How to fill time in retirement

 It seems to me that I am never prepared for the death of someone I know. Sometimes you know they are near death but the moment still surprises me. Sometimes, there is no warning and the death surprises everyone. My friend Robert "Bob" Austin just died and I was totally surprised. I heard about it on Facebook from his son Rick announcing the sad event. Luckily I know Rick well enough to ask him what happened. I have known Robert for more than 25 years. I met him at Coasters, where he spent time with his dad Jim Austin, and good family friend John Pitkethly, who happened to be my boss at ENSCO for many years. Eventually, I started to play golf in a foursome with Robert and John and coworker Gaylen Drape. When I met Robert at Coasters back in the late 1990s, he was usually there with his wife Nancy and their son Rick. This is a picture of Nancy at Coasters, with Robert on the right hiding from the camera. Nancy died a few years after this photo. It was back in 2000 I was playin...

 My Bucket List of Books to Read and Goodreads list of "Want to Read" are full of titles and I continue to read into 2026. Happiness is a Warm Gun , I mean Happiness is a good book... The past few years I have been writing a post after reading 5 books. I have decided to do the BLOG post every two months, which turns out to be six books, since my yearly goal is 36. It just happens that I am one book behind this year so here are the first five books I have read in 2026. The Girl in the Spider's Web (#1) Written by David Lagercrantz; published in 2015; 400 pages; BJ Score 3.0 (Great) I loved the Stieg Larsson's three Millennium novels  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest when I read them. Then Larsson died and then his estate asked Lagercrantz to write this novel with the characters Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. All the stories take place in Sweden and are thrillers, where Lisbeth is a hack...

  Dining out continued during the last two weeks. One new place and three repeats. I am on goal for NEW restaurants and ahead of schedule for Different Restaurants. First, the simple Stats... Statistics Current Weeks: 7-8   # NEW Restaurants:         Current:1   Total:2   Goal:2 # Different Restaurants:    Current:4   Total:12  Goal:8 Here are the restaurants added since the last post... 2/17/26 - U Chun Noodle - Scored 3.5 (Great to Excellent) This was a NEW place that I went to with Nancy on our shopping trip to H-Mart in Orlando. H-Mart is an Asian supermarket with 97 stores around the USA. This Orlando location, located on W Colonial Drive, is currently the only H-Mart in Florida. It opened this past September using a closed  Super Target as its base.  The site includes a massive Asian supermarket, a food hall featuring vendors like Myung Ga, Oh K-Dog, and Paik's Noodle, plus a Paris Baguette b...

 Dining during the last two weeks was some more slim pickings. The weather turned cold and I was not in the mood to eat out. Did some baking at home which adds heat to the house. One morning it was 26 and it was 38 the morning I had my Doctor's appointment. I had to sit in the car for 5 minutes in full defroster mode before I could see out the windows. I could not find my ice scraper. At least the Doctor had good news, most of my numbers were fine and a few went down. I did get out twice to eat which keeps me on my schedule. First, the simple Stats... Statistics Current Weeks: 5-6   # NEW Restaurants:         Current:0   Total:1   Goal:2 # Different Restaurants:    Current:2   Total:8   Goal:6 Here are the restaurants added since the last post... 2/4/26 - Thai Thai II - Scored 3.5 (Great to Excellent) Another of my go-to places when I am craving sushi and I know I will get a great deal. I took the pictu...

 Dining during the last two weeks was kind of slim pickings. I have a Doctor's Exam coming up so I usually dial down on my consumption of unhealthy food to make, hopefully, my blood and urine exams acceptable to my Doctor. But I did get out twice which keeps me on my schedule. First, the simple Stats... Statistics Current Weeks: 3-4     Total Weeks 4 # NEW Restaurants:         Current:0   Total:1   Goal:1 # Different Restaurants:    Current:2   Total:6   Goal:4 Here are the restaurants added since the last post... 1/23/26 - Nomad's Canteen - Scored 3.0 (Great) This was my most go-to restaurant in 2025 and probably will be visited more than once in 2026. It opened back in June of 2024, located in a large building that was for most of my 47 years here an Antique Furniture Store. The first photo (on left side) does not do it justice but it shows the relative location on Eau Gallie Causeway heading tow...

 When I first retired, I created a Bucket List with most items being travel and visiting places. In August 2019, I added to the list an item to read the 100 books everyone should read. It has been a Long, Long, Long time and I finally decided to check my progress. It is just more data from my multitude of spreadsheets. I may have mentioned that I have a spreadsheet listing my spreadsheets. So, I started with a list of 100 books that I got off the Internet. Since then, I have added 139 more books to the list of novels I should read. I do have a tendency to read my favorite authors or any other book of interest I find at the library. These books do not get added to the bucket list but I still read them. I use Goodreads, a great website, to keep track of my reading, and of course they have their own lists of best books. During my first four years of retirement, I read 24 books or just six a year. After creating the list, I have averaged 32 books a year for the last seven years. Five o...