Today begins my last week before second retirement. My last day being this Wednesday, the end of the month of September.  I’ll have a bunch of stuff to take care of finance-wise, but mostly I’ll be getting ready to spend some time with my brother and that side of my family in California.

This one feels a little different and I can’t quite put my finger on why, other than I’ve been down this road before. It’ll be nice to have 100 percent of my time to myself, instead of having to keep to a clock, and I think this time I can manage that better. I’ve been “downsizing” Casa del Garrett for a few months now and I think I have the essential kruft removed. Come October 1 I’ll start bringing in the summer solar garden lights and getting the Halloween stuff ready. I’ll have a good idea then of how many storage containers I need to keep on hand and I’ll take the rest to recycling. Then I can repack the storage area under the basement steps and that should open up a lot of free space in the house.

The next big step is to sort though my big library and decide what to keep and what to donate. Then I go through all the shirts in my closet and do the same. At this age there is a bunch of stuff I just don’t need to keep and deciding which is what is likely to be an ongoing process for the next year or so.

No more Disney trips…at least not apart from using the DVC points I got regrettably talked back into buying. First chance I get I’m selling those. I let both annual passes expire…I’ll go into that more later…but I’m just not feeling the magic anymore. Disney Corp is just getting way too greedy now. Not that they weren’t about the money before (“What does Mickey Mouse eat?”  Yes…yes…I know…), but at least they used to be all about the magic too and now it seems like they don’t care about that anymore. Probably keep my subscription to Disney+ though…at least until I see how they treat Nico in this coming 3rd season of Percy Jackson. I saw a video post alleging that in this season they’re diverging from the book (again) to make Nico have more time and tell more of his story at Camp Half Blood while Percy is away fighting titans. Comments on that post were ecstatic about the possibility that they might show the first meeting between Nico and Will. That would be Excellent!

This weekend is another, probably last visit for a long, Long time to Greensburg and the Historical Society. They’re having a talk with a man (in his 90s now) who signed the memory book of my maternal grandfather’s funeral service and I want to ask him how well he remembers him. My maternal grandfather played a major role in the life I have now, and getting the job I did at Space Telescope, and yet I never got to know him since he died almost a decade before I was born.