hrj

If you'd like to read the full entries from my blog's rss feed, rather than clicking though the links I post in my own account, here's what you need to do:

1. Go to the Dreamwidth feeds page: https://www.dreamwidth.org/feeds/
2. Where it says "Add Feed" and has a box for "feed url" paste in the following: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed
3. Click the "add feed" button.

Remember that I may not see comments posted on the rss feed entries, because there's no way for me to get notified of them. If you want to comment, please click through to the blog itself.

At some point in the future, I may find a way to export blogs automatically to Dreamwidth like I used to be able to do to Live Journal. But for now, this is the easiest way to read them.

ETA: Hmm, it looks like there should be an easier way to subscribe. If you go to the DW Alpennia feed page (https://alpennia-feed.dreamwidth.org) There should be a place up in the top header display that says "subscribe to this feed". If this works for someone, could you post a note here to confirm?

ETA (2018/04/16): I feel like I should note explicitly that I'm not regularly posting links to my Alpennia blog in this account. So if you're using Dreamwidth to follow my blogging, please use the RSS feed as detailed above. I sometimes post things here that are too informal or more personal than I want to put on the Alpennia website, so there will still be occasional content.

ETA (2020/04/15): Revised notional date to keep this at the top of the feed.

ETA (2025/04/15): One again revised the notional date to keep this pinned to the top of the feed.

I finally tackled cleaning up the smallish patio. ("Patio" by virtue of having a concrete floor and a roof, though otherwise it's just a space behind the garage.) Standard distribution patterns of yard debris mean that winter deposits a layer of dead leaves, and my inattention to the calendar means that I never remember to put a winter dust-cover on the grill and smoker, so they need to get a thorough wash-down, as do the shelves and the patio furniture.

But a couple of work sessions took care of all those factors and earlier this week a fired up the grill just for the heck of it. (Corn on the cob, grilled eggplant from the garden, grilled lamb chops marinated in lemon juice.) It's one of those pieces of equipment where my desire to own it seriously overwhelms the actual amount I use it. (I own it for the fantasy life in which I have friends over regularly.)

Next job is cleaning out the fuel feed of the smoker (which I made the mistake of not emptying at the end of the season). Maybe it's baked enough that the pellets have un-concreted. I previously made a stab at disassembling it to clean out the stuck pellets, but balked at how much disassembly that seemed to require.

As you may know, a year ago I invested in a fancy (expensive) recumbent tricycle to support my bicycling habit in the face of the awkwardness sometimes falling over at stops due to the mild nerve damage in my right leg. So yesterday I'd made an appointment to get it an annual tune-up (plus replacing a part that needed fixing) and since the specialty bike shop is in Sacramento, this meant dropping it off in the morning then finding something to do while they worked on it.

I had no idea how long this might take (since it would depend on whether they got walk-in customers) but I figured I'd start with a romance bookstore in downtown Sac that I'd found on a list of such things, and then see where things went from there.

I also took the opportunity to contact some friends in town that I usually only see at conventions and arrange to meet for dinner.

The day started earlier than usual, having volunteered to drop Denise off at her colonoscopy appointment, but that was balanced by my refusal to take the suggestion of my map app of what appeared to be a ridiculous diversion off I-80...and ending up in about 30 miles of slow traffic due to construction. Dropped off the bike, then had to kill half an hour before the bookstore opened and found a cute litle patisserie nearby which served for breakfast.

The bookstore was a perfectly nice indie shop in a space they could easily fill more fully. It's divided into three "shops" on different floors, thought it's all the same establishment, with the romance shop being one floor. (Three narrow stories, but lots of open space.) It was the sort of place that works well if you want to buy books but don't have specific titles you're looking for: a combination of new releases and the sorts of older classics that can be guaranteed to sell regularly.

As usual, the romance section--though plentiful--was extremely thin on the sorts of titles I'm interested in, and I didn't find anything to buy, though I did pick up a newish Malinda Lo from the YA shelves elsewhere in the store. I chatted a bit with the proprietor and he noted that they get their biggest boost from author events.

While shopping, the bike folks called to say they were already done, so I picked it up and then had several hours to fill before dinner. So I found a park with shade and grass and I relaxed and read. Yes, people, I *can* just laze around doing nothing when I choose.

