Christmas 2020

I hope you have all had an enjoyable if probably unusual year.

We spent my birthday in Nashville. I attended a Predators game and a Titans game. I honestly don't remember if they won or not. I do remember the weather was okay for the Titans game. When it is not, it is very memorable. The most memorable part of this year's trip was that I tripped on a pot hole in the Hampton Inn parking lot. My glasses ended up cutting me right above my eyebrow. I ended up with 5 stitches. This is the first time I've had stitches. My knee was sore for awhile but not a big deal. Unfortunately on August 27th, I fell again. This time was while I was walking outside at work. A teeshirt I saw says I did a random gravity check. That sounds better than I fell. This time I broke my cell phone and my leg is still bothering me. It gets stiff when I sit for veru long but feels fine when I walk. Go figure. It worried me so much that I fell twice in 12 months that I went to a physical therapist to work on my balance. Nathan says that my vision and inner ear seemed fine but the little muscles in my legs were completely unhelpful with my balance. I went to him for about 10 visits. He said at the end that he could tell my muscles were definitely helping with my balance now. He gave me 10 different exercises. He said to do them 3 to 7 days a week and I'm sure you are not surprised that the overachiever I am. I usually do them 7 times a week. Hopefully, I won't be doing any more gravity checks.

My mom came up to visit us for Christmas. She stayed at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis. I spent several nights with her. She came to the house for Christmas Eve dinner. We went on a tour of the hotel lead by the Duckmaster. It is a really beautiful hotel.

I have been participating in the prison ministry program at our church. I write letters to the prisoners who fill in prayer request cards. I enjoy doing it and hopefully the prisoners are being blessed by them. 

We got a new French Door refrigerator. It is really snazzy. It was definitely higher class than the appliances we usually get. :)  We had to replace our refrigerator that was only 3 years old because it failed twice in 2019.

I am still a big Tennessee Titans fan. They are doing much better, they made it to the playoffs in 2019. They made it all the way to the AFC Championship but lost to Kansas City who ended up winning the Super Bowl. They are currently number one in their division so hopefully they will make it to the playoffs this season.  Meade's Miami Dolphins are also improving. Last year, they were last in their conference and this year right now they will make the playoffs as a wildcard. They probably won't be able to win their conference but hopefully will make the playoffs as a wildcard.

We are still Nashville Predator fans though we haven't seen many games since they were defeated early in the playoffs. But Lee's Tampa Bay Lightning went all the way to win the Stanley Cup. So we were interested in a team throughout the series and Lee was thrilled.

We have made the sun room at the back of the house into a she shed for me. I have a great view of the trees. There are birds, cats, squirrels and chipmunks.  The chipmunks are especially cute. I have a table to do jigsaw puzzles. My desk for working and my computer for my personal stuff. I have a recliner for reading and watching tv and cross stitching. I have a tv with a DVD player and roku so I can watch CBS All Access, Netflix, Prime Video or DVDs. I love my she shed it will be great for my retirement.

Meade has put in several bird feeders and a bird bath. We are getting LOTS of birds. Mostly cardinals and chickadees. It is very entertaining to watch them.

I moved into my friend Carol's house in January to house sit and take care of her cats while she traveled around the country in her motor home. It is a really nice house. 

Meade and I went to Sevierville Tennessee for vacation in March. We stayed at the same Wyndham resort we have stayed at before because we like it. I went ziplining Anakeesta in Gatlinburg. I also went to Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountain National Park. Covid started causing a lot of concern while we were there.

 

The Friday we got back from Sevierville I got a call to attend a work meeting about what to do about Covid. We ended up going into a work for a week or so and then ended up being sent home to telework for the month of April. I spent the month in Mississippi which was nice. It was a good test of how Meade and I will do living together in retirement. We haven't lived in the same house for almost 10 years so we were a bit nervous about how retirement would go.

Covid had another affect on my life. Carol's financial advisor didn't want her to start living off her investments and advised she sell the house. So I had to be out of the house by mid May. I moved into a one bedroom apartment. Since I was going to retire and go back to Mississippi in December I didn't want to bring a lot of stuff back. So I only have the bed, dresser, and bedside table that Carol let me take and 2 folding chairs and 3 folding tables and my exercise bike. It definitely has a first apartment for a college student feel to it. But it's functional and cheap.

