Category: Miscellaneous babble

This year, one of my nieces started her first year of undergrad at the University of Idaho, the other one started 8th grade. A friend from my Detroit days has two daughters in high school now (I remember seeing them visiting the office in a stroller). Nala will be turning 10 this year and Simba will turn 9 a few months later.

On top of all this, I need reading glasses now. All of this is making me feel a little Old now.

On the plus side, we’re in a better position financially than I think I’ve ever been in before, and on a good path to improving it even more. The list of things and activities to keep me entertained continues to grow.

Getting older, but things are pretty good these days. I’m quite pleased with that.

We’ve reached another financial milestone!

After reaching the debt-free (non-mortgage) point last year, our next big goal was to fill up the emergency fund. We had a target of 6 months for the emergency fund and today we made it to that goal.

Connie’s been doing a great job at keeping us on track and I’ve been doing a pretty decent job at resisting the temptation to buy all the electronics things to play with out at the workbench.

It’s a good feeling having the emergency fund filled up. It gives me a sense of security that I don’t think I’ve had before. It’s nice knowing that there’s this financial cushion behind us and that if anything major happens, we won’t have to scramble much to deal with it.

Hopefully we won’t need to tap into it, but it’s there if we need to, and that’s a good feeling.

Now our next goal is to get back to funding the retirement accounts.

My latest reading obsession has been Isaac Asimov. I’ve always been a big scifi reader, especially in my teens, but none of Asimov’s books ever ended up in my library. I certainly knew of him, but for whatever reason never read any of his books until now. My scifi tastes were more along the lines of Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey and Frank Herbert.

Several years ago (back in 2011 according to my Goodreads list) while browsing the shelves at Mr. K’s, I came across 3 of the 5 books from Asimov’s Foundation series (books 1, 3 and 5), and decided to pick them up. They sat on the shelf for a while before books 2 and 4 joined them on the shelf.

I finally got around to reading the Foundation series at the beginning of the year. I had just finished reading the final book of Robert Jordan‘s epic Wheel of Time series and needed something different to read. I was feeling like getting back into scifi again, and Asimov fit the bill perfectly.

3 months of Asimov immersion and I was finished the Foundation series. Fantastic series that spans several centuries. I really enjoyed reading it.

Having whetted my appetite, I started looking for some of his other books and acquired a copy The Robot Novels, a compilation of the first three books of the Robot novels, and Robots and Empire. They play a prequel role to the Foundation series, and are more scifi whodunnit mystery novels. I found them very entertaining to read. I want robots now. Just about to start on Robots and Empire, and looking forward to seeing how this one is and how it fits into the Galactic Empire scheme of things.

After the Robot novels, I have the Second Foundation series, and Prelude to Foundation to dig into. The Second Foundation series should be a little different. While they’re in the same setting, the three books were all written by different authors. Looking forward to getting to those books.

After that I’ll start looking for the books in the Galactic Empire series.

Back in April my wife, Connie, went to Rome for 3 weeks for Easter and the canonization of two popes.

Four months later, she’s “live” blogging each day of her trip. For her, it was a pretty amazing trip. She got to experience a lot of Rome, and visit a lot of places with historic and Catholic significance. There are also lots of neat pictures too.

She’s half-way through her trip now. Head on over and follow her along on her journey.

• My Rome Trip Report, 4 months later — Day 0
• Lido di Ostia — Rome Day 1
• Moving from the Beach into Rome — Rome Day 2
• Pantheon, Protests, and a Papal Basilica — Rome Day 3
• Defeated by Jet Lag — Rome Day 4
• A Tour of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls — Rome Day 5
• A Peek at St. Peter’s, Hail, and Italian Food Cliches — Rome Day 6
• Wednesday General Audience with Pope Francis — Rome Day 7
• The Spanish Steps and Holy Thursday in Rome — Rome Day 8
• Scala Santa, Pharmacies in Rome, and the Way of the Cross with Pope Francis — Rome Day 9
• A Sick Day with Severe Weather: Holy Saturday in Rome — Rome Day 10
• Easter Sunday Mass with Pope Francis — Rome Day 11
• San Giovanni in Laterano, Trastevere, Basilica Santa Cecilia — Rome Day 12
• Back to the Beach, St. Peter in Chains, and Rome Feels Like Home — Rome Day 13
• Campo de’ Fiori, Piazza Navona, and Wandering through Rome — Rome Day 14
• The Vatican Grottoes, the Vatican Necropolis, and the Tomb of St. Peter — Rome Day 15
• A Rest Day before the Canonization Weekend — Rome Day 16
• The Day Before the Canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II — Rome Day 17
• The Canonizations of Pope Saint John XXIII and Pope Saint John Paul the Great — Rome Day 18
• Last Day in Rome before Going to Vienna — Rome Day 19
• Bonus Day in Vienna, Austria — Rome Trip Day 20
• Going Home after an Amazing Trip — Rome Trip Day 21