Oldest Living Blogger babbles on..... (Why not?)

Tom over in New York, in response to my saying I'm spending too much time on Facebook, says "You need to get a life!", and he's absolutely right. I can even remember when I had one of those. I had a bod with nice firm muscles, quick reactions, good eyesight, reasonably good teeth, a normal head of hair, and all the usual stuff: a job, a recent-model car, a nice place to live, an average income, sometimes a 'significant other', sometimes not, and life was not too bad.

I rode my bicycle around the seawall walkway and bike path at our big waterfront park on the edge of downtown, I enjoyed trips on my roadracer-style motorcycle, I had a season's pass every year to the best of our local ski developments, and I knew my way around the downtown club scene when the urge struck me.

And then I got pushed into something they called "early retirement" with 900 other guys, and it turned out to be a termination with certain added incentives which time proved to be not so much incentives after all as it was a books-cooking exercise that screwed me out of half a million dollars in future wages and benefits between then and normal retirement age.
And left me with a shitty taste in my mouth for years afterward, while I was adjusting to life on a poverty-line pension.

The Good News is, I did adjust, and I've now been retired for 28 years, which is 8 years longer than I worked for that outfit that caused the problem. I managed to quit smoking a few years ago, and last year, bought myself a new Dodge with the saved-up cigarette money. It's the first time I've ever paid cash for a new car, and drove it off the lot debt-free. And I have to say that's a hell of a nice feeling. Life's not so bad after all.