 

 

I ended up damaging my new car. I slid into the back of a truck with a big trailer hitch. It didn't look like that much damage but it cost over $4000 to fix.  Luckily, it was covered by insurance so I just had to pay my deductible and not have my car for a week. Now, it looks just like new.  

 

I ended up teleworking most of the months of July, October and December in Mississippi. We have been very careful because Meade is diabetic so he is high risk. Another positive from Covid is that we have met more of our neighbors and gotten to know the ones we knew better (from 6 feet away). Since April we haven't gone anywhere except grocery shopping and picking up takeout once or twice a week. I did go to a restaurant one time. We are trying to decide whether to cancel our Grand Canyon trip that is booked for May 2021. We'll decide next month. 

I haven't gone to church since April but thankfully they have increased their online presence so it is even easier to catch a service online. I would encourage  you to check it out they have truly great music and messages. https://live.churchofthehighlands.com/ 

I did go down to Florida to visit my friend Sarah and her dog Mr Bing, my Mom, my grandnephew James and Lee for Thanksgiving, Meade decided to be safe and stay home. I drove straight through on the way there and back to reduce my contact with people. The only time I went to a restaurant  for that week long trip was to Cracker Barrel with Lee.

Lee's 14 year old dog Eevee died this year. He is still mourning because she was almost like his sister. He has her since she was a pup.

He found a tiny baby squirrel in the back yard. It is a little boy and he named it Mimir. He has gotten him a nice cage and he crawls on Lee's shoulder. Mimir is very cute. 

 

 

 

 

My retirement plans have changed slightly. Instead of stopping work completely on December 18th I am going to take 2 weeks vacation, then telework from MS for a 40 hour week and then transition to parttime and work 10 hours a week for the next 3 years (until I'm 65). I really like this idea because it will delay the need to start taking my social security. We are starting Meade's in February. I will be staying in touch with the people at work who I really like and it will give me something to do with some of my time. But I will not have to use an alarm clock which is the main thing I am looking forward to. This will be especially helpful until we can start traveling when Meade feels it will be safe. 

I asked Meade if he wanted to put anything in the newsletter and as any of you who read his Facebook posts know he can be very verbose. Here is what he gave me.

This was Meade’s first full year using Spotify and he definitely got his money’s worth. They sent out end of the year statistics and he listened for over 150,000 minutes during the year. An average of almost seven hours a day. 

While he mostly listens to classic rock ranging from the Byrds through Boston his listening is eclectic. He’s listened to jazz, blues, progressive rock, folk, folk rock and country rock. He’s a bit off new country music since he feels that it all is using the same hip-hop like beat and is not at all creative in most cases. 

One of the things he likes most about Spotify is the ease that he can discover artists that are new to him like Fountains of Wayne and Phantom Planet to name just a couple.

Early in the year Meade began to think about trying to learn to play guitar, something he’d thought about before and never acted on.

He got his first guitar, a Fender Dreadnought Acoustic in February and soon began using Fender Play to learn to play.

A month or so later he decided he really wanted to try an electric guitar and bought a moderately priced Squire Strat which he discovered  he loved and was much easier to play than the acoustic because of the lighter strings.

He’s loving the Fender Play platform and the Fender Play community on Facebook as well. He reached level 3 in the Rock Path this fall but is currently in the Blues Path learning shuffle patterns and more about Blues music mostly because he listened to Johnny B. Goode and wanted to figure out how to play that shuffle pattern that is so prominent in it. He’s getting there.

He’s learned a number of riffs, among them ‘Smoke on the Water’, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and “Satisfaction”. He’s got some favorites from among the somewhat simplified songs on Fender play, notably “Bad Moon Rising” and “Louie, Louie”. He’s learned some simple single note songs such as “Let it Be”, “Ode to Joy”, “Blowing in the Wind” and assorted Christmas songs most recently. He also took a foray into finger picking and learned a shortened version of “Dust in the Wind”. 

It has been an excellent thing to have to do during the need to stay at home brought about by COVID. He’s hardly the only one who has discovered learning guitar during this time and that has led to a lively and very supportive community on Facebook. 

He admits he is learning a bit on the slower side but is enjoying the journey immensely. He knows he won’t be the next Stevie Ray Vaughn or Eric Clapton but that doesn’t matter. The main thing is steady improvement while having fun working on it and that, for sure, is what is happening.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.