was the Office Christmas Party, whuch thye commonly have as a lunch cruise aboard the Oddysey, or Spirit of Chicago. It’s a nice opportunity to get together, and while sometimes it’s choppy at this time of the year, yesterday the lake was glass smooth, and the ride lovely. The food was also just as nice, as it always was.

The best part of the trip is getting to know people outside of work. I interact with these folks all day, every day, but it’s nice to get to know people outside of work too. One of my co-workers, who is semi-retired sat across from me, and we had a long conversation about his history; he’s originally of French extraction, French is his first language and though he speaks english fluently he still thinks in french, right up into his 60’s.

He is quite the linguist, and began by becoming a professor of languages (french, latin, italian) and then came to machine repair sort of through the backdoor. He learned machine repair in a time when it still involved such esoteric practices as scraping machine ways as a matter of course. These days so few people have those esoteric skills that he has become a resource to be treasured, and when he made noises about his flagging memory and energy levels, the company made it very clear they’d still rather have him on a part time basis than not at all. So he still puts in three days a week, and tries to pass on the information he has accumulated to the next generation.

Meanwhile, i learn that while he was an excellent linquist language always came hard to him as it does me; his love and inclination was machinery, and still is. And he works hard to stay as active as he can both physicall and mentally, though he can feel the knowledge slipping away, at times.

Instead of work, we spoke about the strangeness of the romance languages and how they work, and the pieces of them that have carried into English. How English has been changed by slang, and what slang has made some sense, and what is crap.

I always sit with this specific gentleman, just for the things I learn from him. As I age I am more and more aware of the passing of skills into the past, and the irretrievability of them. I wonder if anyone will bother learning the skills I have accumulated, before I die and they are lost forever.