Halloween Update

I'm going to try to be better about updating my blog. I'm shooting for once a week, but my life now seems so mundane that it's hard to single out the things worth blogging about. Retirement is still not quite real (or maybe it is and I just didn't know what to expect). We still haven't completely settled in--still buying furniture and other things for the house. My current project is finishing off a desk for our daughter. We thought we had found the perfect one for her room, but when it arrived and we started putting it together, we realized that it had no top. The one in the showroom had a roll top and we asked if we could get it with a flat top. The sales person went away to check the catalogue and then told us that we could order the base without the roll top. Well, that much was correct, but that flat part of the top was connected to the roll part of the top. So now I am trying to finish a piece of wood to use as a top. We'll see if retirement has made me any handier.

I have noticed a couple of differences about retirement--I never know what day it is and I've stopped wearing my watch. It's not that time is less important, it's just that it's less important when it is. I do have to keep track of tee times, so on those days I do pay a little more attention to the time.

Speaking of golf, I'm still waiting for my game to come around. My main problem is not that I don't have any good rounds, it's that I'm really inconsistent. A couple of weeks ago I shot 90, which for someone who's played as little as I have over the past few years is not bad. But my 90 for 18 holes was made up of a 52 on the front 9 and a 38 on the back 9 (that's 16 over par and 2 over par). In Florida, I shot 98 one day and 83 the other on courses of equal difficulty. I'm hoping that the good scores are where I'll end up.

We wewnt to a pumpkin carving/backyard warming party at Chris and Tim's last night. It was a lot of fun. Tons of good food (Tim is a fabulous cook) and some pumpkin carving. Here are some pictures. My granddaughter as a cat:



And some pumpkin head:







Here's how I keep up with the grandkids. This is my daughter and me talking to my Texas grandchild:



She's an early Skype adopter. She also has pretty good hardware for a five month old.

Vacation in Orlando

We are on our way back from Orlando, where we went to play a little golf and visit some theme parks with our grandkids from Chicago. A bonus was that our daughter Chris was in Orlando for a conference (and brought her daughter) and Jocelyn was able to fly in for a couple of days. That put all our extended family except my mom and Chris's husband Tim in Florida at the same time. Sarah's mom Jane and her friend Audrey were also able to drive down from New York, so a good portion of the family was able to visit at the same time.

It was a lot of fun accompanying Rob and Sarah and their kids to the parks. All the grandkids were amazingly well behaved. Except for Friday (when Rob and I played golf) the lines were short and we were able to see almost everything we planned. The weather was unseasonably warm, but the new Texans seemed to mind it less than the Chicago part of the clan.

Here are some pictures from the parks:





All the older grandkids are crazy about Star Wars, so at MGM we had to do all things Star Wars. The Jedi Training Academy was a must, where all three kids hoped to be selected for training. As luck would have it the Jedi master selected our granddaughter to be one of his padawans (students). The boys hid their disappointment well and were proud of their little sister. Here is our granddaughter undergoing training (note the mouse ears) and dueling Darth Vader:



Our youngest granddaughters got a chance to get reacquainted. It's a shame they are so close in age and so far apart geographically. They are both beyond cute. That's Rob and Sarah's girl on the left and Chris and Tim's daughter on the right.



We're on our way home now (actually in Baton Rouge just off the LSU campus). Next week it will be back to the retirement grind.

Am I retired?

This week marked my first return to things Fed. I attended a conference at the Dallas Fed for a couple of days. I was invited to help present some of the training projects I've been working on the past couple of years to the general capital markets population. I jumped at the opportunity because it gave me a chance to get together with some colleagues I hadn't seen since August. It turned out that one of the purposes was also to pay me some nice compliments for the work I've done. One of my friends/colleagues from the Board got up and said a lot of nice things about me and then gave me a framed set of Federal Reserve notes--one from each district--each with the signature of the people from that Bank with whom I've worked during the past few years. I was a very nice gesture (and a cool gift) and I really appreciated it. Then another colleague--a native Texan--presented me with a new Stetson hat and a Waterford crystal vase from the folks involved with all the training work we've been doing. The hat fits perfectly, so I'll have to get some western wear to go with it.

I really appreciated the gifts, but more than that I appreciated all the nice things people said about me. I feel really fortunate that I had the opportunity to work with so many outstanding colleagues over the past nine years. I have to admit that all the attention has embarrassed me a little because I know that a lot of what is being credited to me belongs just as much to the people I've had the pleasure to work with.

The visit was nice and seeing everyone was great, but I find that I have no regrets about retiring. I'm sure that partly it's because I haven't yet come to the point where I'll have to ask myself "OK--what do I do next?" There's also the prospect that I'll stay a little connected through some of the work I've agreed to do for the System over the next few months. It's nice to be able to ease my exit. I'm out of sight, but not entirely out of mind.