Changes

I am now officially retired.  A few observations:

I had thought our house was in good shape.  Apparently, I was wrong, as it appears to be close to collapsing into a pile of sawdust, if the chores that are suddenly now in need of doing are any indication.

Of course, now that I am on a fixed income of approximately $0.00 per month, which does tend to focus your mind, we are looking at cutting our costs.  The first two items are cancelling (a) the cleaning ladies and (2) the landscaper’s monthly visit.  After this month, I will be doing the landscape maintenance, and Mrs. Dean and I are splitting the housecleaning.  Because I am a creature of routine, if not ritual, I now do the dusting, vacuuming, and mopping in precisely the same way every week.  The good news is that I need to get a few tools to keep up with the landscaping.

We have also finally buckled under and joined CostCo.  Words cannot express how much I dislike going there, but there is no doubt we are saving some good money.  I’ve also decided that my evening nightcap is really more of a habit than anything else, and cutting it out (on weekdays, at least) will not only save an embarrassingly large chunk of change, but should also lead to me losing that 5 (OK, 5 plus) pounds that I just cannot seem to shake.  Plus, I think being extra disciplined about the boozing isn’t a bad idea now that I can actually drink All. Day. Long.  Which would be bad.

So, basically, my life is now a live-action “So you are turning into your parents” commercial.

The inevitable question has been “So what are you going to do/what are your plans?”  The answer is, no plans, really, and not that much that I am planning to do yet.  I have started studying Spanish via DuoLingo, which seems to be going well.  I am already more comfortable with it than I thought, probably from being kinda around it most of my life, and also from having a surprising amount of my junior high Spanish actually stick.  I’ve bumped up the workout to nearly an hour a day.  And that’s, err, about it.

I do have a combat shotgun class scheduled for next month, so when the Narrative Liberals I work (oops, I mean, worked) with asked this question, I enjoyed telling them “Not much, really.  I will be going back for the advanced combat shotgun class after I retire, but I haven’t really scheduled anything else.”

I need to add some things to the daily routine, beyond hanging out with the dogs, of course.

A round of dry firearm practice every day would be nice.  I’m also planning to try my hand at writing fiction, but I haven’t gotten any traction there yet.  And I’ve got a few feelers out for gig work as a lawyer – what I think would work is doing temp jobs for in-house legal departments.  Incredibly, there are two firms that have this as their business model.  I’ll be joining my HOA board, with the goal of turning the HOA into a self-defense militia, and will also see about pitching in with a group that is trying to build a very nice gun range not too far from my house.

One thing that I did that turned out well was putting in an off-ramp from the job.  I was half-time since August, so I didn’t have to go in one motion from having an all-consuming job that ate every spare minute to parked on the couch surfing NetFlix.  I can highly recommend this (the off-ramp, not the Netflix binging).  It will take some time (likely months) before I’ve really got my mind right, but having a transition period was a good thing.  I spent my last month cleaning up loose ends and getting my successor oriented and squared away.  When I left, I had not one single email in my inbox, which wasn’t something I thought would be remotely possible.  Oddly, even though my last day at the office was nearly a week ago as I write this, I wouldn’t have worked since then anyway, so in some ways my schedule hasn’t even really changed yet.

The one visible change is that we got a new car – a 2022 Toyota Highlander.  They don’t put a V-6 in them after 2022, so we had to scramble to get one of the last ones. We wanted something that was better for long road trips than the FJs (which, despite their many virtues, pretty much suck at that), and I think this will do the job just fine. What a nice car – I think it has a fair amount of Lexus in it, the driver assist crap can all be turned off, and the electronic hoo-haws aren’t too intrusive.  I got a ridiculously good deal ($27K!) trading in my 2014 FJ Cruiser with 114,000 miles on it, so our cash outlay wasn’t even that bad.

What has really changed is what I was hoping for:  the relentless time pressure is fading away.

Anyhoo, Swiss wants content, Swiss gets content.  If there aren’t any hooks for the commentariat in there, well, let’s go to cocktail time!

A classic – the Sazerac.  I’ve gotten to like doing freezer cocktails when they will work (mainly, the alcohol content is high enough), so today’s recipe is for freezer Sazeracs:

6 oz.  Rye (home barrel-aged Bulleit, in my case)

6 oz. Brandy (Courvousier VSOP, which seems to hit the sweet spot of price and good enough to mix with)

1/3 oz. Pernod

18 dashes Peychaud’s

12 dashes Angostura

1 oz Dolcedi sweetener (I like it because it’s a little mellower than sugar and is lower glycemic.  For simple syrup, I would probably go with 1 ½ – 2 oz.)

Pour all ingredients into a mason jar, stir to dissolve the sweetener, put in freezer for at least a few hours.  The classic recipes, of which there are many variations, almost all call for a rinse of absinthe.  I don’t have absinthe, and Pernod’s gets you the same licorice-ish flavor.  I find the rinse also makes it hard to control how much of the flavor comes through, so I just measure a wee dram directly into the cocktail.  Garnish with lemon twist (I’m told – we haven’t had any actual lemons in the house recently so I haven’t garnished).  As always, adjust proportions to taste.

One of the nice things about freezer cocktails is you can serve them straight up, no rocks.  I still like an ice cube in mine, because otherwise I want to drink it faster as it warms up. With a mega-cube in a double-walled glass, I find that my daily cocktail lasts me about an hour and a half, and the freezer cocktails barely put a dent in the cube.