Let's get back to work.........

or not. I mean, I AM retired, sort of. So, I shouldn't have to work. Except, as discussed the other day, I have a major problem keeping track of how long I have been retired. Now I have to really put forth a major effort to solve this problem because time is rapidly running out for me.

Let's review: As of today, January 30, 2009, I have been retired for 30 days. That part is easy. I know that because I am still in the first month of my retirement. However, it gets really complicated starting Sunday because we move into another month and now I have to keep track of the days in two months. Yikes!!! So, I am looking for a better way to keep track of the number of days I have been retired.

My friend Chuck suggested instead of using the Gregorian calender, I should use the Julian calender. I did some research on this and don't know for certain if this is an easier way. I mean, take a look at the above picture of a Julian calender which archaeologists dug up. There is a lot of explanatory information on the web, concerning Julian calenders, but it doesn't hold a lot of promise for a simple means of keeping track. Consider this, in the Julian calender yesterday would have been julian day 2454863.5. Sorry Chuck, I tried.

So, then I thought, how about the excel serial date? Seems to make sense to me. But that didn't work too well either. Consider that yesterday in the excel serial date calender would be 39845. Now, hopefully I will live long enough to be retired for 39845 days, but by then I would probably lose track anyway.

Finally, I stumbled across the iso 8601 calendar. This seems to hold the promise of keeping track of at least the first year of my retirement in a convenient format. Consider that today's date in the iso 8601 calendar is 2009-030. Tomorrow would be 2009-031, and the best part, Sunday would be 2009-032. Yes!!! I think we have found the short term answer to our problem. Now all I have to do is go to my local Staples or Office Max and get a brand new, shiny Iso 8601 calender! That was easy!

Thursday Jan. 29, 2009

Today's post was going to be a continuation of our study of calendars. However, a situation came up yesterday that I just have to discuss. In the early afternoon, Larry Jr. called to ask if we would be interested in going to a concert to see Celine Dion! Duh!!! Truth be known, going to a Celine concert was one of the things on my bucket list. Granted, I don't necessarily agree with her politics, but my opinion is that her voice is the purest and has the greatest range of any entertainer on stage today. Who hasn't had "the power of love" or the theme from Titanic running through their mind? So, we went to St. Pete Times Forum fully expecting to hear her sing beautifully. We did not expect to be blown away by the total program. What an amazing show. Obviously Celine sang all her well known hit songs and we, the audience, did our level best to sing along. But the overall visual images, the dance numbers, the musicians, and the backup singers, along with the computer images, the stage mechanisms and the lighting were almost overwhelming. It was interesting to watch the huge monitor up by the ceiling when they showed closeups of her while singing. Celine had been on this particular tour since last February and still appeared to be enjoying herself while performing. Her facial expressions were amazing and her interaction with the audience appeared to be real. All in all, this was a truly enjoyable concert. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect was that the audience actually remained in their seats during the performance, allowing everyone to totally enjoy the concert. Speaking of seats, since we got our seats so late, we were concerned that we would not be able to see what was going on. However, even though we were up high, we were able to see everything and I looked around and am convinced we had some of the best seats in the house as we had a view which allowed us to take in the whole performance.

Wed. Jan. 28, 2009

I guess this is day 28 of my retirement. I only know that because today is January 28th. and I retired on Jan. 1. I am now beginning to realize I am facing a real problem in a couple of days. When the date switches over to another month, I will lose this easy way of keeping track and will actually have to start adding the number of days in each month in order to determine how long I have been retired. Maybe I should start keeping track of the hours or minutes since this manner would be a continuum, rather than starting and ending like the months do. And for those of you considering retirement, take note of what weird things go through your mind when you have nothing better to do. Be afraid, be very afraid!

Moving on, we passed our first week in Florida yesterday (see, there is that time/space continuum thingy again). Generally the weather here is really nice. I've noticed a weird phenomenon when we watch the news from up north: while sitting here in 74 degree weather with beautiful sunshine, and seeing snow, sleet, wind, ice, etc. you develop a mental detachment which makes it impossible to actually sense the pain of the cold weather. It just doesn't seem real as though we are watching a disney fantasy or something.

And finally for today, above is the requisite cute puppy photo.

Until next time:
Larry

Today is Tuesday......

and the only way I know that is because I looked at the calendar, and because American Idol is on Fox tonight! This is what my life has distilled down to, marking my time based on a TV reality show! Oh, woe is me. I feel like Bill Murray in the movie, "Groundhog Day", "I keep reliving the same day over and over". I guess the good news in the end, Bill gets the girl and there is a happy ending. If you haven't seen the movie, check it out. Groundhog day is coming up soon and we all need to be prepared. Hopefully this horrible weather will end soon!!

Captain's log: stardate 3245.6

Our mission: to explore this desolate island to determine if it is suitable for human occupation. Thus far we have encountered large "humonoid" machines which appear to be able to roll across the tundra, although they seem prone to consume mass quantities of fossil fuel doing it. These interesting machines also appear to be equipped with crude life support systems which the early occupants referred to as "refrigerators", "stoves", etc. Fortunately we have carried our replicator and bio-matter resequencer with us from the mother ship, and as a result we are managing to survive. It appears the occupants, all of whom exist in an advanced age, with stooped shoulders, grey or white hair and whithered muscular systems, survive mostly on a compote type of food they refer to as "rice pudding" and spend their time engaged in an activity called "shuffleboard" which seems to produce no useful results.