Dinner was a fairly standard (but delicious) Greek place. We chatted about books and publishing and careers and whatnot. Then back home and falling into bed.

I'm still in the phase of "settling into a retirement rhythm" and working on good habits, but it's feeling more settled now. Less of the background radiation of anxiety now that the money stuff is in place. I even looked at my "special expenditures" projection and decided to get a hotel room for BayCon after all. (Commuting is cheaper than a room, but more exhausting, and it was going to make participating in the first online WSFS business meeting very complicated.) It's probably too late to try to pick up a roommate, though.

The "activity category tracking" spreadsheet is being useful, not only as a gamified incentive to Get Things Done, but as a reminder not to get too focused on any one topic. I'm up to 13 categories and generally do something in 5-9 of them on any given day. But it's ok to take days off when I'm down to 2 or 3, and it's fun (but not required) to hit all 13, which I've done twice. The most regular activities are exercise, working on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project (overlaps 3 categories: reading, writing, and promotion), reading for fun, housework, yardwork, and somewhat surprisingly, socializing (though having a calendar full of conferences and conventions has helped with that). The categories I've hit least are "do art" (which is primarily being checked off when I do embroidery during zoom meetings) and "do music" (which should be easier to check off since currently it's limited to "play through one etude on the flute and stop when my chin cramps up").

To the extent that I have a template for the day (for days when I have nothing else on the calendar), it ideally goes something like this:
* work on fiction over breakfast
* post the current LHMP blog and publicize it
* bike ride
* mid-ride, stop at a coffee shop and do some reading/note-taking for the LHMP
* on returning home, before showering, do yard work
* relax a bit with some fun reading (lunch optional)
* do some Medieval Welsh translation
* housework/household-organization
* write up the day's LHMP notes (alternately, work on the next podcast script)
* play music
* dinner & tv
* work on some sort of data organization project with tv in the background
If I hit all those, that only leaves "do art" and "socialize". Socializing is largely dependent on things outside the formal structure.

Mind you, I rarely actually do all of the above on a given day. But having a default template makes it more likely that I'll come close.

I'm making good progress on the current fiction project: the Skinsingers collection. I have one more specialized proofreading pass to do, then I need to decide whether I think it needs an outside proofreader as well. After that, I'll start working on learning the D2D system. I should search around to see if someone has come up with some handy templates for "this is the standard front/back matter for different types of books." Mostly I'm looking at books I have on my shelves. But then there are e-book specific questions like "in a print book, the publication history of the stories in the collection generally come next to the copyright page, but in an e-book the practice seems to be to put most extraneous matter at the end." Can I format the two differently? Do I want to, or do I want consistency?

The plan is to launch at Worldcon, but have it ready enough in advance to get some pre-publicity out. Though I'm not planning a significant publicity campaign for this "test book," just a chance to limber up the muscles.

One of the things I treated myself to in retirement was a lifetime National Park Pass (because of the senior discount). Which, of course, is only useful if I actually use it. I've been thinking about getting back to doing the occasional short car-camping trip. (Short enough to leave the cats to their own devices, so mostly fairly local. But with some light cat-checkup I could get as far as Crater Lake.)

First step will be to pull out all the camping gear to check that it's clean and in good working order. I have a set-up for the back of the Element with an elevated platform bed with gear stowed underneath. I can take a bicycle, but not the recumbent (which is a good argument for keeping the fold-up Brompton).

At one point I bought a pop-up so that I can set up a larger "living space" off the back of the vehicle, which I haven't ever used yet. So I need to do a test set-up. My plan is to use some of the canvas from my old pavilion to create walls for it, so that I can use it for changing. (Changing clothes while wriggling around in a sleeping bag is for the young and flexible.) So I need to do that.

And then, of course, there's the issue of scheduling reservations, though mid-week availability will help there, I imagine. I haven't found a similar program for state parks -- there's a senior discount program, but it isn't as generous. But state parks are more numerous, of course.

I was out deadheading the roses today when I noticed a few late-emerging artichoke heads--I thought the season was well over! That's something to note in my garden calendar. The garden calendar is a long-term project to track when various things typically come ripe and how long their season is. One reason is for the "blink and you'll miss it" crops. The other reason is so I can be mentally prepared when it comes time to do serious harvest processing. I mean, not that it's helped to know that the Seville oranges come ripe around the New Year, since I often haven't had time in January to do things with them. (This year I finally harvested the last bushel in May, which wasn't optimal in terms of quality.)

