one more skyway lunch

 there was a lunch in the skyway for the department to celebrate a birthday, and it also served as the final one before some of my colleagues are officially laid off. one of them is vacation replacement. the other two i don't know quite as well. this was a place we had eaten at before, but not too often. then some of these colleagues were in the shop near the end of the day and said 'bye' to me while i was wanting to stay ahead in my work. there is that question if the world will end with a bang or with a whimper. in this case, both seemed to apply, as it didn't occur to me how it might be the last day when some do work from home on Fridays. a contact from the Fargo file asked for a tracking number, because there was no email asking for it before i created it. for whatever reason, my instant messaging was turned off for a while. there was an inquiry from the Marshall office about their overnights as to if backup forms were included in the envelopes. i said i didn't know as i trusted vacation replacement to handle the overnights for that file. i saw this question after getting back from the lunch as an email said it was there. usually, this kind of notification arrives only when the message is sent after i have left for the day.