The PolyBlog

1300 days to retirement

February 4 2024

Happy Sunday. I’m doing 100-day incremental countdowns to my expected retirement date. When I started the last count at 1400, I was full of goals, thinking I would accomplish a bunch of things, mostly around writing, etc. And the increments are intended as a bit of a test drive for my future retirement.

Now, I know that when I retire, one of the first things I’m going to do is take 100 days off. A 3-month vacation where I do basically SFA. It’ll be August, Jacob may be starting school still and Andrea will be working. But as that fall kicks off, I’m going to chillax like a MF. I’m going to read, I’m going to walk, I am going to NAP like crazy.

I intend to do almost no work during that period, even though I have lots of writing projects lined up. I’m struggling if some of those writing projects will start sooner than that, juggling some stuff, but as far as I know, they’ll be lined up waiting for me to pull the trigger over the late fall and early winter.

So I wondered if I should use this first big 100-day increment to work/plan/adjust or just to chill? And the decision was almost made for me. There has been a LOT going on even without my goals.

Work is not going as smoothly as I had hoped, and I honestly don’t know what my long-term plan is for that. I’m engaged in some e-scanning with mentors, and enjoying the conversations with nothing major hanging in the balance. Planning without consequences, in many ways.

My home life has been a relative stress ball though. Jacob has had a bunch of health stuff going on over the last 4 months almost to the day since I last wrote about my 100-day plans. And with no real resolution in sight. It’s better than it was, but still not sustainable in its current form. So we continue to push.

Both Andrea and I have little room for an additional mental load. So last week, when I happened to notice at first a line on our ceiling, I didn’t really enjoy discovering that the line was actually more than a line. It was about a half-inch wide and about six to eight feet long. Obviously along a beam, directly below where we had work done on the bathroom last year. Dun dun dun.

I checked around, and sure enough, there were other areas with rippling and shifted surface tension on the drywall. It looked like obvious water damage and was even a bit spongy (albeit dry) to the touch. Well, frak. Andrea was home the next two days while I was at the office doing mentoring stuff, so she had the plumber come in. His reaction? Yep, obviously water damage from above.

Except when he started opening holes in our kitchen ceiling, there was, in fact, no water. It was exactly along a beam, where two drywall areas had overlapped. Something shifted, the tape slipped, and the line formed. I don’t know what happened to the other areas. But no water. He had to make six or seven holes to find out though, yet didn’t have to break tiles upstairs in the bathroom. Yay. So all we need is the drywall in our kitchen ceiling fixed. Do you know how much MESS that makes? A lot. Just the holes in the ceiling left a fine coating of dust everywhere. And even some in our toaster, which we haven’t figured out how to clean out yet. We’re hoping compressed air does the job.

When I focused on the “day” last time, I used today as a microcosm of the types of things I’ll do in retirement. Laundry, of course. Reading, of course. Some internet stuff, the black hole for time. And some HR work (I was coaching someone this afternoon). Followed by groceries. Just “being” without trying to push myself like I don’t have time for things.

I don’t know if it is the perfect way to celebrate the 1300-day mark or not, but it worked. I still have some stuff to do tonight that is a holdover from my week, and I’ll have to do it tonight unfortunately. I’d love to dump it to tomorrow, but I’m not retired yet. See you in 100 days (Tuesday, May 14). In the meantime, 185 weeks and 5 days to go.

Honeymoon recap 08 – Kona, Place of Refuge and boat cruise

February 3 2024

Day 8 in Hawaii started with a nice breakfast in “downtown” Kona. You can see the view from our simple hotel room, with distant cruise ships (I seem to recall they were leaving that day, not arriving), the pier going off to the left which is where we caught the lift to the submarine, a small lagoon sort of on the right halfway up which was for the hotel where the luau was, and then the back of the white and blue building to the left which is where we had breakfast, looking out over the ocean. If I recall correctly, somewhere slightly to the left is where the swimming portion starts for the Hawaii Ironman.

After breakfast, we headed South again, back towards where we went kayaking and snorkelling. There’s a site called the “Place of Refuge”, which has historical roots to people seeking political refuge there with a religious order taking care of them. However, while that in and of itself is noteworthy, I really just wanted to see the turtles.

