You may notice some changes to this blog (Kelly’s World). Specifically, you might notice that my posts about motorcycles are missing.
Fear not! My motorcycle content has been relocated to a separate blog: Geek on a Harley. Kelly’s World will remain the place to check for my non-motorcycle and more personal thoughts and interests. Please take a look at the new blog and follow/subscribe to it if it appeals to your interests!
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Our sweet cat Pippin passed away unexpectedly on Thursday, June 20, while Irene and I were away. She died in her sleep of uncertain causes, and I miss her in ways that are difficult to describe.
I’m writing this in the hope that a few notes about Pippin will help me rationalize my feelings.
My career came to an end on Friday, May 31, 2024. That’s when my retirement became ‘official’.
I am feeling pretty good about no longer being a contributing member of society here in the first week of June. It feels very good to have no thoughts in my head about what needs to be done for work next week.
But I am also feeling a bit thoughtful about the past 40 years or so when I spent 40 to 80 hours a week (130 hours a couple of times) working. I’m turning that reflection into this summary post on my blog.
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Irene and I adopted Finn at the end of 2022. He was about 11 weeks old when we got him, born at the end of August (August 29). At the time he was about 6 or 7 kilos. His adoption was not really planned, but it worked out.
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2023 was a difficult year for us. It was a year that made me suddenly feel very old and fragile. I’m still coming to terms with a lot of what happened.
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Say hello to our newest family member: Finn, a dog, or more accurately a puppy. This picture is from when we first got him: he was about 11 weeks old at the time.
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Irene and I had several ‘priorities’ regarding maintaining our new home from the day we bought it. Some were ‘mandatory’: for example, we had to replace the aging but still fully functional hot water tank in order to get house insurance. Others were ‘urgent’, and at the top of that list was the outdoors stairway to my office above the garage.
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I had planned on posting something new about our stairway construction by now, an upgrade that was already delayed from 2021. Unfortunately that still isn’t done despite being ‘in progress’ since the beginning of May.
Instead, I’ve decided to post some pictures from around the house and a few words about how the year has gone. Most of the pictures have already made an appearance on Facebook- apologies for folks who follow me there as well. But the words are mostly ‘new’…
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I’m configuring a new PC for Irene. I’d love to move her to macOS, but she has too much ‘history’ with Windows. So I went with this:
A neat little computer- the Msecore machines have a good reputation as a ‘no-name’ brand. But there was definitely some strangeness in setting it up, which ultimately I blame on Windows 11 and its ‘secure BIOS’ technologies.
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I’m still a few years away from retiring, but the years pass fast- and I’m definitely looking forward to it.
Retirement scares some people. What will they do, they wonder, when every day isn’t filled with the job that currently occupies their time? How will they define their value in the world? Some of these folks retire, then pass away a year or two later. Or sit in their house, watching sitcoms and gradually wasting away.
I don’t think I’m really like that. I’ve had things I want to do, things I want to learn and experiment with, for decades. Not to make money or ‘prove’ myself: that’s what a job is for in my mind, I guess. Just things that interest me, that likely produce little obvious value. I’ve even tried to work time for these into my life pre-retirement, but have never been able to balance them with my job.
So what’s on my list? Glad you asked…
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