Over 100 Million calls for your attention…

We hadn’t seen any dolphins since we came back, but this last Saturday we had a show like no other one before it. Not to be outdone by the sea lions of Valdivia, our local dolphins decided to show up in style. There were at least two occasions where dolphins actually breached the water. At least one of those was a complete clearing of the water!. One time we saw the silhouette of three of them surfing together right under the breaking wave. We had at least 15 minutes of an uninterrupted show, and I was so mesmerized that it didn’t even occurred to me to get my camera out. It’d be too much luck to get a shot of a dolphin breaching, but at least in the video mode I’m sure I would have caught some of the activity. Maybe next time. But not today. Today has been warm (70F) but the strong southwest winds and the off and on storms are keeping the surf quite active. We have decided that dolphins just don’t show up when the surf if so rough.

As co-witnesses to the dolphin show this weekend we had our eldest son Milo and his wife which were visiting from Greensboro, NC. It’s not very often that we get to enjoy their visits. With school and work, their time is quite limited. Still, we appreciated them taking a break to be with their AARP (and soon-to-be-AARP) parents . We brought them news and pictures of his brother in Peru and caught up with all their activities since we last saw them. During their visit, we took a short drive to the Fort Macon State Park after a pizza lunch in Beaufort, at the No Name Pizza and Subs restaurant.

To me, the big reward of putting up with raising little ones and later, teenagers, is to be able to interact with them as adults. I truly enjoy engaging in deep philosophical conversations with my sons and Milo never disappoints me. This weekend he brought us a powerful documentary –he loves documentaries… a son of his father— about the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars band which let us to conversations about how to help others. They gave B and I a white wrist rubber band with the word ONE printed on it, which is an organization chartered “to make poverty history” amongst other things. I promised to wear the band –although not very AARP—and to visit their website to learn about their goals and to determine if this is one way that we want to reach out to help others.

Their visit was short and by Sunday afternoon we were left watching out for dolphins all by ourselves. We plan to be here several more weeks, so we hope to get a few more dolphin shows between now and the time when we will be also migrating south. The remaining time will come in handy to finish some of my home repair projects in preparation for our summer renters. In addition, is time to start thinking on a strategy of how to put an end to my semi-retirement once we are settled in Miami Beach in a couple of months from now.

Thinking HOW to end my semi-retirement is really another opportunity of rethinking what the heck I want to do with the rest of my life. I have faced this question a number of times in my life. It happened several times while I was employed and unhappy about my situation at the time. A couple of times I reacted by going back to school, at least on a part-time basis. School has always been like my own personal security blanket. It’s challenging but it’s easy to follow the path and see the entire picture until graduation. Jobs are not that clear and straight lined. And with my new AARP status, selling myself to potential employers, in a new city and with an employment gap that continues to grow as I write, may prove to be yet again, another opportunity to revisit my security blanket, at least as a way to delay the inevitable. Except that this time I don’t have an employer to pay for it, so it may be challenging in more ways than one.

I am very grateful to have the luxury of at least two (or three) regular readers. There are over 100 million blogs that are calling for your attention and I know it takes effort to come back to this one from time to time. I’ll try to keep it brief and light-hearted for a quick read, but bear with me if I stray into topics that are more pertinent to me as I face our transition to our new home, new city, new community and (hopefully) new gainful employment. I’m learning that the more interesting books and blogs that I read, are those that are brutally honest and open about exactly what’s going on. Besides, with 100 million other blogs around, writing here is almost as private as writing in my own personal journal. I’m not quite there yet, but I’ll try to keep the icing to the bare minimum.