Retired for One Year

Today it hit me that I have been retired for one year.  It doesn't seem that long ago when I was out-processing, and I couldn't wait to get home that day.  I have no regrets about going out when I did.  I miss the people I worked closely with and I am in occasional touch with them.  It was great getting to serve on that kind of team.  But situations like that are not forever, and for me it was time to get out.

Looking back, I thought I would have done more road trips than we have.  I want to reprise that one we did when we went up to Four Corners and back.  Dang, that was some really neat scenery we saw when we were up there!  But as I said in my  last post, we want the next one to be Alamogordo.

As for all those projects I told myself I was going to do..........well I've started a bunch of them.  And I'm still working on those.  The "Ugly Money" page has three times as many images as it did a year ago.  My coin collection has been worked on.  I've done a lot of reading, alternating between previously read books and those that have been on the shelf for more years than I would like to admit.  And with another heat advisory (this one "severe") underway there's been a lot of reading.  And very little yardwork.  

In spite of all of that, there have been a lot of necessary but not fun tasks at hand.  Today we took a truckload of items to Goodwill.  Some from my mother's house, some from the master bedroom closet, and some books that I know I will not be re-reading.  I guess this begs the question, what books am I keeping?

I still have all of my college textbooks.  On a rare occasion I will pull one out, thumb through it, mainly to see if I still understand what I studied 45 years ago.  Not a lot of it was used as a reference during my career.  I think the degree I earned is evidence that I was trained how to think like an engineer.  There wasn't a single course I took that addressed satellite engineering or aircraft engines.  But I had an understanding of why they worked they way in which they worked.  

I've also kept the Tom Clancy and James Bond novels.  All are interesting reading.

The Isaac Asimov novels are remaining in the bookshelf.  I have read all of them at least twice, maybe three times.

The recipe books, which I really need to dig out and get some ideas on what to cook.

So, what do I foresee in the coming year?  I'm not going to dwell on that in this post, but I can list some goals.

One, some more traveling, preferably via road.  We are looking at getting a trailer and living out of that during our adventures.  I have researched solar panels which we intend to use to power the trailer, and I've somewhat recently purchased a ham radio rig that's ruggedly designed for portable use.  

Two, have my coin collection and currency collection better organized.

Three, some more reading.  

Four, more genealogical research.  I'm not sure if I should dig some more into my Bonsall roots, or to concentrate on my Pilkington ancestry.  As of late it's the Parkers I've been looking into.  

The bottom line is that I will keep busy.  The challenge is to live long enough to get the rest of the things I want to do done.

7/9/26: Thursday

I can't say that there's been a whole lot that's worthy of report here.  We either have high heat warnings or high wind warnings, and we need more rain than we're getting.  I've spent some time scanning my QSL cards for my ham radio blog, and some defaced banknotes for my "Ugly Money" page that's on this blog.  The defaced nots are also posted on a webforum that I frequent, along with others who share this unusual enthusiasm for collecting these kinds of things.

I'm also going thru my US banknote collection and getting that organized.  I have a healthy collection of foreign banknotes, and I want to get that inventoried, organized, and post scans of that on a new page.  I have many archived scans that I could start with.  Foreign money has interested me for many years, and my collection of foreign currency is viewed as an art collection.  

And just think, in a matter of a few weeks I'll have been retired for a year.  I hear from tech recruiters on an almost daily basis and it's rare for me to respond.  I've seen two of the jobs that smell rather badly of attempts at industrial espionage.  I don't like to discuss what I've worked on in the past except in very generic terms.  I've worked on orbiting satellites, satellite ground stations, circuit cards, aircraft engine monitoring systems and cancer detection equipment.  I miss the good times when I was a satellite engineer and the overseas travel that I got out of it, but I'm not going back to it.

That said, I won't rule out updating my resume and throwing it out there.  One former supervisor has the right of first refusal if I do go forward with this.  Plan B is another supervisor who I know but did not work for.  I can think of a Plan C and a Plan D if I want to.  But I've got to work on getting my mother's house sold.  The work on the house itself that we've wanted done to it completed this afternoon and I expect we will have this one the market before the end of the month. 

And after that, I want to do a road trip.  I'm looking at Alamogordo, northern New Mexico, northern Arizona and historic 66 on this one.  Maybe then I'll entertain the idea of making some good money on the side.

Dang, I almost forgot.  Last week while doing some genealogical research I discovered that I am related, although distantly, to Jeannie C. Riley of Harper Valley PTA fame.  We share a 5th great grandfather, that being John Parker, born in 1725.  Her descent from there comes down a different son from this John Parker.   As far as I can tell that branch of the family was one of the pioneering families of what was then the Mexican state of Texas.  

There is also some information about this John Parker's forebears which, if reliable, goes back further than 1725.  If that information is true it would explain why there is a Massachusetts/Connecticut connection to the Parker family, which keeps coming up from more than one source, and one of those is reliable.  I know that the Parkers owned land in Virginia and North Carolina because I've seen the property tax rolls as well as other documentation.  But did they own land down south while living up north?  I can't prove they were in New England at this point in time.

I think with that I'll call this a post, and watch some Looney Tunes.  

Those were some of the best cartoons ever made.