We Bought an RV!
I retired at the end of 2015 and spent the first seven months just enjoying myself. My wife, Joanne, didn't retire until the beginning of August, 2016. A year and a half later, we hadn't really changed our lives very much. I had my things to do, such as lunches and...
Band Lineup Change
After the League of Rock Final Showcase, described in Shades of Grey Lives On!, the band took a month off and then got together in January to discuss what was next for the band. Unfortunately, Karen wanted to leave the band to sing in a metal band, hence our lineup...
Shades of Grey Lives On!
I mentioned in my previous post, I've Joined a Band, that, yup, I'd joined a band. Well, we've continued through to the finish of the League of Rock session and decided to keep going as a band--Shades of Grey lives on! We had an official weekly practice where we...
I’ve Joined a Band!
If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that I took lessons for bass guitar and piano in the first half of 2016. I used to play bass but hadn't really played since about thirty years ago, when I was in the University of Waterloo Computer Science Grad...
What a Great Vacation!
We had a great vacation in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and, as usual, it came to an end much too soon. We were able to stay a couple of extra days so that our vacation overlapped with that of my sister and the older of my two younger brothers by two days. We had a great...
Vacation at Last! We Arrive in Old Orchard Beach
We arrived at our vacation cottage in Old Orchard Beach, Maine on Saturday, August 6th, with a sense of excitement. Vacation at Last! I've been coming to Old Orchard Beach since I was five years old. It's become a nostalgic place for me. For that matter, my wife,...
I Need a Vacation!
My hockey buddies think it's funny when I say I'm going on vacation for two weeks. Their retort, as you might expect, is that I've been on permanent vacation since I retired. In many ways, they're right. My days consist mostly of stuff I want to do mixed in with a few...
What’s Good for the Gander is Good for the Goose
I've known for many years that I'd enjoy retirement. I even had a countdown timer on my whiteboard which I would update every morning when I got to the office. Although that fell by the wayside when I became an official work-from-home employee, retirement had been on...
I’m Retired. Now Who Am I?
One of the things that caught me by surprise after retiring was a simple question: Who am I? First, though, some background. How I Decided to be an Electrical Engineer I knew in Grade 3 that I wanted to be an electrical engineer. My father had introduced me to...
The Sublime Beauty of Music
Taking music lessons has been a real ear-opening experience, far more so than I expected. For example, I've come to appreciate the sublime beauty of music more so than before. As a novice piano student, I'm learning fairly simple pieces. Still, they have their own...
Time Still Rushes By
When I was young, say about ten years old, time seemed to last forever. School would end near the end of June and wouldn't start up again until early September. We would have about ten weeks off in the summer and the summer seemed to last forever. I would even get...
A Little Structure is a Good Thing
Now that I am several months into my retirement, I'm noticing that I'm not getting as much done as I would like. I want to write at least weekly for this and the other websites I have. I also want to practice bass guitar and keyboards, which is needed to progress in...
Busy, busy, busy!
A common refrain of one of my retired friends, when asked how he's doing, is "Busy, busy, busy!". I used to think it was mostly a joke. Now that I'm a month and a half into my own retirement, though, I'm beginning to understand. When I get up in the morning, I have an...