T-27 Days Until the End of an Era

As my time at my current job winds down, my forced early retirement currently has no shape or focus beyond some future welding class that I haven't even signed up for yet.

It was a nice day so I drove a Buick to work.  I won't have too many more times to do that.

Of the 27 days left, 19 are normal workdays but I'm still using up vacation at the rate of 2-3 per week plus a full week off.

That leaves only 8 days in the office over the next 4 weeks.

I've been cleaning out my area. All pictures and most personal items are home already. I've got 6 hot chocolate K-cups, some Trader Joe's dried pineapple, half a bag of Hershey's kisses and 3 Rice Krispies treats in my pantry drawer.  There are a couple of G2 Gatorades in the dorm fridge.

It might not be enough to weather a Corona virus quarantine but for 8 days of work, I should be fine.

T-60 Days Until Retirement

BoomBozz Elizabethtown, KY

At the end of today, I will have only 60, six-zero, days until retirement or something other than working here. Of that, I only have 25 actual days in the office. All of my vacation time is scheduled and will be taken barring any unforeseen problems.

Retiring at 57 sounds good to me. That doesn't mean I will sit on the couch, eating bacon and pizza all day long though that does have an appeal.

I intend to take a welding class but will probably find something else to do while waiting for the next semester to start. I helped my father and aunt with new computers and phones last weekend. I used to do that a lot. I could probably help a few folks out and make a few bucks on the side.

One of the other things I'm intent on doing is getting rid of a bunch of collected stuff (I don't like calling it junk) that I probably won't be using in the future. I tend to save boxes from big-ticket items like TVs and laptops in case I decide to sell them. It makes them bring more and shows how well they were taken care of. Kind of like having maintenance records of my vehicles.

Over the weekend we went to Louisville to drop a bed off at our daughter's. No more sleeping on air mattresses!

On the way home, we stopped in Elizabethtown to get gas and have lunch at a place called BoomBozz. It was pretty good pizza though it was an 8" instead of a 10" like many places serve. It hit the spot. They have a lot of TVs in that place. They even had a cluster hanging in the middle, arena-style, for those not facing a wall, which is a problem I've often lamented though I'm not really a sports fan.

T-68 Days: Burning Vacation Days and the Census!

With only 68 days left in my working career at the job I've held for 32+ years, I earn vacation days January 1st and must use them by December 31st in a normal year. This year, my last day is March 31st.

The company policy on vacation days is to prorate. If I take none, I will be paid for 1/4, or five days, when I leave. Therefore, I'm taking all 20 if at all possible. I submitted the requests. Basically, I'm taking every Friday off to make it a three day weekend and the odd other day plus three trips. I've already taken the Scottsdale trip. So far, so good.

About the census. What is up with a 46-page book to be filled out? Seriously! It takes a wedding ring to get that much information about me. If they want to know how much my mortgage payment is and what my house is valued at, they need to buy that info off of one of the credit bureaus like all the telemarketers do now.

I filled out the name, age, sex, date of birth and race. That's all they need to represent me in congress. But they didn't ask if I was a legal American! Unbelievable.

Bucket List Check Off Item

I've steadily been checking off bucket list items for most of my life. Sometimes I remove an item, sometimes I add items. This is about adding one I hadn't really thought about until a good friend suggested we give it a go.

I'm talking about attending a Barrett-Jackson classic car auction. Jan wanted to know what was so great about a Barrett-Jackson auto auction only slightly ahead of barring me from bringing home another car.

I've just returned from Scottsdale, AZ where I had a VIP badge! Now, the January 2020 B-J event is over. It was like a state fair for car guys. I've never seen so many Superbirds in one place before!

Some pictures from it below and an in-car video of drifting a Supra!


