Winter Report

The dog and I were walking down the road and ran into a neighbor. I asked him how his winter was. He was pretty quick to say it was terrible: bitter cold, snow, it would warm up, rain and then everything would freeze. He had to break up a foot of ice with pick and shovel to use his driveway. This guy's in his 70s, rececntly recovered from cancer and has a new hip replacement.

He did have two good weeks where he was down to Florida. He and his wife were tempted to rent a place down there for next winter. However, they decided at the last minute not to. The traffic intimidated him. Worse, he thought he'd be bored down there.

May I never get so set in my ways that I can't find something interesting to do. Retirement is wasted on some people. He and his wife are now in reasonably good health and have plenty of money. They are really starting to suffer from northern winters, but can't figure out a good alternative.

Maybe I'm lucky that I've always had to figure out how to do things on a limited budget. It forces me to think outside of the box.

-Sixbears