Friends

My college room mate, Maureen, was down from Seattle this week, visiting her sister. We've known each other for so long and it is always years between visits. I've always thought that we just leave off where we were before and it's like we've never been apart. But that isn't true. So many things have gone on in our separate lives that is silly to think that. Maureen's husband, Jim, died a few years ago. Since then she has had to sell their business, their old house and move to a new home.

She has gone through a lot of changes on the surface of her life, but I did find that she is just the same person. So, I guess it's like we've never been apart. Which is a good thing, because I will be visiting with her for a many days in June. She is at the fulcrum of my move East. Eric and I will be traveling north to Vancouver and then Karen and I will be traveling east from Seattle. Maureen and I will either get to recount all that has happened in the past few years, or enjoy each other's company now. I bet it will be the latter.

Clif and I went to visit our stock broker on Friday. You won't believe all the stuff that will happen in December when I finally cut all ties to The Times. Forms to fill out, checks flying through the mail. Winnie has helped many former Times employees through this transition. I keep doing stupid things with my money, but she keeps this ship upright. She even knew about a bit of money that I would be getting that I'd completely forgotten about. So there is The Times' pension, which she will never see because it is an annuity. Then we had an ESOP at one point. She'll get that to invest. Once upon a time, I think before 401K's, we had PSI, Past Service Insentive. Who knew? Who remembers this stuff? That money will go to Winnie. And finally is our new Zellishous Cash Balance plan. I can't believe I have money in that.

His folks decided that they would no longer put anything into our 401K's, no matching at all. Instead, they would put money into the Cash Balance Plan. This is all on paper stuff, I'm sure. No real money leaves their pockets. I guess I got some last year as I was leaving. Zell bought the tribune company the day I left. Pretty coincidental, if you ask me. I don't think I could stand all their shinannagans.

I wonder what my old pal, H.L. Mencken, would say about all that. He was a pretty pro-business guy. Not much for the common man. I'd enjoyed the other Mencken book, so I decided to learn more by reading Disturber of the Peace by William Manchester. That was pretty dumb. The woman who wrote the other book used this book as a reference. And I do mean used. I knew all the stories. Nothing new was revealed. Boy, that was really stupid. What I should have read was something that Mencken wrote. He did a 3 part autobiography, but I bet she used those as references, too. Manchester probably did as well. I guess my Mencken days are over. One interesting note is that The Baltimore Sun still uses a type face called Mencken. Per told me that. Our friend, Manny, has to recreate the typeface so it can be put into the consolidated news editing system. Cool.