Arontius of Bygelswade

.....Feels cold, but it is bright and sunny outside. Perhaps Spring really is around the corner? Or is this the lull between storms? I seem to remember something on NOAA about a possible chance of snow tonight. I'm O.K. with that as long is it gets it out of its system before the long drive to KAS / KBC next weekend. :-)

.....Friday night was a retirement gathering at a Mexican Restaurant in downtown Bremerton. Felt a little more surreal than other retirement in that Fred is someone I had been working with for well over ten years. I always thought of him as part of my generation, and here he is retiring. Made me feel old, up until I realized I still had another eighteen to twenty years left until I was the one having the retirement party.

.....With everything said and done, Fred's going to be receiving retirement checks of approximately $4,500 a month. His bills come in at around $4,300 a month. He didn't seem overly concerned as his wife was going to continue working for a while. But more importantly, he was actually going to be looking for a job doing something he really liked doing. As young as Fred is, he might still retire from a second job. He's under CSRS though, so there is some latitude for doing that. I think that FERS is going to make us wait until our mid-sixties to retire.

.....Many people from our old Code 361 days showed up to wish Fred well. It was interesting to witness as, to a person, retiring and de-stressing from working at the Navy Yard seems to have taken years off of their faces. Never underestimate what stress does to a body. It's amazing.

.....Saturday was a trip to Madrone's Arts and Sciences Championship. I piled into Florence, the Wonder Van, along with Laurellen, Madrun, Ellen and Tsuruko. The event was in a church in the Magnolia area. Beautiful houses with incredible views.

.....We made it before Court, so TBT and I sat alongside Cire and Elizabeth and they witnessed four competitors. Lots of good stuff on display. All the ladies were asked to judge some items during the day. I was not, but there wasn't anything that I would have lent much strength on as a judge in any case. So I wasn't incredibly disappointed. I was feeling a little sluggish anyway.

.....Ismenia performed her skaldic rendition of 'Baby Shark' for Court. It was FANTASTIC! Very well written. She has promised to do it again at June Faire.

.....Worked on the largesse bag that TBT gave me to do about four or five years ago. It's finally finished! :-) I need to remember to give it to her so it doesn't get lost in my pile of stuff. :-) Took me long enough, but I never gave up on it. The rest of the day was spent in some interesting conversations. I pulled out the knitting piece that TBT started me on doing. I kept making the mistake of keeping the stitches way too tight, which led to the dropping of stitches. But it is still a good learning process and I'll keep going on it until I run out of yarn from this skein. Kind of a nice way to keep the hands busy on something that doesn't require a concentrated effort to achieve. Although I say that after dropping stitches here, there and everywhere. :-)

.....By 2PM the hall was starting to get full of people. Not uncomfortably so, but a really nice turnout. Mistress Khalja traveled up from Three Mountains to attend the event. She has a deal where her proteges and apprentices pick a particularly favorite event of theirs for her to attend. Khalja's protege Aleksandra picked Madrone's A&S Championship to be that event. I thought the concept was actually a rather nice idea, and a great way for Khalja to see her peeps in a 'natural' setting.

.....Khalja has six apprentices and protege though. I would feel a little uncomfortable with that many to worry about, but Khalja keeps up with them. Kudos to her. I have one inactive and one concentrating on more important things at the moment. Another has asked to become part of the group and I'm on the edge of saying yes. I just have to make sure the other two don't have any issues with this happening.

.....We all left before evening Court as TBT and I both were feeling rather tired. The hall was packed by then. During the day I had seen Tomyris, Countes E and Cire (of course), Anne-Marie, Kerij-E, Sean, Fiach, and a whole host of people. The people of Madrone were very nice, friendly and inviting. I really enjoyed the day there.

.....Mateusz and Rycheza appeared later in the day as well. It was good to sit and chat with them for a while as well. Some good conversation with Mateusz concerning A&S geekery. His mind works a little differently than most. :-) But very inspiring. He was contemplating the inadvertent use of lanolin as a preservative on tooling and wood because of the extensive use of wool in clothing and storage. It was a different way of looking at a supposition, but all his postulations made sense.

.....Other good inspiration in the hall. I was looking at a really nicely done 'X' style chair done by one of the competitors. It started a conversation between Madrun and I about how to build a really nice looking encampment. After TBT and I step down of course. :-) I've complained a number of times about the hodge-podge collection of stuff TBT and I bring to an encampment. Comes from many years of collecting stuff without an end goal in mind. I think that the year we step down we need to take some time and clear out our camping gear and come up with a plan and timeline of what we want our encampment to look like and how we are going to get there. I love camping in Lobelia and all, and am certainly not going to give her up. But it certainly feels a lot more 'medieval' in a pavilion. We'll get there. There is plenty of time.

.....We took the Seattle ferry home and had dinner at Family Pancake House, then home. TBT was done at that point and went to bed. I was feeling restless and took some clothes over to Brighid's that she had purchased from Tomyris. Bernadette had arranged to have a Birthday Party for Sexy Matt over at J.R.'s house. Although that kind of fell through as Matt's employers called him on short notice to go to work down in Arizona / California. By the time I showed up, most everyone had gone for the evening. I stayed though and chatted with J.R., Cedric, Brighid, Madrun and Radmund, Conchobar and Eilidh, and Thangbrand and his lady. Lots of hilarity. A nice way to end the evening, and I was still in bed by 11PM. :-)

.....The Ladies are coming over today to prepare for Kingdom Bags. That happens at 1PM. If we are going to get our Starbuck's in, and our shopping done for the day, I think I'd better see if TBT is going to get up soonish.

