Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving


 The last time I posted was January and here it is Thanksgiving.  To be honest, I assumed that no one was interested and I had kind of run out of energy, so I've been just letting the blog sit.

Recently, I have gotten a couple of complaints that I haven't been posting from friends that I don't see very often.  So, I thought I would take this moment to run down a short list of things that have been happening with a promise to post once in a while.  I will give more detail in future posts.

About this time last year, I was frustrated with the job.  The normal thing to do is wait for better times.  This time, however, I looked over my finances and realized that I could retire.  Hey!  That's cool!  Why wait?

I hung around for through most of the winter test season, so I wouldn't leave my coworkers  in a pinch, and officially retired April 1.  It turns out that I could have left earlier because those coworkers both left the job, part of an exodus from my department in particular.

My first couple of months were spent rebuilding the KLR engine.  Smooth.

But then family issues called.  Both my brother-in-law and my father (94 years old) got sick. In the end, both passed away with 2 weeks of each other.

In the months following, I don't seem to have accomplished very much, but I guess that isn't surprising.

To answer the question that all not-yet-retired people ask, I do like retirement.  It seems that there are two kinds of people.  Folks that live through their work and don't have significant outside interests.  It seems that they get bored in retirement. 

Then there are those folks like me.  When I retired, I had a list of projects a mile long.  Since I retired, the list has gotten even longer.  I was even dreaming up new projects when sitting at my father's bedside in the hospital.  So, although I will never get them all done, I haven't had a moments boredom since I retired.  In fact, it feels like I am busier than ever.  I have to discipline myself to attend social events and otherwise take care of myself.  Otherwise, it would be just none stop projects.

So there is the update.  I'll try to be good and keep posting.

Jac