OK, I know, I fell off the blogging wagon. I definitely need more discipline here.
My excuse is that I was gone for a week to my son's wedding (though that doesn't explain why it took me a month to get back to this blog -- procrastination, I guess). I haven't discussed the wedding here, as a wedding is really not relevant to being retired (unless you think that planning for larger wedding expenses than you predicted should be part of retirement planning :-). But it was a beautiful wedding and we had a great time. Marrying off a child is an important milestone; it definitely makes you think of your child as an adult more than before.
Before the wedding, which was on the East Coast, we went to New York City to take in a few shows, eat in nice restaurants, and do normal touristy things. This is definitely something we want to do regularly in retirement. We went to see "Book of Mormon" (which was good, but not as good as the hype) and "Mathilda" (which was excellent -- definitely better than the hype, but then there wasn't much hype around it). I came away with at least three more shows I want to see this season. (For those wondering which shows caught my eye, they are: "Kinky Boots", which got lots of Tony nominations; "Anne", a one woman show about Anne Richards, the larger than life Democratic governor of Texas; and "Pippin", which is nominated for Best Revival and apparently is practically a Cirque du Soleil-style show.) We also love museums, walking in Central Park, visiting less well known tourist attractions, and just soaking up the New York ambiance. I am very glad that I don't live in New York, but it really is a great place to visit. I hope we can arrange things to visit at least once a year, for a long as I can handle cross country plane trips.
Once we came back, I started getting more seriously retired. While I still have a large number of things on my "must-do" list, given the time constraints of dealing with the various administrative retirement-y things and the wedding, I wasn't taking on even one-day projects. I now have more of a routine (I have a hiking day and a biking day, and I've moved a bunch of my regular errands into the weekday to free up more weekend time; I go to lunch with someone at least twice a week), but I am also taking on more garden and cooking projects. I've been making jam and artisan bread (soup is up next); my very small garden is in full flourish -- we are having salads using lettuce from the garden every night, my green onions are just about ready, and I can see small tomatoes on the tomato plants (so maybe cherry tomatoes in July; that would be fantastic). I didn't plant enough of the sugar snap peas; so far they just generate enough pods that I can snack on peas each afternoon, but not enough for a meal, even for just two of us.
While I think that the specific things I spend my time on will change a lot ----I'm right now exploring things that I haven't had time to do recently; I'm sure I'll get my fill of baking and cooking -- what I am enjoying most is that much of my day is driven by activities I select. I still have errands to do -- dry cleaners, laundry, bill paying, trying to sell some furniture we are no longer using -- but I am able to make sure that my day is more than 50% things that I am actively looking forward to. That definitely wasn't true of my work life, where a lot of my work was driven by deadlines, but it's my model of an ideal retirement.
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