You'd almost think I was social

Yesterday day was a huge social day for me. Normally I'm a bit of a recluse. Shy, retiring, not much for chat. Hardly ever stir out of my lair other than to go to work.

Work was social. My office roomie and I were both in a chatty mood. Normally we are head down buried in queries and spreadsheets. Our big tasks for the week were accomplished. We still made progress on things, but there was a bit of chat. For two such as us, some of the conversation might surprise you.

Then home to get Linda and attend Mike Hallihan's funeral. I really enjoyed working at Skystone, and Mike was one of the founders of the company. One of his core beliefs was that it was important to take care of the people. While I was there that was one of the core belief's of Skystone, and it was a pretty special place to work. In many ways his wife Terry was the heart of the people part of the organization. She was the main person organizing many of the occasions that made us more than a group of co-workers. I'm pretty sure her mission in life was to fatten us up to sell us by the pound, because she was all about making sure there was enough to eat. Attending one of the company "picnics" at their cottage on Lake Newall was an exercise in restraint. The food kept coming and it was all good. Mike had a great hand on a BBQ.

I'm still in regular contact with several of the people there, and in more periodic catchups. There was lots of that today, since I haven't seen some of those people for nearly a decade. I've got a few tentative dates for coffee. Some have aged very well, some less so I'm afraid. I guess you could say Mike was in that category, to everyone's sorrow. He was not yet 61. Think about that. I wasn't really close to Mike, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any regrets about things not done in the time he had. He had an active and full life, both family and professionally. How about you?

As a bit of side commentary, I hadn't realized he was Catholic. It shouldn't matter, really. So it was a very Catholic service, which is a bit odd if you're not used to it. Then I remembered what Linda's dad's service was like, and relaxed to enjoy the show. (I'm not religious in a church way, so I essentially consider all church services as a form of theatre, with certain conventions to be observed.) I have to say though, that particular church is going to be in trouble soon, if the people I saw were representative. The priest, his helpers (I don't know the correct word for them) the choir were all elderly. There needs to be some renewal there, or there's going to be an empty building.

Since I started up working on my novel again, and since at one point the remains of a body show up, My buddy Jayne added me to a Crime Writer's page on Facebook, and invited me over for a social and meet some of the others. I knew her and Kevin a long time ago. Kevin was one of the first people I met when I moved to Calgary. Then we were off in different worlds, and connected up a while ago. There are a couple other people in the group that I know as well, but they weren't there last night.

We had a perfectly nice evening chatting about all sorts of stuff. Jayne has been short listed for an award, which has made her week. All in all it's got me thinking more about my novel, and wanting to really get moving on it. In that vein, I accidentally stumbled across some writing software called Scrivener. I read about it, watched an intro video, and it looks right up my alley.

Anyone use it?

One of the consequences of being social is this:

I really don't want to change my plan, so for the last couple days I've hardly looked at my phone. There's a bit of an itch there. I've come to like Twitter, but I guess it eats bandwidth, or rather, following the links does.

Today I'm sipping a coffee and we'll be heading out for breakfast soon. Another buddy flying through town on a work mission, but there is time to catch up. Now that I'm done this I'm going to head downstairs for a quick bit of core, since there wasn't time yesterday. Plus more. Zoom!