My good friend Duane Slocum has been out in Maryland for the past week or so and flies back sometime today or tomorrow just in time to celebrate his 72nd birthday this coming Monday. He’s been telling me he wants to stop by to see us in Pocatello sometime in June as he’s planning another road trip. So, I’ve got to put together my schedule for the month of June and send it along. Meanwhile, Duane set a goal to post a new blog entry every day this year. He’s come pretty close. At last count, he’s posted an entry 70% of the time. Sometimes his post covers more than one day, so as far as recounting his life this year, he’s probably up around 85%, if not higher. Duane substitute teaches and always draw classes with the typical, hormone driven, anxiety ridden, socially inexperienced teenagers and has developed a variety of names for them. I think it’s kind of funny, but I guess at 71.981 years of age, he’s having a hard time remembering being like that in flatter-than-a-pancake Kansas. But, he’s definitely got me beat in the blog post category!

I’ve only posted 47% of the days in this year. Plenty pitiful if you ask me. I think I’m too busy or perhaps have other things I want to do, and pretty quick it’s been a week between blog entries. Well, it’s time to change that practice. For this year I probably can’t catch up with Duane (unless he breaks his fingers and can’t type anymore), but I can definitely get above 60%…. I’ll check the stats again in a few months.

I am now somewhat more retired. The application for Social Security is now official and the first check should arrive in August. We’re meeting with a financial planner again tomorrow to see if what we’ve got in our 401k plus what we’ll receive in Social Security yields a comfortable retirement. I’m also looking at some other ways to bring in some income by building a small business on the internet. That’s been chewing up a lot of time, including attending an on-line seminar series. The seminar has been very interesting so far. It’s pretty intense … 90 minutes a day plus homework for one week followed by a week off to complete the homework, repeated 4 times. Today the time was spent on website design principles.

I was going to write about what’s upcoming. But, if I do that, I don’t have anything to write about when the day actually arrives. Stay tuned!