USMB Coffee Shop IV

[gallantwarrior]

I am about to embark on retirement. I've been to the circus, I saw the elephant and I contacted my retirement service (OPERS) today. What a relief!

For the past three years my health has become a concern. My energy levels are low and climbing stairs into an attic or crawling through a crawl space has become a source of exhaustio. I'm not complaining nor am I seeking sympathy. It's a fact of life that after suffering through diabetes and a sluggish thyroid, Father Time is sending me signals that my line of work was cut out for a much fitter, younger man.

So, there it is. Money is not a worry as I am single and, with the exception of groomers and vet bills, I have no dependents. I have travelled extensively with my work visiting Europe on a few occasions as well as becoming intimately familiar with every major city on the east coast. I had a project in Puerto Rico where I lived for a year and a half. I'm ready to settle down.

Settle down and write. Compile the stories I have unraveled here for you, write memoirs of my adventures, embellishing them with love and laughter. That's something I've wanted to do for quite some time.

Remember the old TV show The Waltons? John Boy wanted to be a writer and I shared his ambitions long before I ever saw Richard Thomas and Ralph Waite play out those ambitions on Tuesday nights.

Now I have the time and means and motivation to pursue those latent ambitions.

I'm feeling that urge, too, NoSmo. Climbing, crawling, lifting are all becoming increasingly tedious. I'm looking at winding down the next 2-3 years and getting things set up for my little farm. After the truck is paid off, I'm "retiring", too. Even though I've been offered that full-time professorship at the Uni again (the guy they hired instead of me lasted two semesters and one winter), I just don't feel the gumption needed to start another career.
Good luck on your new endeavor. It will no doubt be a big life change, may your writing bring you great joy and satisfaction.

 

[Nosmo King]

Happy belated birthday Esther!!

Happy birthday CeeCee!! Yer 88 years old???? Noooo! You "sound" 50ish!

I would say 39ish. I prefer to celebrate my 39th birthday every year.

You and Jack Benny!

 

[Nosmo King]

I've taken to a certain app on my iPad lately. Old radio broadcasts. Fibber Magee & Molly, Fred Allen, Lux Radio Theater.

I was born at the threshold of television and never got to hear those old radio shows. I put them on, use my Bluetooth sound bar in the bedroom to amplify and enhance the sound and blissfully listen to Fibber open his closet and Jack Benny driving his Maxwell.

The incredible thing to me about this experience is both the similarities and the vast differences between my radio listening and that of my sainted relatives. No doubt we both enjoy the antics of Allen's Alley and The Bickersons. But here I lay in my queen size bed fitted out with a plush pillow top mattress and an iPad on my lap. I can't use Johnson's Wax or smoke Lucky Strikes (LSMFT). But commercials selling J-E-L-L-O come across the wide wide world of the Internet.

My relatives drove Hudsons and Studebakers fitted out with clutches and manual transmissions. They stoked coal furnaces in the winter and pushed reel lawn mowers in the summer. I drive an air conditioned car, tell my robotic overlord Alexa to turn up the heat from the high efficiency gas furnace and mow the lawn by means of an electric mower.

How my life is different from theirs. Uncle Alex (pronounced Elec) was the stereotypical Scotsman. He lived more than frugally. His lifestyle was practically monastic compared to the life Mom and Pop and our family lived. We had him over on the holidays and could hear him mumbling about the cable television service we enjoyed.

"Why are you paying for TV when it comes through the air for free?" He also wondered why Mom had an automatic washing machine and a dryer. Elec made due with a wringer washer and cables strung along the joists of the basement in order to air dry his laundry.

The linoleum, that's right linoleum not vinyl sheet flooring, on his kitchen floor was worn so thin that the jute backing was visible at the high traffic areas. His suite of living room furniture was bought down at Smith and Phillips at Fourth and Washington back in 1923.

