April 2022

I’ve now been retired for 25 months. I had originally planned to work until next year, but decided to let my grandmother have the title; she worked until she was 81. And all my friends disappeared from the 4:30 a.m. MARC train to DC and from the 3:02 northbound.

I sleep until 5 a.m. instead of 2 a.m. now. Reading, woodwork, flower and bird photography, writing, dogs, robots, Python, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and an elliptical machine consume my days. I’ve got a couple of models of artillery ordnance I keep telling myself I’ve got to start real soon now.

I occasionally visit with Karl; we eat and compare woodworking projects and are just generally friends. Now that we’re both 80, it’s nice to think our friendship has endured for 75 years.

Kathryn has retired from teaching and is working as a community college counselor, which is rather more involved than I would have ever imagined. Our daughter, Aleksandra, departed Pew Research for a federal job, still writing and editing. She and husband Greg are building a new home in Virginia where she plans to have some chickens.