Reasons to be cheerful...

In addition to numerous reasons to be thankful (family, health, job), I have several reasons to be cheerful as well:

• After several decades of reading, I am still passionate about books, primarily but not exclusively fiction, especially science fiction and historical fiction. I cannot picture myself going more than 24 hours without reading;

• I also love writing, both fiction and nonfiction, and I hope to do that quite extensively after I retire;

• I really enjoy spending time with my students. A typical day at school consists of my students arriving shortly after I do at 7:45am, then I spend nearly 2 hours with them before I ever start teaching. I spend my free 7th period tutoring again, and finally another hour after school with students. I deliberately do not think about my life after retirement without spending a large portion of my time with students;

• I have always been a big fan of rock and roll, especially progressive rock, but I also like a lot of good core rock and roll, and even the occasional hard rock band;

• Although I have been out of school since the mid-1970s, I still enjoy learning new things. In recent years I have spent time learning to play guitar, studying elementary Chinese, and learning to sketch. All of those activities are on my post-retirement list as well.