When Uncle Elec died in 2001, Pop and I drove the six blocks from the Big House to Elec's on Fisher Avenue to clean the place up and search for vital papers needed to settle his estate. Elec was the past president of every Masonic organization known to Free Masonry. And, as such, he owned three tuxedos. I cleaned the pockets of his tuxes of all the Sweet and Low packets and Lance's Captain's Wafers he pilfered from banquets over the years. I found a banquet ticket in one pair of trousers from an affair he attended in Chicago in 1962. Forty odd years before his passing. Why he never thought to have his tuxedo dry cleaned in forty years, I could not say.

Elec kept everything. A forty eight star flag that flew over the family homestead on St. George Street during the war, paint by numbers pictures my late Aunt Helen painted, a stock of Campbell's baked beans lacking the now familiar bar codes.

When his estate cashed out, he named 19 heirs that each inherited and equal portion of his holdings. They totaled 1.67 million dollars.

Yet the kitchen faucet in his house was so encrusted with mineral deposits it could not be moved to both bowls of the sink.

What would Uncle Alex think of me laying here dabbling in a past I was too young to remember? What would he think of Jack Benny on demand? Would he be proud, or astounded, or incredulous?

 

[Gracie]

W00T!!! Housemate just told me we are getting...drumroll...CABLE TV!!! In about 3 days the boxes will arrive! YAY!!

 

[Sbiker]

I am up with the foxes at 5.30 am this morning, and there is not enough light to photograph them yet. In fact I am touch typing because its too dark to see the keys properly.

Time fo feeding cows and then sleep again
Or to make web sites... I did it many times (working through the night to 7-8am), living in village and observing, when and how people working at their farms... Walking along the borders of my territory and smoking pipe like Stalin

Nothing better than rolling hills with green fields, forest and farms, and the smell that goes with it. Call me crazy but I love the smell of a farm. I guess that's why I've lived coast to coast but always came back to WI. This is home. I grew up on a farm, best years of my childhood. I loved it. If I ever won the lottery I'd buy myself a farm, or two, or TEN...

I have about 1.5 acres, where I tried to grow a garden... but now I cannot combine living in village with job.. Maybe some years later...

 

[CeeCee]

I thought you said you turned 88 today?
Sorry..kinda confusing day here, lol. Did you edit?

Ha ha...the temp was 88...I'm 66.

 

[CeeCee]

Good morning...86 today...the temperature not my age Gracie

Can't wait til winter again and I might be 50! Haha.

Hope everyone's day is a good one.

 

[Dajjal]

I am up with the foxes at 5.30 am this morning, and there is not enough light to photograph them yet. In fact I am touch typing because its too dark to see the keys properly.

You touch type well. Not a single typo.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

I typed that sentence which contains all the letters of the keyboard without looking, and made no mistakes

 

[saveliberty]

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

I typed that sentence which contains all the letters of the keyboard without looking, and made no mistakes

I used copy and paste, no mistakes either.

 

[saveliberty]

W00T!!! Housemate just told me we are getting...drumroll...CABLE TV!!! In about 3 days the boxes will arrive! YAY!!

I regret you becoming a TV zombie.

 

[Foxfyre]

W00T!!! Housemate just told me we are getting...drumroll...CABLE TV!!! In about 3 days the boxes will arrive! YAY!!

I regret you becoming a TV zombie.

Hey! I resemble that remark. Us TV zombies are people too yanno.

 

[saveliberty]

W00T!!! Housemate just told me we are getting...drumroll...CABLE TV!!! In about 3 days the boxes will arrive! YAY!!

I regret you becoming a TV zombie.

Hey! I resemble that remark. Us TV zombies are people too yanno.

I am a cat, you don't think I see the difference?

 

[CeeCee]

What's even worse is paying for 200 channels and not watching anything except reruns of Big Bang Theory to fall asleep on...I record them.

My contract with them should be over soon..I think and then I'm cancelling TV...that was my plan before the current contact I have with Direct TV.

I was paying $188 a month for the AT&T Uverse bundle...was going to cancel the tv part but they talked me into switching to Direct for my TV...so for two years I'm paying about $135 for the same thing I paid $188 for and that's even too much.

 

[SixFoot]

 

[Foxfyre]

What's even worse is paying for 200 channels and not watching anything except reruns of Big Bang Theory to fall asleep on...I record them.

