My last day at Space Telescope this trip was last Wednesday. After that were days I didn’t usually work anyway. That’s because when I came back to work it was part-time; Tuesday and Wednesday full eight hours, then half a day Thursday working from home, to make a twenty hour work week.

Eventually, because I had a recurring Monday afternoon web meeting with our ITSD staff, I switched the half day Thursday for a half day Monday working from home. Then I’m off until the following Monday.

But Monday was a work from home day. So yesterday didn’t really feel like being retired, even though I didn’t need to do the web meeting, and could not anyway because I turned in my equipment last Wednesday. The short wave radio is sitting on my desk where the office laptop used to. Yesterday I’d been retired for five days but it didn’t really feel like it. For the past two years Tuesday was the first day of the week that I needed to be in the office and put in a full day.

And…it’s Tuesday…and I don’t need to be anywhere.

The awareness begins settling in; that strange feeling…like I’m a kid again and school’s out and I have the whole summer ahead of me.

“Oh that magic feeling nowhere to go…” Actually, I need to go to the hardware store…