Honey, I'm home. . .for good!

[MossRoad]

Congratulations, you got out with your health and sanity. Just don't "Favre" us.

Ha!!!! That's a good one!

 

[Egon]

Well, well, another fellow gets to join the rank of retirees with all that spare time and doing all the things you want! Congratulations.

Now for the truth, you will probably be working harder than you ever have had to before in your life!

There is a new boss and he's a driver, no coffee breaks, no holidays, no free weekends and work don't stop till it's finished.

 

[Bird]

Jim, just come on over anytime, and I'll buy breakfast or lunch. Bring Kathy, too, and I'll let Margaret go with us. And I drove a school bus one year myself at Plano. I was working 9:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. at the post office in downtown Dallas, would get off work, go make the morning run, go home to sleep, then get up and make the afternoon run. Of course that was about 47 years ago. First half of the school year, I was driving a 1952 International (oldest bus in the fleet) and last half of the year, I only drove an afternoon route in the newest bus in the fleet; a 1957 International.

 

[mjarrels]

Jim, welcome to the club! I retired over two years ago and haven't looked back, I still have eight more years before I can apply for SS at 62. ONE thing you will notice is that your expenses WIIL be much less than the working class. I probably put less than 500 miles a year on my truck now, new shoes ever couple of years and can buy clothes at the goodwill store now since I don't need to impress anyone anymore. It would be nice for some one to offer me 20 million to stay retired (Favre). Also, don't have to pay someone to do those pesky jobs while you are at work. Spent two months back in the Philippines last year travelling... san miguel is still cheap and Subic and Cubi are booming!

mark

 

[jinman]

Jim, just come on over anytime, and I'll buy breakfast or lunch. Bring Kathy, too, and I'll let Margaret go with us. And I drove a school bus one year myself at Plano. I was working 9:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. at the post office in downtown Dallas, would get off work, go make the morning run, go home to sleep, then get up and make the afternoon run. Of course that was about 47 years ago. First half of the school year, I was driving a 1952 International (oldest bus in the fleet) and last half of the year, I only drove an afternoon route in the newest bus in the fleet; a 1957 International.

Bird, Kathy and I may just take you up on that. I'm a little more of an early riser than she is, but I'll promise her she can sleep on the way there.

I'm not sure about the school bus driving, but that's about the right salary range for what I want. Having time in the middle of the day when businesses are open is another big plus. . . and summers off. Did you know that many of the buses have both a driver and a bus monitor these days? Also, I think most of the buses are air conditioned and have automatic transmissions.

Mark (mjarrels): Both my wife and I are retired once already. Her's is from a city and mine is from the US Navy. This will be our second retirement. I actually offered my previous employer to come back and work on contract as long as it was no more than 24 hr/wk. The real final straw that made me resign was the fact that they layed off two people on my team last week, leaving only me to complete a project that was delivered to me two weeks behind schedule (dumped on me last Wednesday) and with a deadline moved up 25% in time by someone in the Montreal office wanting to make himself look good. The last 6 months have been full of examples like this. We've had one VP, one director, two managers, and a couple of project managers resign or get canned in the last six months. There's been plenty of "fun" to go around.

Thanks everyone for all the good wishes and kind words. I've got a little planning to do because I wasn't expecting this, but I'm sure I can come up with a dandy fun-schedule for the next year. Heck, now I won't have to take time off from work when Vin (daedong) comes to visit from S. Australia in September. Dang! I'm liking this already.

 

[Bird]

Sounds familiar, Jim. I'm always on at least my 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee in the morning before Margaret gets up. I used to tell people that when we were traveling in a travel trailer, we were usually quarreling by the time I got her out of bed and in the truck to go in the morning. So I had to get a motorhome, so I could take off in the morning with her still in bed.

And yep, school bus driving would sure be different now from what it was when I was driving. We had no air-conditioning, no automatic transmission, no power steering (did have a vacuum booster on the brakes), and would you believe only one outside mirror (a side view mirror on the left side; no mirrors on the right side). That lack of mirrors wasn't too bad out in the country, but I sure would have liked to have more mirrors when I took a busload of kids to the State Fair in all that traffic. Theoretically, the only thing a bus driver could do for discipline was report any problems to the high school principal (I hauled kids from all 12 grades). And the bus drivers, as well as the kids, knew the principal wasn't going to do anything. I guess in this day and age, I couldn't get away with it, but I put some boys off the bus a long ways from home so they could walk home and tell their parents why they were late. And after that, no more problems. Two of the boys' daddy came to see me to apologize for their behavior and tell me he'd use a belt on them if it happned again. Can you imagine that happening in these times?

And your reason for retiring sounds much like mine, too. I was Commander of the Planning & Research Division and we had a "re-organization" in which they changed the name to "Planning & Budget Divison", and in addition to what I already had, they gave me the fleet management (which I'd had in the past), the Quartermaster Unit, and the Fiscal Affairs Division (all money and budget matters) with no increase in pay or rank. And we had our highest ranking officers wanting me to spend money that wasn't in the budget (of course, they weren't too smart, but they were smart enough to not put those kinds of orders in writing. )

 

[sandman2234]

Going out and getting a CDL and a job for fun doesn't sound like fun to me, but I guess to each their own. (Never drove a school bus, but do drive the Church's bus from time to time, and a truck all the time)
Congradulation on the retirement.
David from jax

 

[mikim]

Congrats Jim!! I'm right behind you at the end of Dec.....We were at Don & Karens yesterday - intended to spend the week up there but Eduoard(ms) had other ideas for me. We may yet get back there before the weekend though. !@#$%^ storms. Can't wait to get out of here.

 

[tommu56]

Enjoy your days off!!

My wife still drives School bus, I use to when I worked 3rd shift and now I wouldn't do it with out a gun!!

tommu

 

[billbill1]

Jim, congrats and enjoy yourself for a while. See if you can get those catfish to bite!! Might as well enjoy that fine pond you have. Drive down and kill one of Eddies hogs. I've still got about 3 years to go and I really look forward to not punching a clock. The co-workers that you are friends with will remain close to you, invite them down to enjoy the pond with you. I look forward to you gardening again to, I miss your posts on the garden. No matter what you do, enjoy it, you earned it!!