Winter adventures

I have a zillion things I want to do in retirement while I'm still in the US. First up are travel and exercise, while also learning a "it doesn't have to all get done today" attitude - something that doesn't come easily to me. So I have scheduled all my travel through the end of May, which includes a fair amount of travelers visiting me. I began by going to Ohio to visit my parents. 

An ice storm hit while I was there. Hiking and walking in northern Ohio reminds me how much I appreciate the DC area - not only does spring arrive a month earlier, we have a lot more sunny days. Still, it is very pretty in the rural area where my parents live and it was surprisingly fun to tromp on the grass when every blade was encased in its own coat of ice. 

I'm also trying to bike or walk most days, something that I managed to start even before I retired. But now it's so much easier because I can go out in the warm, light part of the afternoon. Mostly I bike on my own, but occasionally I cajole friends to join me. I know there are lots of riding groups, but I ride especially slowly - 6mph/ 10kph, which rules out a lot of the super serious cyclists. My friends N and R are regular bicycle commuters who deign to go my speed occasionally. Our last trip featured some vicious wind but at least it wasn't Ohio weather.

And a photo especially for my friends and relatives who have escaped the Midwest - the ice storm coated my car. We ran a garden hose over it for a half an hour before it thawed enough to open the driver's side door. The ice didn't completely fall off for another 200 miles. Brrr.

 

Celebrations

I knew I wanted to celebrate my new milestone, but I couldn't figure out a way to throw a big party right now in a way that felt safe. So I had a couple of smaller celebrations with the friends that helped get me to retirement.

C and L are my FIRE friends- we met a few years ago in a financial independence book club and just hit it off. We have traded financial advice, reviewed each other's investment philosophies, and eaten a lot of ALDI (along with Lidl, the budget grocery store of choice) food together. C is already retired, and L is working as fast as she can to join us. 

We had tea at the Willard, a historic hotel near the White House. The food was tasty, but a part of me knew I could have made better. However, the real treat was dressing up and looking vintage glam while a harpist played and people brought us scones and sparkling wine. 

Familys T and M helped with a second celebration. The kids had macaroni and cheese and all-they-could-eat ice cream sundaes, and were grateful that they didn't have to eat the grown-up food, which included weird ingredients like roasted eggplant and truffled cheese. My friends E and K offered their house, which was ideal - their family did all the cleaning, and I did all the cooking. 

I used all the fancy food people have gifted me: imported pasta flour from my uncle and aunt, Belgian cooking chocolate my nephew gave me, and artisinal olive oil from my boss and her wife. For once, I was pleased with each and every dish I made. I discovered eggplant caponata, a Sicilian dish that is a excellent use for my many bags of frozen garden eggplant and improved my butternut squash soup recipe (secret ingredients: green apples, and garnishes of roasted pumpkin seeds and crème fraiche).

Now I wish I could retire a second time, just so I have all the parties again. 

Ten Year Plans

Tonight I am on the eve of my retirement, and I've been reflecting that this was a plan ten years in the making. I first heard about the concept of early retirement in 2012, on a blog written by a "Mr. Money Mustache." Before long I was trying to convince my late husband, Andrew, that this was something we should do. He was intrigued by the idea of financial independence, but I could only get him on board by promising that he'd never have to retire (like many physicists, he viewed doing physics as the fun part of life that you should never stop). 

A decade passed. I reduced spending, saved more. My location, lifestyle, and family changed dramatically, but the plan worked. It worked even faster than expected actually, since my income grew, my spending didn't, and I found a cheaper country to live in.

I might even consider this my second ten-year-plan, because when I was twenty-five, I decided that working a not-quite-minimum-wage job as a cook in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. I wanted to be a physics professor, and all that stood between me and that dream was... another bachelor's degree, getting into graduate school, passing my qualifying exams, and seven years of research.  A mere ten years later, I was a PhD physicist.

I hope that I can have a few more ten-year plans in my life. I don't know what those plans will be yet, but free time will help me find them. And here's pictorial proof of my new free time.

 Above is my weekly calendar while working. The green is fun stuff, and the blue is meetings. I had a *lot* of meetings every week.

This is my new life. I'm doing a tiny bit of consulting, which explains the blue, and then the blank space can be filled in with new, fun, green stuff.