Greetings to all homo and hetero sapiens out there. One thing I really wanted to do here this year was to post more often. I started this "money" series that I need to write more often on, I need to post some Route 66 pictures from my two trips there, I need to comment more often on the headlines, and it probably wouldn't hurt to write some personal reflections on some other things.
As it is, I seem to spend a lot of time "taking care of life", for lack of a better term, and my job has me putting in overtime from time to time, and I've seen some of that. My employer does pay me straight time for the OT, which is a plus since I'm salaried, but to be honest I think I would rather have a normal schedule. But the problem there is that I happen to enjoy my current assignment very much and I have no desire at this time to pursue other opportunities. That's a good thing.
In case anyone was wondering, I am spending a lot of time with Sheila and less time on the hobbies I was enjoying before I met her. I tell myself that I need to pick up the guitar and finish some songwriting projects that I started a year ago. I need to catch up on some reading (I'm currently working on the LBJ biography series by Robert Caro.....I highly recommend it!), and there's season number five of the classic Hawaii Five-O DVDs (I often watch these episodes with Sheila). And of course, I spend time with my two devoted cats, and due to this thing I call "cattus interruptus", I sometimes don't get much done in my leisure time. That too is a good thing; it's their job to slow me down and make me pet them whenever they want my lap, which is very often.
One thing I've been doing is trying to get the house caught up to where I want it. It's something that I resolved to do two years ago and it still isn't where I want it to be. The good news is that there's a new spa heater, the back door to the patio has been fixed, a new patio carpet was put in earlier this year, I've built some shelving, and a contractor is coming over on Friday to replace some aging shower doors. After that I want to get a new stove and a new dishwasher, and I'm also thinking about a deep freeze unit and stocking that up with meat from Costco (I'm really going to need that freezer if I ever get off my sitting end and bag a deer). And in addition to that, I'm thinking about becoming active in ham radio again, and getting that dipole antenna up on the roof.
Oh, did I say that I want to get my coin collection better organized? I work on that from time to time. Over the years I have collected lots of foreign coins, and although I am working on filling vinyl pages with them. There are also lots of US coins in the collection, and I'm working on searching a box of pennies that I picked up the last time I was on the east coast (there is a rare die variety on the "P" cents, and coins from Philly are hard to come by in the Grand Canyon State).
When I think of all the things I want to do, I sometimes suffer from this dread of retirement. I mean, if I have my way, I'm going to be in the workforce for several more years, but when I retire I'm thinking that I just might be as busy then as I am now. That's a good thing too, as that there are lots of horror stories about aerospace engineers kicking the bucket not long after retiring, and I sometimes think it's because they have nothing to do with themselves once they stop working, and somehow that kills them. I have no way of knowing if I'm right on that. Me, I'll have plenty to do, though I see myself as spending a year on the highways of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada before getting a part time job. I'm not sure if I'll bag groceries at Safeway or if I'll return to my present employer as a part time consultant. I'm also not sure if I'll stay in Tucson when I retire.
Arizona does have a lot of retirees, and from what I know a great many of them are escapees from California. A good friend of mine from San Jose is right now in Prescott Valley and I think he picked a damn good place to retire. I was originally thinking I would end up in the White Mountains somewhere, as that I want to be somewhere where there's plenty of hiking, hunting and fishing. The White Mountains strike me as such a place, but so does Prescott. And, I'll admit that I'm intrigued about the prospect of retiring in Ely, Nevada. I've never been there but I'm thinking of making a scouting run up there, but if I want Nevada then maybe I should consider Pahrump. Las Vegas is out....don't get me wrong, Vegas has plenty to offer in terms of entertainment and I could spend lots of time people watching on Fremont Street, but Clark County is northeast Southern California and the real estate market there has been dicey. I won't make a lot of equity living in Ely but Ely doesn't have the big city problems that I seem to be reading more and more about here in Tucson.
Well Sheila has just arrived, and so I'm going to sign. Moe and Larry are in the process of welcoming her (and of course they'll get plenty of pets from her) but I need to take over from them when they're done.
Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.
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