Detritus of Empire - 2020

And another year turns over.

Being old and retired I find my sense of time has been subtly altered.  Decades of clinic practice gave me the largely useless super power of being able to always know what time it was within fifteen minutes.  Because of course that was the standard unit of clinic appointments.  Even a decade of ER work did not undo this although it gave me another odd ability.  I was always thinking of how much time I had before Things Fell Apart; as well as how many steps were necessary to prevent said Falling Apart and the sequence and time budgeting for each.   

Three years into retirement now and I have only the residue of these abilities.   

My work with robotics programs probably goes better with that awareness of time management....and the sense of how close we dare push things before Things Fall Apart.   

But lately I'm experincing some other interesting Time Shifts.  Since the FIRST Robotics campaign occupies so much time in January/February/March I basically feel as if winter is over by Kickoff on January 4th.  Snow, subzero cold...just nuisances, mere logistics challenges to be factored in and overcome.  

I also find that I am turning in earlier and getting up at ridiculous hours.  Hey, in retirement you sleep when you are tired and get up when you are not.  I'm almost "preset" to UK time, so I figure our trans-Atlantic ventures in April and May will go off without significant jet lag.

In some areas, such as writing, it is long pauses and short bursts of energy.  I hope in the year ahead to write about robotics a lot, about politics very little.  The grands will get mentioned, but most of the fun with them is out of the public eye.  Brewery caves are getting harder to find, but I have some new lighting and photography tricks to try out and hope for at least a better study of whatever new ones I can locate. 

I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions but perhaps for the year ahead I should set my mind to doing something entirely unexpected.  Stay tuned. 

Oh, and here's an image of something unexpected.  Who knew that in certain southern communities they modified the famous "Ball Drop" in Times Square by slowly dropping a 'Possum!

Sadly PETA put the kibosh on Possum Droppin'