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Random thoughts from a happily retired American living in Germany

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It’s Official

Yep, it’s official now. Yesterday, Independence Day in the United States, was my first official day of retirement. I went off the rolls as of July 3rd. I don’t know how I feel about that. I just haven’t had the time to think about it.  The past two weeks have been a blur. The Queen flew into St. Louis from Germany on June 23rd. I flew in from Austin on the same day. Of course, my flight was delayed by 2 hours and the Queen had to wait for me in the St. Louis airport for four hours. There wasn’t much we could do about it, I suppose.

Daughter A flew in from Austin on that Friday, and CityWendy and Drew flew in from New York City a few minutes earlier. So we had the entire family together. In addition, the Queen’s siblings and their families (minus one niece’s husband who couldn’t get any vacation time from his job) were also there for the big celebration of the Queen’s parent’s (The Queen Mother and the Jack of Diamonds) 60th wedding anniversary and the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday. It was a big bash which was held in a restaurant in what seemed like the outskirts of Kansas City. If you’re not familiar with the geography of Missouri, KC is on the opposite end of the state. In reality, it was just in a different part of St. Louis, but it seemed farther when searching for the place. It was a wonderful party, and my in-laws were pleased, which is what the whole thing was about in the first place.

Since then, Child A flew back the following morning, and we had some time to socialize with CityWendy and Drew until they left on Monday. There has also been time to visit with my in-laws, both of whom are in questionable health, but still fun to have dinner with and talk. You’d think that I would have had plenty of time to post to this blog, but somehow, it has been run, run, run for the past few days. The Queen and I flew to Austin this past Friday to visit with Kid A and to see the sights (with the Queen in tow) of this great city once again. She has also fallen in love with Pappasito’s after just one visit. She had me take her back there for a second night yesterday evening. She has promised to go back with me for a Happy Hour later this week, so there’s one thing that we have in common. Hooray!

I have accumulated lots of odds and ends over the past two weeks when I didn’t have time to post. For example, while visiting Home Depot the other night, I ran across this sign on a the door to the men’s room. Thank goodness that Apple provided a camera with the iPhone. What do you suppose this sign means? I shudder to imagine.

More odds and ends: Did you know that Gold’s Gym has declared July to be “Cankle Awareness Month”? According to Rush Limbaugh, (and don’t we all believe everything that we hear on the radio?), that is the case. So, Madame Secretary of State, if you are reading this blog post, you know how to spend your month. Ooh, that’s uncalled for.

And isn’t it interesting how the press was so wrapped up in the mystery surrounding Michael Jackson’s death? That is, until Sarah Palin decided to resign as governor of Alaska. I think that the summers must be slow news months for everyone and incidents such as these take on greater proportion when there is nothing else happening….not that either one of these stories isn’t big news. They are, but I didn’t hear much of anything else while those stories were playing of every media outlet.

And I told myself when I started blogging to steer clear of politics and family stories. My daughter, CityWendy, can tell you about the hate mail that she receives on some of her stories (and, in my totally unbiased opinion, it’s not deserved, but that’s another story). Anyway, here goes with my first political rant: In Missouri, there is a group of church members that protest at military funerals. Are they protesting the war? Nope, they are protesting because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military. I will keep my thoughts about the law and also about the war to myself. However, this misguided group protesting at military funerals is disgusting to me. Having worked on US military bases for the past 36 years, I have a pretty good idea of the stress that is involved with having a loved one who is sent into harm’s way. Unfortunately, I have also had way too much experience in being close to people who get that dreaded knock at the door to be greeted by two military members in Class A uniforms. Please, let these people bury their dead with dignity. If you don’t like the law, tell your member of congress. Write letters to the editor. Gather petitions. Do whatever is legal and proper, but please, please, don’t disturb the dignity of the final ceremonies to honor these fallen warriors. Yes, I know that the Supreme Court has said that they can continue, but I don’t care about that. How about doing what is right?

And, with that, I’ll go back to being Retired-Ed. But before I end this particular post, I have a plea. If any of my three or four loyal readers (one of whom is not even a family member) know anything about the iPhone, I have a problem with mine. I have downloaded a program and my iTunes program does not recognize this program as being for the iPhone. Ergo, I can’t “restore” this program to my phone. Any ideas?

Retired-Ed

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Welcome to my blog

My name is Ed Atterberry, and I am a (soon to be) retired school administrator for the Department of Defense Dependents Schools in Germany. My retirement will be fully effective on July 3, 2009. My final job was as assistant superintendent of the Bavaria District. My purpose of beginning this blog is to write about items that might interest some of the following groups: Americans living in Germany, retirees (especially those living overseas), DoDDS employees and former employees, people who like to travel in Europe, and perhaps some people who share my hobbies and thoughts on various issues. I will remain in Germany because my wife will remain as a teacher and I will be her dependent. This lady is the Queen of the House, the Queen Bee, and I’ll just refer to her as The Queen or simply Q. Because she doesn’t have a presence on the web, it would not be fair to subject her to the slings and arrows of web existence. We have been blessed with two wonderful daughters. Our elder daughter does have a web presence. She is a writer of some note on the web and you can read her blog at www.citywendy.com. Wendy lives in New York City and will soon be married. Our younger daughter says that I can refer to her as “Child A”, rather than “Number Two”. She is a registered nurse living and working in Texas and specializes in sexual health issues. What’s on my mind at present, as a newbie to retired life, is how to make ends meet on a much-reduced income. I had several ideas on how to supplement my income. One was to be an eBay merchant or a web merchant. Sounds promising, but shipping products from Germany to the States via German Post (using the APO for business is a big no-no) is very expensive. Is my German good enough to try to sell to the German population? I don’t know about that. Another idea was to start a worm farm and sell worms as bait and sell their (ahem) “castings” as fertilizer. Going from being a school administrator to peddling worm crap seems like a natural progression. But some colleagues suggested that I become a writer. This blog will be my first attempt at that, and we’ll see how it goes. I would be very interested in developing discussions about various topics. For example, I have mentioned that I am looking for ideas of how to supplement an income while retired overseas. Any ideas? I’d welcome comments. Future posts will be about travel opportunities, discounts for senior citizens, hobbies, activities, and, oh yes, I’ll write some things about DoDDS after I am off the rolls. I look forward to having you come back and visit. And certainly this site needs an upgrade in its look. Are there any website gurus out there who can offer suggestions for improvement on the header and the look of this site? Retired-Ed (but not quite)