Phase I Retirement Complete! in Everyday Ramblings

This is from Tuesday out in the neighborhood. It still looks like that outside with a little rain, a lot of fog and not that much wind. Yesterday morning, much to everyone’s astonishment we had a break and had partially clear skies and it was not cold.

I went on a morning hike down into Washington Park and then back up to the Arboretum with the “other” hiking group, the one I don’t belong to yet because you need to make commitments to lead hikes and help host meals up at the lodges in the Gorge and on Mt. Hood.

There was concern about the group having restrooms at the beginning and end of the hike so we switched venues from a different hike. Then when we all gathered at the new location the restrooms there were not yet open. But our resourceful hike leader had the number of the park ranger on duty and he was cheerful when he arrived.

But we had already switched plans again to hike down to a part of the park that had additional restrooms. While we were still up top a couple of young men who clearly had not finished celebrating New Years Eve were waiting by the bathrooms. Personally even though they were both quite high I think they only wanted to use the restrooms but a number of the other hikers in the group were anxious and thought they were “casing the joint”. In the end they wandered off down the street and we used the restrooms and took off ourselves.

I spent most of the hike talking to two new to me people. I have been more social in the last 10 days than I think I have been in the last ten years.

Afterwards I went home with Mrs. Sherlock to have lunch, read stories and poems to each other and visit with Mr. Sherlock and the guy who lives in his car. He is the most resilient person I have ever met. Just in a week his recovery from the surgery is amazing.

There appears to have been some sort of communication problem between all three of them. The guy who lives in his car took off shortly after I got there I think because he mistakenly thought he was in the way. Lunch was not prepped and Mr. Sherlock, who I found out later was not feeling at all well, was watching Civil Ward videos on YouTube.

Mrs. Sherlock wanted to watch Moonstruck, which would have been fun but Mr. Sherlock was grumping about it. After we had lunch the guy who lives in his car came back and I sat with him while he had lunch while Mr. Sherlock was dealing with what he was dealing with. It was all very chaotic. I finally looked at Mrs. Sherlock and said I think I will just go home. She was fine with that and we conferred on the confusion as she graciously drove me home.

The plan was to go snowshoeing tomorrow.

I still need to practice getting into and out of the bindings a number of times (with my boots and gloves on) of the snowshoes Most Honorable so kindly brought up to loan me on Tuesday and I needed a non-cotton base layer to wear up in the snow.

Doing new physical activities is good for the brain, I know this but because I have never done this before and these folks are all in good shape and are encouraging I find the prospect, umm, terrifying. I know I will love it once I get the hang of it. But I am not there yet.

But Mrs. Sherlock just texted me to say she has to deal with some things tomorrow and can’t go after all. We are going a week from tomorrow, still a relatively easy outing on groomed trails so I should be okay.

Stay tuned.

I received my first payment on my pension today! I thought I might have to wait until March 1st but now I know exactly what my net monthly payment is going to be I can plan things like vet trips and new ski pants that fit. And I won’t need to work in 2020. How cool is that?

And my supplemental prescription plan kicked in as of yesterday and this morning I took all the insurance cards that I now have operational down to the clinic where my GP is and got everything set-up and ordered all my meds.

This is all such a relief. I feel like Phase 1 of my retirement has now transitioned to Phase 2.

Now I can chill, finish the murder mystery I got from the library and plan out what I need for the next batch of cookies.

Last updated January 02, 2020