Retirement Activities - Reasons to Watch More TV

As if I didn’t already watch too much TV, tonight’s news gives me two more reasons to become a couch potato.

The first is my own logical extension of a study published in the Journal of Public Economics. It shows that more people die within a few days of when they get paid than at any other time. Note that getting paid includes receiving Social Security checks and tax refunds, so this applies to retirees as well as those still gainfully employed.

The author’s assumption is that people go out to spend some of that money, making them more prone to auto accidents or other misadventures, the result of engaging in risky business of one sort or another.

My monthly payments get auto-deposited, but just to be safe, I’m going to make it a point to stay home and watch TV during those high-risk days. This should improve my odds of avoiding payday demise.

The other piece of news was an update on technology that will enable TVs to emit specific aromas. This capability has been around for awhile, but apparently not in a refined enough way to make it commercially viable. As with most things, give them enough time, and they’ll figure it out.

“They” in this case is the team of Samsung and the University of California San Diego, who have developed a device that can deliver 10,000 distinct aromas. These are chemically created, of course, but then so are most of the fragrances in our soaps and other health and beauty aids. (You didn’t honestly think that purplish goo was made from real lavender, did you?)

The TV device works via a matrix of 100 X 100 little cells. (Yet another practical application for an Excel spreadsheet…) Each cell contains a minute solution that, when heated, turns to gas. That gas delivers the specific smell. I assume these can also be combined, much the way a fragrance house mixes scents, especially since it was tested using perfumes that carry the names of two celebrities. Test subjects could tell the difference from 10 feet away.

Attach this little sucker to your TV set and the next thing you know, you’re smelling the garlic in that garlic and citrus chicken dish Giada de Laurentiis is cooking up. Or maybe it will be her perfume. I’ll bet she smells fabulous. She certainly looks great. (Are you guys out there drooling over the chicken or the eggplants?)

The latest developments in this technology were reported in a paper published in Angewandte Chemie, the journal of the German Chemical Society. I love the name of this journal almost as much as I love the name Pipilotti Rist, the Swiss artist I mentioned in my post on the Venice Biennale earlier this month.

Yes, dear readers, the day when TV advertisers will manipulate us through our noses and not just our eyes will soon be upon us. We may as well embrace the new technology. At least it will keep us off the highway and away from all those high-risk behaviors we all crave the minute our Social Security payments hit the bank. Thank you and zum wohl, Samsung, UCSD and Angewandte Chemie. I raise my glass to all of you. And by the way, can you please set the cell E6 to have the aroma of a fine Barolo?

Retirement Observations - Revisiting Past Lives

If this post seems a tad disjointed, it’s because I’m writing it with half a buzz on. By the time I finish, it may be a full buzz. One of my friends signed on for a Groupon promotion at a restaurant near her house and we took advantage of it for tonight’s dinner.

For those not familiar with Groupon, here’s the short version. They are an Internet purveyor of promotions from third parties. They announce lucrative short-term offers with a minimum number of takers required by a certain cut off time in order for the deal to actually happen. If enough people sign up, you get the special that was promised. If not, the deal goes away.

We had sixty dollars of good food and libations for around thirty. But this post is not about the meal as much as it is about actually going out to eat with Lynne. As you know, I’ve been singularly focused on getting my house on the market (next week for certain.) That means that most days I throw on grubby clothes and pay no attention to my appearance.

I decided that tonight I would get dressed properly. By properly, I mean real underwear (not a comfy camisole that gives no support) and linen pants with an actual waistband (not my baggy shorts with the drawstring that does double duty now that the elastic has given way.)

But wait! That’s just the beginning. I also put on earrings. (Thank you, Lord, for not letting the holes close up—it’s been so long since I’ve worn any.) And makeup. (So that’s what a mascara wand looks like…) I even put on some perfume, which I’ve been hoarding, since I’m almost out of my favorite one. In the process of all this prep, I discovered that I had forgotten what it was like to “go out.”

The place where we ate turned out to be a sports bar, with enormous flat screen TVs all around. It felt like jocks and blue collar, so I decided to have prime rib and a Sam Adams draft. My friend had a Margarita that was big enough to swim in, and lobster mac and cheese (which almost sounds like an oxymoron, or maybe a sacrilege.)

It was a nice, relaxing break from the retirement routine I had fallen into, and I was glad to know that I could revisit my past life. I don’t normally get excited about Internet promotions and what I presume will turn out to be fads. But I’m glad that Lynne hopped on this Groupon deal.