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....I'm staring at my lengthy list of 'go-dos' and am not motivated to get very many of them done, that's for sure. :-)

.....On Friday at work we had an interesting conversation with one of the Shipyard Management who was giving us a taste of the future at the Shipyard. The Shipyard was told that we were to live with a 5% reduction in the Total Operating Budget for the year and that we could expect another 5% reduction next year. Management is scrambling to figure out from where they are going to cut, so we can expect infrastructure maintenance and upgrades to take a hit, as well as overhead positions. We were surprised the week before with several major availabilities having their funding cut completely. The ones scheduled for this upcoming year are taking major hits to their budgets as the Navy finds alternative funding to make sure they happen at all. Several scheduled for FY'12 are on the chopping block all together. The Navy still expects to maintain its fleet size with little reduction, but I don't know how they are going to do it.

.....Right now two years of a pay freeze are already a done deal. A bill before Congress currently will extend that to a third year, and it looks like it is in position for an easy pass. Another bill just starting the rounds would make the pay freeze five years in length. It hasn't traveled anywhere yet, but everyone is watching it closely.

.....Another interesting idea making its way through Congress would reduce the number of Federal Workers coming into the workforce. Specifically it states that for every three Federal Workers that retire the government is only allowed to replace them with two. I haven't seen the particulars on that one yet, and don't know if it is going to apply to DoD or not, but the word on the street is that it will.

.....Retirement is also going to see some changes. Under current rules under FERS I can retire at 57-1/2. There is one piece of legislation that would overhaul those rules to bring them in line with the other major leg of FERS retirement, Social Security, and not allow me to draw on FERS until our mandated Social Security retirement age.

.....And, of course, ages at which we can start drawing on our Social Security are being discussed. But that one may have a difficult time passing as there are still a lot of Baby Boomers out there who are ABOUT to retire and are a major voting block. We'll see.

.....Fun times! Looks like I'll be at the Shipyard longer than anticipated. Suffice it to say that all the talk of government being in financial trouble is a more true than most would like to believe and will be affecting us all for a number of years. But it is not all bad. I have a job which is rather well paying, with a really decent package of benefits. I will hit my 24th year this July, which amazes the heck out of me. I haven't done ANYTHING for 24 years straight except live and play in the SCA. :-)

.....Under the current rules at 25 years I have to be retired if the Yard were to undergo a Reduction-In-Force rather than lose my job. There is a certain amount of wistful thought associated with that as I could conceivably go back to school and learn something interesting. Not sure what that would be though. I hope that I'm not at the point where I'm too set in my ways to start something new. Although TBT would have to rethink all of her strategies for the future and she might be cranky with having to do that. Understandably so.

.....I feel for friends who have no jobs, or jobs that barely make them a living wage. I am in no position to complain at all and do not presume to do so and will be extremely thankful for what I have, including my health.

.....And when I think that the world is falling apart completely, one of my weird friends ups and does something that just totally amazes me. I have a friend I've known for a large number of years who lives (normally) in Montreal. Two weeks ago she was invited to go and study local herbology and agriculture with a tribe residing in the Amazon. She had no clear plan of what she was going to do to take care of herself while there, or what she was going TO DO once there. But the IDEA appealed to her and so just, just, did it. Took all her money out of savings, put her stuff into storage, and after a series of adventures in the air and with local river traffic, has taken up residence in the middle of the Amazon rain forest, where she sends out regular Facebook reports. :-)

.....Now, some would call that foolhardy, with a stunning lack of planning, but I personally call that freakin' courageous as hell. :-) I look forward to her updates, and truly hope she finds her passion. I definitely plan to do some living vicariously though her. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.

.....Last night I attended a dinner in honour of the retirement for a member of our Code 361 at work. This lady, Ellie Esteban, was our timekeeper/secretary and had been with the code for over ten years. She has been working for the Navy though for longer then I've been alive. :-)

.....It was good to see a number of people who had retired over the past five years come back to say 'Hi' and give us the stories of what they are currently doing. It was a reminder to all present that an active retirement life is an absolute necessity.

.....The funny part was when everyone still working started discussing their own retirement plans. All these people were talking about what they were going to do in three, four or five years when they were eligible. I'm sitting there being quiet and at some point one of the guys turns around to me and asks, 'How many years do you have to go until retirement?' I sat back and did the math and said, 'I have eighteen years until I'm eligible to retire, but FERS will probably not let me go until I can draw on Social Security. Which means that my actual retirement will most likely be in twenty-three years.'

.....The area around me grew really quiet for a couple of minutes. Which was amazing considering how noisy the hall was. Then I started noticing the looks of 'Don't get too close, it might be contagious.' At which point one of the guys across the table quips, 'I'd shoot myself.' Everyone started laughing. I guess I never realized how much younger I was than most of the people in the Code. :-)

.....But I sure received the rude turn-around later. After the retirement get together I went back into Bremerton and met up with the group at Fight Practice. Everyone headed out to dinner afterwards in honour of Talon's birthday. When asked how old he was on his birthday, he replied, '27'. All of a sudden, I felt old again. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.