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Kari baked a cake, added baloons and celebration-specific paper plates and napkins to turn our Friday night get together into a retirement party. Mixed emotions, as when your 15-year old daughter comes home at 3 a.m. with a Gideon bible under her arm, are funny things. It feels like I’m going on vacation, which we are since we’re headed to Red River next week, but I keep remembering that, no, living pay check to pay check is over. Now it’s no paycheck, which is scary. On the bright side, the days of working all day in the office only to go out into nearly the hotest part of the day for a couple hours before dinner to try and keep up with the work around SA are over, too. Getting up at dawn during the hot months of the year, working in the morning cool — and the morning cool on the High Plains is tough to beat — and scuttling into the shade or A/C as the case may be when the sun gets high in the sky sounds appealing. Having evenings and weekends free may take some getting used to. Maybe I’ll watch more TV. I would like to play golf once a week when the weather is pleasant. Being able to take advantage of pleasant weather during the cold months, which doesn’t always coincide with the weekend, will be a big help in getting things done around SA. I am grateful to ICS for providing steady employment these last 21 years and wish ICS and my colleagues there the best. I’ve made some pretty good friends at ICS and among the customers I worked with over the years, some of whom have urged me to keep in touch.
Maybe I’ll have more time to be of service to my extended family. For instance, Wednesday evening, the taller Zbindens attended a volunteer appreciation banquet at their church and asked me to frolic with Lil’ R while they were gone. Joyce was supposed to attend as well but weaseled out at the last minute, something about getting the guineas put up for the evening. So Rebecca and I went to Chick-fil-A for dinner after which she wanted to play on the little inside playground they have. She played quite a while and when I got the urge to suggest we move on I had to remind myself that I was on duty until 9 o’clock and I could sit there and let her do what she wanted as easily as sit somewhere else and let her do what she wanted. After waving at me and my waving back for the umpteenth time she finally came out and allowed as how she was ready to go. There were no other children in there by then and she said it wasn’t much fun by herself, not that she interacted with any of the other kids when they were playing on the equipment. Maybe it’s just more fun to be around others having fun. We went home to the cave and watched Phibus and Ferb until Kari made us go to bed.
If you have 10 minutes to waste, use the Search by Category pull-down and watch Big Buck Bunny on the Just for Fun page.
In a previous blog I mentioned that Abigail was playing club softball. This week she made the Crockett volleyball team. She practices volleyball before school and softball after school.
There was a fox in the meadow at dawn this morning, the first we’ve seen in months, maybe even this year. Joyce was not pleased to see it because now she worries more about her guineas.