You Can't Have Enough Friends

All the news that gives you fits. Well, it seems that I am truly blessed these daze. After 34 years of teaching High School English to seniors (you know--the kidz who know everything--like Mark Twain said, "When I was 18 I thought my dad was the dumbest guy in the world. When I turned 21 I was amazed at how much the old man learned in three years."--who have been speaking English for 17-18 and in some cases 19 years) I was able to retire. At first I was a little upset because if I did not retire at age 55, I would lose half my medical benefits whenever I did retire, so I felt like I was sorta "forced out". But you know what?? I am digging this so much that my lovely wife is a little jealous. She still has four more years (including this one) until she gets "forced out." She tells me how lucky I am and I tell her that "LUCK" has nothing to do with it and AGE has everything to do with it.

So a few of my friends and relatives got together on 9/23 to celebrate this rite of passage. You can't have enough friends and in that sense I am truly blessed. Some of them made it to this blog page. Some had really good reasons (Rosh Hoshannah family stuff) to have missed it, but a few (who said they had to work on a freakin' Saturday) were a real disappointment, but this two shall pass, You can see the party tent--Thank God the rain held off-- and some of Ken's crew cooking great ribs. Of course you can see some of my friends and family.

So I strongly recommend retirement to everyone, just as I recommend marriage. My step-daughter is getting hitched next week-end and you can see in the photo how happy she and her fiance are. They are glowing. So that's the news and my skewed views. What are you views?

PS Thanks to my California buddy, Dr. Len, who could not make the party for obvious good reasons--wrong coast, for explaining to me how to post pictures on this blog.