h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

With any luck my second last holidays ever started yesterday late afternoon and will last till monday morning 6am on september 17th

After that I should only have to w*rk for 65 days until my final holidays start in mid december

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyggY_R3jU8

I hope that you will have a good time.

Peace, man! Won't that be good?

Thank you, Ti

I'm sure it will be grand on a grand scale, Milla

People keep warning me and asking "but what will you do?"

I say "look around - ever met a retired who doesn't moan about how busy she/he is?"

Murphy's law says "any kind of w*rk will eventually take as long as the amount of time you dedicate to it"

So I will probably spend the first fortnight changing my bed linen

And once I've won a few millions I will start visiting you all

I *may* even start writing enries - at some point

It's been something like five years since I took early retirement and I can
vouch for the fact that it's just so fantastic. I meet lots of other retirees
and everyone is just enjoying life.
One thing I notice is that time seems to go by so fast, so I'm getting up
earlier to make the most of life.

So - do you regard it as a beginning or as an end?

I hope your last couple of months at work are good ones! Hope also that I am on the list of people to visit!

I've been retired for two years now. With two parents in medical facilities, it helps a lot that I have time to visit them and try to keep their spirits up. Today I spent some of the morning visiting my mother in a nursing facility in Sterling, Mass. I chatted at her bedside for a hwile, then pushed her wheelchair into the courtyard, which has a beautiful garden in it. We sat in the shade, enjoying the breeze and the flowers.

This afternoon I drove to a hospital in Worcester, where my father is being treated for a digestive tract obstruction. I brought him his mail and a couple days' worth of newspapers. My sister is keeping track of the bills that will need to be paid, and will have him sign checks for them and then mail them.

I see twice as many movies as I used to. I'm expanding my CD collection on a scale that wouldn't have been imaginable when I was still working.

So, Pierce, you are not going to stop working once you retire. retirement is a very demanding job, but the good news is that you will be your own boss. I hope you'll be a good boss.

You are on top of that list, Lanzababy

I will try to make the most of the last 65 days, but it's all turned into a rut so I can hardly wait to get out.

I hope I can make room for a new employee, but I'm afraid the best I can hope for is saving a colleague from getting fired - for a while...

It's a beginning, TC, probably my last, but a beginning nonetheless

Last of my holidays started yesterday efternoon

Due to some red tape I will not be able to take retirement until March 1st but that's okay and it makes no difference to the holiday situation: These are my last ones ever. All six weeks

The biggest problem with retirement [apart from not having as much money to spend as before] is that you don't get holidays off. Your job of being retired never ends.You can't take a day off from retirement even on a holiday.

I know that - but I realize I don't know it the way retired people know

Everything comes at a price. If I live to be 81 (as I have been predicted) I now have three quarters of my lifetime behind me - but who knows how much tme will come my way?

You might say that retirement is the last step before - well, the last one

But I'm okay with that. Things could have been so much worse

I'm enjoying retirement a lot. You will too, most likely.

I'm counting on it. 74 days now, but only 28 of them are w*rk days

How will they ever manage without you?

Cemeteries around the globe are filled to the rim with people who thought they were indispensable. I am not one of those

But, Pierce, I imagine that most cemeteries contain people who really *were* indispensable. Many a ifne organization has been diminished by the death of someone who was holding it together. Some business fold after the deaths of key people.

But in the context of the lives of you and me, I'm sure that there are able replacements.