Sometimes I am a glass half empty kind of person. I’m not a follower of astrology but I do think my being a Gemini affects how I react to life. Represented by the twins, Geminis exhibit dual personalities. You can never know a Gemini completely. They can be loving and gentle one moment and distant and detached the other. You never know which part of a Gemini you are experiencing. When we learned a few weeks back that our Union is months behind in processing retirement documents and instead of the standard two month delay to begin collecting your pension checks, there is now a good five to six month delay, well, I was ready to dig a hole in the backyard and climb in! It took me a good week or so get to the overused, but true, ‘it is what it is’. It felt like we were slugs on a rainy day climbing up Queen Anne Hill from Mercer Street, the view at Kerry Park is amazing but that hill is intense.
I’ve accepted the changes we’ve made for our retirement plans and while it’s not starting exactly how I envisioned, we are nearly there. We have made travel plans for this coming fall and next spring to look forward to. We have an extended RV trip reserved that won’t involve a lot of traveling but will be a nice opportunity to be away. I was being very dry camping minded and booked a site with no electricity or water, knowing with our solar, lithium batteries and generator we would be set. Well, for $5 more a night, we can have full hook ups so, I changed our reservation. We will have plenty of opportunity to ‘rough it’ later. I’m grateful we prepaid for this stay before we learned about the delay in retirement payments or I probably would not have booked this trip to look forward to. Sometimes the drive we’ve taken many times is settling and familiarity brings us peace, not every adventure has to be filled with something new.
We booked a short two night cruise to celebrate his retirement. No airfare and an Amtrak ride back home makes this an economical and fun get away. The price of this cruise is less than a two night (one night??) hotel stay and includes meals, entertainment plus a visit to Canada. I wish Seattle or Vancouver, BC offered year round cruising to save on the airfare. They do offer a few shoulder season cruises from Vancouver to San Francisco or Los Angeles that we can look into for next year. A short jaunt will be very refreshing and give us an opportunity to celebrate his retirement.
We had booked a 15 night roundtrip cruise to Hawaii for spring of 2024. And then…. we found a YouTube Video by Emma Cruises and she talked about transatlantic cruises and how much less expensive they are. I watched a few more videos about the pros and cons and decided to do a little investigating. Needless to say, we are canceling the Hawaii cruise and will be cruising to Southampton, England with stops in the Azores, Lisbon, Spain and France – for very nearly 1/2 the price. Even with airfare and a night or two in Southampton post cruise we will be spending less then the trip to Hawaii and it’s an extra night of cruising too. I’m still wrapping my head around it and am grateful I can work remotely so will take my laptop with me to keep caught up and not negatively impact my coworkers – it’s a win/win. I can already feel the wind in my hair, as though we are driving a convertible through the curvy roads on Whidbey Island.
@https://www.youtube.com/@EmmaCruises @https://www.youtube.com/@GroundedLifeCruises @https://www.youtube.com/@LifeWellCruised
#retirement #homeiswhereyouparkit #livefortoday #planfortomorrow #cruiseship #camping #pnw #queenannehill #kerrypark #whidbeyisland #transatlantic #shoulderseasoncruise #travelpartner #glasshalffull #glasshalfempty #gemini #keto #diabetes #amtrak #travel #motorhome #rvlife #southampton #azores #spain #goforit #noregrets #makeaplan #beflexible #washingtonstate #getamap
Our New Neighborhood 2023 