Retirement Party

Well, Carl's retirement date is coming really soon!
He recently went on an IBM business trip to visit a software company IBM just acquired and several neat things happened:
1. The manager from the newly-acquired company presented Carl with a very nice bottle of champagne, along with their congratulations.
2. He met, for the first time, several people he has worked with for a long time, including his manager Robin Edstrom. (The wonders of the modern business construct of remote workers.)
3. His manager and her manager, Michelle Ginther, held a dinner in his honor for retirement. It was pretty special. He was presented a bound album of letters from IBM teammates, past and present. Included was a page of Carl's epigrams that he has at the bottom of his emails, collected over time. Example: "What's another word for thesaurus?" Last but not least, there were bowls of personalized M&Ms on the table in blue and white. They were labeled "Retiring.. Not!" and "Congrats Carl."


And it goes on and on. Carl's going to stretch this retirement for all it's worth. Although June 30th is his retirement date, he figures he can get at least another couple of months out of it.
Last night's party was just between Carl and Linda. Since he is retiring from "Big Blue" his present from Linda was wrapped just right.


An iPod Touch! How cool!