Sleepy Friday

Work has been very, very slow of late. I have cleaned up everything that was waiting to be done, and I've still had enough time to do web surfing. I don't normally do that at work, but this has been exceptional -- I've not had this little to do for two years. I'm working from home today, and the most productive I've been is baking some chocolate chip cookies -- where I discovered to my distress that a) the recipe I posted here neglected to mention to add the egg, oil, and vanilla (they were in the ingredients, but not in the steps) , and b) we were just about out of flour -- I used the last of it on these cookies. For anyone who used that recipe -- I apologise for the oversight.

One of the people with whom I work was terminated today. He first learned about it two days ago. The motivation was, as it so often is, cost; the company did not want to pay for his time. Given the convoluted structure of this organization, its not exactly clear who made the decision; the local manager denies it, and said he had tried to find an alternative; the contractor organization through which his services were hired was unlikely to have instituted it; the customer for whom we work could not have done it; and the group that he's part of couldn't have, either. Clearly, someone made the decision, and I suppose that if you followed the money, you'd find out who. In a sense, though, that's immaterial. Companies have the right to organize their affairs so as to keep costs down. I don't like it, and I don't like being aware that I could be arbitrarily axed, but its a way of life.

I am glad that due to our own financial prudence over the years, I am able to retire, should I choose, at any point. I don't particularly want to do ; I like most of what I do, and I like earning money. Yet retirement would give me the chance to try working in some other areas. There are two things that I'm thinking about: I'm going to be a reading mentor at a local school, and I'm going to maintain the web site for a local political organisation. But what else? A couple of things. I want to work on my photography. To my surprise, though I really enjoy our little digital camera, it hasn't felt the same as the photography I've done with my Canon AE-1. I found that I missed the heft of it (even as I delighted in its ability to take exceptional shots in dim rooms, or zoom in from very far away indeed). I see so much good work on Flickr that I find myself thinking: Can I do that? Do I have that level of skill? And I want to try. I am not sure how I'd do it --Hey, mister, can I take your picture?-- but it's something that I'd like to do. HTML. Bake. Take photographs. That all sounds good to me.

Of course, our financial health makes that easy for me to say. I mentioned that I am financially secure, and thats mostly true. The only thing that keeps it from being entirely true is that no one knows what phenomenal medical bill lies around the corner. Ever since I was stunned to see the amount that it cost to have my shoulder repaired, I have been more sensitive to the costs of medical practice. I know this is not a new topic; its not new to me, either, but I find that I think about it more often. So when I say that I am financially secure, I mean: assuming there are no surprise medical bills that decimate our savings, that force us out of the comfortable middle class lives we have and into the margins. Do I think thats possible? Yes. Probable? Who knows? But that aside -- we're secure. And thats a very calming thought.

In fact, when we reached The Magic Number, I was a little surprised to realize that I was not giddy with delight. I had always assumed that I would be. This was a goal that I frankly did not think we would reach for at least another year and a half; possibly never. I had joked that if I looked at Quicken, and we were fairly close to TMN, I would fudge the numbers -- rate the value of the stock higher, something. And yet all it took was two months of this year's phenomenal stock market (and even ignoring the startling behavior of a few days ago, it's been phenomenal for the longest time) for us to reach it. I looked at it for a moment, and I thought Well, that's it. My wife had a better reaction: she went and found two small crystal cordial glasses, she pulled out a bottle of Carolyns Irish Cream, and we toasted each other. We have major expenses coming up which will force us down below TMN, but thats okay. Number one, the projection is that we will go back up again, and, in fact, will be there for an extended period. And Number two, its a goal, not a steady state. We did not expect or intend to always have that much money (nifty as it would be to do so). It was the apogee of our financial arc, so that as we retired, we would coast for a good long time. And so, barring medical expenses, we shall.