30 And Counting

That would not be me.......
That would not be my marriage.........
It would be how long I have worked at Boeing. Although my actual Anniversary is tomorrow, the Company took me to lunch yesterday. I generally could care less about this sort of thing usually, but the prize in the puddin' was that I got to take the rest of the day off after lunch. Not to mention that the two choices for lunch were steak and salmon. Our cafeteria at work is pretty bad. Admittedly better than the School Cafeteria or the soup kitchen, but definitely south of fast food. I think of it as fuel as opposed to food.
The luncheon was at the Bellevue Club, a hoity-toity members-only kinda place. Everything was very nice and the food was excellent. Shake and pictures with the BIG BOSS. The head of Engineering for BCAG and VP of BCAG, Mike Denton is a nice guy. There were about 20 of us celebrating our 30th, one her 35th. Each one had to get up and say howdie and give a short autobiography.
"I stood on the tarmac of Boeing Field in Seattle on December 28th 1967 and watched the very first 737 take off on it's delivery to Lufthansa airlines". Some of you with rudimentary math skills might catch the fact that 1967 from 2010 does not equal 30. I had a couple of breaks in service. The first was because Uncle Sam decided he needed me. Very much against my will I was dragged, kicking and screaming into the Army, where I ended up as the Liaison Officer for the locked Psychiatric facility on Okinawa. As I explained, it was excellent training for my career at Boeing.
The second came when we lost funding for a top secret research and development project I was working on. The laid me off two weeks before Christmas, with no warning and no notice. I swore I would never go back. But of course I did, and I really don't regret it. It has been fun and a challenge.
I guess I'll stick around for a few more years.