Today is one of those days that I just am not too crazy about. The weather is cloudy, overcast, blech and still in the mid-’20s, which really is not all that cold, but this kind of weather coming the day after the winter solstice…well it just seems to suck the life right out of me to start the day.

Life

The household is in full Christmas prep mode, Needhams, sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies are being made, which means that I HAVE to taste test them. Mary is attempting to finish painting the master bathroom while continuing to help the girls with everything else surrounding the prep work for Wednesday. She amazes me with how much she does around our home.

I do my best to help out when she wants it, but mainly stay out of her way, when she gets up a head of steam, pass at your own risk. 🙂

At the beginning of Bennie’s long walk, three of the local gun ranges all started in. I have been around guns all my life and served in the military, so I am not anti-gun (although there are issues that need to be resolved by people a lot smarter than I am).

I think people using a shooting range is a good thing, except when Bennie turns into a shakey baby. To be fair those people don’t realize how much their shooting bothers my dog, but I do and Bennie went from his high-stepping normal self to a shakey baby and had to be “coaxed” along to do his thing. After which, he dragged me straight home and hid in my lap for about half an hour. Bennie’s reaction to the shooting is our problem, not the shooting ranges, but it does suck to watch your pet react so badly to something we have no control over. So I do go ahead and take the time to ensure that he is able to rely on us to protect him as much as we can.

Yeah, we spoil him, but that is part of the deal with our pets – they love us and we get to spoil them.

Our neighbor lost his wife to cancer last Friday and this is the first time I have talked with him since she died. I offered our condolences and we talked for a bit. While we are not close, we are neighbors and have had our usual ups and downs, but when he brought up her Celebration of Life and I could tell that he wanted me to commit to going. So I did. Honestly, I am not big on going to these things, but it is the right thing to do and the wife and I will be there to show our respects.

Blog 

I continue to tweak and find stuff that I think I need to clean-up to make it more readable and better for those who choose to read it. The best thing is that I am re-energized about writing here and have a bunch of ideas and posts in various stages of drafting.

I am going to start something different and add links to online articles that I read over the course of a day. If I find an article that I read and think enough to add it to my Google Keep, I will add a link to it in my daily blog post or the next one that I write. This will give you an idea of what I find interesting and I won’t comment on them to allow you to make your own thoughts about the article.

Reading

Articles that I found interesting and worth sharing today:

A Call for a New Strenuous Age | The Art of Manliness 
How Mental Models Unlock Your Thinking

Running

After Bennie calmed down, I decided to go for my run.

Once the day got going, things tended to work themselves out and got a lot of things accomplished, definitely more than I thought that I would. I did get to read some good articles, worked on the new blog, comforted Bennie, got a good run in and did the right thing by a neighbor.

I thought they said that retirement would be quieter and that I would be less busy all the time. I guess the ones that say that are not living the same life that I am.
Originally posted on Aging – My Thoughts and written by Harold L. Shaw.