The Year So Far

Yeah, I know, it's been more than a year since I posted. Guilty as charged. Rather than try to come up with some lame excuse as to why I haven't posted in so long, let's just move on to the present, shall we?

2019 has so far proven to be quite a bit more than I expected it to be. It's only half over and so far it's been filled with more pleasant surprises and disappointments than I counted on, but then again we really don't know what to expect from life, do we? Hell, if we knew what was coming next life would be boring as hell. But at least I can say that the past 6 months have been interesting, that's for sure.

January and February were fairly routine with nothing other than my 62nd birthday happening in January. March, on the other hand, is when it all started.

March started off with my family celebrating my father's 90th birthday and my mother's 88th birthday. Words cannot express how very happy I am that I still have my parents in my life, and I cherish each visit with them. Got one coming up this coming weekend, actually, and I'm looking forward to it as usual.

The first big disappointment came barely a week later on March 14th. To make a long story short, I made a silly but innocent mistake at work that was classified as a "safety violation," and my store manager who had been looking for an excuse to get rid of me did just that as my useless supervisor stood by and did nothing to defend me. After 11 years with Lowe's I was fired for one mistake in which nobody's "safety" was in jeopardy, no damage was caused to the building, and no customer's safety was endangered. But like I said, my store manager jumped at the chance to get rid of me since she was under the mistaken impression that all I did was sit around and watch videos on YouTube all day. (Karma paid her a visit shortly after that, though - her store failed inventory miserably and she was demoted to a lower volume store which is the kiss of death for a store manager in Lowe's.) Am I bitter about it? Yeah, a bit, and I always will be. I have a real problem with busting my ass for a company and/or a person and not being appreciated for it, as I'm sure we all do. But hey, life goes on, and mine certainly has.

Gina and I had been discussing me retiring anyway, and we figured out that for me to equal the salary I was making at Lowe's, all I would need would be the money I'd get from Social Security and an additional $300 a month - and that was IT. We figured I could get a part-time job and make this easily, so we made plans to do just that. So when this whole "safety violation" thing came around, I kinda saw what was going to happen and in the week it took for it to happen I contacted the Social Security Administration and applied for Social Security benefits - in other words, in May 2019 I was going to retire and let the working world do without me for the rest of my life. Thing happened fairly fast after that.

I was fired on March 14th; a week later I got a phone call from the Social Security Administration who just needed to ask me 2 questions about my application for benefits, and after answering them I was told that my application for benefits was approved and that I would receive my first check NEXT WEEK. Then we sold Gina's motorcycle which she hadn't ridden in more than a year, taking the money from that and from an 401K account I had with Lowe's and paying off nearly ALL of our bills. This freed up a hell of a lot more than $300 a month, so the end result has been that I don't have to work AT ALL. I am 100% RETIRED and loving every minute of it!

Also taking place in March was the 5th anniversary celebration of my Widow's Sons Chapter. Over the past 4 years I've watched the Chapter go from a group of 6 guys of whom maybe 3 would show up for the rides to the largest Chapter in the state with 21 members, a lady's auxiliary, and the average attendance at Chapter rides sitting at 17. The anniversary celebration was nothing short of fantastic, with nearly the entire Chapter attending and 6 members of the Grand Chapter riding down from Lancaster to attend as well. It was a fantastic event that I will remember for the rest of my life.

But this month all of that came crashing down, and the end result was that I felt it best for both myself and the Chapter for me to leave the Widows Sons entirely. I could go into detail about what caused it but I won't, because I don't think it's appropriate for me to air the Chapter's dirty laundry in public. Besides, emotions are still kinda raw about all of this (to include mine) and I don't feel it necessary to inflame them further. All I will say is that I cherished the 3 1/2 years I served as the Chapter President, and that in the time I wore the President's patch every decision I made was for the benefit of the Chapter. Considering the phenomenal growth of the Chapter, I'd say I did a pretty fair job of it. I have to admit, though, that leaving the Widows Sons has left a very big hole in my heart that will be tough to fill. So now I'm in the process of looking for another group to ride with, preferably a Masonic group, but that doesn't mean I won't consider a non-Masonic group. I have a couple of things in the works, so we'll see how all that turns out.

This year in my Masonic lodge I'm the Junior Warden, and that means I'm responsible for providing the meal at all meetings. This is a task that can be fairly easy if you keep on top of it, but if you don't it'll run you slam over. It's kinda like being a reporting giving a report on the progress of an avalanche while running downhill. But I'm still running, I only have 6 more months to go, and then it's not my problem anymore. Next year I'll get to sit back and kind of coast as the Senior Warden, but in 2021 I'm going to be Master of the Lodge - and that is a 24/7 job which is anything but easy. But I've been preparing for it for the past 3 years and still have another year to prepare, so I think I'll be ok by the time 2021 rolls around.

There have been some other very minor ups and downs over the past six months, but nothing important or worth writing about. Since I retired I've put more than 2,000 miles on "Casper" (my 2003 H-D Road King Classic) and plan to put a whole lot more on it as well. Gina and I are still loving life and each other, and for that I'll always be eternally grateful. I still say that she's the best thing to ever happen to me, and I'll always feel that way. We're headed to a Columbia Fireflies game tonight, and both of us are really looking forward to it!

Well, it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining and there are things to do, so let me close for now. All in all life is good, and I have no real complaints. As the old saying goes, "Any day above ground is a good day," and that pretty much sums it up.

DEO VINDICE.

IHC