What Would You Say? - Redux

The text of this post originally appeared as a response to comments upon a previous post, left by my beloved brother. That is not tongue-in-cheek, folks. I really do love my brother, though we frequently disagree. 

Given that his comments generally cause me to expend vast amounts of energy in composing rebuttals, they are among the few that I would have gone to the effort to reproduce here, but they disappeared when he vacated his MySpace™ profile. In the text that follows, the quoted segments were contained in my rebuttal, and excerpted from his original comments.

People Look At Me Funny...

I go through life with a soundtrack.  I grew up during a time when people sang, or played instruments, or both, all the time.  They did this instead of going to concerts or watching a performance on TV, mostly because at that time, no one could afford those things. But you know what?  I think they were happier, better adjusted people.

Heart Health

Hurrah!

Yesterday was a good day, in spite of the fact that my doctor tried to kill me.

You see, I've reached an age when both he and I want to establish the baseline state of my health, and what the impact of that is going to be on my future lifestyle. This requires that some tests be performed.  We just don't always agree on which ones should be done first.

What Would You Say?

Yesterday I got, as did some of you, a forward from Uncle W, containing a pic of a young boy, being handed a folded American Flag, at what was obviously intended to portray a military funeral. The subject line was:

"WHAT CAN YOU SAY TO THIS KID????"

Appliances

Life was simpler, before appliances. You might not believe that I'm old enough to remember, but I am.

You see, while I was growing up, some homes actually did have TV, washers, and dryers, even dishwashers!   Not everyone could afford them, though.  My parents didn't usually have to cope with broken appliances, for the simple reason that they usually didn't have any appliances at all, to speak of.

Two More Work Days!

Two more work days!

Thursday and Friday are it!  Although my "official" retirement date is to be September 30, that falls on a Sunday this year, so Friday is going to be my last day at work for my current employer. As the time approaches, more and more people pop out of the woodwork asking, "How are you going to avoid  boredom?" or "What are you gonna do with your time?" The fact is, I probably will have less unstructured  time.

Anticipation - or Anxiety?

Retirement!

By this time next month, I'll have been retired about 48 hours. How can one actually look forward to living on half his/her current gross annual income ? Fairly easily, actually, if you observe and remember that many people retire on even less - like whatever Social Security pays.