Being retired isn't so bad. I stay up late, I sleep late, I eat when I feel hungry, and I get to read the entire newspaper. It is almost like a month of Sundays. I'm sure that I'll get bored soon and I'll have to watch what I eat because I'm overweight already.

I have driven the Toyota Prius for two weeks and the only change in my first impressions about this hybred is that it gets better gas milage than I first thought. The fuel flow meter is a lot more accurate than any gas station pump. It makes the trip to Oklahoma City and back on about 8 gallons of gas. Its onboard computer claims that it is getting 47.1 mpg. It showed a marked drop im mpg when I was driving is a hard rain. Its instantenous mpg and its five minute avg showed about a 5 mpg drop during the rain storm. The Prius still rides rough and you can tell if the dime you rolled over was heads or tails.

When I went out to rent a car for the trip to Oklahoma City, they had a Prius for the same price I would pay for any other "standard" renta;, so I chose the Prius. It's different. No motor sounds as I sit at a traffic light. I'm still interested in how it does on the highway.

Current Location: Home sweet home

Tomorrow, I rent a car and drive back to OKC. My suburban needs a bit of work before I start commuting to and from OKC. It seems just a short time ago that I left OKC with the prospect of four weeks vacation. Now, vacation time is over and it is time to get back to work. I'm still concerned about short term memory loss. I'm misplacing too many things and I have difficulty sometimes finding the right term for something technical. If I wasn't supposed to be a technical expert, I could get away with it. But, I'm supposed to know the answers and be able to explain why that answer is right.

I had to take time out to fix a minor plumbing problem before it became a major problem. The fill valve on one of the commodes started spraying water on the bottom of the tank cover and causing a big water leak over the side of the tank. Nothing is easy with plumbing in a 47 year old home. It took a good sized wrench to move the shutoff valve. Fortunately, the handle didn't collapse as sometimes happens with stuck shut offvalves. Of course nothing fit as it should but now the new fill valve is working and it doesn't leak or spray water against the top of the tank.

I would invite Susan to come along, but she needs to be home for the grandkids and to keep her appointments. There would be nothing for her to do in OKC and she would miss her massage and hair appointments.

Susan and I have enjoyed our three weeks of vacation. We will be home on Sunday night. There's probably a few pounds of bills in the mail box. My assignment in Oklahoma City doesn't start until Sept. 14. 

This is a phisoliphal question, Does a retired couple need a vacation? Supposedly, we are already on vacation. Most times it is a stay at home vacation, but we don't have to get up by an alarm clock and go to work. There's a big pile of tree trimmings in the back yard that will have to be mulched. There is some A/C work needed in the recreation room. The house needs a thorough cleaning. I've been away for six weeks, only home on the weekends.

So, Susan and I plan to take two weeks off. Nothing special, we will visit my sister. Then we will visit Susan's sister. Then we will see some nieces, drive to the North Carolina coast to see another niece. Visiting my cousins out west will have to wait for another year.

It appears that I get to be retired again. That's a good thing. I'm ready for a vacation. I haven't seen my sister in quite a while. We left my sister-in-law's place rather abruptly in the spring because of a possible job assignment that didn't pan out. Now, the weather is warm (hot?) and her backyard above-ground pool is inviting. So, I am ready to take some time off and visit old friends and relatives.

My fears that something might go wrong with my cataract surgery were unfounded. It still concerns me that there is no way to un-do the surgery once it is done. Everything has gone as I was told it would. It has been a week since the left eye was done. I can see very well at moderate and long distances. I do need reading glasses. Hauling around reading glasses and sunglasses is a nuisance. So I will be getting several more pair of reading glasses so that I can leave a pair wherever I might need to read something, like at my computer desk at home and my desk whenever I do work. And, probably a pair in the glovebox of my car and Susan's car.

I met an ex-FAA employee at the barbershop, today. He is enjoying his retirement. He said he had been retired for three years and had never even considered going back to work. Of course his retirement pays him more than mine does. He is a retired air traffic controller manager while I am a retired FAA computer tech. There's two general schedule grades difference in our paychecks. 

I was hoping to travel some after retiring. But I have health problems that must be addressed before I can travel freely. The first step in the cataract surgery left me unable to read street signs. I'm hoping that a GPS will help me there. I have to start programming addresses in it so I can be familiar with its instructions. I missed a couple of turns when I borrowed one fron a brother-in-law for our trip home from North Carolina two weeks ago. The nagging voice saying make a U-turn at the next intersection was very irritating when I knew that continuing on the current street would eventually get me back on the Interstate. It finally said Re-computing. I will probably need to have stents placed in my carotid arteries. Both my parents had to have the earlier procedure where the doctor opened the carotid arteries and scraped out the crud.

I'm getting ready for a short road trip up to Oklahoma City. I'm visiting a relative to exchange pictures and stories.

I got tired of the kids mowing down my 30 year old oxalis (small purple flowers) so I bought some more landscaping stones and built a ring around one of the trees where some of the oxalis still grows. It took three trips to move the 30 stones from the car to the backyard. Tomorrow, I need to start pruning some of the trees. The limbs are touching the house and I fear that wood ants might use them for access into the house. I would really be upset to discover any of them as big as the ones that were in Susan's mother's place. Corrected some typing errors. I couldn't see them.