The other crop that's currently delighting me is the blueberries. Combining the fact that blueberries ripen individually rather than all at once, plus the fact that I deliberately planted varieties with a range of harvest seasons, I could well have a steady supply of about a cup every week for the entire summer. Last year they weren't entirely happy for unclear reasons, but this year they're going great guns.

The tomatoes are setting but none are coming ripe quite yet, which the calendar says is typical. It should be a good season, though. I'm trying a different irrigation method this year--soaker hose that loops around the bed, rather than the oscillating sprinkler. I've spinkled radish and onion seeds along the line of the soaker and I'm getting a steady supply of the former for my salads.

I've spotted two apricots. Not ripe yet, but they should be in a couple of weeks, if some critter doesn't get them first. They're on a very low branch. Maybe I should do something to try to protect them. The cherries will ripen sometime this month, based on past results. The calendar says that the plums will come in July.

So I've probably already mentioned (many many times) that one of my strategies for leading a balanced and productive retirement has been to identify a variety of "activity categories" and aim to do something in multiple categories each day, as well as aiming to do something in each category on a regular basis. That is, I don't have to hit every category every day, but I should rotate through them and get good coverage.

Today is the first day that I hit all 12 categories. I may at some point add more categories, but these are broad enough to cover almost everything. So what does that look like?

Got up around 6am (which seems to be what my body wants to do at the moment). Light breakfast and post about the podcast on social media {Category=Promotion}, then completed revisions on Skinsinger story #3 {Category=Fiction writing}.

Went out on a bike ride {Category=Exercise} and paused at the turn-around point to have coffee and read/annotate a chapter of my current LHMP book. {Category=Read for LHMP} Divert the end of the bike ride to set up the gym account that I get as part of my Medicare Advantage plan.

Shower and decompress for a bit, reading the current hard-copy novel (as opposed to the current audiobook). {Category=Fun reading} Then do a page of Medieval Welsh translation. {Category=Language} Type up the LHMP notes. {Category=Writing for LHMP} Then work on the "What is a Related Work Anyway?" background research. {Category=Writing organization/research}

Do a deep-clean of the bedroom. {Category=Housework/organization} Start dinner simmering (not a category). Do a session of weedwacking in the backyard. {Category=Yardwork}

At this point, knowing that I had a zoom date in the evening {Category=Socializing}, I wanted to push through and hit the last item {Category=Play Music}, so I put together my flute (which I haven't touched in a decade or so) and started some scales. The fingers were willing, but the embouchure was weak. This is going to take some work. (The higher priority is replacing a harp string and getting it into tune, but ticking the box with the flute was easier.)

So now I have dinner almost ready and at least a couple entirely free hours before bedtime. I know this all sounds really busy, and I'm serious that I don't have to hit every category every day. But it was fun to manage it at least once in my first month.

I worked on some fiction this morning. Nothing new, but I'm doing light revisions on my skinsinger stories so I can self-publish a collection (with one new story). I completed story #1 (of 7) today, mostly fixing some consistency and continuity issues of the sort that arise when you write seven related stories over the course of twenty years and had no overall plan at the beginning.

Yesterday I did a Berkeley Bowl grocery run and met up with former co-workers for lunch. Yesterday was also the start of the Rodent Mitigation in my crawlspace and attic. They were supposed to do more of it today but were having issues with the Giant Rodent Dropping Vacuum that needed to get sorted out. Unfortunately, this meant I hung around the house all day waiting for them to maybe show up and didn't get the final "not until tomorrow" until 4pm.

I finally got around to looking into the gym membership thing I get with my Kaiser Medicare Advantage. One of the member gyms is the Planet Fitness that I used for a while pre-Covid through Bayer's fitness plan, but there are a couple other possibilities within a similar distance. Biking is good for cardio, but I'd like to get back to some weight training too.

Started the day by biking down to Walnut Creek for some routine lab work. Dropped by Brioche de Paris for breakfast afterward combined with LHMP reading/note-taking. (My plan to reduce my "eating out expenditures" is being stymied by my current routine of doing LHMP reading in coffee shops. I'm not beating myself up about it, since I also combine it with my bike ride.) Texted the former co-workers to see if anyone wanted to meet up for lunch when I pop over to Berkeley Bowl tomorrow (since Wednesday is their on-site day).

