#70 – Update on Our Retired Living

Three weeks since the last post, my apologies!

It’s been a while since I took a look back at the specifics of what retired life has been like for us, so here goes from the past couple of months:

• After multiple trips in January/February, I went through March without any trips outside TN. My brother Doug and I considered a baseball Spring training venture, but decided against it this year. Instead, I ended up meeting our son Andrew for a couple of regular season Braves games in Atlanta in early April. Night time temperatures in the low 40s, and watching the Braves play poorly in both games took a little out of the fun, but few things can match spending a couple days catching up with Andrew (and hot tub sessions helped us forget the cold game experiences).
  • We’ve been doing father/son trips for 20+ years now and they just keep getting better. Most of them include Braves games as a destination. Graduate school is coming to an end and there’s plenty of excitement associated with determining the projected professional path. There’s also an upcoming summer internship in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (road trip!). In return, he gets to hear me drone on about retired life. The trip included lunch with Doug at The Battery.
  • One of the February trips was a Southern California swing to see several friends, in this case almost all USNA classmates: Jim up near Thousand Oaks, Warren (who I had not seen in 44 years) in Coronado, Wade in Vista, Dave and Masami in Bonita, and golf with Scot and Dave at North Island.
• If you’ve been tracking my Social Security saga over the past 15 months…the first check finally arrived two weeks ago. For those of you not yet receiving SS benefits, it was more than three months from the time I pulled the trigger (applied for benefits online) until that first check arrived.
• These last few months I’ve been attending Christian leadership training at our new PCA Presbyterian Church home- Bible study like I’ve not done in 40+ years.
• Golf- been playing about once a week since early March, some days in the low 70s (temperature, not score!), but still the occasional morning in the low 30s. Three days ago we had snow flurries.
• Yard projects- some little ones, like replacing tree/plant victims of our two “below zero” periods this winter, some big ones like working a rock garden in the back (more rocks equals less mowing). Have to limit the time and effort of any daily yard work, even before the summer temperatures arrive- just don’t have the upper body, back, or leg strength these days. So far no snakes sighted.
• Beth and I went through the full West Wing TV series since Christmas. It’s still entertaining to go through all the White House dynamics and comparing not-so-fictional politics from almost 25 years ago. We also just finished a recent British comedy/documentary called Clarkson’s Farm, starring Jeremy Clarkson (host of Great Britain’s version of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire TV show). I get the feeling we’re going to make a pass through the Winds of War series next.
• The Navy article, started back in September, is mere days from being published in the May (International) edition of US Naval Institute Proceedings.
• Attending Naval Academy Alumni lunches- held the first Wednesday each month about an hour from here in Knoxville. There’s a steady group of 15-25 attendees from the area along with a very active Blue-Gold Officer (BGO) who stays busy interviewing and tracking high school candidates for USNA. Each March we have a special treat when the national champion-caliber Crew team comes down for a week to train on Tennessee’s Clinch River, and we host them for lunch during the visit. It’s a great event- this was my first one.
• And just this past Thursday – Monday Beth and I drove up to DC to help move our daughter’s family (and see our granddaughter). Resulting sore, worn out bodies remind us of our current physical limits. Those potential aging medical miracles can’t manifest themselves soon enough (see Post #64).