Post 3931 - Yes. I am still alive.

Hello again, my friends.

It has been so long since I have written a blog post, that Blogger itself has changed its interface to one I do not recognize. 

In the last few months, much has happened to me, and for me, and with me. I sold the house in the Valley at the end of April. I miss the place a lot, but the new buyers are doing right by the place, spending a tidy sum sprucing it up. I would never have been in a position to spend that kind of money on the place, not when I still have a mortgage here at Casa Bevboy. 

I have spent a bit of the proceeds of the sale on this house. We got a new deck in the last few weeks. It is 10x10, so not large, but much bigger than the glorified landing we had before. And there is a privacy panel there now. We get along fine with our neighbours, but there is nothing wrong with having that panel. The deck and the panel were money well spent. 

In about a month we are getting new doors and window as well. That is another significant cash outlay, but once again, it will be money well spent. The existing doors and windows are almost certainly original to the house, which was built around 1987. 

Ten months after we retired, we are in a pretty good place. We do not regret retirement, but we fully admit that if we had known that the world would have gone to hell shortly after we left; if we had had some kind of intuition that there would be a pandemic, then one or both of us would have remained working. As it is, we are collecting our pensions every month, which comfortably pay our bills. 

And, you know how you pay your bills according to your bi-weekly paycheques? (In my case, I always paid one day after payday). I still pay those bills bi-weekly, even though I just get the one "pay cheque" now. For those of you who are reading this who are eligible to retire, and are worried sick about whether you will have enough to live on, then unless you still have kids in school whose tuitions you still have to pay, then you likely have nothing to worry about, especially if you have little or no debt otherwise. 

I have been thinking long and hard about this, and I have made the following decision. My cold case series at Frank is on... let's call it a hiatus. And for some reason Jordan Bonaparte at the Nighttime Podcast appears no longer to be interested in recording episodes about Nova Scotia cold cases with me. I am going to dip my toe into the podcasting world, myself. 

I have some technical hurdles to jump through and over, first, which I will describe as I overcome them. But I just dropped a bit of money on a new microphone, a pop filter, and some of those little "socks" you put on the business end of a microphone, so I have begun this journey.

The full nature of the podcast, its shape and content, and its very name, will be rolled out in the coming weeks. It will not just be a recitation of my Frank articles, me just reading them into the mic. I think I can do better than that.

Please bear with me while I sort this stuff out. 

And please forgive me for taking so long to write you guys. I do miss you. I had thought that I would have more time for bloggin' post retirement, but it hasn't worked out that way, has it? Sleeping in until 9 or so every morning cuts into this stuff, and my honey-do list is long and sprawling. 

Let me try to make a pledge here. I promise to write more frequently. I miss you guys, and I hope you haven't forgotten me. I started this blog in 2007 for a reason, and that reason still exists. 

Talk to you... very soon!

Bevboy