When I brainstormed about how to structure my days in retirement, I came up with the idea of having a list of "activity categories" where I would try to regularly check off a certain number of different categories each day. (The point is the doing, not the checking off.) Most of them are things I'd been doing previously, though not on a close-to-every-day basis, like exercise, yard work, housework, LHMP reading, LHMP blogging, etc. But I added three categories for activities that had largely fallen off my routine: writing fiction (duh!), playing music, and--after some thought--working in non-English languages.

I'm still working on getting the first two into my routines, but yesterday I pulled out a Medieval Welsh text that I haven't previously translated (Owein) and started working through it. It helps that editions of Medieval Welsh texts generally have a glossary at the end, so in the event I don't know a word, I don't have to be going back and forth with a dictionary. But I was a bit surprised at how few items I had to check.

My current process is to copy out the original on every third line of a ruled notebook, take notes for vocab I had to look up, or verb forms I needed to work out on the second line, and write my translation on the third line. Out of two notebook pages, there were four words I didn't know, three I checked but had remembered correctly, and one verb form I needed to look up. There's also a passage where I know all the words, but I'm still working on the overall sense.

It helps that I'm intimately familiar with several of the branches of the Mabinogi, and the overall grammar and vocabulary of the medieval tales tend to be highly similar. (Also: I know the general shape of the literature.) But it was still gratifying to find that I could pretty much sight-translate 90% of the material. After I finish Owein, I want to try some poetry because I want to work up to translating a poem that doesn't appear to have an English translation published yet.

Given all the language study I've done across the decades, it's felt sad that I don't use most of it except as general background radiation. I'd like to brush up on my Latin, and I'd like to get a more formal grounding in reading French (at least academic French), which I can get the overall gist of, but don't have the grammar for.

But first, a word from our garden...

Summer squashes are always hit or miss with me. I plant at least one every year and then take what comes (or doesn't). Today I had two good sized squashes and picked one. (There's also a clump of volunteer squash in a bed I'm not actively using, but they're from seeds that were in the compost heap, so who knows what the genetics are!)

I'm getting a good handful of blueberries at least once a week and there will be a solid gooseberry crop in another month or so. The currents are taking the year off, but are healthy. Artichokes are done for the year. Tomatoes are setting but not yet ripe.

This week started off with spending a couple days at my dad's place to take him to a couple appointments and do some shopping. (My brother, who lives there, is currently waiting on cataract surgery and isn't driving.) He has other options for rides, but I want to get over there more often now that I have time, so it works out.

Wednesday the electrician came over and got all set up for replacing my electrical panel. The replacement happened in a single day on Thursday, and since I was off biking and having a routine medical check-up for the first half of the day, the lack of electricity wasn't as much of a bother. (There was a pre-appointment survey about my exercise habits, so it was a nice touch to show up sweaty in my biking clothes.)

Replacing the electrical panel meant temporarily moving the not-built-in-but-fastened-to-the-wall shelves on that wall where all my bins of fabric and crafting supplies live. So in addition to taking the opportunity to wipe down the shelves and bins, I'm also doing a sift-through of the contents. This is reminding me that when I moved in I did a fair amount of "let's just stuff this in a plastic tub and put it on a shelf."

I've been meaning to do a second round of "let's invite people over to take away things I'm not likely to use". The first round was SCA camping gear. The second round will be craft supplies. So I need to go through everything and identify what I want to keep, what I want to prioritize actually finishing, and what I'm happy to re-home. I can probably combine it with a little "come over and see if you want these books I'm getting rid of." My goal is to boil it down so that "tools and small supplies" will fit in the cabinet in the craft room, while "fabric and large supplies" go on the garage shelves. Part of that will be actually completing some projects that currently take up space.

Ticked off two more things on the retirement checklist this morning: getting copies of the two paystubs that I was still missing, and getting my official "retirement gift" from the attaboy catalog. As usual, the catalog offerings were mostly either "already have one" or "no use for this" but in the end I settled on a wet/dry shop vac. You know, in the event that I ever get back to doing carpentry projects or whatnot. After you pick your primary gift, they roll you over into the gift card section, where you pick gift cards until you run out of remaining balance. So I currently have $250 worth of gift cards for Black Angus Steakhouse that I will be looking for a special occasion to use.