Today is Saturday, January 24, 2009 and I have been on this lonely island for almost a week now. All hope of being rescued is vanishing. I think the rest of the world has forgotten about us. Food and water is still in abundant supply, but we are starting to miss our friends and family. Yesterday we saw an airplane flying overhead but by the time I started a signal fire, it was gone! (Of course by the time I got the signal fire going, the campground management had also called the local fire department!!). We spend our days wandering aimlessly, exploring our island. We have seen evidence of other occupants, but we have been afraid to approach the natives. They are different than us and we are afraid they might not be friendly. We will continue to observe them and maybe try to make contact in the future.

Weather update from Sarasota: currently 38 degrees and sunny, with a high today forecast at 65. Tomorrow is expected to get up to 70. Sorry, not commenting, just reporting. Hopefully our friends up north are surviving.

Yesterday we took the pups to Petsmart to have them groomed. This included a bath and a haircut. Gotta say we were pleased with the results.

Interesting day on wall st. yesterday. Market is up, market is down. Where is this all going? Nobody knows. (except maybe Warren Buffett)
Having an interesting discussion on RV.net about the economy and what is driving this recession. Some are blaming the media for having a strong, negative influence. This is an interesting opinion which I believe has some merit. Beyond that, the real question is how do we get out of it. Our new president seems to think government stimulas is the way to go. Only time will tell, but I do wish him all the best in his efforts.

More later,
Larry

Lafayette, we are here!

Ok, so I'm not General John Pershing, but we are finally in Florida, and we are getting settled into our site at the campground. It was quite an odyssey getting out of the snow and cold in Ohio and arriving here in Florida. Of course, Florida put out the welcome mat the last couple of days, trying to make us feel right at home (home being Ohio) with temperatures approaching freezing and high winds. Add in a very noisey rain storm the other night, coupled with overcast skies and we were feeling like we never left northern Ohio.

Here is a photo from our yard at the campground, taken this morning. You can decide whether to feel sorry for us or not.

:)

If we had global warming,

we wouldn't have temps of 20 below.

If we had global warming,

we wouldn't be shovelin' snow!

Not to be totally negative, and while the temp this morning was 34 when we got up, I will say the sky is blue and the sun is shining, and we are expecting temperatures in the 70s this weekend. Way better than what the poor folks at home are experiencing.

Trying to get going:

Here is a story to help your imagination: Started packing all the last minute stuff last night and decided to wait until this morning to leave. Got up early and started to work on last minute loose ends. Got pretty much finished about 10:00 and decided it was time to fire up the Cummins and get ready to leave. Keep in mind it went down to -12 last night and was pretty much unchanged at 10:30. Tried to crank up the motor and it just was not ready to go yet. So I dragged out the torpedo heater and aimed it under the back of the coach. Meanwhile I also checked to make sure the block heater was working. Well, the breaker was tripped and the heater was not doing anything. Ran an extension cord from the house to the block heater and with that, along with the torpedo heater, I am hoping by 2pm I might be able to get 'er going. During all of this, I was also putting air in the tires of both the coach and the car. Getting 105psi into those tires on a good day is tough, getting it in when the temps are -12 is a real SOB!! I estimated I could handle, maybe, 10 minutes of the cold at a time. Of course the various air hoses and power cords really don't like to uncoil at -12, so that really hindered the process. So, I am now sitting here on the couch, waiting for the motor to heat up so I can try it again in a while. Of course the good news is that the weather in Florida is COLD!! So why am I doing this???

And yet we wait..........

Here we sit, waiting for the weather to get better. Maybe the weather will be better in Florida? Who knows?

However, there is hope on the horizon. Tomorrow is Friday, and Linda has hinted that she might just be ready to go. Oh, be still my beating heart!!!

We may be leaving tomorrow afternoon, or perhaps as late as Saturday afternoon. We still have a lot of packing to do, but can't do it until we are actually ready to go. Meantime, we sit and wait.....

Stay tuned for our exciting departure attempt. Our driveway is not only 400' long, but it is downhill, snow covered, slippery, and clogged with ice and snow right at the very bottom of the drive, right where we have to make the sharp right turn to get onto our road. Oh, and did I mention, when we turn onto our road we immediately begin an uphill climb to the next street? Thought not. Probably should mention our street is not very wide and right at the end of our drive, on the other side of our narrow road, there is an open ditch. That is right at the end of our downhill, slippery, snow covered drive!! What am I planning??!!

Foiled again......

in our attempts to get started on our trip to Florida. Mother Nature is just not cooperating. We have had about 10" of snow since last Friday. It is snowing now and more tomorrow. On top of that, we are expecting temperatures to drop to about zero tonight. Yikes!! We have some loose ends to tie up, and then we hope to hit a weather window and head south. Lookin a lot like this weekend might just get it done. Time will tell.

The BIG day has come!!! January 2009

Well, it appears the big day has finally arrived and I am going to retire. Actually, to be perfectly correct, I have already retired and have actually signed up for Mr. Obama's social security benefits. It is a new year (2009) and we (me and Linda) are starting our new life as we head down the road to Florida for a couple of months to rest, thaw out in the sun, and ponder what may be around the corner for us. With some time on our hands (hopefully) I will try to post some photos of our adventure as it unfolds and will try to make it entertaining if I can. You are welcome to come along for the ride and I hope it's a smooth one.

Larry