My contract with them should be over soon..I think and then I'm cancelling TV...that was my plan before the current contact I have with Direct TV.

I was paying $188 a month for the AT&T Uverse bundle...was going to cancel the tv part but they talked me into switching to Direct for my TV...so for two years I'm paying about $135 for the same thing I paid $188 for and that's even too much.

I hear that. We have 800 channels with Comcast and watch maybe 3 or 4 of those on any kind of regular basis and maybe a total of 20 during the year. I would sure love a cable service that would allow us to choose up to say 30 channels that we wanted access to and pay only for those.

 

[CeeCee]

What's even worse is paying for 200 channels and not watching anything except reruns of Big Bang Theory to fall asleep on...I record them.

My contract with them should be over soon..I think and then I'm cancelling TV...that was my plan before the current contact I have with Direct TV.

I was paying $188 a month for the AT&T Uverse bundle...was going to cancel the tv part but they talked me into switching to Direct for my TV...so for two years I'm paying about $135 for the same thing I paid $188 for and that's even too much.

I hear that. We have 800 channels with Comcast and watch maybe 3 or 4 of those on any kind of regular basis and maybe a total of 20 during the year. I would sure love a cable service that would allow us to choose up to say 30 channels that we wanted access to and pay only for those.

Yep...they have it all figured out so that you have to choose the higher priced plan to get the few channels you want.

I like tbs and of course that's in the 200 plan.

CROOKS!?..all of them!

 

[Gracie]

we got the basic plan....140 channels. We are paying 50 bucks for it...25 bucks for housemate, 25 for us. They were charging him extra for data usage since all we have is internet. So for 50 bucks to go to cable..it seemed better. I miss the food channel and cooking shows.

 

[Gracie]

What's even worse is paying for 200 channels and not watching anything except reruns of Big Bang Theory to fall asleep on...I record them.

My contract with them should be over soon..I think and then I'm cancelling TV...that was my plan before the current contact I have with Direct TV.

I was paying $188 a month for the AT&T Uverse bundle...was going to cancel the tv part but they talked me into switching to Direct for my TV...so for two years I'm paying about $135 for the same thing I paid $188 for and that's even too much.

I hear that. We have 800 channels with Comcast and watch maybe 3 or 4 of those on any kind of regular basis and maybe a total of 20 during the year. I would sure love a cable service that would allow us to choose up to say 30 channels that we wanted access to and pay only for those.

There is SlingTV, but it sucks. Always pops off for about an hour, and very limited on what you can watch.

 

[Gracie]

I've been without live news, food channel, walking dead, etc since October of last year. I need to feel normal again. Cable will feel normal. Well, minus the sports channels, mexican channels, etc.

 

[Foxfyre]

What's even worse is paying for 200 channels and not watching anything except reruns of Big Bang Theory to fall asleep on...I record them.

My contract with them should be over soon..I think and then I'm cancelling TV...that was my plan before the current contact I have with Direct TV.

I was paying $188 a month for the AT&T Uverse bundle...was going to cancel the tv part but they talked me into switching to Direct for my TV...so for two years I'm paying about $135 for the same thing I paid $188 for and that's even too much.

I hear that. We have 800 channels with Comcast and watch maybe 3 or 4 of those on any kind of regular basis and maybe a total of 20 during the year. I would sure love a cable service that would allow us to choose up to say 30 channels that we wanted access to and pay only for those.

Yep...they have it all figured out so that you have to choose the higher priced plan to get the few channels you want.

I like tbs and of course that's in the 200 plan.

CROOKS!?..all of them!

We want cable news and the four primary free networks because they all have at least one of our favorite programs: "Survivor" "Amazing Race" "The Voice" "Dancing With the Stars", "Hell's Kitchen", "Master Chef" plus some sports and such.

And we want our Mountain West sports channel so we can watch the Lobos play. Others we enjoy from time to time include the special productions on PBS, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Turner Classic Movies, ME TV (local channel with non stop golden oldies), the History Channel, the Food Network, ESPN, Cspan, and a few others. On demand television and movies are nice but I could live without that. I really REALLY love having the capability of recording programs to save to watch later.