Most of the IRA activity is complete -- I have confirmation and documents for one of the annuities and for the managed fund (the "pretend this doesn't exist for now" fund). I should get the confirmation and paperwork for the other annuity shortly. I've updated my budget projections spreadsheet and concluded that the annuities are probably over-deducting for taxes, but I think I'll let it ride for now. This year is going to be completely weird for income taxes and I'd rather get a refund than have to pay. Next year I can fine tune things, and the year after that I should be able to predict fairly precisely.

Oh, and still waiting on Social Security to come through. I think on Friday I'll do another round of sitting on the phone to check in. (I check the website almost every day, on the chance that an approval will show up there before I get it in the mail.)

In the mean time, I'm continuing with an overstuffed calendar. Mon/Tues in Stockton to run medical errands for my dad. This morning recording an interview for the podcast, then working with the electrician who will be re-doing my electrical panel. In a couple hours I'll do a guest appearance by zoom for a college class that read one of my books. Tomorrow the electrician starts and completes the panel work, mostly while I'm out of the house for a combined bike ride and routine medical check-up. (I figure since they sent me a pre-work questionnaire about my exercise, I'll properly impress them if I show up in my bike togs all sweaty.) Online Wiscon is this weekend, then Monday the HVAC folks come to do my annual maintenance. And then I have nothing extra scheduled for a week and a half before the Nebula conference (which I'm attending virtually). June is pretty empty at this point, but the way things have been going, who knows?

Just to acknowledge that I'm not always as smart as I think I am...

While going over things with my Fidelity Guy, I discovered that I overpaid on my taxes the last three years. This came up because I was certain that some of the money that went into my 401K was above the pre-tax limit and therefor needed to get rolled into a Roth IRA, not a regular IRA. Except they couldn't find any evidence that I'd made any above-limit contributions.

Why was I so certain that I had? Because there was this section in the tax instructions for Additional Income where I (mis)read my W2 as indicating that I'd contributed more than the limit. So being a good, law-abiding person, I plugged in the numbers and added it to my taxable income. Except it turns out the numbers I misread as overage were actually non-taxable contributions to my employee-provided health and insurance coverage.

So I need to do corrected tax returns for 2022-2024 and get some money back. I don't mind the paperwork. I just hate losing my pride in being tax-savvy. (Please, no advice required on this point.)

Today I had a long, productive session with my Fidelity Guy. We rolled over my 401K into an IRA, then set up 4 different instruments to move the money into. I'm putting about half my money into two different types of annuity which, together with my Social Security (still waiting for approval) should cover my current monthly budget (which includes allowances for "special topics" and adding to my emergencies fund). Most of the rest goes into a managed investment fund that shouldn't need to be touched currently. Then a small chunk goes into a cash account that will be available for "topping off" my checking account, if necessary, to keep it at my safety target.

Let me explain "safety target". Currently my "ordinary" credit union accounts (i.e., separate from my IRA funds) include:

* A "pretend this doesn't exist" savings that is for major unexpected costs.

* A couple of smallish IRA accounts from previous jobs that are functionally part of my "pretend this doesn't exist" money.

* My "saving for special projects/trips" savings account. The plan is to have a "safety threshold" that it shouldn't get below, so the target is to keep it at "safety threshold + known projected special project costs". For example, for Worldcon the projected costs include transportation, hotel, and food budget (higher per diem than when eating at home). My planning spreadsheet includes the next year's worth of special projects with estimates of cost. When things settle out, the idea is that if I add a future special project I block out the projected cost and need to make sure I save for it.

* My checking account. This is where routine expenses come from. It also has a "safety threshold" that it shouldn't fall below. Right now, I dumped all my "extra payout" funds (bonus, vacation payout) because I need to be able to work from it until I have the Social Security and annuity money coming in. (The annuity payouts don't start until July. The Social Security will include back-pay back to February when it gets approved, but in the mean time I'm working from my existing balance.)

The take-home lesson for those of you thinking about retirement planning, is that when they say you should have X months of cash in the bank, that includes because there may be a gap between stopping your paycheck and starting drawing from your retirement funds. It really really helped for my peace of mind to get a big bonus check and a big vacation payout right around my retirement date.

