Death of a Retiree

The other morning my office received some very bad news. One of the folks who retired from my office a few years ago passed away. We still don't know how, but he had multiple health problems and any one could have been the culprit.

The truly sad part was how we had heard about it. Apparently, he had died alone and was found by people sometime later. The authorities had no way of contacting his next of kin or anything. They had found a business card in his wallet of a person he had dealt with in US Customs. This person recommended him to our main office in DC, who then referred him to his supervisor in our Columbus office. The supervisor then had to contact the administrative officer to look in his file to see who he had listed as next of kin. This took more than a couple of days.

While I didn't know him very well, this coworker had always been very helpful and friendly and it surprised me that his friends and family weren't closer, but not all of us are close to family, I suppose. Still, it's a lonely way to pass on and I feel very bad for him and his family. bearpaco had posted on his journal the other day about how people should leave information with friends about contact information for family members. Suddenly, the importance hits home.

Um... it's for a friend...

Okay, now that I've brought down the house with sadness, let me see if I can't bring it back up a bit.

I'm in my hometown for the weekend. I stopped on the way to my mom's to have lunch with my sister, who wanted to go to Wal... er, that place with the greeters to get my nephew a birthday present. So after fighting the local idiots for parking and seeing some of the most awful eye pollution trolling in stretch pants, I found myself walking through the aisles of the womens wear with my sister. We together noticed these ENORMOUS brassieres (we're talking 40 DD or more).

"Are those padded???" I asked, thinking why would a woman that large need padding and reached out and pulled one off the hook.

I turned to find my sister gone and a sales lady looking directly at me. My sister had stepped back and was hiding behind one of those security posts laughing her ass off.

"Um... it's for a friend," I said to the sales lady, carefully putting the bra back and walking down the aisle.

After we got a row or two away, we both were laughing like crazy. I'd forgotten how much fun hanging with Rhonda can be.