Unexpected Road Trip 11-16-24

 Retired Life. Sunday.

Whose bright idea was it to stay up late watching football?? When the alarm went off early this morning so we would make it to church on time, we were grumpy and sleepy. We looked at the below Jesus Picture and got reminded of why church makes us happy, and got up and got going.

Sacrament Meeting. Men's Meeting. Choir Practice.

Made it home with time to eat a quick lunch. Then to Hanna's Mom's place to bring her in the Sacrament.

Back home, we laid down for a quick nap. THREE hours later, we woke up! It was already dark outside! But it felt good, and as old retired folks that have worked hard our entire lives, it is deserved.

Leftover stew for dinner, read, watched some church videos, watched an episode of The Chosen.

And that was our Sunday.

Retired Life. Monday.

Today was one of our favorite days. Revlimid Day. Aka, Hanna's expensive Chemo Drug Arrival Day. We are grounded to the house until the FedEx dude shows up and we sign for the stuff. And being grounded to the house is a treat when you are retired.

I dutifully did up the books and presented Hanna with a budget report. I later looked at it again and found several screw ups in my Excel calculations. No big deal. No one's paying for this stuff. And it's proof that retirement was a good decision.

In the evening, after the FedEx dude did his thing, we joined our neighbors by going down to the Community Center and celebrating and honoring our local veterans. These guys covered every where and everything in between from World War II to Iraq. The recognition and celebration included a free potato bar and the Mayor made us homemade root beer. Life in a small town! That's why we live here.

After the party, we watched the movie "Reagan". Very interesting and entertaining flick.

Besides the FedEx truck, there is a picture of our town's tribute wall to Vets and a picture of Homer Longhurst, Hanna's Dad, who served right after World War II.

Thanks to all the vets out there. We both cherish and appreciate our freedoms!

Retired Life. Tuesday.

I started my day by getting my toys out for the small engine repair dude. Impressive, right? Except none of them run...

Today was "old people must have food" day. We planned out our busy week. Created yummy menus. Made up a long list of groceries to buy. Drove to Plummer. Played Rummy and ate salads at Gateway. Walked on the trail of the CDAs. Bought the groceries. Drove home. Unloaded. Put away groceries.

Hanna fixed a turkey for dinner. We use the leftovers in the salads she makes. Healthy and cheap source of meat.

Today's exciting financial discussion featured us debating the risk levels of managed mutual funds vs index funds. We came to an interesting conclusion.

Pictures below:

- My toys

- Our on-going list. As we notice stuff we need to buy, we write it on the white board. And then on shopping day, it all gets added to our official Excel shopping list.

- Weekly plan and menu with cool color coding. Red are days tomatoes are needed for breakfast. Green are days Hanna will fix salads. Both of these colors are counted and entered into our Excel Grocery Shopping Inventory Calculator which then compares what groceries we need next week vs what we have and tells us what to buy and how much of it. (We'll always be nerdy accountants. Proud of it too!) BYU blue indicates Hanna is cooking. ISU orange indicates I am cooking.

- Frivvy and me on our walk on the trail of the CDAs.

- Hanna making sure we have spices.

- And me officially declaring it Egg Nog Season!

Retired Life. Wednesday.

Dreary day out, so I stayed in all day. I spent some time making travel arrangements for upcoming trips to Seattle this weekend, Pocatello in December, and Chile in January. Did you know it is cheaper and quicker to get to Chile via Orlando than via Miami?

My turn for dinner. See my delicious steak!

Also, I missed this picture yesterday of an Indian dude sitting on a city bench in Plummer, playing his drum and singing an Indian song about Jesus. That's our culture experience for the week.

Today's exciting financial talk was on how we need to break out pet food and supplies as well as long-term food storage expenditures from the groceries budget and track those separately. Since they are starting to overwhelm the poor grocery budget. I did say "exiting", right?

Retired Life. Thursday.

Started the day by driving into town and worshipping in the temple. Peace, strong spirit, and revelation all in one stop. Plus I saw an old good friend from Riverside in there. Always good to see folks.