And how does retirement feel? Well, I've been back from Kalamazoo for 3 days now and each day has felt like one of those weekend days when I'm running around getting things done that I don't have time for on working days. Still working on the daily routine, but so far the constants have been a bike ride, reading/writing for the blog/podcast, yard work, and housework/organization. Which leaves me fairly tired at the end of the day, but I've been trying to avoid going to bed early because somehow I've started waking up around 5am and I simply don't feel like getting out of bed that early.

I think the rest of May will play out similarly. I have non-routine events scheduled almost every day for the next week and a half. No chance to feel at loose ends yet.

My Amtrak experience (to Kalamazoo) has been fun and interesting...and I'm ready to be home now. Although we're just about to go through the Sierras and I'll be in the dining car for that, which has great views.

The train was delightfully on time heading east -- in fact, we got into Chicago early enough that I could change to an earlier Kalamazoo train and be on the same one as Lauri (though she was in Business so we couldn't sit together). Heading west, we had a 6 hour hold-up in Salt Lake City due to police action on the tracks (rumor mill says something about a shooting). So here we are in Reno around the time that we were originally supposed to be arriving in the Bay Area.

Kalamazoo was fun, as always. I may jot down some thoughts on the sessions in my Alpennia blog when I have some brain back. (Train travel doesn't drain my brain as bad as airplanes do. I've gotten a bunch of reading/note-taking for the LHMP blog, polished the script for the next podcast, worked on data transcription for my "what do fans think is a Related Work anyway?" paper. Didn't manage to do a full clean-up of my email inbox like I'd been thinking, largely because there's no wifi and although I can tether my phone, the reception goes in and out regularly.

Part of the fun of being a sleeper-car passenger on Amtrak is that all meals are included and you get sorted into random dining groups to fill up the tables. Most of my meals have included fascinating conversations about where people are from, where they're going, etc. Lunch today turned into talking lesbian fiction and I sold a book and picked up a new podcast listener.

A large proportion of the sleeper-car set (i.e., people who can afford the substantial cost) seem to be retirees doing a lot of traveling, including a fair number of foreign tourists. But then there are some people who simply don't fly but are heading for family weddings and reunions and that sort of thing.

I've spent most of my non-meal time hanging out in my cubicle, which gets views almost as good as those in the Observation Car. The sleeping arrangement is about equivalent to camping in my car (i.e., questionable mattress and cramped conditions for changing) but much superior to flying.

And we're about to pull out of Reno, so I'd better post this before I lose signal.

Now that I don't have to worry about using up vacation days, I'm taking Amtrak to Kalamazoo for the medieval congress. This one time I sprang for a "roomette" (which is roughly equivalent in space and comfort to the best trans-oceanic business class seating). It would be a bit crowded if I were sharing it, since I didn't bother to check luggage, but if I were sharing it, I would have arranged my luggage so I could check my suitcase.

I enjoyed lunch (for those of us in the sleeper cars, all meals are included) with three other older single women ("single" as in traveling alone) and we had a great time sharing life stories as the train slowly climbed through the Sierras. The dinner scenery will be much more boring as we'll be in the middle of Nevada.

Either the train will be going very slowly overnight, or there's a planned lay-by, as we'll barely make it to the far side of Utah by morning. Tuesday will take us through Colorado (mountains involve rather slow travel) and then I get to sleep through Nebraska (yay) and arrive in Chicago a bit after lunchtime on Wednesday. A brief layover before catching the train to Kalamazoo.

US train travel would be a bit more viable if the trains were allowed to go faster. The winding, steep, mountain bits it makes sense to go relatively slow. But at the moment, crossing the ultra-flat, ultra-straight bits of Nevada I have no idea why we're creeping along around 30 mph.

The train does not have wifi (boo!) although the Amtrak commuter trains do. But despite the prediction by the train attendant that phone service would be spotty, I've mostly have sufficient signal to tether the laptop when I wanted to be connected.

I've pledged to enjoy the scenery as much as possible, but I've also finished the next podcast script. Also been on the SSA phone-hold three times before getting though to a human (well, ok, I got through the second time but then got cut off) and been told that the "escalate to a manager" thing I was told to do last time is a no-go but she sent an actual email to the person with my case (rather than just putting a comment in the file, as happened the last two times). The changing advice/information about next steps is frustrating, but I was calm and cheerful.

