Friends@work..... It has been quite a week for visiting old work friends, and celebrating a birthday of a 'new' work friend.

First of all, I meet up with the folks I used to work with at CIBC. We were a very small section called bank@work and was a program for selected company's employees. We were a bit of a motley crew, had the threat of the department being dissolved at a moments notice for over a year, and I hadn't seen any of them since I left 2 1/2 years ago.

Here is Brenda and Angie. Brenda was very impressed to hear that I am knitting, Angie asked me if I was pregnant (this is how rumours get started). Brenda did take an early retirement package with CIBC before I left, but has gone back since then on contract as they seem to want pay her an outrageous amount of money to do so (soak them for all they are worth Brenda!). Angie is still working for CIBC, and is great to get all the scoops about what is going on from (although she is way off on the knitting/pregnant thing).

This is Uziel and his lovely wife Gabby. Uziel left CIBC shortly after I did and went for greener pastures at Scotiabank. I was taking a walk (aka window shopping) in the concourse downtown the last month and bumped into him. It was good to hear that he married the woman he met in Toronto, who is also from Mexico City (life is strange, huh?).



Finally, here again is Uziel (who is clearly not camera shy) Anees and Wendy. Anees was the last boss I had at CIBC, and one of the best (I can say that now without it sounding like I am sucking it up for a good report). I had many words of wisdom from Anees (like your customer is everything) and she was always great at drawing on her staff's (including my own) best skills. I should also mention that she has been CIBC for probably around 35 years or more (she should get a medal for that alone).

Wendy is also still working with CIBC, she figures she will be with bank@work until they finish the program in 2007. She used to live not too far from where I am in west Toronto, but she has recently bought a home in Whitby (it sounds like a long haul, but I am sure it is worth it).

Today, is the 30th birthday of my friend Fabio at my present employer, McLean Budden. I love to knit presents for my friends, and Fabio had told me sometime ago that he hadn't picked up a scarf since moving to Canada 3 years ago. I had been knitting with Alpaca for sometime, love the texture, softness and warmth of it's yarn, and wanted to find some for this project. Going on eBay, I found 10 balls for $45 USD (or something like to that affect) that with shipping, exchange and duty worked out to be something like $6 a ball! I set to work at it last April, and was probably finished in May, but it hardly seemed like an appropriate time to give it to him.
I waited for his birthday (thinking it was an opportune time as winter is coming), and he was very pleased with the end results. Fabio told me that no one had made him something like this since he was a child, and I was glad I could make by hand such an appreciated gift.

Just before his birthday, he also told me that he didn't want anything 'special' done for to mark this milestone. That sounded more to me like a challenge than a request, and I decided that some 'decoration' should be done for his office. Last Friday, he left early for the day sick (thank you again, that was much appreciated) which gave me and my friend Shauna a chance to go to town.....This was the result. Fortunately, Fabio does have a great sense of humour and is still talking to me.