How to fill time in retirement

As I continue to scan in all the photos I have collected over the years, I have continually modified the way I am trying to organize the photos. I have created groups by individuals, and of course central to that are photos of me. I have shared some of the single photos of me on Facebook, and I would like to share here a few of photos of me with others. The first photo is me, not even four months old, being held by my Grandmother, Helen Rheaume Shackett. I know the photo was taking at our Weybridge Street house in Middlebury by the banister behind us. The stairs are steep in the Provoncha house, and many a drunk fell down those stairs into the cactus my mom kept at the bottom. Tom moved the bathroom from the second floor to the first when he purchased the house, so now only those spending the night get to go up those stairs. BJ with Grandma Shackett The next photo is when I turned one in the summer of 1958. I lived at the Weybridge St house all my life through high sch...

This year, 2017, was the 34th Annual Southern Sprints Indoor Rowing Championship. Started in 1983, the event is currently held at the Clemente Center on the Florida Institute of Technology campus. I have been a volunteer in probably more than 20 of the 34 events. My current job has been the posting of results and the presentation of individual medals to the top three places in most events. I volunteer all three shifts and usually have one other volunteer to help me for each of the four-hour shifts. I got into the volunteering at rowing because of my friend and past classmate at FIT, Eileen Corelli. Back when we were working on our advanced Math degrees, she was just Eileen Kennelly. A few years after graduation, I ran into her at a wedding of mutual friends. I asked how she was doing and she said she was working in the New Orleans area. My company was looking for a mathematician to work on my projects since I was getting promoted.  I asked Eileen if she wanted to come work with m...

As I was cleaning up some of my files the other day, I found an Excel spreadsheet called Best Bloody Mary . It had been a while since I had seen it, the last entry was on January 23, 2010. That is seven years ago. Well, let me explain the wonderment of this file. Back in 2001, my mom had passed away in January. Our first family Christmas without mom was that year and I had gone to my sister's house in Orlando for the day. It was before noon and my sister asked if I would like a Bloody Mary to drink. I said sure; I had had them before and usually enjoyed them. These were wonderful. I told my sister Pat that it may be the best Bloody Mary I ever had. Then I forgot about it. The following February in 2002, I was on a ski trip with friends to Steamboat Springs in Colorado. We had flown into the small airport in Hayden Colorado, similar in size to our local airport here in Melbourne. The ski trip was great and as we were leaving, I noticed a sign at the Airport Bar that said the Bes...

A thing that is almost as fun as retiring is to go to the lunches for someone else that is just retiring. Usually, there are stories of the past and people are happy to see another person reaching the goal of full retirement. I have been lucky to have retired early, and now I am having the pleasure of starting to see other friends and past coworkers retire too. Today, it was my friend Kevin, who started work a year after I did. I have known him for over 35 years. That is a long time. Kevin at his retirement luncheon First, Kevin isn't even his first name. His full name is Michael Kevin Atchison. His wife's name is Christine but goes by Christy. I know Kevin is from Oklahoma and I always assumed Christy was too. They ended up in Florida because of the job at ENSCO, Inc., the company I retired from over two years ago after 34 years. The Florida Division of ENSCO was working sub-contracts for the Air Force. The Florida office was located at Shopper's World in Indian Har...