I've confirmed that my vacation pay-out is deposted in my account and was the correct amount (or at least in the ballpark of the expected amount -- I won't see the statement until it arrives by snail-mail). And the closing amount for my 401K was satisfyingly higher than the last time I checked. I've still taken a bit of a hit from the Trump economic chaos, but not as bad as it was looking in January.

(This post is intended for entertainment purposes only. Advice is not required unless you're planning to come over to my house and solve the problem without me needing to snarl at you.)

So once upon a time, I had a monitor setup with a docking station that worked perfectly for both my work pc and my personal mac. (I am addicted to my three-screen solution.)

Then they pushed a system update to my work pc and it no longer played nicely with that docking station.

So I did some research on docking stations compatible with both pc and mac and ordered one that looked ideal. Worked perfectly with the mac. Still had problems with the pc.

So work gave me a docking station identical to the ones used on site. Worked perfectly with the pc. Mac wouldn't extend to both external monitors. But I could do a workaround: If I plugged one of the external monitors directly into the second USB-C slot on the mac, then I got all my displays. There was a minor annoyance that my fancy Snowball mic only works if it is also plugged directly into a mac USB-C slot. So when I'm recording, I can only have two monitors. And when I swap the mac into the desktop, I have to unplug one monitor from the dock and plug it directly into the mac. Every single time. But you do what you have to do.

Now that the work pc is out of the picture...victory! I can go back to the docking station that worked perfectly with the mac.

Except now it doesn't. It doesn't talk to the external monitors at all. I have a vague recollection that I went through a bunch of annoyance to get it to work initially, so I suspect that if I do enough research and tweak enough settings, I can get it to do the things I want it to do.

But not today. Today I do not have the patience for that. So it's a problem for future-Heather.

On the other hand, I can now ditch the keyboard and mouse that I needed for the pc and switch entirely to the wireless mac mouse and keyboard. As soon as the keyboard finished charging (given that I haven't used it in a couple years). I've been swapping out the wired mouse for the "magic mouse" when using the mac at the docking station because the action is different enough that it's worth the trouble, but it wasn't worth the trouble to keep swapping the keyboards.

It will, however, be a while before my hand remembers that the mouse now lives on the keyboard tray, rather than on the side table (because the pc mouse needed more space).

This is it. I put in almost a full day's work today, though in theory all I had to do was turn in my laptop and badge. But I have a trainee and we spent several hours working on her third (and qualifying) investigation. Then I pitched in for some administrative work that needed a warm body entering data. I spent entirely too much time sending frantic emails to HR trying to pin down several things that I still hadn't gotten clear answers on. (Results: I didn't need a "Final Medical Evaluation", they *did* credit me with the entire year's vacation allotment for my payout, and I *think* they will be postal-mailing me my remaining paystubs. At least, this week's paystub wasn't available to me electronically when everyone else's were, so I presume they already had me switched over.)

Oh, and I got the proofs of the in-house article about my Hugo nomination for the company newsletter, approved them, and saw the resulting article on the website. (However it's the internal website, so I can't share a link. I'll put the text up on my Alpennia blog.)

And then I had a final chat with my manager, handed over my laptop, and went to Security in theory to trade my security badge for a "retiree badge" which would give me access to the company store and cafeteria. Except evidently I needed to put in an advance request for a retiree badge if I wanted to get it today. Which, of course, nobody in all my correspondence with HR had mentioned. So my (former) manager will follow up on that and presumably I'll get it eventually. (Access to the company store is very useful, if you remember that this is Bayer**, so I get big discounts on all manner of vitamins and OTC drugs.)

**While employed there, I've been rather careful about not naming my employer publicly, just to avoid having to do all the "I do not speak for my employer" stuff each time. But now that I'm retired, I figure I can lift that. (Which was only a personal policy, not a corporate one.)

Since I didn't leave site until around 4pm and then did my usual shopping at Berkeley Bowl, I was in peak commute traffic coming home. So I don't really feel retired yet, just tired. Tomorrow will just feel like another random day off. I don't think the reality will hit until I get back from Kalamazoo. Until then, I'm still in constant motion.

