Marion's Retirement

[Jessica_Rose]

@ChrissyRyan , I don't know what I have done to earn your praise, but thank you. Many people have come before me on this site, and many will come after. I like to think I'm simply repaying the help I received from those whose footsteps I follow. Since I enjoy music, I'll add Wendy Carlos to the list. She composed the score to 'A Clockwork Orange', 'The Shining', and 'Tron'.

Love always -- Jessica Rose

[ChrissyRyan]

@ChrissyRyan , I don't know what I have done to earn your praise, but thank you. Many people have come before me on this site, and many will come after. I like to think I'm simply repaying the help I received from those whose footsteps I follow. Since I enjoy music, I'll add Wendy Carlos to the list. She composed the score to 'A Clockwork Orange', 'The Shining', and 'Tron'.

Love always -- Jessica Rose

Jess,

You just continue being you.  Keep that love in your heart and let it continue to shine through your actions.

Hugs,

Chrissy

[Maid Marion]

Doogie's, a hotdog restaurant in the middle of Connecticut, has one of these Progress Pride flags hanging inside.

[Maid Marion]

Easter holiday shopping at the grocery store.
This is a great time to buy ham on sale.  I bought a fully cooked boneless 4 lb ham for $12.
I also got a free dozen ready to cook meatballs with that purchase, so I got 5 lbs of meat for just $12!

Grocery store routinely offer great deals around holidays.  Sometimes a couple weeks in advance.
So do most big box stores.  The employees would much rather have you buy sale items early rather than waiting to the last moment like everyone else.

[ChrissyRyan]

Any roses of your blooming yet Marion?


Chrissy

[Maid Marion]

In my yard the first roses are usually just before Memorial Day at the end of May.

I'm busy taking out the invasive weeds that were planted as ornamentals by former neighbors.
They were nice to look at but insist upon spreading through my rose beds via runners.
Fortunately they are under control after a lot of work and I'm taking out the last few stragglers this year.

[davina61]

I want to move a climbing rose and its starting to put out new growth, will it be okay to move it?

[Maid Marion]

Yes, you can move it now.  But the roots should roughly balance the top part, so may be sacrificing a lot of blooms moving it now versus moving it when it was dormant if you lose a lot of the root system.
I have moved Hybrid Tea and mini roses in the early spring to new locations and won trophies a couple months later!
The worst time to move a rose is just after it has bloomed.

I had a chance to meet one of top French rose growers at a National Convention.
He said that exhibiting roses isn't done in Continental Europe.  It is just the UK and the USA.

[davina61]

Thanks, need to wait for a dry day and then move it to grow up the rose arch.

[Maid Marion]

I prefer to put perhaps a foot of space between a rose and support like an arch.
Roses throw more laterals when the canes are closer to horizontal than vertical.
It is often easier to work on the canes when you have more space.

[Maid Marion]

I've decided to eat out more this year.
I had lunch today at Pepe's Pizza in West Hartford.
Surprised to see only two people at one table having a long lunch at 1PM.
I had the white clam pizza and chocolate milk.

My roses are growing really well this year.  So are the weeds. 

[davina61]

Not sure if the rose I moved will do any good as had to cut through the main root to get it out, mum has kept watering it.

[Maid Marion]

They sell roses with small root systems that eventually get big with proper care.

[Maid Marion]

Reading Michelle's blog about her issues with her father I had similar issues with my mother.

I won third place in a fishing contest.  A gift wrapped stuffed animal.  My mom took it and put it away so I never saw what it looked like.  My brother was the expert in fishing but I just got lucky that day.

I finally got my blood pressure back under control with a calcium channel blocker.
A beta blocker worked when I was working but when I retired my stress level declined and so did my resting heart rate which got too low.

I bought a pink cable sweater and wore it yesterday.  It was on sale at Revolve for $50 and I had a $20  coupon for a net price of $30.  The downside of having thin waist is getting cold with the room at 70 degrees or 21 Celsius.

[Maid Marion]

I had preventative maintenance on the furnace that heats the house.  The tech says he comes to my house first thing in the morning because he knows I'm always home and wants a good start to the day. 

Finally got around to rolling over my 403b retirement account so I'd have less fees and more flexibility with investing options. One less account to keep track of!

Roses are just starting to bloom.  There should be a good display in time for Memorial Day. 

[Maid Marion]

Just bought a pair of black Eddy Bauer flannel lined jeans on sale.  60% off plus a $10 coupon dropped the price down to $36.  I have a blue pair that fits perfectly without alterations.

Good news!  I've had an identity theft problem that ended up with a debt collector filing a non-payment claim with Experian last month.  This allowed me to file a dispute that Experian had to research.  They sent me a notice that they ruled in my favor and deleted it from my file, so my credit rating is back over 800!  My employer got hacked so they signed me up for a credit monitoring service so I knew immediately about the claim being filed.

[Maid Marion]

I was around ten when I thought I might be transgender.
Of course that was in the dark ages where one kept such desires hidden.
But, I remember taking the breading of fried chicken before eating it in front of a guest.
My mom said that was wrong but the guest, a tall and athletic Chinese man, said that was a very healthy thing to do!

Over the decades I've been very good about protecting my skin from the sun.  Especially my legs, so they look decades younger than my chronological age.

[davina61]

UV from welding, my dry skin anyway and scars from working on cars have made my forearms look bad, lots of body lotion help.

[Maid Marion]

I went out to have lunch today at 3PM after spraying my rose bushes.
I had a kid's meal of a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries. 
Just the right amount of food for my summer weight.

I figured it was the right time to buy an infrared camera for $140.
I like to fix things and it is quite useful to know what is getting hot.
Image looks good with a 128x128 sensor upscaled to 240x240.

My retirement strategy is a bit unusual in that I'm going to slowly wind things down here in Connecticut for a likely move to Hawaii.  Low expenses right now will allow me to move money into a Roth conversion to minimize the tax bite right now.  Then when I move to Hawaii I can use qualified charitable donations as well as my higher expenses to handle the required minimum distributions if my investments continue to do well.  Moving from one high tax state to another.  Both are very LGBTQ+ friendly.

[Maid Marion]

Busy chopping up a large Chinese Wisteria.  It is now on the invasive species list for Connecticut.
It took a lot work to prune every year to prevent the seedpods from maturing after it bloomed.

I gave away my Star Wars Legos to a stay at home mom with a 3 year old.  I know her from the garden club and realized it would really help her out.  I bought the Legos to better understand the younger generation when I was working.  I wanted to compare that experience versus the models I built in the 1970s.