Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

This falls into the category of "other assorted retirement activities" as in reorganizing the fall/winter closet.  Yes, don't judge, I have two closets, one for the aforementioned fall/winter clothes and a second for the sweatshirts and spring/summer clothes.  With the culling of the fall/winter clothing, however, I might need to consider moving the sweatshirts to the fall/winter closet although sweatshirts, for me, are a year round item of clothing.   The past two weeks, I've had the pleasure of teaching a few classes.  When I teach or speak in public, I feel compelled to wear a dress.  Hence, on the evenings I taught, I pulled out a dress.  And heels.  Again, don't judge.  Remember, I'm 65 1/2 years old and came up through the ranks when NO ONE wore jeans to work unless it was Casual Friday and even then, if you were an administrator, you thought twice about wearing the jeans.  (Once you crossed the line, however, you seldom we...

We've been ripping our basement apart, a retirement activity if I ever saw one.  We demolished a powder room that we stopped using a couple decades ago--fortunately, when we opened the toilet, we didn't find any dead critters in there.  We pulled down sheetrock from waist-high down, which means ripping out the insulation as well.  There was a unused bar in the basement and it's now in the dumpster.  Finally we pulled up the carpet from the basement stairs.  That night, we sank into our matching recliners in the family room.  Dan looked wearily at me and said, "We're never doing that again." Damn right. Anyhow, while demolishing, I've had a lot of time to think, too much time perhaps.  Pulling down the powder room walls, I composed the following letter to my Congressman, Erik Paulsen (R-MN).  I originally intended to send it to all members of Congress and the President.  However, as I researched doing that, it became clear that members of ...

It's the morning you've been dreaming of ever since you announced your retirement. Your co-workers have gazed longingly on that date marked, probably in red, on your calendar.  LAST DAY OF WORK. The alarm does not go off. You don't have to haul yourself out of bed when you awaken. Now what? Here are a few things (that I can recall) those who were already retired shared with me about retirement: It's great. You'll never look back. You'll be so busy, you'll wonder how you ever worked. You can do whatever you want. Keep a list of all the things you say you want to do. Travel.  Travel.  Travel. It takes a while to get used to it.  About a year. You'll get to spend a lot of time with your grandchildren. You'll get into some sort of routine. Friends and co-workers asked me what I was going to do when I retired.  I sensed an undercurrent of, "You're not just going to be  retired , are you?" which I took to mean there wa...