Category: retirement

  • Hickory Hill Park Ramble

    Hickory Hill Park Ramble

    We visited Hickory Hill Park today in Iowa City. We’ve lived in this area for 30 years and have been near it but never walked a trail until now. It’s full of trees, birds, and other wildlife, including deer, which seemed to pose for the camera. I say we’ve been near it because we have…

  • My Top Ten YouTube Videos

    My Top Ten YouTube Videos

    OK, my top ten YouTube videos are going to get pretty low ratings anyplace else. But where else are you going to see the list but on my blog? In a world where popular videos are viral at a million plus views, I’m way in the back yard. I wasn’t very picky, of course, because…

  • The Paperboy

    The Paperboy

    I don’t read the news much at all these days. It’s almost always bad, anyway. I was a paperboy in my youth. I delivered the Des Moines Register and Tribune for a year and earned a certificate as Honor Salesman. Let me tell you a little something about being an Honor Salesman back in those…

  • The Retirement Home Search and The Well of Memories

    The Retirement Home Search and The Well of Memories

    We were out for an adventure today, shopping for a retirement home. That’s what it was, really, although we really didn’t make any hard decisions or commitments. Nowadays there are considerations for whether to build from the ground up, buy and modify a spec home, buy an older home, go condo, even rent, move to…

  • Retirement Home?

    Retirement Home?

    You know, sometimes I wonder about rephrasing the line in the Men in Black movie, “Let’s put it on…the last suit you’ll ever wear.” How about, “Let’s do it…the last house you’ll ever buy.” That’s what I think the retirement home should be. Houses are getting harder to find and the home-buying experience has sometimes…

  • Thoughts on Paunch

    Thoughts on Paunch

    I’ve thought about my weight over the past few days and decided to look at a few pictures. I had not realized that I had lost about 20 pounds over the last several years. This was all intentional and I’ve shed about 7 of those in the last six months—due mainly to daily exercise including…

  • Robin Saga: Start to Finish

    Robin Saga: Start to Finish

    We’re just a bit on the sad side today. The robin chicks are gone. It’s another empty nest and sort of the story of our yard over the last month or so, what with the loss of the house finch and cardinal chicks before this. It’s a hard life for every creature. On the other…

  • Just an Introduction

    Just an Introduction

    Well, it has been about 3 months since I opened this blog. My YouTube channel needed an updated channel trailer, so I’m posting it here as well. Why not? I was surprised at how long a minute and a half channel trailer took to make, even with the aid of video editing software (maybe because…

  • Robin Saga: The Next Chapter

    Robin Saga: The Next Chapter

    This is just a quick post updating the saga of our robin family in the front yard crabapple tree. It looks like all 4 chicks are alive and kicking so far. The parents are very protective. The male robin won’t fly away unless I’m just close enough to touch him. The female is about the…

  • Baby Robins Fill the Nest

    Baby Robins Fill the Nest

    It rained for about an hour or so before I could get out to the crabapple to check the progress of the robin hatchlings. Yesterday there were two unhatched eggs but there was a definite hole in one of them. There are now 4 hatchlings, although the biggest one looks pretty sluggish—and appears to sport…