Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

In my Florida mind, I am in a different decade.  I am in my late thirties to early fifties, the time period during which my parents wintered on Sand Key, just south of Clearwater Beach. When I go with my mother to the grocery store, there are many what seems to me to be old people  Then there is my mother, who is not yet old in my Florida mind.  Then there is me and no in-between these three divisions. My day rolls much like the tide.  I manage to rollerblade from the condominium complex down to Sand Key Park, where I glide around and through the parking lot, holding onto my portable CD player where Sting's Ten Summoner Tales provides the background music in my Florida mind.  My dad wanders down the beach to the parking lot, to make sure I'm okay and tell me it's time to come home. There are four small children in my Florida mind, frolicking in the waves, digging in the sand, crawling onto the lounge chairs with me and Dan, burrowing under the beach towels...

We're in Florida until the end of April, returned to the same townhouse we rented last year.  Simply put, we love it here. That's not the subject of this post. Driving down, we listened to a couple interesting books: Educated  by Tara Westover and Bad Blood   by John Carreyrou.  (Click on the link to read Bill Gates' notes about the book.) An aside: if you have yet to discover downloading audible books from your local library, I highly recommend doing so tomorrow, if not today.  You have 3 weeks to listen and there is something quite soothing about being read to (ask any preschooler for an endorsement). We were mesermized by the story of Bad Blood --it  details the rise and fall of Theranos. If you aren’t familiar with the Theranos story, here’s the short version: (from Bill Gates's Gates Notes)  the company promised to quickly give you a complete picture of your health using only a small amount of blood. Elizabeth Holmes founded it when she wa...