So tomorrow Winnie and I head out for the first real vacation since the start of the Zombie Apocalypse started back in January 2020. We’re breaking our vacation fast by going to one of the places in this world I truly love. We’re heading to the beautiful island of Oahu, Hawaii, for a ten day visit.
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
I grew up in Farmingdale, on Long Island, New York, moving away to the Hudson Valley area of Pine Bush at age 15 way back in 1972. Since then, I’ve made occasional visits to Long Island over the years, but always to visit family still living there. Regrettably, over the years my family ties to Long Island gradually thinned out, and now are non-existent.
However, my heart has always been with Long Island as my childhood home. Over this past Juneteenth weekend, Winnie and I decided to make it a long weekend and pay a visit to Long Island as tourists. It turned out to be a very worthwhile trip.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
So we’re in a new house, time for new adventures. This latest is having a family of birds build a nest in a potted plant located on our back porch. It was pretty cool watching these birds build their nest, lay eggs, then raise the youngsters.
Alas, it all happened too fast. But it was fun watching them while it lasted.
Estimated reading time: 17 minutes
As I’m beginning to wind down my career into retirement, I’m forced into reminiscing about career experiences both good and bad. One recurring theme of bad experiences relates to the many times I’ve been set-up for failures. I’ve never been able to understand why anyone would deliberately put effort into making the people around themselves fail.
I’ve experienced too many people in my professional life who seemingly worked extra hard to get me to fail. Most of the time I succeeded despite the best efforts of other people. But, there was one time I didn’t. As I reminisce about my career I keep coming back to the one time when despite my best efforts, I was successfully set-up to fail.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
This past Monday folks here on the north-eastern seaboard of the United States discovered that it really is winter. The realization came from temperatures changing from 60 degrees on Sunday to 30 degrees on Monday. Accompanied by our first snow of the season, a whopping nine inches in my neighborhood.
Nine inches doesn’t seem like all that much snow, compared to what I’ve experienced even since living here in Northern Virginia. But, perhaps because we’ve had almost no snow for the past couple of winters, people forgot that snow happens. This past Monday, going into Tuesday and Wednesday, the great snowpocalypse of 2022 shut down a major interstate highways and dumped power for thousands of people in my area.
And this is only January. We have lots of time for a Snowpocalypse Part II, and more…
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Our moving had a number of challenges, but one challenge we didn’t expect was having our electrical service cut off. But we did, at absolutely the wrong time. Not that there’s ever a good time to lose electrical service.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
So Winnie and I have successfully finished moving into our new old house. As it’s been 15 years since I last moved housing, this most recent experience re-taught me old lessons. With luck, I won’t need to re-use my re-learned lessons again.
This all comes under the heading of “The Tao of Moving: How to Move Gracefully.” As opposed to “Dear, where the hell is my other slipper?”
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
So after nearly fifteen years of being settled into the same house, Winnie and I are moving. It’s not a big move, as these things go. We’re only moving across town so local rates apply. But we’re self-moving, one trailer load at a time.
I’ve discovered that fifteen years in the same place means a lot of accumulation.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
This past week Winnie and I made a trip to Rhode Island to visit family. It was notable for several reasons; it was the first overnight trip we’ve had since this Zombie Apocalypse started in March 2020. The occasion was the 75th birthday of one of my cousins still living in New England, and lots of other family came in to celebrate.
So we had several days of hanging around family and visiting in New England in November. It turned out to be a nice visit.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
I’ve had a long post-Navy career at this point, and moved around a lot in my jobs. Within the different companies I’ve worked for I’ve had the great fortune of moving around doing different things, learning new skills, and working with different people. Some of the things I’ve done and people I’ve worked for were good. Other things and other people – not good.
I’ve also made some bad decisions throughout my career, mostly on basis that my word was the same as my signature, and other people’s word was the same as their signature. So when I had a chance to answer a Quora question ” Did you accept counter offer from your current employer when you put in two weeks, how did it turn out?” I went with my most infuriating job-related incident of trusting someone to keep their word.