How to fill time in retirement

 Well, my reading of books has continued into 2024. My bucket list of books to read is slowly completed. Problem is I just keep adding more new books to the list faster than I am reading the ones already there. It appears to be a never ending task but I am enjoying the books I am reading. My goal for 2024 is 36 books and here are the first five that I have read. I am on schedule according to Goodreads and have started using that site to help me keep track of what I want to read. Here is a quick summary of the five books and then I will give my thoughts and scores on each. Summary Five books read including three fiction and two non-fiction. I added two more fiction novels to the Bucket list and each author was my first book read by them. Two of the other books were by favorite authors and each book was the fourth book I have read by the author.  The first nonfiction book was a library read... I saw a good rating on Goodreads for this non-fiction book so I decided to get it out ...

 Anyone that owns a computer knows that a lot more files are collected than are necessary to keep. If you become a hoarder of photos like me, the mess becomes even greater and harder to manage. Here are some more from my collection of funny and interesting finds on the Internet, what I like to call "Digital Hoarding". Personal What, BJ took a picture of a beer? I had to share this one because of the can art. My parents use to own a VW camper that we traveled with from Vermont to Florida. It had a pop-up tent. Also, certain family members have became Beach Hippies, the name of the beer. Can you get any more personal? For 34 years I worked in the world of computers. I try to tell the story of the IBM hard drives I was using that held like 330 MB and were the size of a large washing machine. When I saw this photo, it helped prove my point. And to think, this photo is four years out of date. I have a whole collection of Nubble Lighthouse photos, what Vermonter doesn't? I just...

 As I get older, I have a tendency to pay better attention to famous people who are passing. I am not so old at 66 to have many contemporaries dying, but more people I know and remember have died recently. The latest was country singer and guitarist Toby Keith. He was only 62. Now, people younger than me are leaving the earth and it makes me wonder and a little nervous. I do have a connection and memory of Toby Keith. Back in January of 1994, just over 30 years ago, I took my mom to a concert at the King Center. Back then it was on the campus of BCC, Brevard Community College. It is now on the campus of EFSC, Eastern Florida State College, although it is in the same exact building. My dad had only been gone a few years and I was trying to keep my mom busy with activity. I knew she liked Kenny Rogers, and he was playing at  the King Center, which is only about 10 minutes from where Mom & Dad lived. So I got the tickets and we went to the concert. The opening act was a large...

 Our next stops on this 10 night cruise were both in Mexico, one in a port I had never visited, Costa Maya, and the other a port I had been to before, Cozumel. The last day was an "At Sea" which would get us back to Port Canaveral. The Day 8 stop was at Costa Maya Mexico located on the Yucatan Peninsula. They have built a large pier for cruise ships and a small area for tourists to shop, dine and party. Tom  and I went ashore and had a few beers, Mexican of course. The first people I saw were some Mayans, who seem very happy to see me with big smiles and waves. There were plenty of shops to find trinkets. I bought myself a ballcap which is one of my favorites to wear. I took this picture of Tom looking back at our docked ship. We did not go snorkeling, but we did get some pictures of the reef. The tropical fish seemed bigger than in the Bahamas. Here is Tom next to Nemo. They did have a pool where you could interact with the dolphins. I took some videos of these two girls bei...