The sixth anniversary of my retirement and a triple bypass

January 11 was my mother's birthday and when I retired six years ago, I chose that date in honour of her. It is a day for me to reflect on the past year and to get excited about the next year to come.

It's a colder day today with a beautiful blue sky and temperatures about freezing.

But the warm temperatures over Christmas have confused our daffodils which are coming up months in advance of their normal arrival in March or April.

When my mother was about my age, she had a heart operation with several bypasses. Knowing this, I have tried to keep my cholesterol levels in check and religiously take my daily pills. As you know if you have been following my blogs, exercise is an important part of my retirement life and I do a three-mile walk around the community most days of the week.

Just before we headed south, I noticed on the last hill of my walk that the air in my windpipe seemed cold, which was very unusual. Over the course of our time in Georgia, I was beginning to feel that something was not right so the evening that we arrived back home, there was unusual pain so we went to the local Union Hospital in Elkton.

After an EKG, it turned out that I had suffered a mild heart attack. They transferred me to the larger Christiana Hospital in nearby Delaware to have a catheterization. You stay awake but sedated during this procedure. At the end of it, they gave me the bad news. Three of my arteries were partially blocked. Stents and balloons might do the job, but the arteries really needed to be replaced. Obviously, in the woozy state I was in no shape to make a decision, but I did have enough sense to say to the anesthesiast that this was the luckiest day of my life. He agreed. I was a really bad heart attack waiting to happen.

The procedure was done on New Year's Eve. I woke up the next morning in some pain feeling very weak, but fortunately, all the exercise has made me able to recuperate quickly. By the following Sunday afternoon, I was able to walk twice around the recuperation ward so they sent me home. I have been visited by a nurse and a Physical Therapist a couple of times and I am now outside walking around the closest block. It has a hill to climb and the walk takes about 15 minutes. Of course, I am quite buggered when I get home, but the exercise is wonderful for my recovery process. The other vital signs continue to improve so I am quite hopeful.

One of the doctors told Marianne that all the walking over the past six years saved me. My regular doctor happened to see me at Union Hospital and was amazed to see me there. 

The last time I spent any time in a hospital was when I was 15 and had my tonsils removed. Procedures have changed since then! Everybody was very professional, friendly, and helpful. I quickly found that if I asked every nurse who looked after me where they got their training and some more questions about their career, then they became more interested in me. Quickly you realize that they see hundreds of patients who are focused on themselves. To have the focus changed to the nurse, each of whom have their own set of problems is a novelty. Only one person said 'it's a job'. All the others loved their work and I tip my hat to them.

I have a five-week trip to India planned for early February. Obviously, that trip is in doubt but we will see how I feel later in the month. I may just postpone it for a year.

So don't worry about me. My vital signs are improving every day and I fully expect to be out there in all parts of the world taking more photos for more blogs.

The fifth anniversary of my retirement

Since it is my mother's birthday, it is also five years from when I fully retired. What a wonderful five years! Each anniversary I write a short blog and I've just been back to review them. I see that in other years there was a lot more snow than what we have now, but I am not complaining. I also see photos of Robin when she came home for Xmas but she has missed out the last two Xmas's. She is coming home in June / July to be bridesmaid at her best friend's wedding.

As usual, I went for my three mile walk. The day before it was so cold and windy that I had to give up and take a short cut home. I suspect the windchill was dangerous.

The bay had frozen over so the geese were just standing on top.

The ice is not thick enough to walk on.

This year I am planning to go to Turkey for about a month in April or May, travelling all over the country from Istanbul to Kars by train and also walking part of the Lycean Way along the Mediterranean coast. It should be interesting since I have never been to Turkey.

In July and August we have house exchanges lined up for Near Leipzig in Germany and near Selestat in Alsace. We are thinking of doing our annual Oz trip in late October / November. Marianne wants to experience some Aussie heat again.

And now, announcing the cat vomit proof tube amplifier. Early last year I started a thread on one of the hi-fi forums about how to deal with a vomiting cat that wanted to enjoy the heat of a tube amplifier when it was feeling cold. I'm not worried that the cat would be hurt by the heat but that it would be electrocuted. Here is my solution.

These 6C33C tubes put out a lot of heat and the design also uses two big fat black 100 watt resistors. All told there is 200 watts of heat rising up. The amp itself produces about 14 watts per channel to drive the loudspeakers. I've covered the really high voltage (480 v) with black electricians tape.

Those of you who are older might remember a Russian pilot defected to Japan in 1976 in a MIG fighter jet. The Japanese let the Americans examine the plane and they were puzzled that the Russians were still using tubes / valves in their planes. It turned out that the tubes were not effected by the electro magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear explosion. Ordinary solid state components would be effected or destroyed by the pulse. These are the same tubes used in the jet fighter. They cost about $20 each when you buy them from Russia or the former Soviet bloc countries.

The grates came from Ikea I think and were originally serving stands.

The amplifier circuit for those of you who can understand it.

By the way, it sounds very good. Catty-watty of course got up to investigate, I could see her thinking 'What the hell is this?' and then she wandered off to sit on the old laptop that I use as a music server.

