10th Anniversary

On July 19, Shaun and I celebrated 10 years together. Wow! Time flies when you're having fun. We went to Tacoma, WA to see glass art and then went on to Port Angeles, WA where we took the ferry to Victoria, BC for a couple of days. We visited Butchart Gardens which was just beautiful, and enjoyed exploring downtown on foot.

Vespas

Last week we sold our Vespas. It was very sad. We let our practical selves rule over our sense of adventure! We both had less than 400 miles on our bikes in a little over 3 years, so we figured it was costing us about $100 a mile to ride them! We also decided that since I'm always an accident waiting to happen, even walking on flat ground, we were flirting with disaster every time we got on them (after all, there was the broken leg in motorcycle safety class!).

It was a good time to sell. Scooter dealers can't keep stock, so demand for used scooters is high. A young man, Scott, bought mine to use as transportation. It took him 4 days to borrow all of the money he needed and he was thrilled to have a way to get to work. A lady named Kimmy bought Shaun's pink and white unit....mostly because she loved pink and she thought the matching jacket and helmut were just over the top!!!! It took her about 90 minutes to borrow all of the money at 9:30pm from her relatives. They were all small business owners and cleaned their tills for her that evening. Kimmy was clearly about the recreation and fashion so we related well :) The evening was bittersweet--we loved the Vespas, but in our retirement we're making tradeoffs in how we spend our time and money and what risks we are willing to take.

"The Cleanse" and Rockin' Moms

So, if you are wondering what it is we do when we are not on the road, here's a little snapshot!

After returning from Las Vegas, we did "the cleanse". All of the kids did them, so just like blogging, we felt compelled to not be left behind. For 7 of the 11 days, we drank protein shakes and ate 1 meal a day (400-600 calories). The other 4 days, we drank this awful cleanse drink and ate "snacks" -- Six almonds and a "chalk-o-late" cleanse wafer. We both made it through and lost about 4-5% of our body weight each. The bad news, is that for each of the next 4 days, I put 25% of that back on, so by day 5 after the cleanse, I was back where I started! I lost a couple of those pounds and stablized lower than I started at, but it was a lot of agony for 2-3 lbs. of weight loss! I guess we have to look at the bright side--clothes fit better, and our cells are all purified of the toxins that had infested them.

On a "normal" day of retirement, you are likely to find us playing Guitar Hero on the Wii. We have aced the "easy" level, but can't seem to get "medium" down! Since Shaun can't rotate her left arm or hand, we had to set up a rig for her guitar using a keyboard stand. She uses the lack of arm rotation as her excuse for not mastering medium, I just lack basic hand/eye coordination and can't keep track of more than 3 notes at a time! We sit for hours in front of the game rockin' away. Shaun reads a lot, I surf the internet, mostly planning trips or doing investment research. Shaun works out every day, usually twice. She runs by herself, then goes over to Josh's and lifts weights or does more aerobics with him. I walk a lot and continue to do my 10K + steps a day and have gotten back in the bike saddle. We take advantage of all that Portland has to offer, including attending the Waterfront Blues Festival (and seeing Phoebe Snow live), going to a play "The Little Dog Laughed", going to movies, walking around town, having coffee, lunch or happy hour with friends, reading or whatever. The days go by really, really fast! This week we are attending classes at the Intercultural Institute Summer Conference at Reed College as guests of our friend April.

So mostly, we do a little of this and a little of that. It's so nice to sleep until we wake up (usually between 6-7 instead of 4-5 like we did when we were working) and just take life as it comes.

Las Vegas

After returning from NYC, we did our laundry and packed for Las Vegas. We spent 5 days there with my Mom who is 86 and going strong, my sister Barb and brother-in-law, Bill. The 3 of them have been vacationing in Vegas for several years and usually spend a week at a time walking up and down the strip, taking the bus downtown, taking excursions to Laughlin or other nearby places, enjoying good food and of course gambling. None are serious betters, but enjoy playing penny and nickel slots. Shaun and I got addicted to penny slots called "Hot Shot" and won enough jackpots on our 15 cent bets to fund our gambling for the few days we were there. We enjoyed good company, good food and good weather. When we got home, Shaun got called in to work for a week, while I relaxed and worked on a multi-year backlog of projects! Shaun is continuing to work on-call for Multnomah County where she is a project manager for the Department of Human Services. She works when they need her to create Requests for Proposals (RFPs), contracts, biennial plans or whatever.

Retirement 2008

On May 16, I resigned from my position of CIO at Multnomah County Oregon. It was a good 4.5 years--I learned a lot and met many wonderful people, but I was just plumb tired. It's a hard job trying to keep 6000 customers and 170 employees happy every day! Immediately after leaving (like real immediately on May 19), Shaun and I flew to New York City for 2 weeks where I had a very interesting consulting engagement with the City of New York Division of Mental Hygiene to do a current state assessment of their IT organization. The people there were very smart, motivated and helpful so it was a great gig. We LOVED NYC! Shaun spent the days exploring museums, parks, and neighborhoods. In the evenings, we explored neighborhoods together, mostly in the area of Tribeca, SoHo, Little Italy and Greenwich Village and ate great and greater food! My niece, Janet, took the train up from Baltimore for a couple of days and she and Shaun spent one day in MoMA and all 3 of us spent the next day exploring Greenwich Village. We were fortunate to have one of the IT managers take us to the rooftop of a 35 story building right next door to Ground Zero. It was fascinating to look at NYC from that vantage point. Looking at the enormity of Ground Zero was a very emotional experience.