retirement reveries

You’re looking at Apple Maps on a typical weekday morning. All that orange is slow moving traffic, and the red indicates all those roadways with stop-and-go, mostly stopped, traffic. The biggest traffic problems are all over I-4, the major expressway that’s been under expansion and construction for about a decade now. A lot of the expansion is finished, but the traffic problems are still as bad as before, if not worse, than when this construction started. At least with most of the construction finished up and the roadway now running straight and true, it’s not as horrific as the late twenty-tens. But still. The last major piece is the completion of pay-as-you-go express lanes that run down the center. Orlando already has a large number of toll roads (408, 414, 417, 429), along with the Florida Turnpike that runs through Orlando from Ocala down to Miami. And to really add insult to injury, the 528, which runs from I-4 east to the Space Coast has a full toll road with even more expensive express lanes in the center.

As I sit with my coffee and look at this I give thanks that I’m retired and no longer running a commute anywhere. And I do that many a morning. One day I’ll stop doing this, but I want to keep this small vicarious action up as long as I have the least little feelings about part time work in retirement.

creative animal crossing gameplay

You can get tired of playing a game the same way, day in, day out, especially if game play is over multiple years (this pandemic period, for example). I’ve been making Snowboys for at least two winters, and I’ve collected 200 large snowflakes from them. I’ve also collected 190 regular snowflakes, the kind you “catch” with the net. And that’s what’s left of both types after building the DIY projects that require both regular and large  snowflakes. I have the luxury, if you will, of getting a little goofy building my Snowboys. This is the last panel that’s displayed in the sequence when you do what I just did. I think I’m going to make all my Snowboys just like this until the snow disappears for spring. It will be interesting to see how it melts…