The fourth anniversary of my retirement

It's January 11 and the fourth anniversary of my retirement. There is not much going on today because it is wet, foggy and generally miserable outside. At least the Polar Vortex has retreated north and we are not waking up to temperatures of -2 Fahrenheit (-11 Celsius) in the morning.

Marianne has the bird feeder in action again and it looks like there are a couple of cardinals enjoying a feed. Last year the squirrels managed to unscrew the feeder by twirling it around so that it would fall on the ground. I solved that this year by liberally applying a glue called Goop to the feeder to stop it twirling. Goop is really good. I use it when I build amplifiers to attach large motor run capacitors so that they don't fall off.

Robin is not home this January. She would prefer to come when it is not winter and I can't blame her.

I am currently planning my adventure for this coming year. If all goes to plan, at the end of April I will fly to Narvik which is above the Arctic Circle in Norway. I will take a train and bus to Kemi in the north of Finland and then train to Helsinki. From there, train to St Petersberg and then on to Moscow. The Tran-Siberian train will take me to Beijing (via Mongolia). Then on to Hanoi and Saigon by train, bus across Cambodia, and then trains from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur finishing in Singapore.

Essentially this will be a train trip from the most north west in train station in Europe to the most south east station in mainland Asia. I'll be stopping at the major cities along the way and in total the trip should take 45 days. Plenty of blog material, I would think.

From Singapore I will fly to Sydney where we will be house sitting the house next door to the one we stayed in last year. Marianne is not going on the monster train journey and will just do the usual flight from the US to Sydney. I've been looking up walks I can do in the Sydney area, but I am still pondering what major multi-day walk I can train for this year.

The other big event of the year should be my 50 year high school reunion which hopefully will be scheduled for when I am in Oz.

And yes, I still love retirement.

The third anniversary of my retirement

My mother's birthday was January 11 and three years ago I thought it would be an excellent day to retire.  Fortunately it was not raining or snowing, so Robin and walked my usual loop around the community.

So here is Robin with the tree growing out of her head taking the same photos I took. She flies back to Sydney via Beijing tomorrow and Marianne and I have really enjoyed having her home. Now that she has finished her degree she seems more relaxed.

Robin requested that I make a pizza so I was happy to oblige. It was a white pizza with chicken, mushrooms and some spargel (white asparagus) that I bought at the local Aldi's. We all agreed it turned out very well.

When we were in Pittsburgh last weekend, our friends Larry and Mary from Pittsburgh gave us a bottle of bubbly which I opened to celebrate the occasion. It is called "Pittsburgh Bubbles n'at" and was made by a winery called  Le Vigne in California. Apparently, the phrase n'at is in common use in Pittsburgh. I don't know how Mary and Larry got hold of this bottle but for a short review let me say that this particular wine was semi sweet with a short finish. It went fine with the white pizza but it was definitely not the equal of the ten year old Ridge and Heitz Cellars wines that Larry produced for our dining pleasure last weekend.

So what is on the travel agenda for this year?

In the middle of May I head off to England to do the first half of a walk across England from St Bees to Robin Hoods Bay. It's known as the Wainright Walk. I stop at Richmond where Marianne will join me and we will fly to Amsterdam for a three week house exchange. We then return to England where I will then complete the second half of the walk. We will then do a two week exchange with a family in Birmingham before heading home.

Later in the year we are planning to fly to Seattle, drive down the coast to Oakland to visit one of my nieces.  We then fly to Australia for a few weeks and hopefully spend a couple of weeks in the South Island of New Zealand on the way home.

So there will be plenty of blog material coming up in the next year.

Retirement is wonderful!

After two years of retirement

I went back to last year's post that I wrote after one year of retirement and I see nothing much has changed. I was thinking this morning as I lay in bed at 8am that the best part is being able to get up when I want to, be that 6 am, 7 am or 8 am. It's my option.

Prior to my trip to Oz last year, I bought a Nook Color so that I wouldn't have to carry books. It turned out that I didn't read all that much on the train, but I did find the device useful for timetables, maps etc. I've since put the Honeycomb version of Android on it so I have access to the Android apps and the device is quite useful. If Apple ever comes out with a smaller Ipad I will consider it eventually.

So what is lined up for this year. I may do a walk across the Grand Canyon from rim to rim. Yes, I will be going down into the canyon, not levitating.

We have house exchanges lined up for upper Bavaria in Germany and Ulladulla in Australia. There is also a good possibility for an exchange in Geneva.

I continue to enjoy doing the blogs and I appreciate the comments. There are now 171 of them, an increase of over 90 from last year.

The first morning of retirement

The initial plan was to sleep in till about 9am but I was awake at 7am and ready to get up and go so off we went for a walk. There had been about a quarter inch of snow overnight and all was quiet with just a slight breeze. It was cold of course, about 24 degrees, but not too bad.




As we approached the bay we were greeted by a bunch of deer that ran off a few seconds later as we approached.

The bay has been frozen over for a few weeks now with all the sub freezing weather. The layer of snow on top of the ice made for some interesting patterns.

And so back to our house for breakky and a cup of coffee. Retirement is looking good at the top of the bay.

I can be reached at my gmail account rperry13