But tomorrow it will be back to camisoles and baggy shorts, since I’m coming down to the wire on house prep. In the meantime, keep your eye on that Groupon site. And email me if you get a good deal. There’s still a little bit of perfume left in that bottle.

Retirement Downsizing - Plain Vanilla Staging

By now, some of you are weary of my grousing about what’s involved in staging my house to list it for sale. You have my permission to skip today’s post. Those who have been following my rants know that it’s my contention that the Plain Vanilla school of staging is not the optimum way to market a 100-plus year old Victorian. I now have some ammunition from the retail arena to support my case.

It comes from one of my frequent sources of inspiration, the New York Times. (And let us not forget that even “the gray lady” added some color years ago.) A June 15 article by Stephanie Clifford on retail mannequins made a claim that immediately caught my eye. “The generic white, hairless, skinny mannequin is being pushed aside by provocative alternatives that entice shoppers.”

“Aha!” (said I.) “She has just described my repainted and staged kitchen.” Generic white. Hairless and skinny. I commented to some friends that a potential buyer who sees several properties staged by the same team will get confused about which kitchen was which. Here’s a clue: mine is the one without granite counter tops.

I guarantee that a large percentage of homes on the market in Providence have kitchens painted Fossil and White Dove. Likewise hardware in brushed nickel, and very likely my same new chandelier. I would be snorting up my sleeve after being shown three houses with identical plain vanilla décor.

More importantly, the potential buyer who is drawn to this décor is (IMHO) likely someone who really wants a new house. People who like Victorian houses are drawn to their character and charm. Staging a Victorian in plain vanilla is hiding its light under a bushel basket. Or in my case, inside a packing box in the basement.

Let’s get back to Ms. Clifford and her report on the trend in retail mannequins, which she describes as “a new appreciation for old-fashioned window dressing.” (Take that, stagers! So much for naked windows.) Retailers are using mannequins to “personify their brand” and focus on a specific customer. That’s what I feel staging should do for a house, especially one that has distinctive architecture.

It all comes down to Marketing 101. The seller shouldn’t do things that will alienate a large number of potential buyers. However, trying to appeal to everyone’s taste runs the risk of having everyone like your house a little bit, but having no one fall in love with it. If you use period-appropriate touches (in my case Victorian) to target the buyers who are most likely to truly appreciate your house, aren’t you more likely to find a match?

Let me illustrate my point with descriptions of two types of mannequins—one from the seventies and one from today. In the 1970’s, retailers kept costs down with generic mannequins that had no wigs and no make up. Bald and nondescript—in other words: plain vanilla.

Today, one designer store has mannequins that lie down, per Ms. Clifford, “to help shoppers imagine wearing lingerie.” A professional stager would be shocked. “What? Suggest that they should wear something specific? What if they don’t want lingerie?” Hello-o-o! You’re selling lingerie. If they don’t want it, they should be shopping at Pottery Barn.

Some of these new mannequins even have muscles. That’s tantamount to putting color on a wall in the house. My stager would have apoplexy. He feels white walls let the buyer use her imagination about how she would decorate. I think he gives buyers too much credit. He’s also out of touch with how busy women are. Most of us would be happy to be handed a home that has tastefully colored walls, ones that are relatively neutral, but not plain vanilla. It saves us hiring a decorator. Excuse me. An interior designer.

I’m having one of Oprah’s “Aha!” moments, the ones where a light bulb goes off above your head. I think I’ve stumbled upon the real reason that stagers want everything done in vanilla. As my mother would have said, they’re in cahoots with the interior designers. By having houses done all plain, it forces the buyers to hire designers to add character to the interior of their shell of a new home.

So, the seller (or the seller’s real estate agent) pays the stager to clear out every vestige of décor from the home. The buyer then hires the stager’s partner (legal or unofficial) to redo the décor. If there is any justice in this world, the interior designer attends the seller’s tag sale and buys most of the décor the seller was forced to dispose of. It then winds up back in the house where it started out.

Is this a great country, or what?

Retirement Choices - Free Days

Aspen, Colorado recently announced (proudly) that it has become “the nation’s first true Meatless Monday community,” with a website, www.meatlessmonday.com, dedicated to the issue. The site does not name any particular community as being a false Meatless Monday one, so it’s not obvious why the claim “true” has been appended to Aspen’s title. But the first “true” it claims to be, so that’s how we’re reporting it.

The Aspen program aims to promote healthy living and respect for the environment. (They cited the heavy environmental costs of meat production.) We’re not sure if that has to do mostly with the methane gas produced by cow flatulence or if there are more expansive concerns. In any event, this appears to be just the first of many “free days” around the country where various behaviors are discouraged on certain days of the week.

Hot on Aspen’s heels, San Francisco declared that from now on, they would be promoting Potless Tuesdays. Those who are licensed to use medical marijuana will be exempt from the calls to desist from lighting up. It also appears that the use of Mary Jane in cooking and baking would not be covered by the ban. This has led a number of wags to refer to the new program as Pot Luck Tuesdays.

Not to be outdone, New York’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, told the New York Post in an exclusive interview that his city was working on instituting Cigarless Wednesdays. Apparently several popular cigar bars resisted the plan to ban them outright. A compromise of allowing them to be carried and gummed, but not lit, was also snuffed out. At last check, they were negotiating: “You can light them, but just don’t inhale.”

In other news, the official site for Las Vegas tourism, VisitLasVegas.com, now carries a headline about Textless Thursdays. This has been clarified with a subhead: “It means no texting. We’re not promoting SEXless Thursdays!” along with a reminder that “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” I am greatly relieved. So are thousands of conventioneers, many of whom wanted to know if emailing photos from their cell phones counted as texting.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, word has leaked out that shades of gray will no longer be allowed on Capitol Hill on Fridays. Everything must be stated in either black or white. The hope is that Grayless Fridays will lead to the speedy passage of legislation, enabling members of Congress to get a jump on weekend traffic. It’s unclear how this will work, considering that most lawmakers see everything in extremes in the first place.

Speaking of the political process, the Windy City of Chicago is searching for its own take on Free Days. Mayor Rahm Emanuel had thrown his support behind Daleyless Saturdays, until someone pointed out that everyday is Daleyless now that Emanuel is in office. Ditto for World Seriesless Saturdays. Windless also lost out, in part because it flies in the face of the city’s moniker, but primarily because it would remind people that their politicians are generally full of hot air. We’ll have to get back to you on this one.

And finally, right here in Providence, Rhode Island, I’m declaring Stageless Sundays. On the seventh day, God rested, and on the seventh day, I’m refusing to do anything to my house that is remotely tied in to the staging process. Somewhere along the way, you have to put your foot down and dig in your heels. Provided, of course, you don’t mar your newly refinished floors or make a hole in your recently landscaped lawn.

Retirement Downsizing - Kitchen Redo

It’s 7:30 on Wednesday evening and I’m waiting patiently for some inspiration for today’s post. Once again, I have nothing. To be fair, I’ve been tied up this week with painters and plasterers. In between that, I was roaming the aisles of Home Depot, part of the time with my stager, part of the time by myself. (More on that below.)

My Realtor felt strongly (just one notch below “insisted”) that I needed to redo my kitchen. Not a done-done redo; just a freshening up. That meant removing the old wallpaper, plastering, sanding, prepping and painting. Did I mention that the ceiling was also wallpapered? We took the coward’s way out and covered that with wallboard. (Does that make it ceiling board?) The ceilings are so high, we could afford to lose a few inches.

I, too, can afford to lose a few inches, but I’ve yet to reap any weight reduction benefits from all my lifting and climbing. The only thing I have to show for my hard work are black and blue marks up and down the insides of my arms. They are about three inches too short to effectively hold a carton of books without having to clutch them to my chest as though they were a case of my favorite wine. Or any wine, for that matter.

Back to the workers in my kitchen. It’s mind boggling how much plaster dust one room can generate. No matter how careful the workmen are, it migrates throughout the house. They finished at 6:30 this evening and dutifully cleaned up the kitchen area and the front hall. I’m left to clean up the dust in the dining room, living room, back pantry and various other hallways and areas. As you might expect, writing this post seemed like a far more attractive task at this hour.

The kitchen certainly looks refreshed, or as I prefer to say, sterilized to within an inch of its life. If you look up “tabula rasa” in Wikipedia next week, you will likely see photos of my kitchen. (They have not yet been taken.) The only things between the redone room and Realtor perfection are that there is no hardware on the cabinetry and there are no overhead lighting fixtures.

Here is where my trips to Home Depot come into the story. My stager wanted me to replace the non-descript white porcelain knobs that were previously on the cabinetry with non-descript satin nickel knobs. Apparently, satin nickel is the material du jour. Moreover, the drawers will not get knobs, as they had before, but rather bin pulls. Picture an orange wedge, with the juicy part removed, and dipped in metal. You have a bin pull.

In addition, my knobs were in the wrong place. (Oh, the ignominy!) They should be in the very corner at the bottom of the door. Mine were four inches too high. My cabinets are oversized, so the distance from the top of the door to the knobs was probably correct, but apparently that doesn’t count.

I know I shouldn’t take this personally. After all, the knobs were there when I bought the house in 1992. Still, I had an overwhelming urge to cross my arms over my chest when I heard: “Your knobs are in the wrong place.” I guess I should be grateful that the next sentence was: “They’re too high,” rather than: “They’re half way to your knees.” My new knobs will be installed on Friday. Don’t hold your breath waiting for photos.

Also on Friday, the new lighting fixtures will be put up. My old ones looked “too eighties.” I didn’t tell the stager that I actually purchased them in the nineties. In the first place, he wouldn’t have let me keep nineties either. More importantly, I didn’t want to admit that I purchased eighties lights in the nineties and didn’t even realize it. Worse yet, I paid full price. How lame is that.

The good news is that my kitchen will now be trés 2011, or twenty-tens, or whatever we call the decade that we’re currently in. The bad news is that we don’t dare eat in it, cook in it, clutter it, or use it in any way. Now I understand why all those houses that have been professionally staged have kitchens with nothing in them. You move everything out for the workmen to have at it. Then you just don’t move anything back in when they’re finished.

I shudder to think what will happen if the Realtor takes a closer look at our bedroom. If the kitchen is any indication, we’ll be banished from our own bed. I wonder if Home Depot sells air mattresses…

Retirement Transitions - Signs of Staging

Our house is nearing L-day, the day it will be listed for sale as part of our plans to downsize. My Realtors provided a stager and I’m working my way through the long list of what he wants done before we can put the house on the market.

Many of them make sense—we all know we need to declutter and pack up all those family photos. But some items shout “professional staging.” In celebration of the almost-completion of this process, here are the top ten signs a professional stager has prepped your house for sale.

10. All the towels in your bathrooms are white, but none of your bathrooms are. And by the way, they are unwashed, so they're still fluffy, and Lord help anyone who tries to actually use them.

9. All your toilet brushes and plungers are stowed out of sight. You’ve made notes of where they are because… well, out of sight out of mind, and at this point, you’ve totally lost yours.

8. Mr. Popper’s penguins could now hold their bowling tournaments on your kitchen counter tops. Provided they cleaned up after themselves when they were done.

7. There is not one single paperback on any of the 100 linear feet of built-in bookshelves in your house. Ditto for the 25 linear feet of shelving in various furniture items.

6. The carpeting in several rooms is now two different colors, in distinct rectangular patterns. To make the rooms look bigger, you had to get rid of several large pieces of furniture that had been in place for 18 years. Who remembered the original carpet color was deep blue, not faded slate?

5. All of the energy efficient helix light bulbs have been replaced with old-fashioned round ones, because incandescent light is more flattering to what is left of your decor.

4. The storage room in your basement looks like one of those little second-hand furniture sheds along a New England roadside. All it needs is a sign: “Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe,” and an elderly dog that smells like wet upholstery.

3. Your cats need psychiatric counseling because most of their favorite places to curl up have been banished to that basement room. It’s where they’ll also be banished when the house is being shown. When that happens, they’ll be glad their baskets and condos are down there.

2. Your husband can’t find any of his favorite things. If the house doesn’t sell quickly, he may need counseling, too. Or a basket in the basement storage room.

And the number one sign that a professional stager has prepped your house for sale:

1. You come back from one last staging errand and discover that your house keys no longer fit the locks.

Retirement Observations - Venice Expo as Metaphor

The inspiration for today’s post came from the New York Times review of the 54th Biennale in Venice, one of the world’s most respected art expositions. What caught my eye was the headline: “Old Patina Encircles Fresh Art in Venice.”

My immediate thought was: “I know what they mean. I feel like I’m an old patina encircling the young people I meet, now that I’m retired.” Not surprisingly, I was motivated to read the entire article. Talk about a treasure trove of metaphors for retirement! Let me give credit in advance to Times contributor, Carol Vogel, for being such a rich source of material and for my liberal excerpts from her write-up.

