This is a big week

This is a personal big week. This is the 10th anniversary of my retirement, my last week and last day of working. That was Friday, December 18, 2015. The 18th is this coming Thursday. 

As I said that day, I started working full time in late 1975.  Before that, I worked part time while going to school.  From 1975 to 2025, I had been unemployed for 6 weeks.  It was '82, during the post-Carter recession, when Fed Head Paul Volcker raised the prime rate to 21.5% (at one point) to stop the near-runaway inflation of the late 70s.  Since then, I had been laid off, but generally left one job on Friday and started a new one on the following Monday.  

I started in college in the fall of '72, three months after high school, with intent to study biochemistry but never had a good feel for what was available in terms of where to work and what to do. I ended up dropping out of that program, got a job as an electronics technician based on what I learned as a hobbyist and started going to school at night for that. I worked full time and took two night classes per term until 1988 when I finally got my bachelor's degree. 

There's a saying everyone knows about "the best laid plans of mice and men" and it describes this part of my life. In high school, I was in all the "honors" classes, graduated with honors, had some recognition I don't remember the name of from the National Merit Scholarship Qualification test, and was accepted to both colleges I applied to. In my senior year of high school, my dad fell at work (US Postal Service), re-injuring an old injury from WWII and became disabled - wheelchair bound. Mom and dad had to tell me they couldn't pay my tuition like we had planned. So I went for some "discount knowledge at the junior college" - Miami Dade Junior College. Until they moved to the next county north and further disrupted life.

In my adult life, I never took more than a week long vacation while working and since retiring, we haven't gone anywhere for more than 10 days. We took a couple of trips but really nothing much, and I think our last trip was to the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. We went to a small city in Tennessee that was closer to the centerline of the eclipse path, called Goodlettsville. We drove up, 800 miles each way, spending one night in Chattanooga on the way up, and one just south of Atlanta on the way back. Yeah, we could have done each drive in one day but took it easy.  

Now that I sit down to tell the story, that's really just about all of it. We paid off our house early, and really tried to get into a good position financially so that we might be less likely to need to go back to work. It worked out well. The house was built in 1980 (IIRC - we bought it from the first buyer in 1984) so while it was built well, survived the various hurricanes and tropical storms well, it's still a 45 year old house. While I fight to keep hiring contractors to a minimum, every so often, I need to. We replaced the central Air system in 2020 - where system means not just the air conditioner itself, but the duct system as well keep. I need an expert for that. I mostly keep an eye on things. 

After I graduated Junior College we played with some goofy pictures. Here I am pondering a lawn sprinkler as if it's some sort of alien technology. I think this was in 1985, but I'd need to go find my degree or an old resume to verify that.