Then we drove to CDA (picked up dry cleaning on the way, now everything is nice and clean) to go the Dermatologist's office for the annual check up. They checked both of us out at the same time. As usual, Hanna's skin is perfect (this kind of makes up for having BLOOD CANCER, but not really). I'm the bad one. All my life up until a bit ago, it was cool and manly to get burned a little bit. Dark tans are attractive, right? Now I'm paying the price. They froze several precancerous growths off my face, back and head. And one biopsy was taken. I'll probably look like a freak by tomorrow.

To celebrate such a great checkup, we went to Red Robin and played Rummy and ate bottomless fries and burgers. I won several hands of Rummy, but Hanna may have felt bad for me and let me win. She'll never tell.

Topped off with cheap Idaho gas and drove home.

Arriving at home, we encountered 33 boxes of food storage that the poor FedEx Dude had stacked on our porch plus one little Amazon box. Now you can guess what is on tomorrow's agenda.....

Exciting Financial Discussion was how Medical Offices don't know what to do with patients that don't have typical insurance. (We use a Sharing Ministry, which means we essentially are "self-pay", getting reimbursed later). I got a call early this morning from the Dermatologist Office concerned that we didn't have insurance and verifying that we still want the appointment. When I said "we don't have insurance, we are expecting to pay your bill while we are in your office today, and we have known about this appointment for a year and have budgeted and saved up for it and have the cash in the bank..." She really wasn't sure what to do with that. Then the Dermatologist almost didn't do the biopsy..........."oh, maybe we shouldn't do it, you don't have insurance..." I'm thinking, "no, I'd just rather die of cancer..." I had to tell her not to make health decisions about us based on our perceived finances. We have a way to pay for it. Sigh...........times have changed in the medical field.

Retired Life. Friday.

"Old people go out for breakfast" day! We went to Gateway in Plummer for Meat Scrambles and Rummy. Yum! We also took Frivvy on a walk (very dreary weather though) on the Trail of CDAs and gassed up the old JEEP with cheap Idaho gas.

Today's major project was to move 33 boxes of food storage from the front entry way to the back of the basement. We got part way thru the project and the neighbor guy came over to lend a hand. Very much appreciated.

I also whipped up a batch of Sweet N Sour Beef Stew.

In the evening, we declared it date night and watched a Sandra Bullock movie. The Lake House.

Today's very exciting financial discussion: how to book all this new long-term food storage into our financial statements. It isn't consumables YET, so it ain't grocery. So we booked it as a personal asset. Personal Financials are prepared at market basis, so the next question is do we depreciate the food? That was quite the discussion. Most of it has a 30-year shelf life. So an argument was made to depreciate it over 30 years, if at all. But the other argument was that it lost some value when delivered. It would be hard to find a buyer for it for the same price we bought it for. It lost value already. And will continue to do so the longer we keep it. We finally agreed to write it down over five years. Hey, just like we were back at the office peering over some financials from a new client. Only we didn't get paid for it today. No need. We're retired...

Retired Life. Saturday.

We drove to Seattle. Because one of our grown children, and their family, whom we have not seen in SIX years is there for the weekend. So, off we went.

It was blizzarding on the pass. No matter. The truck did just fine.

Upon arriving to Seattle, we were pretty much surrounded by Teslas. (See the picture of a pretty blue one.) It is always fun to drive around Teslas. They have that "self-driving" app that keeps the car from wrecking. I always put it to the test by pulling out in front of, cutting off, or brake checking the Tesla just to see. The car is always very successful at avoiding a collision and the look on their passenger's face is priceless. Passenger, because there really is no driver...

Once in Seattle, we checked into our AirBnb. Frivvy immediately made himself at home and claimed ownership of the patio.

We went Fancy Like for dinner, which included Rummy.

Our exciting financial discussion revolved around why gas is a dollar more expensive than Spokane, which makes it two dollars more expensive than Idaho. (We made sure to top it off in Ellensburg...) With all those Teslas, you'd think demand for gas would drop dramatically and thus the price also. Not seeing it...so confusing.