The lid is off!  Up until now I have been reserved in what I wrote.  Disclosing publicly my retirement date is something I have avoided, I just did not want to become a lame duck in my job until I got to the point in time that it would not matter any more.  That time is now.  Tomorrow, Monday the 11th of March 2013 I will formally submit my notice of retirement.  90 days later I will have my last day on the payroll and enter, with a gazillion of my fellow baby boomers, retirement.

But if you have read the introduction to this blog or any of the previous posts, you know that retirement for us (Cyndee actually gave notice at her job in January) does not mean a rocking chair on the front porch.  Far from it, we're going to have ourselves an adventure in lifestyle.  Nomadic, exploring geography, geology, flora and fauna.  We are changing from collecting things to collecting memories.  Gone is 3,000 sq ft of living space crammed full of, as George Carlin called it; "stuff".  Now it is 400 sq ft and very little of that space can be used for stuff.  The elimination of all that stuff has been liberating.  In the past eight months of living in our RV we have found we want for very little.  In fact, Cyndee has even done a re-visit of all the things we initially brought to the camper with us and put together a couple of good loads for Goodwill.

Although my last day on the payroll is in the first week of June, my last day to go to work will be May 3 because of the vacation time I have.  Cyndee's last day at work is May 23 and we will depart for Livingston, TX on May 25th.  Once in Livingston we will spend the next month becoming Texans again.  We are going home, we have been away for 29 years and we are looking forward to returning.  We are estimating it will take a month to get all the changes made that will satisfy the Federal Gvt and the states of GA and TX that we are no longer beholden to GA and their tax system.  This means, of course, getting our driver licenses and truck & trailer tags but we have to do a lot more.  There is the changing of all our legal documents from Georgia "paper" to Texas "paper".  Our wills, family trusts, medical directives, power of attorney's, banks, phone service, doctors, everything is to be done all at once in June.  These things normally get changed over a much longer period of time when one is doing a conventional move.  But since we will be taking off on our traveling adventure, we will be leaving Livingston as soon as we are finished with no idea of when we will be back, it all has to be done at once.

The last of June and beginning of July will see us winding our way north from Livingston to Quitaque (kit-a-kway) for a stay in Caprock Canyons State Park.  This northward drift will also have us seeing family and friends around the state.  In that pursuit we will also spend some time in Palo Duro Canyon, near Amarillo.  Both of these state parks are familiar to us, though it has been almost thirty years since being in them, and we hope to be volunteer camp hosts in both in the not too distant future.

Our applications for volunteer camp hosting are in at several agencies - Corp of Engineers, Texas Parks & Wildlife and the National Park System.  There are some really interesting prospects out there.  But for now we have to concentrate on becoming Texans again and getting to the factory in July for some upgrades and warranty work on the RV.