Skip to main content

Impending Retirement and Move

As of today the interior remodel of our new home in the Central Coast of California is 99% finished, and we can start moving furniture out of our rented storage garage to the house.
We expect to be all out of San Diego by mid-May. We tore out the carpet and put in bamboo hardwood flooring in the living room, dining room, and hallway, and put new tile in the kitchen.
We have a new wall oven with a giant broiler, and a new gas cooktop where a range used to be.
We were very fortunate and blessed to get a great contractor to do the work, he came highly recommended by our realtor and the selling agent, both of whom also live in the same development. Once we are in, we will add french doors to the master bedroom and a deck that will wrap around to the back of the house, where the guest bedroom already has a sliding patio door, but no patio, just stairs to the yard.
My co-workers and I are enjoying the countdown to my last days, it seems all 600+ people in my work building have heard about it, not that I have kept quiet.
People I know by sight only stop me in the halls and ask "how many days left?" Yesterday the answer was "36 calendar days and 16 workdays", as I am taking nine days off in April to haul things up north.
I am truly going to miss the cameraderie with my friends at work. And for sure I will miss harassing Mercury, Farmers, 21st Century, State Farm, et al.....

Popular posts from this blog

On Doing Photography, #1

An apologia on the making of an acceptable photographic file. One hears from lay people and even some photographers a disdain for image manipulation, particularly using modern programs such as Photoshop, and it's ilk. I used to be one of the latter. I was all about the "in camera manipulation", ie, get the composition and exposure as close as possible to the desired result before pressing th e shutter release, then print as-is. This may have been because I had only a primitive darkroom, and depended on commercial labs for prints, with all the attendant miscommunications about the final look. I have since learned otherwise. Since photography was discovered/invented the making of a visible print was the obvious goal. Early photographers had to go through great efforts with bulky equipment and hazardous chemicals to produce an acceptable product. That is to say, from the beginning, there has been no way to make a print directly from the camera w...

Projects Never Sleep...

Lessee, We now have four outdoor video cameras up and running for coverage of the front porch and bird feeders, the carport, the front from the right and the front from the left.  We have the feed sent to a dedicated TV monitor on the wall of our "rec room".  Next to go up will be a couple-three motion lamps.  I now have three citrus trees along the back fence, a red grapefruit, a Valencia orange, and a Navel orange.  Also there is a cherry tree off the south deck stairs.  This makes a total of twelve fruit trees, nine of which we planted.  The canning season is going to be busy from now on: 2 apple trees, 2 lemon, 1 lime, 2 orange, 1 grapefruit, 1 plum, 1 apricot, 1 cherry, and 1 peach.  We also have a bay tree we brought with us from San Diego, and it is harvested almost daily for cooking.  Of course, the pace is leisurely (no pun intended) because I schedule time for shooting, kayaking, reading, etc....

ManCave Progress

Last month I finally built the metal 8' x6' shed from the kit I bought last year, and had stored in the large wooden shed that came with the house.  Up to now the old shed was jammed to the roof with the new shed kit, containers, tools, boxes, miscellanious junk that we brought with us from San Diego in 2010, all thwarting my dream of making a workshop/artist studio of it. Now that the deck was in, and I finished a stone planter out front, I had no excuse. So, I cleared the only space large enough for the thing, attempted to make the pebbly soil level, and began sorting out the dozens of parts.  Everything had to be screwed together in precise order, them added to the pieces already done.  I soon learned to enlarge the screw holes as they were too small to engage the screws as made, which added days to the time.  Finally after a week, what they claimed was a one day, 2 man job, I finished.  I could hardly wait to begin unloading the old s...