Only concrete progress has been setting paying my first 3 months of Medicare (after which they presumably will be paying my retirement benefits and can deduct it automatically) and sending in the paperwork for auto-paying the Kaiser add-on. Still no approval of retirement benefits. Still no exit interview appointment with the employer.

At my retirement party, everyone asked me what I'd do on my first day of retirement and the answer was, "Pack for two separate trips." But of course, me being me, I've already finished the packing. Because that's how I roll.

It's a bit fitting that my first "retirement activity" will be going to an SCA event (West Kingdom coronation). What's amusing is that of the two SCA events I've attended since I dropped out, both will have been at the same site, same event, and for the same purpose (attending a friend's peerage ceremony). Since I've given away all my camping equpment, last time I stayed at a motel. This time, what with working on reducing spending, I'll be sleeping in my vehicle (which is actually very well designed for the purpose -- I use it for regular camping on occasion).

I've been debating whether to start attending events again more regularly, if only because it would help with my "interact with people in person regularly" pledge. Site fees have really jumped since I was last active, though not unreasonably so. Still it makes it less of an impulse buy. I'll have to ponder on it. Find the things that bring me joy (which is *not* "generic SCA court culture"). And, of course, the writing will come first, in terms of time priorities.

Spending the day humming "One Day More" from Les Miserables.

My department has its weekly "everyone on site" day on Wednesdays, so yesterday was my last full on-site day. (Next Wednesday will be limited to "turn in the laptop and security badge" day.) So we held my retirement party in the afternoon and lots of people dropped by. I gave away all but one jar of the 2 dozen "Heather's Retirement Marmalade" I'd brought (which clearly was a big hit). The site head came by and we had a lovely chat which covered all the topics that I'd wanted to bring up in a one-on-one with her, so no need to schedule anything separate.

After that, I joined a multi-purpose cocktail hour at our default local bar and had a lovely time. (Past-me might be amazed to see me enjoying "getting together with co-workers for drinks." How we change.)

I've confirmed that Medicare has acknowledged my initial payment. Still need the bill from Kaiser to start my payments there (and receive the new member card). The basic-basic Kaiser Medicare Advantage plan doesn't have any additional expense, but there are a couple of options that do have a fairly minimal additional payment for extra services. I picked the one that gets me a pair of glasses every 2 years, expanded dental coverage, gym membership, and up to $60 of OTC drugs per quarter, all of which more than covers the monthly add-on. I didn't pick the option that has a somewhat larger monthly add-on that reduces co-payments, because currently I wouldn't have enough reductions to balance the cost. That may, of course, change at some point, but I can always modify the plan details later.

Still no movement on the retirement benefits, but the "follow up in 2 weeks" recommendation comes due on May 1, so I'm leaving it for now. (Other than checking the website every couple of days.)

My 401K has slowly been recovering from the asshole's tariff shit, though I'm going to end up with about 50K less than my projections were suggesting back before the election.

I still have 2 investigations to close, as well as two that my trainee is trying to close before I leave. Other than that, I'm twiddling my thumbs a lot.

Medicare Advantage (through Kaiser) is all set up. I've paid my first 3 months of Medicare B through the website, since they can't automatically deduct it from my retirement benefits until they're actually giving me retirement benefits. (Still waiting on that one.)

Sent out my retirement announcement (and celebration invite) at work. I've promised people jars of Heather's Retirement Marmalade as door prizes for as long as they last. (I made 2 dozen.)

Other than the SSA thing, all that's left is:
* last-day stuff at the job (turn in computer/badge, exit interview)
* convert 401K to IRA and select investment strategy (the exact details of which may depend on market details)

Oh, and close my last two investigations. One is in final review, the other is pending completion of some corrections.

(My "retirement checklist" also has some other items on it that aren't directly retirement related but it seemed useful to record them as official to-do items.)

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Grilling Time

A Nice Day Out

All Projects Go

Thinking About Camping

The Garden Delights Endlessly

Achivedment Unlocked

Did some writing...

Began another to-do category

The Busy-ness Continues

Almost there! Almost! (Retirement)

A Finances Addendum

More Retirement Stuff

In Training

On the way to Kalamazoo

Surely I can remember how this worked

T=0 (Retirement)

Retirement T-1 and counting

Retirement T-6 and counting

Retirement T-8 and counting