Yes, turtles. When we were in Hilo, there were some sea turtles that swam around the bay by the hotel, which we had spotted while walking around. It seemed a bit surreal to me that these giant turtles just swam by. At the Place of Refuge, there are a lot of turtles nesting and mating in the area, so you can see them along the shore.

I know lots of people who have gone on African safaris, but I get excited just watching sea turtles. 🙂

For dinner, we drove a bit north to a small marina, and boarded a catamaran for a sunset dinner cruise. There were about 4-5 couples, I think, nothing big. And we chatted with the owners about the business. Like many in the Islands, they had originally gone to Hawaii on vacation, loved it, and eventually moved there. But, of course, they needed income, and so they decided to offer cruises. I found it a complete mystery to me, an area that I had never thought much about before, just assumed most people working in this area would “start fresh”. But just as the guy running the lava tube tour had “bought” the business, so too had this couple bought the boat and business together. Someone else started it and had it up and running, with a predictable cash flow, etc., and like any business, it could be sold to someone as a turnkey system. Which these people had done. I don’t know if they knew much about running a business like this, knew anything about boats, marine safety, weather conditions, etc.

But we had signed up for that day, so it obviously worked!

I don’t remember what we had for dinner, I remember some drinks and a bag of chips for snacks. I remember one of the other couples laying on a hammock strung across between the two runners of the catamaran. I have a vague recollection of the shape of the cabin, storage, a little kitchenette next to the helm.

But the big draw was the sunset on the water.

Part of me wishes we had a way better camera for that sunset. I think it was the first night I felt fully relaxed after the busy year up until and including the wedding. We had nowhere to be; nothing else we had to be doing. We were just chilling on a boat, sipping and noshing.

Gallery: 2008 – Honeymoon 08 – Kona, Place of Refuge, and boat cruise

February 3 2024

Kona, Place of Refuge and a boat cruise

Honeymoon recap 07 – Snorkelling and luau

February 3 2024

Day 7 in Hawaii and up to this point, we had barely done stuff in the ocean yet. Sure, we went to the hot springs near Hilo on the first day, and were around the Ocean a lot (or under, if you count the submarine), but we hadn’t really swam properly yet in the full ocean.

We headed south of Kona to a place near the Captain Cook monument, rented some kayaks, and headed across a bay. Once there, we used a simple disposable underwater camera and went snorkelling.

This first photo of the monument is NOT, as you can tell, one of our photos — it’s one of our souvenir postcards. But it shows well the general view above the surface. We parked our kayaks over to the side, as did a lot of people.

As you can see from this next photo, the bay is a bit sheltered, but not completely. We kayaked from about where the sailboats are shown docked at the bottom.

Ah, the fine art of complex photography with water still on the cover.

But we did get some shots of some of the fish…

The bottom of the ocean wasn’t exactly alive with colour, not surprising given the depth and the fact that a LOT of people come snorkelling here. I had some problems with my snorkel, and ended up almost feeling like I was being pounded against the rocks by the shore. I was trying to fix it, and some passing tourist group was yelling at me to get off the rocks. I felt like telling them to “F*** off, I’m trying to drown myself”, but I didn’t. I wasn’t there by choice, that’s for sure.

Later that night, we went to a very tourist-friendly luau at a hotel on the beach in “downtown” Kona. Yeah, it was kitsch, but well, it was our honeymoon. It was a fixed price, with free cheap pineapple juice and rum drinks. You could probably have drank a bucketful and not felt any effect of the alcohol, but it was fun, and the buffet was good. Roasted pork from the pig-in-the-ground was the highlight, of course.

They put on a full show for the tourists, making it seem like they were honouring their ancestors, of course, as most locations do. As an aside, it’s a bit interesting that some of the performers that “lead” the show actually are training to be professional actors, and isn’t a whole lot different for employment than being a character at Disney. They do their “show”, which includes both interacting in character and the performance and then disappearing back to their regular life. The highlight of the night was the fireeater although I confess I liked the early hula dance training as they explained what the hand gestures represented (casting nets, catching fish, etc.).