Okay, I'm totally stealing material here. I've copied and pasted a post from my dear friend's blog. Janet is the one who introduced me to blogging! In any case, here is some priceless Chuck stuff that few of you may know:

Sunday, August 26, 2007
I always thought that I’d see you again*

My friend Jan married a guy named Chuck about 13 years ago, right after we graduated from college. I didn’t know him; he didn’t go to school with us. We didn’t take to each other right off, not that we were at odds, we just didn’t quite click. He wasn’t like other friends-in-law in that he never tried to win me over or make nice. Instead, when I would call Jan and he’d answer he’d ask me a question about myself, and then he’d drop the phone and walk away. I would be answering his question until I’d hear Jan laughing on the other end of the phone. This happened SEVERAL times. Finally, I wised up some and wouldn’t take his bait. His bait became more sophisticated and he’d ask a few questions and listen to the response and THEN drop the phone to walk away.

But despite that, or more likely because of that, we became friends. He was a hilarious person. When we’d get together Jan would sometimes yell at us to slow down because she couldn’t get a word in amongst our rapid fire banter. We were always competing to see who could make Jan laugh more. He would always win. We even had a joke about how Chuck and I didn’t like to be left alone together because we refused to laugh at each other; we had to have an audience.

In 2001, we both found ourselves unemployed. I was living in Denver when I lost my job, and I went into a bit of a shock. I needed to get out of Denver and think about what to do next. So I drove down to San Antonio to see Jan. During that time is when their home became a sanctuary for me. Chuck and I spent a lot of time together that week staying up late (Jan is not a night owl and besides, I think she had to keep going to work) watching movies and commiserating on our unemployment, which Chuck had quickly coined as “retirement.” He had some big defense built around the career of Michael Jordan, comparing ourselves to how he had retired, but then came out of retirement to play again. Our line was that we might come back out of retirement, as Jordan did, if the job seemed good enough and our fans demanded it.

So those are some of my Chuck stories and my Chuck stories aren’t even very good. He was like none other. I miss him already.

More about Chuck on Jan’s blog and better Chuck stories are at Fix up Chuck.

*From “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor