Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow we will close on the sale of our home of the past 25 years. It's an odd feeling. On the one hand, I am SO EAGER to be starting this next phase of our lives, and we've been preparing for this moment for over a year now. OTOH -- these walls resonate with the lives lived within them for the past quarter century.

Our daughter RuthAnne was up from D.C. this past weekend for a Gyro training. As I said goodbye to her on Monday morning, she noted that this was the LAST TIME she would ever leave this house. That must have been strange for her, and I'm sure it will be for me, too.

We've tagged much of the furniture and many other objects in the house with one of three colors of painter's tape: green for "give away", blue for "send to long term storage", and purple for "goes to the Cape at least temporarily". We have movers coming next Thursday to haul the first batch of stuff off to storage. It's all going very fast now.

"But I've loved these days."

I'm getting my Technician class ham radio license

Today I passed the exam to get my Technician class amateur radio license. This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.

I should receive my call sign in about a week.

Next stop: my General license.

Update: I am now KC1MCS. Woot!

Things I learned today

I keep learning unrelated factoids.

• The ship station license that we get for our on-board VHF radio winds up being used for everything radio-like on the boat, including AIS.
• Once a boat has been documented as a U.S. flag vessel, that documentation number is used for the life of the boat. It's not particular to a specific owner.
• The one rollover per year rule for IRAs does not apply to 401(k)-to-IRA rollovers. 
• Vanguard's hold times can be terrible.
• A deep cleaning (AKA root scaling and planing) isn't really as terrible as I expected, at least not at Gentle Dental in Porter Square. (Thank you, Lea Fontanella!)
• Manning Publications has a very decent policy on books: if you purchase a paper book from them, they will give you the book in any of several digital forms for free.
• Hey, my Hayden duet concertina has been tuned by The Button Box, and I can start playing again soon!

Hey, I'm retiring!

Long time, no update. Well, much has happened.

Katy and I are about to move onto a 45' sailboat, a Garcia Exploration 45. We will be moving to France early next year, and begin sailing in late April or May.

More to follow, but to say the least, we're very excited!