Well Boys and Girls, it’s been awhile since I announced My Retirement Countdown In Superfluous Capital Letters and Expensive, Imported Clarified Butter Catapults that not Only Fling Large Amounts Of Butter in ALL directions, but also find New Meaning in Donated Capillary Floss Finding Missions which of course have never been discovered yet so please let’s not talk about those.

Thank You.

Yes, it’s that time again which happens pretty much every day I’m at work: I reflect upon the number of years, months and days I shall have to wait before the Great Retirement Lever is pulled with glee, sending balloons filled with sand over the rails of highway bridges that traverse the El Flampo River in the southeastern corners of Northern New Mashpottle.

In fact, today at the movies we saw the preview for a flick that will be released on March 2; the day after my belly button was built. As the release date was announced, I leaned toward my Beautiful Girlfriend’s Beautiful Ear and whispered unto her, “when that movie comes out I’ll have 1 year, 11 months, and 29 days till I retire!!” She nodded about 723 times in the course of twelve seconds, which caused her cranium to fly about with great speed and camouflage. In other words, she kinda grunted as if to say, “ya, OK… awright awreddy!!”

She may have heard the countdown a few thousand times.

It’s getting closer… and the more I announce the years, months, and days, the more the years, months, and days are announced by me. This is the way of my talking face parts. At work, I’ve found myself saying things like, “yes, these computers are leased, and everything needs to be returned when the lease expires. The lease is for 4 years. However, in 2 years, 5 months, and 1 day, I will not care about such things. But hey, who’s counting??” “Sounds like maybe YOU are…” my friends say with a smirk. Then they show their happiness for me by throwing expired pudding on my shoes and writing funny sayings on top of my eyebrows with markers.

Feels like it did when I was halfway through my tour in the Air Force. I am a “Vietnam Era Veteran,” which means I received much of the benefits of having served during that time; such as the GI Bill which paid for my college. Also got a VA loan that enabled us to buy our home. I served stateside for my entire tour, so the sacrifices I made for our country were minimal indeed compared to many who lost life and / or limb. But when in the Air Force, your life belongs to your Uncle (Sam), and most of us knew our “getting out” countdown by heart.

These days, I cheat because I have an app that plops the countdown on the screen of my work computer when it boots up every morning. Sometimes it gives me hope, other times it makes me want to smear jellyfish on my sandwich at 2:37 AM just to relieve the stress of working all the time; and I work on computers and all the people in our department who know what they’re doing are either leaving the company for another job or retiring; and that leaves the rest of us holding the bag full of slimy technological marshmallow residue that will break at a moment’s notice and then people like me have to figure out who’s still here and can fix this crap and HOLY COW everybody is freaking out because they can’t print their reports and their screens are oozing melted cheese while internally there is purple smoke and Oh Jeez this is no fun anymore.

HOWEVER… in 2 years, 5 months, and 1 day, I won’t care AT ALL about slimy marshmallow residual technology.

I’m really glad it’s Friday.

How’s this for a diversion?