I was born \u25a0\u25a0\/\u25a0\u25a0\/19\u25a0\u25a0.\u00a0 Highland Park Hospital.\u00a0 Illinois. Top notch facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a long and non-distinguished academic career, my first real job after college was at Kemper Insurance. Their corporate headquarters was near Lake Zurich, IL, about 10 miles east of Highland Park. I was hired into their Data Processing Department, what we now call Information Technology. I worked my way up the corporate ladder, from Trainee, to Programmer, to Programmer\/Analyst, to Senior Analyst to Project Manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was on the Claims Team. We had a bunch of crazy things happen, much like the Farmers Insurance guy in the ads today (“We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.”) I used to read the claim descriptions. A riot! The things people tried to get away with. And, the silly rules (“From a claims perspective, a bird is not an animal.”) One claimant that I particularly remember is a woman named Tusanelda Noosepickle. I kid you not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kemper sponsored a blood drive while I was working there. People that were interested had to fill out an application card (like they were giving us<\/em> something?) The guy in our department who collected the cards noticed that I had the same birthday as another person on staff. In fact, she was a fellow teammate on the Claims System. Her name was\/is Shari. Not only did she have the same birthday, but she was born in the same year. Crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And get this: she was born in (drum roll, please) Highland Park Hospital. And our mothers were roommates (we checked with them at the time…they remembered each other!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So 25 years after my roomie and I split up and went our various ways, we ended up on the same team in the same company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I moved to California and Shari stayed in the Midwest, living in Wisconsin. We lost touch. Big time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On our 50th birthday, Shari tracked me down and called me from Wisconsin. On our 60th, I called her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coincidences are cool!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was born \u25a0\u25a0\/\u25a0\u25a0\/19\u25a0\u25a0.\u00a0 Highland Park Hospital.\u00a0 Illinois. Top notch facility. After a long and non-distinguished academic career, my first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allposts","category-crazy","category-family","category-neighbors"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartreis.com\/123repete3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}