm ready to embrace my new age and the adventures it brings. I'm ready :)