A new look

It's getting close to my birthday so I decided to make a change. I'll have to change my profile after the 12th. I was thinking last night, while talking to Ken (who's 91) that I'll probably have to wait until I'm 62 to retire, but that's only 9 years from now, and 62 suddenly doesn't seem so old. We were talking about people who die shortly after retiring (like my father, who died 3 years after retiring, and who didn't really enjoy his work situation for the last several years of his career). Ken knew someone who drew one pension check before he died. We concluded that the dead people couldn't really be resentful or mind that they didn't have a long retirement, since they were dead. OK, that helped with my constant worry that I will die shortly after I retire and never get to enjoy the retirement that I've been looking forward to for the last 30 years.

Then we talked about Christmas trees. I had been thinking about getting one on Saturday, actually paying money for one. I've done that twice before, and I figured that if I bought one in town I could have Bill help me put it up when he came for Sunday dinner. I mentioned buying one to Ken last night and he was stunned. "How much would you pay for one?" Maybe $20. He couldn't believe it. "Why wouldn't you just go out your front door and cut one?" Because that's a pain in the neck. So we talked some more, I told him we always used to cut down 40-foot balsams & take off the tops for our trees, and that I had cut down smaller trees by myself since I've lived alone (I've concluded that it's truly easier to pay money for a tree). I thought, at the end of the discussion, that maybe I really would cut my own tree, maybe just a small one this year. Of course, in the light of day this morning I feel completely different and want a bigger tree, a nice one I wouldn't find on my property--all the trees that are 8' high are skanky looking. Plus we're supposed to have 6" of snow, which makes getting a tree in the woods both more difficult and unpleasant. So we'll see what happens on Saturday. Maybe I'll skip the whole thing until next weekend. Or for the whole season. My living room is small and Christmas trees are big.

And now I have a meeting that's set to last an hour to see what reports (that might be useful) we can pull from our automated system. I love statistics, it's just a matter of making them relevant.