A few of my already checked off bucket list items are listed below:

1. Dive the Great Barrier Reef and visit Australia
2. Visit all 50 US states 
3. Eat a pizza in the Pisa piazza in the shadow of the leaning tower
4. Fly a plane
5. Fly in a helicopter (I'd like to fly one but the training may be a deal-breaker)
6. See a glacier
7. See a volcano
8. View the Mona Lisa
9. See the Eiffel Tower
10. See the Rome Colosseum
11. Visit the Vatican
12. Visit the Acropolis
13. Drive a Ferrari 
14. Drive a NASCAR
15. Visit the Grand Canyon

Retiring Early? 77 Days To Go

Life is never static. If it were, we'd be dead. Things are always changing. This is a post about another life altering event, also unexpected.



In May I found out my job was being outsourced and my services would no longer be required after March 31st, 2020. I'm going to take my generous severance package and retire early. I'm leaving little more than a week before my 58th birthday. It seems like a good place to stop to me. Jan is still working for now. Perhaps we will relocate. More on that later.

I have been reading about FIRE, which stands for Finacial Independent, Retire Early. I'm certainly not on the early side of retiring early but I still have my original equipment knees!

When the news came down that all of IT was being outsourced, I offered to exchange my late leaving position with someone that had a house payment and was being terminated sooner but they said I needed to stay because I had vital knowledge. Here I am, 11 weeks left to go and I am one of the three remaining people that will be leaving at the end of March. Interestingly enough, I was sent to the UK to help with a data center move after Thanksgiving. It was good to see some folks I've worked with for years but never met.

I've been learning Spanish for all of 2019 with Rosetta Stone. My access expired just shy of finishing the course at 97.5%.  I have continued into 2020 with a year of DuoLingo under my belt. I've resigned myself to the fact that I won't be fluent without immersion in a Spanish-speaking environment. However, I got a joke while on a dive boat in Cozumel and I can pick out some discrepancies in the subtitles and spoken Spanish on the Amazon series Jack Ryan. Season two takes place largely in Venezuela and there is a lot of Spanish.

This brings me back around to relocating. Most of the least expensive places to retire with a high quality of life and good healthcare are in Spanish speaking countries. Costa Rica, Panama, Spain and Mexico. Portugal and France also made the list. I was surprised by France but supposedly, if you don't want to live in Paris, you can get by for $1,500 US a month.

Here's a few pics from a recent trip to Mexico and my last business trip to the UK. 

Stingray in Cozumel

Cozumel Reef

Beach Swing at Iberostar Cozumel

Morning Mist in Telford, UK

Derry City Wall, Northern Ireland

A Decade Later

Life is good in many ways. It has been 11 years since the accident that started this blog.

Jan has fully recovered from that experience and had reconstructive surgery on the pin scars on her forehead to minimize them. It turned out well.

I haven't owned a convertible since the accident and haven't had any accidents since. I sold my motorcycle a few years ago with the intentions of replacing it though I haven't yet.

Here's to keeping my fingers crossed and continuing the good life!

Here's a pic of Jan and her healed forehead.

Is This Thing On?

Edit: This post was from eight years ago that I never published.

Back on the web after a three-year hiatus. The legal things are all settled, lawyers are out of the picture and I've sanitized the names to protect the guilty.

Hopefully, this is a whole new chapter to the blog. Things that I originally intended to blog about from the beginning, people asking me if I'm that redneck guy.

So, we just returned from a trip to Seattle and Alaska. We got to see family in Redmond before we set out on the Norwegian Pearl for a cruise up to Alaska.

Day 392 - NORMAL AT LAST!

Jan finally said she feels like she is back to normal. Thank goodness!

However, the hospital sent a bill and insurance hasn't paid them yet so I'm not giving them a cent yet. I called and asked for an itemized bill. Mistake! Ticked me off royally. They charge $835 for 24 hours in the hospital. Despite the fact that she sat in the waiting room for an hour, they say she was in the hospital for over 24 hours, which amounted to an additional $507 for the alleged one to two hours! I've instigated an audit because she was out at around 5:30PM when the doctor left.

We went to visit a friend in the same ward that was having heart issues. He didn't have a heart attack but it was chest pain, numbness and shortness of breath.

Luckily, Jan has not had any more episodes.