CuRVWander

For those of you following me from locations in Russia, Europe and Asia, I am not sure how the word 'darned' translates.  It is a word often used by people living in the southern parts of the United States as a polite way of saying damned.  But I have a darned car that is giving me fits. About three years ago Cyndee needed to jettison a minivan that simply was not going to make it until our planned departure date.  We had to get her something to drive for about the next 36 months.  Keeping it as low-cost of an affair as possible she came upon a little red PT Cruiser (Chrysler) (now named Putt-Putt).  It was a 2004 model and had 90,000 miles on it.  It was in great shape in the looks department and seemed mechanically sound as well.  And it was, until the last 14 days. In the past two weeks I have had to take it to the shop 3 times for safety related issues that could not be put off until selling the car next month.  They had to be fixed right ...

I once heard the definition of what "work" is:  it is when you are doing something but would rather be doing something else.  For most of my 35 years I had a great job, but in the last few it has become work.  I would reallly rather be doing something else.  So I am doing something about that.  It is only 18 days until my last day of work.  Now, Cyndee argues that it is only 13 days as she only counts work-days not calendar days.  But since my job has always been in support of customers around the world, there has been little distinction between night/day, week-day/week-end or even holidays.  It's 18 days. My pending retirement was announced broadly a couple of weeks ago.  Since then there has been a shift in the normal flow of work.  Typically I would handle 40 or 50 emails a day (the ones that needed action on my part), a stream of phone calls and meetings of all sorts.  In the last five days I have not seen more than 15 em...