Since I have recently reclassified myself as semi-retired (from my painting day-job anyway), I have devoted most of the newly “freed up” time to writing. This helps keep me out of the poolhalls and saloons and, frankly, I do not see true retirement in the cards anyway. As Warren Zevon stated in song, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” But in truth, I have been fortunate to have had my hobbies and vocations as one-in-the-same, so I really have nothing to retire from anyway.

Besides, my momma didn’t raise no slacker. My first book, Searching for Alpha Centauri in a ’64 Chevy, has already been published. The second, Sometimes It Feels Like Far, is well underway with its rough draft recently completed. I hope to have it available by December 2019. And I have just created the outline for my third book, The Improbable Sea Dogs of St. Croix North. I consider this a personal milestone of sorts since this is akin to having poured the concrete footings from which I will build. So I have “broke ground” on book #3, so to speak.

 

For me this is what going all out for Christmas looks like. I think I might be raising the bar too high for the neighbors though.

Actually we have no snow. This is last year’s photo. I guess that you could say that I am using “fake snow” to fit the seasonal narrative that I am trying to peddle.

Crisp, cool, damp mornings on the water are making us think that summer is not for long.

The mountains are starting to get that cloud-clad “northwesty” look again. Most of the tourists are long gone. And the osprey left town a few days ago.

For all of us dwellers of the higher latitudes, summer blows through all too fast.

Thank God I read this warning label attached to my new sandals before I wore them outside.

It is a scary world out there! Live in it at your own risk.