5 Mondays

I only have five Mondays left until I retire. The problem with that is these are the Mondays that I usually take off to use my leave. It is highly likely that I will be the only one in the office during this time. I haven't been a real good one to use up all my leave so I have donated a lot of it to people who are sick. This year I am going to take it all---yup all of it---in the form of a lump sum check for what is left---the plan is to have the check be for 472 hours (almost six weeks)---that should get me through until the first retirement check shows up.

It is going to be really strange to get a single pay check per month since we have been getting two a month for almost 39 years. It is going to require rethinking our spending habits because it is a huge change. We also don't really know how close it will be to what we are getting now but it should be realy close because I won't be paying into the retirement fund or into our 401K anymore.

It is starting to seem weird to me that I will be getting paid for what I did in the past and not what I am doing now---getting paid for doing nothing is a new concept to me.

HOPE IT GOES WELL