Monday was my 64th birthday. A friend who I have known since first grade and keep in close touch with sent me a birthday gift box with a riddle to the lyrics of a song. The contents contained a bottle of Chardonnay, a Happy Birthday message, and a Valentines card. The Beatles released the song in May 1967, so my friend has been waiting almost the entire time we’ve known each other for just this opportunity. It took me half a day, but I did solve the riddle to this most excellent gift! (Sandy figured it out in half an hour).

This past year continues the trend of the overly active retirement lifestyle. I have a wealth of photos and embellished stories to send out, and will slowly work thru that backlog on those bad weather days when I cannot go outside. This conflicts with the retirement goal of spending 70% of my waking hours outside, making up for 36 years of sitting in an office staring at a computer screen. I’m pleased to report that goal has not only been achieved but also exceeded!!!

One of those outside activities is running. I’ve been running at least one race a year every year since at least 1984, and perhaps a year earlier. This year nearly broke that streak, as I had to defer running the Glacier Half Marathon in June due to lack of training (and perhaps some drinking!) during our month in Scotland/England/Wales/Ireland. Fortunately the delightful Hoo Doo Half Marathon in Fairbanks AK on September 30 keeps my streak intact, running the entire race with my daughter Sally as a wonderful bonus. A sub 1:55 time earned me 2nd place in the old fart division!!

The never ending house improvements continued this past year. Besides replacing the cement patio, I woefully underestimated the effort required to eradicate the cottonwood tree roots from the 4 large trees we had cut down a year ago October. Conceptually simple: just dig up the root and patch the grass to prevent the trees from spreading. Part of the motivation is the 5 year goal to have a lawn that looks better than our neighbor Larry’s down the street (which has been a rolling 5 year goal 😀). The other motivation was to ensure the roots did not get in to our septic leech field. I expected this to be a 3 week project. It ended up consuming quite a bit of my time from May thru October. The longest root from the big fat bastard tree stump went almost to the garage, which we measured at 95 feet distance. The alternative would have been to have an excavator tear them out, haul topsoil in, re-level the yard and reseed ($$$$). Instead my labor cost is free, I’m outdoors and I get a daily workout for a couple hours.

I did manage to spend time indoors by attending an informal online seminar on The Federalist Papers. My attempts to read them in the past have been failures, due to a lack of background understanding and language differences from that time period. Though it was online the class was excellent (whiskey was encouraged by not required). The papers are such a keen, well articulated insight into human nature and the design of a national government (the Constitution) around human strengths and weaknesses. This has definitely sparked my interest in a number of related topics, such as natural rights. Not only fascinating from a historical perspective, but as relevant today. Neat stuff!

One more important task accomplished recently is the replacement of the battery in my 5 year old Macbook Air, which is what I use for dealing with photos. For $70, ifixit.com sent me a battery with tools and instructions, and the replacement was surprisingly easy (10 minutes). I am a very satisfied customer that can use my laptop again without being tethered to a power cord.

Future emails will be containing photos. Photos seem to trigger spam/junk email filters, so if you do not receive any photos in the next 2 weeks check your junk folder. On my too long task list I do have an item to test out different email list services to better deal with spam filtering.