In her first paragraph, Ms. Vogel describes this Biennale as “more subdued and less experimental” than past ones. Compare my years immediately post-college with my current life and you’ll find that phrase is an appropriate subtitle for my autobiography. Vogel also calls the expo “a nostalgic meditation on life,” which could be a generic subtitle for almost any retiree’s reflections.

The Biennale’s curator, Bice Curiger, installed 16th century Venetian art at the expo’s entrance, specifically, works by Tintoretto. She described the “demolition of a static order, the loss of harmony” in his “Last Supper,” as evidenced by the fact that “Christ is no longer at the center of the scene, and the table lies diagonally across the painting.”

If that isn’t a metaphor for my retirement, I’ll eat my AARP membership card. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m now more likely to be on the sidelines of events than at the center. And I readily confess that if you put me anywhere near a horizontal surface about an hour after I’ve had lunch, you’re likely to find me lying diagonally across it before the mail has been delivered.

The Biennale has been described as bigger than ever, which is exactly what my internist found when he weighed me at my recent checkup. To use his words at the end of our semi-annual get together: “Your blood pressure’s fine. You’re generally in good health. It’s just that there’s too much of you.” Speaking of which…

One of Vogel’s more colorful items about the expo is her description of Jeff Koons’s sculpture “Fait d’Hiver,” as “a busty porcelain woman in a fishnet top being ogled by a porcelain pig and penguin.” Now that’s cutting a little too close to home. Oh, wait. It says “busty,” not “buttsy.”

And while we’re close to home, some of the language reminds me of my house during the staging process. Per Vogel, the Biennale had many off-site exhibits, “stuffed into abandoned churches, disused palaces and empty industrial buildings.” Or as I’d like to say of my belongings that the Realtors’ stager banished: “Stuffed into abandoned storage trunks, disused closets and empty drawers.” Fishnet stockings, anyone?

Japanese artist Tabaimo said his exhibit was about “receding into isolation in the face of globalization.” There are days when government functionaries and multinational corporations have me thinking Tabaimo is on to something, but the last thing I want to become is a hermit curmudgeon. There are already some role models for that in my life, and they’re not what Martha Stewart would call “a good thing.”

A similarly glass-half-empty point of view was expressed in the environmental commentary of Swiss artist, Thomas Hirschhorn. His installation was comprised of old computer screens, cell phones, plastic chairs and such, reflecting “a world of high-speed obsolescence.” I have nothing to say about fellow Swiss artist, Pipilotti Rist. I just love the name and wanted to include it in this post.

I prefer to focus on the commentaries of the glass-half-full members of the art world. Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reportedly enjoyed the exposition, describing it as “chaotic, kaleidoscopic and exciting.” That sounds a lot more like the life I aspire to lead once I settle fully into retirement. I could do without the chaotic part, but I’m a realist. No matter how much I declutter and downsize, it’s unlikely I’ll completely escape chaos.

Vogel ended her review with a quote from Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, reflecting on the Hirschhorn installation. He described it as “an elegy toward postindustrialism.” His poetic observation: “As we glide into the simulated universe, real things take on a different, maybe even talismanic significance.”

Now there’s a thought I can sink my mental teeth into: real things becoming talismans in my retirement. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pour a generous glass of wine and glide off into a simulated universe. Preferably one without a porcelain pig.

Retirement Observations - Crazyville

The end of this week finds me worrying that we relocate to Crazyville around the time we reach retirement age. Take for example the news item about the 73 year old man from Southern Arizona who was so insane over the terms of his recent divorce that he went on a shooting rampage.

At the end of it, his ex-wife and her lawyer were both dead, as were three bystanders and the man himself. His death was a suicide. Apparently he built up his courage by practicing on the other victims. He had certainly practiced the divorce part, having been through four of them before calling it quits with the wife he shot. It’s unclear whether he tried to shoot any of his other exes.

I know what you’re thinking: “It must have been a hell of a divorce settlement.” Actually, the main issue was who got custody of their mobile home. The article did not specify whether it was a double-wide. The marriage lasted from 2002 to 2007, which made the shooter 64 to 69 during the union.

So, what made him go berserk this time around? And why now, if they split in 2007? Was the trailer that fabulously tricked out? Perhaps by the time he reached 73, this man from a farming community near Yuma had inhaled too much fertilizer. I think he simply moved closer to Crazyville as he got older.

