What's After Work?

  I have been retired for 833 days and I still feel like I'm adjusting to not working. Today Jan and I had a few errands to do and decided to have a nice late lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.  Miguel's Mexican on Kennedy Blvd in Tampa.   It was great we left the house about 10:30 did a few things and then went to have lunch out on a Monday. After lunch and then drove home to have a nap. On a Monday.  Retirement, I highly recommend it!

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...

Now that I am retired I have time to notice the small things. One thing I have noticed lately is a small Spineybacked Orbweaver spider . I have been watching it weave its web for about two months now.  It is really quite interesting how it remakes it's web over night. In the morning is when its web looks its best. By the afternoon it looks quite tattered. This morning it looked like she had completely redone her web because all of the attachments to the wall and plants had been moved slightly and I was able to get behind the web to take this picture and catch the sun through the web.  I'm not sure how long the spider will stay here but I'll keep watching.

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...

 Here is something I've never done till today. Ridden in an Airboat.  For my retirement my kids got me a gift certificate to an adventure ride on an airboat. Today Jan and I along with Kent and Leslie cashed in that gift.  We made an afternoon by meeting the Voges for lunch at Backwater Fins . A quaint little fishing restaurant and bar fight up the road from the marina. Leslie likes the place because the inside reminds her of caban she use to go to as a girl. We sat out on the deck looking over the water. I had a BLT and it was very good. Jan watching Captain Billy docking our airboat. After lunch we headed over to the Ozella Boats and Airboat Tours. A rustic working small boat yard on Ripple Path in Ozella.  There we met our Captain and boarded our airboat.  Then it was off into the wilds of the St. Martins Marsh Aquatic Preserve . We saw a lot of salt marsh grass and the paths cut through to connect the small lakes so the small fish can get into the lakes to h...

 It is October and I'm done with the Great Cycle Challenge. Jan and I spent the first part of last week RVing it. We rented an RV to travel north to visit Austin and Morgan in Raleigh. This was our first visit with Austin after he proposed to Morgan. We are very excited about the coming nuptials. Morgan is a nice girl and we are happy to have her become part of our family.  We rented an RV from a company called RVshare . It is kinda like Airbnb on wheels.   We chose for this trip a 24 foot class "B" RV. The family we rented from were quite nice and explained about traveling in an RV quite well. My favourite part of traveling in an RV is that packing you just carry clothes from your closet to the closet in the RV. My least favorite part was empting the "holding" tanks.  Click to see the inside of our RV This trip also gave us a chance to meet Austin's new dog Roo. Roo is an Australian Blue Heeler and is very active.  She likes to play and go on long walks, f...

  For the past 5 years I have ridden in June to raise money to  support of research to develop better treatments and find a cure for childhood cancer. This year because of Covid 19 it was moved to September. I began the month with the challenge of raising $500 and riding 250 miles. I'm still trying to ride 250 miles but because of my having very generous family and friends I have raised more than $1500. That is just  amazing. One of the other challenges I gave myself is to document each ride and share that with my friends, family and other Great Cycle Challenge riders. What follows is each of those posts that I placed on the GCC site. I started posting before September, kind of a prequel to the ride.

I knew going into retirement things would be different. Not just sleeping in and going places but also trying new things.  As you all have read in an earlier post Jan and I did go to Hawaii soon after my retirement and that was fun. But at about the same time I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. That was not one of the "new things" I wanted to try but at least I now have the time to deal with it. And 9 weeks is the time it will take. I started radiation therapy on June 3, 2020 and will continue for nine weeks 5 days a week. No missing treatments! The doctors office is not far from my house so travel time is not bad and once I get into the groove of things I think each visit will only be about 20 minuets.  I've had 3 treatments so far and the radiation technologists, nurses and staff at  West Florida Radiation Therapy  are all very nice and caring. They have quite an efficient system there for treating a bunch of old guys with prostate cancer.  Dr. Mic...

I've been noticing that a lot of people I know are retiring. I guess it is that time of my life. People my age are retiring. When I was a kid birthdays were the big party event. In elementary school I remember going to many of my friends birthdays. W, e would spend an inordinate amount of time discussing, planning and attending birthday parties. Having the best birthday party ever was always the plan. It never lived up to that ideal. I could never talk my parents into building a go-cart track in the back yard for the party. Sigh! Later in Junior High we were more interested in boy & girl parties. There me and my buddies saw a darkened living room with "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" or even "American Pie" playing and hoping not to hear " Gilbert O'Sullavan "Alone Again (Naturally). Then the big party was prom in High School. Oh we had plans....but as in most of life the expectations never live up to the reality. We did have part...

Woke up this morning at about 7:30. I think it was Jan leaving to go to an appointment. I rolled over for a little longer. 7:40 I heard my phone message alert going off and thought it might be Jan so I got up and looked. It was not Jan but from Mary E. Bryant where only a day before I worked, now I do not. It was sending a video of the lights flashing in the school, some kind of glitch in the system. If that is still going on when the kids get there our principal should just forget about any rigorous education going on today. Don't miss it. I responded that I was just getting up and had nothing to do with this happening at school. Good luck! I rolled over and went back to bed till 8am and then got up and made coffee. I could get use to this. After I had a leisurely breakfast and I read the paper at about 11am I decided to go on a bike ride. I made a nice stack of rocks at the half way point. Then after a light lunch Jan and I left to go visit Matt our VALIC guy to go ove...