What's After Work?

For a year and a day I have been waiting and on March 16th 2021 I received the second of the required vaccines needed to prevent covid 19. It has been a long strange journey to get here. During this time I have learned about myself and others.  Last January Jan and I took a big trip to Hawaii. It was great we flew from Tampa to Hawaii in a big plane packed in with a bunch of people we did not know. No masks or excessive hand washing. I'm not even sure we carried any hand sanitizer. While there we ate out at  restaurants and visited sights with lots of people.  I also just started my retirement in January and had planned to do lots of fun things. I was going to get involved with volunteering in my community. Jan and I were going to travel and see things. Then before I could even get started on March 15, 2020 everything came to a screeching halt.  Next thing I know we are sitting at home watching Netflix and figuring how to order groceries online. I broke out the sewin...

January 6, 2020 was my last day of work. I remember that it was rather anticlimactic. It was the day after Winter Break and a teacher work day. Everyone at work had just come back and it was a non-student day. I was there because if you work one day in a month our health insurance covers you for that month, If you have ever priced insurance a month is worth working a day. So after a number of very nice parties celebrating my retirement. (I know that is a strange concept now, getting together in large groups for any reason. ) I had a few weeks to just relax, sit back and contemplate my future. Ummm what should I do? I thought it would be sleep late and watch late night TV. No! My body had other plans . Even without the need to get up and go to work I was still waking up early and getting sleepy around 10 pm. I guess my body was having a hard time adjusting to this new life style. The nearly 40 years of work had taken it's toll. I realized I would  never be able to go back to my 20...

Monday morning Jan and I walked over the the Isles Cafe for breakfast. We sat out by the water at a picnic table and enjoyed the view of Mauna Kea. Most mornings clouds covered the mountain but today it was clear. Nice view for breakfast. After breakfast we stro lled over to the  Liliʻuokalani Park and Garden s.   This is a very nice park with great views and a nice place for a stroll. After breakfast we drove over to Sharks Farm . There they grew coffee, cacao and vanilla. There we met Tom Shark, entrepreneur. This was an interesting tour covering the growth of cacao, vanilla, coffee and other native and non-native plants. We also learned about how cacao, vanilla and coffee are processed. We even got to taste some chocolate that had just been made from the cacao beans grown at the farm. Nothing better than farm fresh chocolate! Jan even got to help make her own batch of chocolate covered macadamia nuts. I even got to taste ONE of these Hawaiian deli...

.  Sunday was a great day of tasty treats from Hawaii. After waking up at a reasonable time. About 7:30AM, you see it takes a while to get use to the 5 hour time difference . Wednesday I woke up at about 3:00am in the morning. That would be 8:00am Florida time. That gave me a lot of free time till any coffee shops opened. So being able to sleep in till 7:30 was great. Now earlier in the week we had stopped by a little donut shop called "The Royal Hawaiian Cafe and Lounge". Well we were back for our custom made malasadas. A dozen or more were waiting for us when we got there Sunday morning. The malasadas were very tasty. We did take a few for later. After breakfast we hung out by the pool to save our en ergy because this evening we were attending a Hawaiian Luau.  Once again we would be traveling across the island. After a scenic drive we arrived at the  Courtyard Marriott King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel.   There was where we would be attending the " Isl...