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-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.

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

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.