I need an emergency skein of yarn!

Mike the Gossip King is retiring and this is the last night I will work with him. I'm pretty sad about that, since he is the best source for finding out what is happening in the hospital, and he's also just a really funny guy. He is the same age as RA, which is a little early for retirement, but he is tired of working for his current boss (everyone hates that guy), so he's retiring.

A couple of years ago, when I was just getting to know him, he came into my office one night all excited because he had been in the office of the CEO, changing the time on his wall clock to Daylight Savings Time, and the clock slipped out of his hands and fell onto the top of a cabinet, breaking a ceramic cow and also the glass in the clock's face.

He said he had hung the clock back up, and the missing glass wasn't really obvious, but the cow was too broken to just prop it back up, and he wasn't sure if he should write the CEO a letter of apology, or if he should just say nothing about it. He thought the cow might be something of sentimental value, and when he described it to me, it sounded like a collectible. Mike said there was a tag on it, and he went to the office and brought the tag back, because there was a name on it.

It turned out to be part of a line of collectible cows called Cow Parade, and we found one like it on eBay, so Mike wrote the CEO a letter, explaining that it had been an accident and offering to replace the cow. Of course the version of the letter he was writing in his head that he told to me was so funny that I was laughing myself into an asthma attack! It all ended well, when Mike got a note back from the CEO the next day, thanking Mike for caring, but assuring him that the cow was not an important artifact.



So in honor of Mike's retirement, I found another cow on eBay - only now that damn cow is discontinued, so it cost more - and I gave it to him tonight. He thought it was pretty funny! I'm really going to miss him!

In other news, Rachel and I took the two-mile walk tonight with Rondee and we saw an old dear out walking a dog that Kim and I had met a few days ago when we were walking on that street. The dog is very beautiful and very friendly, and when we first met him, I was talking to the old dear, who explained that it is her son's dog, and she takes care of him while her son is at work (doggy day care!). While I was talking to her that night, the dog stole the water bottle out of my hand and started chewing it! I took it back and told the dog I needed it, but it was pretty funny how quickly the dog had snatched it, just like a ninja! Apparently he chews emptly plastic bottles at home because he likes the crunchy sound - when Buffy was a puppy, she did the same thing!

So that was the highlight of the walk, because we were on the hilly uphill route back to my house, and I was huffing and puffing and sweating, and just generally unhappy to be there. Rachel and Rondee were tired afterward, too, so I drove them back down to Rondee's, where Ash was visiting Joe, so Rachel could get a ride home with him.

When I got home, I dragged my tired legs upstairs to get a shower - I was already starting to stiffen up, I'm such an old lady! - and then I got into bed to take a nap before work.

I'm at work tonight without enough knitting, so I might have to rip back a few inches of this sock so I'll have something to work on. As I was falling asleep earlier, I thought to myself that I needed to grab some yarn to bring with me, but when I woke up, I had forgotten. Darn. I'll have to bring in an extra skein of sock yarn to keep in the drawer for emergency knitting.