And Yes, It's Official

Yesterday was my absolutely last day at my job, so I am now officially out of the workforce.

We had a big going away party in the afternoon that resulted in me bringing home a huge amount of Italian cream cake (from Whole Foods) and a more modest, but generous quantity of a fantastic chocolate dump cake a co-worker made, that she tricked me into taking by saying, "Wouldn't Robert like a piece of this cake?" I did not know that "a piece" was going to equal "the rest of." Robert and I both had cake for dinner last night, we each saved a piece for dessert today, and I sent the rest with him to work, where if he leaves it in the break room, it is guaranteed to disappear. I had briefly thought I might have to knock on doors around the apartment complex looking for takers and was glad when I came up with this obvious solution to the extra cake problem. I am sorry that I could not find a way to share this cake with you all.

It was interesting to realize that now that I won't be seeing these people at work every day, or every week in some cases, for years that many of them really do have the potential to become friends, and when people mentioned that they were going to miss me on some personal basis (as opposed to those with whom I have had Mutual Appreciation of Professionalism and Competence Societies and who are primarily agonizing over having to deal with some other less capable and satisfying co-worker in my absence), I went on record as saying I am going to be in Austin for a while and since I have Fridays off from school (woot! 3 day weekends every week!), it will be easy for me to come up to the office and meet for lunch or something. This is kind of a big deal for me, because I tend to let relationships fall apart as I get distracted by other things, get lazy and don't tend to them, and just generally fall into asocial habits, but it's something I should do (because social networks are important and useful) and something I want to do. And posting this here is another way for me to commit to doing a better job of keeping in touch this time. Of course, since they are all still at the same place, unlike my last job where we all got riffed and scattered to the winds, it should be easier to manage since I have everyone's work phone numbers and emails and can arrange to see several people at one time. They asked for my email address too, which I am going to send out to everyone (my second-tier email anyway).

So today I get to celebrate my newfound freedom by... studying for my calculus final. Groan. At least I have one more piece of cake to get me through the day.