Introductory ramblings

As anyone who has been to college knows, a professor is never at loss for words and is always ready to share his great and wonderful wisdom. I have been too busy to blog, but I guess it is about time since I no longer have a captive audience that has to listen to me if they want to pass the next exam. Actually, I retired in 1999 - hard to believe it has been that long already. Many have said they are busier in retirement than they were when working. It is true! But there are several reasons for this:
1) Once retired you only do what you enjoy doing and everyone knows time passes rapidly when doing something enjoyable.
2) Face it: very few people retire when they are young and full of energy. It just takes longer to do things and the older you get the longer it takes. But who cares!
3) Most importantly you need to factor in at least one nap a day.

What have I been doing to occupy my time? Well let's see. I have always wanted to develop my skill as a photographer, and I have done a bit of that. Not as much as I would like, though - I just have not had the time. Like many old codgers, I became interested in my family and that just grew an I began to collect information about my widely extended family. My father's fifth cousin did a lot of work on the family and starting with this I ended up producing a thousand page book on the descendants of my ancestor who arrived in this country in 1749 (I think). Then I discovered an organization called ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) which my wife and I volunteer at least a month per year. When I retired we bought a motorhome and began to travel. Then we discovered Mobile Missionary Assistance Program (MMAP) and decided this was for us. We now volunteer with this organization four months per year, arriving on a project the first Friday of the month and work the next three weeks for the organization. We travel in our motorhome and have worked for churches or Christian camps most of the time, doing anything from maintenance  to renovations to new construction. The projects are expected to supply full hookups for our RVs so this makes travel just a bit less expensive.

Well, that is about enough rambling for an introduction, so will sign off.