Thanksgiving
We celebrated at home this year and it was very enjoyable. A couple days after Thanksgiving we decided to put the rest of our rain gutters back on the house. We took them all down when we had the house painted. We were working in the front of the house (me, Roxie and our son Aaron). I went to the back yard to get up on the roof to get some leaves off the roof. I setup the ladder and started up to the roof. When I reached the top rung the ladder slipped out from under me. Down I came, hard!
Roxie heard a crash and me moaning and rushed to the back yard. I was on top of the ladder and writhing in pain. I was checking arms and legs for any major injuries and wanted to stand up. She didn’t want me to but I was able to. We knew the next stop was the ER.
After about 3 hours in the ER I was found to have 2 displaced broken ribs (not fracture but completely broken), a very sore tailbone, two gashes in my elbow (even though I had a coat on) requiring 10 stitches. The rib pain was manageable but I developed a cough shortly after which was pretty painful.
Here is the ladder that I landed on:
A couple of days later I realized that we had a surveillance camera right where it happened. Here is the video:
Christmas
This is the first Christmas with Atlas. We knew we wanted to celebrate with him, Hannah and Lukas. However, we are not the only set of Grandparents. He has Lukas’ side that lives in Auburn. Luckily we were able to spend Christmas with the Prassinos family.
This turned out as an opportunity to tow the trailer on the truck’s maiden tow. It did very well and I had a heck of a spot to get the trailer in there. It was down their driveway and a hard 90° into their spot. It was pouring rain and there were people watch so it was a double hex. I was able to get it on the third try and just chewed up a small portion of their ‘lawn’.
It was really cold and we had both of Aaron’s dogs in the trailer but we did just fine. There were 10 people and 7 dogs to make a grand old time! We were able to spend Christmas with both of our kids and both of our grandkids. Win!
Retirement
I started working at the Tulare County Office of Education on August 26, 1985, as a Programmer Analyst programming on the HP3000 minicomputer in COBOL. 4 positions and 31 years later, it was time to retire. I was planning on going a year earlier at 55 but we were in the throes of building a new building and were given a 4.5% COLA. That was enough to push it back. It worked out well. It gave me a chance to prepare for the afterlife a bit more.
It was a bit surreal to retire at 56 but you never know how much time you have. It also felt like the right time to do it.
As I write this entry it has been over 1 month of retirement and I don’t regret it at all. I have achieved a milestone of sorts, I don’t really remember what day of the week it is now.
Retirement allows us now to move off to our travel plans, but we have to finish our shower in the house first. <sigh>
