Recently my wife hosted her “circle”.  In the Presbyterian world this is a group of women with some degree of commonality, i.e. status, age, etc. who meet once a month and discuss things I am not permitted to know and choose not to speculate upon.

My assistance was summoned in the form of cleaning up and making other preparation.  While I was wrestling the vacuum cleaner around I could only think, “While this is not onerous it was not in my retirement agenda.”   I was also persuaded to make coffee and remain in basement until end of activities.

Why do we need to include some sports in the Olympics.  Tennis, Soccer and Basketball have world championships almost every year,  world tours (Tennis), or periodic regular championships, Soccer.

When did badminton players conspiring to determine their next opponent become the lead item on the news.  This was while civilians are being slaughtered in Syria.

Did I mention that that I became interested in self publishing some stories on Amazon.  It looks to be pretty simple.  The Amazon part is mostly filling in the blanks and formatting the material.  You still have to write.  There are uncountable articles available on Amazon on how to write, publish and format.  Other that roughly outline a couple of stories, one a SF time travel one and another mystery one I have not made much progress.  Both are set in Richmond roughly during the Civil War.  Wait for any announcements.

My first thought about the consequences of retirement was that I would have an enormous amount of time to do “stuff”.  “Stuff” included everything.  Work in the yard, go to appointments, help around the house, read, hobbies, etc.  I couldn’t imagine there would enough fill up my time.

Part of my retirement event was a gift card from my fellow employees.  I used this to get a Kindle.  The “Touch” model was selling for 79.00.  I stepped up to the Touch + WIFI and 3G.  I learned that the 3G was only used when WIFI was not available.  It only accessed the Amazon Store.  Using WIFI for access opened up the internet and email, etc.  Since the Kindle is not a real computer with a real operating system it only approximates easy use of the internet and email. Hmm.  Should have gone with the Fire model.  At least you get color.

I became enamored of Kindle.  I downloaded about three different bibles.  KJ rules!  Most written material over 50 years old is out of copyright so you can find downloadable digital versions of all your favorite older (“older” is pretty relative!) material.  Even if the format is not friendly there is free software to convert it.  Between this and “free” Kindle publications I was spending about three hours a day downloading, reading and organizing.  With my running and yoga I found I was not doing much else.

My actual retirement day was 12/31/2011.  My “rough” plans were to:

• Be a full time “Ladies home companion”
• Brush up on my Spanish (used live on the Mexican border and had some facility)
• Learn to play the Banjo
• Get in shape for a 10K race
• Pursue Yoga classes
• Complete some things around the house that were needed

The results are pretty “spotty”.  So far:

• No Spanish
• No Banjo
• Not much around the house

More later

Retirement means the possibility of sleeping late every day.  That was so much like weekends that every day seemed like Saturday.  This included the actual Saturday but not Sunday, which has some pretty unique characteristics.  The idea of “real” Saturday evolved to avoid confusion.  So I have 5 “para Saturdays” and 1 real Saturday.  I watch a ton of television so it was important to make the distinction.