Our Spring Trip to Southwestern Utah As our friends from Minnesota would attest, the winter of 2021/2022 has been long. Too long. So, to celebrate our 60th birthdays in June, sister-in-law Liz and I planned a trip (with spouses) to southwestern Utah to (a) escape to some warmer weather and (b) enjoy some hiking and […]
Author: Gary C
Reflections – Three Months In
Good day, everyone! It’s been a while since I logged a blog entry. To be honest, I haven’t felt compelled to add another entry until this morning. This lack of motivation could have been due to a variety of things, including I’ve been busy with other things, I didn’t feel I had much to add, […]
Le-French Pig – Kitchen Charcuterie
Another Get-a-Life Tree Activity This past weekend began on Friday at 11 a.m. when I logged onto a Zoom workshop hosted by Kate Hill. It was to be the beginning of nearly 8 hours of “making basic French cured meats at home … using primarily pork.” During the workshop, comprised of two hours on Friday, […]
Reflections – Two Months In
Good day, everyone! Two months have now passed since I became a full-time connoisseur of life. Besides the activities discussed in prior posts, our trip to Sweden to visit our youngest daughter game me the chance to dive into more books and podcasts related to retirement. Most interestingly, I stumbled upon the writings of Arthur […]
Salmon Lox
A Get-a-Life Activity When we drove back from MSP to our home last Wednesday, we stopped at Moreys Fish Market in Motley, MN. We purchased some catfish (which became fish tacos – recipe below), some smoked trout, and two pounds of sockeye salmon. I bought the salmon so I could try a new Salmon Lox […]
My Swedish Valentine
Our youngest daughter moved to Stockholm, Sweden in mid-2021 for a job with a video game publisher. We first made plans to visit her in July of that year, only to have our plans thwarted by the Delta variant of COVID. We were forced to cancel our trip, much to the dismay of our daughter […]
Happy, Wild, and Free!
Good day, my friends! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything to the blog. I have learned that you need to write when the mood hits you. It is not something that can be easily forced. Well, today it is AGAIN below zero degrees outside and the mood hit me so it’s a […]
Reflections – One Month In
To begin with, one month is NOT enough time to really reflect on. Because the retirement celebrations were held the first week of January (some connecting still continues, in fact), because we’re still unpacking from moving to our home in Northern Minnesota, and due to other things that have arisen since the first of the […]
Thinking about retirement (part 2)
For this blog entry I’m going to focus on my second aspect of non-financial retirement planning: friends who helped upon the way. And by helped, I mean either supported, encouraged or introduced areas of exploration for me as I considered retirement and what it would mean for me. Peter Stathopoulos, mentioned in part 1 of […]
Thinking about retirement (part 1)
The way I think about it, there are two areas of preparation when it comes to retirement: financial and non-financial. In other words, can you afford the type of retirement you want and what you need to do to prepare for such a retirement. The financial preparation aspect gets a lot of press, in part […]