Blog draft mar 23 26

Plodding Along

After many years of living on a small income, mainly Social Security, I now have my university retirement income that had been going to my ex-wife before her recent death. Suddenly I had disposable income. A relief certainly but also a sense of future opened up.

The first thing I did was lease a new car. This would allow road trips. I used to do road trips annually, sometimes twice. That is my basic nature – following the hood ornament to new places and experiences. Of course, that purchase meant higher insurance premiums, but not gas. The new car is a hybrid and gets 35+ mile per gallon. I drive less than 300 miles per month and the car goes 430 miles on a tank, so I see the gas station rarely.

The first road trip is being planned to New Mexico and Arizona. The suspense is killing me. I’ll share how that unfolds while on the trip which starts April 25.

Other than that, I’m sitting a lot, watching a lot of YouTube videos and writing this blog. I wait out winter storm forecasts that are more alarming than actual. That’s another reason the car mileage is so low.

Let’s see, the apartment gets cleaned weekly but only because I have a caregiver that does that work and helps put away the dried laundry. She helps with grocery shopping and does windows! Yes, windows. They look great and the view is even better than I thought.

I did my taxes in February, but TurboTax has glitched them. I have to determine if the filings actually took place. I’m hoping so. Meanwhile I continue to read the bimonthly journal on Foreign Affairs. That is dense reading but helps me understand what’s going on in the world. Of course, this last issue was written before the latest war so what that means has not yet been published. I wonder how academia will view this foolish adventure.

In the meantime, I while away the days just plodding along. This is a new experience for me. So far it is boring. Maybe it will motivate me to do something new?

March 23, 2026

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