What a day to be going over my own actuarial tables! I have to make a decision within a couple of days, so a quiet Christmas morning is ideal. It is turning out to be a far less complicated decision than I supposed. It boils down to life span. By merely “banking”, I will have over a million in equity if nothing goes wrong. The trade off is the sooner I dip into anything, the less I receive monthly.There are two alternatives. Wait things out, or go back to work and so long as I’m operating at a surplus, leave the pension money alone. I should not be complaining, because most people don’t thing about retirement until they are will into their fifties and sixties, but I like to plan decades ahead.
Work, for me, means teaching, and teaching does not pay that well. But teachers cannot be replaced by robots, as I have been three times in my life, so far. I’m guessing there are a lot of old people out there who will be forced to learn computers and would resent being taught by somebody under thirty. There is yet another alternative but I would need a better understanding of international law and RofR is just not helping out in any way. The guy owes me a thousand favors already.
There is, ahem, an item of note being thoroughly discussed among the Latin contingent in the trailer park. It seems some “French Canadian Lady” was caught doing the wild thing in the laundry room y’day morning. While her husband was “at work”, except we know they are not allowed to work and it was reputedly quite the half-hour show. No report on who the male participant was and none of the Spanish-speaking spectators seemed to notice him anyway. Merry Christmas, again.
I have a series of new winning songs, double crowd-pleasers because they fit my philosophy of playing hits that are not guitar standards. For all the new stage techniques I’ve invented (without any help I point out), the choice of material has always been my top selling point. We shall see this weekend, where I suspect my personality will likely dominate the proceedings.
The two most popular new tunes last week were, “Is That What Good Friends Do” (Poppy Family) and the theme from “Bonanza” as a break song. It is truly amazing how many local guitarists lack the talent to play a variety of truly popular music, but rather fall into a drug-fogged coma of overplayed standards. It does, however, explain their total lack of a following. I mean, we are talking zero people, which has never happened to me. (Um, the Poppy song has the instrumental electronically removed and the Bonanza theme is cut to 90 seconds.)
Later, Jose is back from Ft. Lauderdale. I think he is saying (in a strong Mexican accent I have always had trouble with) that I am the only gringo he knows who does not drink and that is why he waited for me to get home when he needed the ride. So he just brought he a huge garlic roasted steak, seriously more beef than I normally eat in a month. Two feasts in two days, can my system handle it? The video cam reveals that Pudding-Tat will not eat beef, either, won’t even sniff at it.
My cell has been busy but I’m not answering. Except for text messages, I mean. It seems I left without saying goodbye to everyone at the party last night, but be assured I left because it was late. Not because there were no single women there. Could have used a selection, mind you. A well-wisher gave JP and me the word about the blonde that was at Alaine’s birthday as apparently “a lot older than you guys think”. I thought she was like, fifty, which brought the repeat, “a lot older”. Alaine wanted to know if the blonde had emailed me. I don’t know, I can’t check unless the computer store is open, which takes time that I don’t have any to spare this month.
