What it must be like to be retired

The other day I had a vacation day. What with the air conditioning man coming and the rain I ended up spending the day doing not much of anything. I was thinking this is what it must be like being retired.

The first thing you notice is the activity of your neighborhood. With all the busy people off at work, the retired people come out and gossip. Then the stay at home parents come out with their toddlers and their dogs. One mother seems to make a lot of noise when she walks by. I wonder if they all are cleaning up after their canines. These are the types of thoughts retired people must have at 10am in the morning.

The air conditioning man came and put in the part. I guess I'll know if it's working on Memorial Day of next year. Got the see the maintenance man for the complex come by in his tractor.

The phone rang about every half hour. Guess they've been waiting for me to be home on a weekday. No I don't have a bag of clothes for the vets. Sorry I gave my used clothing to Lupus last month. "No I have my own charities" I told the cop on the phone. Hope I don't get a ticket for speeding next week.

Finally I drove off for a nice diner breakfast. Boy, all the construction they don't do during rush hour they do on weekday mornings. The diner was half filled. I ordered breakfast. Luckily they do late late breakfasts. Nice place, all the retired men seem to go there for coffee and transfats to wash down their Lipitor.

Early afternoon I listened to Leonard Lopate. Whenever he has a guest he always lets you know what he (Leonard) knows about the topic. The guest is explaining how Napoleon's family moved to America. Yes, we know Leonard that Napoleon's brother lived in Bordentown with a mistress. Now let the guest talk.

Leonard reminds me of the person who works in a library when she is taking a class in library school. She knows more than the teacher because she is a page in Plainfield.

Finally I turn on WXPN radio. They are playing the 885 greatest records of all time, as voted by the listeners. Right now they are in the 300's. I'm hearing the Allman Brothers, the Moody Blues, the Who, and Ten Years After. Sounds like they are playing the record collection of the the guy up the hall from me at Davidson freshman year. It will be interesting to hear the list in a few years when all us baby boomers are dead or on ventilators.

Well the day is about over or at least is about the time I usually get home from work. Tomorrow I get to enter the working world again. Thank god it will be Friday.

sup

I was watching the new TV show, Selfie. I find it to be a most enlightening television program. It is giving me new insight into the world of the millennial. Last night I saw a man text a woman with the one word term "sup". I thought he was inviting her to sup with him (ie. have supper). Later I googled the word and now I know it is shorthand for "what's up?" You learn so much from TV.

You don't know what you've got til it's gone

Last year I noticed when I started my desktop computer that I got a tapping sound. Sounded like the hard drive. I soldiered on, occasionally having to start the computer from a CD. The computer was bought in 2006 and ran Vista, but I liked it and, like a beloved old car, planned to keep it til it died. 

Well, the hard drive died. Knowing it was time to get a new desktop (I know --- I have a laptop but a home office wouldn't feel like a home office without a desktop) so I bought a new one from Dell.

The new computer runs Windows 8.1. With a few troubles along the way (it was a bear getting Quicken to read my old Microsoft Money files) I have got everything running, more or less. My boss asked me if my scanner worked. I had forgotten about the scanner but low and behold, I did get the scanner to work.

Then a friend asked me if I could read a floppy disk. I took the floppy disk home. Holy moley. I didn't realize it. I no longer have a computer that can read floppies!

My first home computer, an AST 386,  had two floppy drives. A big one and the 3 and a half inch job that I have known and loved. I have so many memories of saving files to my floppies for safe keeping. I can remember many a happy Saturday morning, when I would back up my computer onto thirty floppy discs while listening to Car Talk. I thought for sure my old laptop that I seldom used had a floppy drive. It didn't. For the first time in my life since 1992 my home was floppy-less.

Yes I know there are CD's, flash cards, the cloud, portable hard drives. Even my Apple i pod can hold data. But I no longer own a floppy drive. Life will never be the same. I'll especially miss snapping the metal thing on the floppy back and forth. I won't miss getting the floppy out of the machine with a paper clip when it became stuck. (Although when I did this at work it made me the hero for the day).

At work, my computer has a floppy drive that I was able to read the disk with. The story has a happy ending. Happy though somewhat poignant. 

And so I now must learn to live life without a floppy drive. Floppy drives and Windows 3.1. Those were the days. 

A happy man

Today I saw the happiest man I have ever seen on television. After forty years of television viewing I saw the true utter complete happiness of a man who has finally been shown to be right and suddenly becoming important again.

It was John McCain and he was explaining how he knew all along that America should have left ground troops in Iraq and that now he has been proved right.

America now knows what we need. We need ground troops in Iraq. Ground troops in Syria. Ground troops in the Ukraine and just to show we are also humanitarians, 30,000 ground troops in Africa to fight the ebola virus.

Office potlucks

One of the great things about having a job is getting to go to office potlucks. Today we had one at work, it was football oriented and was called a tailgate potluck. People were expected to show up in football jerseys or t-shirts and bring food to share. I brought chili. I realized now I was supposed to put the chili in a crock pot and not just microwave it. I had to warm it up twice.

My chili was dwarfed on all sides by better offerings. Fortunately, one of the office managers pushed the chili. "You should try Mr. Mustache's chili" he exclaimed. "It has a real bite to it!" That helped it along but there was still a lot left. Tomorrow I guess I'll be eating chili.

The purpose of potlucks is not just to give the staff indigestion. The purpose of the event is to allow people from other units to socialize and get to know each other. It worked out that way today. The Mom's talked toddlers and soccer games. The older men talked about their golf games. Luckily, I travel, so occasionally I can mention my recent trip to Ireland or LA although I didn't get a chance today.

One thing I hate is people who grab food and run back to their offices to eat. They miss the point of the thing. It's supposed to be a social event. Nobody is that busy.

It wasn't a bad potluck. Now, next year, to make it a real tailgate potluck we should have it in the parking lot and there should be a keg of beer. That would be a real tailgate party

the Roosevelts

Just saw six of the seven programs on the Roosevelts. I've been to a few places mentioned in the show. Hyde Park is worth seeing. On display is FDR's wheelchair, a rather primitive thing, a chair with wheels attached. I also went to the Teddy Roosevelt home in Oyster Bay, a nice visit, especially if you like bear rugs and lots of trophies. You can get to Oyster Bay by the Long Island Railroad, if you don't mind a walk.

On a trip to Georgia a few years ago, I went to Warm Springs. Nice place and up the street I ate the best southern fried chicken I ever had.

Americans lack ambiton

According to a recent report by Career Builder employment agency. Ambition, like acne, is one of those things most of us leave behind by age forty. The problem is ambition leads to supervisory jobs and since most people lack ambition, supervising people can drive you batty. As I was told in the break room years ago, "If they see you are a hard worker, they'll just keep piling on the work and nobody ever gets promoted around here."

So let's get out there and ACHIEVE!

Editor's note: Someone gave me a whole book about having no ambition. Pete Jordan has made a career out of being a layabout. I guess that's his ambition.