Here’s another news item from the New York Times. A former Wall Street trader took his own life just a few days after one of his secretly taped conversations had been played in court. It supposedly implicated him in insider trading and the tape had been used to secure his cooperation in spying on his peers for the FBI.

His wife said he was “conflicted about his cooperation,” “worried about entrapping his friends” and depressed over losing his job; (his employer had found out about the spying.) This alone could explain why a 50 year old would hop on the train to Crazyville, but wait—there’s more.

Before agreeing to turn snitch, the man sought legal advice. His attorney counseled him to cooperate, but to tell no one else (again per the Times) except his rabbi and his (nonexistent) therapist. His attorney is now a chief assistant DA. Yet another example of a lawyer who helped punch the ticket to ride to suicide.

At least the trader didn’t kill his wife or others before he hung himself. Had he been ten years older, he would have been a lot closer to Crazyville and it would have ended with a lot more mess. The assistant DA should say his "thank you" prayers that the trader was fired and not retired.

If you read my Wednesday post, you’ll know I was dangerously close to reserving a seat on that Crazy train. The week ended better than it appeared it would. The second Realtors I interviewed came in with figures extremely close to the ones I’d put together and they had considerable data to support their proposal. That was the good news.

The bad news is their laundry list of things to fix. Beyond the financial consequences, there’s the net result that I won’t be able to list the house for at least two more weeks. Say goodbye to any buyers who want to close before their kids’ school terms begin.

On top of that, the agents brought their stager to tell me what more I need to thin/rearrange before anyone sees my gem of a home. Once again, the good news: I feel we’ll work well together. The bad news: I have about one third more furniture than he envisions being here when the house is ready to show.

Obviously, I plan to sell/donate a fair amount before we move, but I can’t stop my prepping to hold a tag sale. Where do the entertainment unit, tall curio cabinet, small TV cabinet, second sideboard, six high chairs and four doll carriages go in the meantime? (And that’s just the larger items.) I’m sure I’ll figure this out, but for the moment, it leaves me in a very precarious state of mind.

This is a dangerous place to be when one’s real estate agent says this about the listing process: “Once you put your house on the market, it no longer belongs to you; it belongs to the public.” Public indeed.

Fair warning to my husband: next stop Crazyville. Though I haven’t been dealing with any attorneys (yet), I have a feeling real estate agents will face the same risks once I get on that train.

Unless of course there’s a bar car that serves good quality red wine.

Retirement Transitions - Going With the Flow

Today has been rather hectic, at least compared to most days post retirement. The car went in for servicing and I had to beg rides to and from. I met with one of the Realtors I interviewed to hear her proposal for listing our house. Then I went over some loose ends with my contractor. Finally, I went to an evening event at Brown that lasted over four hours.

Here it is, ten pm, and it just dawned on me that I have not written my Wednesday post. I sat down to do it this morning, but realized I had no topic in mind. I began sifting through magazine cuttings, hoping for some inspiration. The sifting soon led to filing, as part of the need to tidy up my basement office. Then the rest of the day got in the way.

My first reaction when I realized I had nothing done for the blog and nothing in mind was panic. I’m proud of how disciplined I’ve been about posting to this blog every Wednesday and Saturday. To miss one of those days is unthinkable. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I found myself in a “cone of serenity,” a favorite phrase of my friend Lynne.

Retirement is supposed to be less stressful than working. If this blog has reached the point where it is so rigid that it gives me panic attacks, something has gone terribly wrong. I decided to give myself permission to be flexible, and I’m asking you to give me that permission, too.

As for this “day that got away” from me, here's a thumbnail of the two key events. The suggested asking price from the Realtor (the first one to present to me) was far lower than I anticipated. If her price is validated by another Realtor, I’m not going to list the house this year. That will present a number of other choices to be made, but I’m not going to worry about them until and unless it becomes necessary. Stay tuned.

The event at Brown was extremely enjoyable. We toured two of the new and renovated buildings. I spent the evening with some long-time friends and met some new alumni (younger than I by several decades.) The tornadoes that were forecast went through Springfield, MA, several hours from Providence. All in all, quite a good evening.

Perhaps the best part: my friend Becky did the driving, so I was able to enjoy a nice glass of red wine at the dinner. And it wasn’t a cash bar, either. Now that’s something worth blogging about.