Here we are on April 11th. We officially
retired on April 1st. We thought that would be a good day to retire. No one
would really know if we were joking or not until April Fool's day came and we
really didn't show up for work.
Things didn't work as planned for our
"escape from work with no one knowing" strategy but we were able to
keep it fairly quiet. Only about 30 people found out before we left. We didn't
want people knowing we were retiring because we aren't great at saying goodbye.
We prefer it to be more like "See you later". We also didn't want all
the parties, lunches, cake and hoopla everyone seems to think is necessary when
someone leaves for retirement. We figured if I, Carl, didn't get up to make a
speech we would leave with everyone thinking we were a great couple instead of
thinking a whole lot less of us once I was completed saying what I really
wanted to say and inevitably would have once I got going. Our true friends knew
how we felt and that was all that mattered.
So if you are here reading this it's
probably because you are family or we consider you great friends we would like
to stay in contact with throughout the rest of our lives.
So far the first few weeks have been
fairly uneventful. Kathy had her back surgery on March 14th and is doing very
well at recovery. Her doctor saw her a week after the surgery and said
"See you in 3 months" so we took that as a good sign. We try to walk
as far as she is able at least once a day and twice if she is up to it. I push
her a little to get her to push herself and not get complacent. In her eyes it
is a long process and going too slow but I see her improving daily.
Our plans haven't changed. We plan on
leaving here in the motor home May 1st and heading towards Flagstaff, AZ where
we will check out Ashurst Lake to see if it is a viable camping location to
hold one of our events. After a day or two there we will head north out of
Flagstaff, headed up to Sioux Falls, SD to establish our domicile (become
citizens of South Dakota). This makes filing taxes every year simpler. South
Dakota has no state tax so we will only have to file for federal taxes. Also
vehicle registration is cheaper in South Dakota and we will have a mail forwarding
service which will collect all our mail and then forward any important mail to
us whenever we ask.
Welcome along for the trip and thanks for
joining us! We will try to post weekly and include pics when and where
possible. You can always shoot us an email with questions or if you just want
to say "Hi"!
Carl & Kathy
How exciting!
ReplyDelete