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Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

I may never see Dan again as long as I live. Which is fine, except, I like Dan.

Dan is one of the most annoying co-workers I worked with over the years, or at least so I thought for the first half dozen years I worked with him. Once I worked it all out though, the next 12 years with him were a joy; his absurd complaints, bizarre ideas of how things should be done, and highly emotional reactions to his work environment were like an entertaining unhinged cartoon version of my own. I've written about him plenty here in clerkmanifesto and once made a dramatic comedy film about him as an alcoholic with a dinosaur problem, so we're not going to go into all that again. But I will say that a couple of weeks ago, knowing that I was weeks from retirement, he confided, in the strictest confidence, that he would be taking a couple of months off for... something.

If someone takes you into the strictest confidence, and makes you swear to tell absolutely no one, the least they can do is actually tell you something that would, theoretically, be of interest to anyone, absolutely anyone at all! But no, Dan's confidential information, that he hadn't told anyone yet, was that he was going to be off for unspecified reasons.

"It isn't anything bad." He assured me.

Fascinating.

Every few years Dan has one of these 'absences'. Our general theory is that some kinds of medical procedures are going on. And as his closest work friend he has privately confided in me that... oh, wait, no. He hasn't confided anything to me. Well no, that's not right either. He has taken me into his strictest confidence to tell me...

nothing.

But at least it was only me he told.

I'm honored.

I guess it was a warning that one day he would stop being at the library until well after I was gone. And so... goodbye?

Unless he's at work today.

Time will tell, but it won't say much.