On Sunday, we took our son to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, the oldest and one of the largest--if not the largest--establishment of its kind. I didn't really know what to expect, so I picked up a brochure and had a look.

The brochure recommended either starting or ending the day on the 4th floor, with a carousel ride.

On Saturday night we stopped at Wendy's for dinner. It wasn't an intentional choice--we would have preferred something more distinctly Indianapolis, but the St. Louis area Wendy's franchisee went bankrupt, so there are only a couple of Wendy's left in St. Louis, none anywhere near our house.

OK, so I didn't work for Initech. I couldn't resist the Office Space reference. But as of 4:08PM CST yesterday, I am unemployed. Fortunately this time it's only until 8:00AM CST on Monday.

I pretty much intended to just go in, clean out my desk, work as much as possible like I would any other day, and stay until someone came and told me it was time to leave.

But of course it wasn't quite that simple.

I started my professional career doing network administration at the University of Missouri. (I generally don't count my stint selling low-quality PCs at the last surviving national consumer electronics chain towards my professional experience anymore.)

The University had its own IT department, but some of the larger departments, particularly Journalism, had their own IT departments as well. I worked for the School of Journalism.

Today, some 10 years and 11 months since the last time I did it, I left a job on my own terms. I called my boss, asked to see him, and walked to his office with a single-page letter in hand.

It's not something I'm especially good at, and, being a fixer by nature, it's not something I'm usually inclined to do. And while there are several things about this job that I won't miss at all, my main reason for leaving is health care.

So an ex-girlfriend finds you on Facebook and contacts you out of the blue 12 years after the fact. What do you do?

1. Jump up and down like a giddy schoolgirl because someone's interested enough to find you after all that time?

2. Passive-aggressively sit on the message?

3. Tell her exactly what you never had the chance to tell her?

Although option 2 crossed my mind, I thought it best to handle it a little bit differently.

My wife and I watched Marley and Me tonight. Good movie. Not as good as the book, of course. But I think they did a good job of adapting it to the screen.

I guess the book and movie hit me on three levels, rather than just two. I'm a parent, I have a Labrador Retriever, and I went to school to try to be John Grogan. That last part didn't quite work out, but that world just doesn't seem to exist anymore, not with a major newspaper closing its doors pretty much every week now.

I awoke this morning at my usual time. It was Saturday. I really just wanted to roll back over, pull the covers over me, and sleep another 30 minutes, but it was Saturday. And that's not what I do on Saturdays. It didn't matter that I was tired, and it didn't matter that it was 10 degrees out. Staying out of the cold isn't what I do on Saturdays.

I took a phone call tonight from my old college fraternity. I've been trying to be nicer when they call asking for money. The organization and I see eye-to-eye on virtually nothing, but the poor pledges who have to make these phone calls every year have no control over any of that.

We actually ended up having a nice conversation about the transition from college to high school.

I got a few letters behind my name this afternoon. I passed the CompTIA Security+ exam with flying colors. And that means two things: I get to keep my job, and I was qualified to have the job in the first place, but now I have a certificate that says a third party agrees.