Good times

We're off to a good beginning this morning. A cup of tea is close at hand and Boo the Cat is asleep on her shelf nearby. The furnace is taking the chill off and my mind is wandering; a good thing, as it proves that I still have one… a mind.

Earlier, I was writing on a different subject and I suddenly remembered my life as an instructor and 'idea guy'. I worked for the Strategic Development Department of the company I retired from and we used to attend quarterly meetings at the department headquarters in Bonner Springs, KS. First; I loved the name, Strategic Development! What great name…made you feel really important even though it was only a department with 8 people in it.

Ordinarily I avoid meetings whenever possible, but these meetings were great and I loved going to them. Since we only saw each other four times a year, our department head insisted that we each spend a few minutes relating to the group all of the news about our families and life on the road. Really, the same stuff we would have talked about if we had had a normal office life and could have chatted around the proverbial water cooler.

We met in a small conference room and I would usually arrive first and set up a network hub and some power strips under the table. 8 of us would soon be sitting at that table with our laptops open and on. And once the family news portion of the meeting was over, most of us were multi-tasking. We would be taking care of problems in distant offices and surfing the web for jokes to share. Even instant messaging between our fellow attendees. Once in awhile we would look up and contribute something to the topic at hand. Our department head? He usually had to be reminded that we were still having a meeting as he became engrossed in whatever he was reading on his laptop. Usually it was stuff we had just sent to him.

And like most meetings, the real business was discussed later, at dinner…