I was going to do a rant on the state of the nation… But I figured I don’t have enough BP meds handy, so you get humor…

I ‘really’ don’t think this one is very far from the truth… 🙂

A Few years ago, my wife and I moved into a retirement development on  Florida’s southeast coast.  We are living in the “Delray/Boca/Boynton Golf, Spa, Bath and Tennis Club on Lake Fake-a-Hachee”. There are 3,000 lakes in Florida; only three are real.

Our biggest retirement concern was time management; What were we going to do all day? Let me assure you, passing the time is not a  problem. Our days are eaten up by simple, daily activities. Just getting out of our car takes 15 minutes. Trying to find where we parked takes 20 minutes. It takes a half-hour in the check-out line in Wal-Mart, and 1 hour to return the item the next day.

Let me take you through a typical day: We get up at 5 am, have a  quick breakfast and join the early morning Walk-and-Fart Club. There are about 30 of us, and rain or shine, we walk around the streets, all talking at once. Every development has some late risers who stay in bed until 6 am.  After a nimble walk, avoiding irate drivers out to make us road kill, we go back home, shower and change for the next activity.

My wife goes directly to the pool for her underwater Pilates class, followed by gasping for breath and CPR.  I put on my ‘Ask me about my Grandchildren’ T-shirt, my plaid mid-calf shorts, my black socks and sandals and go to the clubhouse lobby for a nice nap.

Before we know it, it’s time for lunch. We go to Costco to partake of the many tasty samples dispensed by ladies in white hair nets.  All free! After a filling lunch, if we
don’t have any doctor appointments, we might go to the flea market to see if any new white belts have come in or to buy a Rolex watch for $2.

We’re usually back home by 2 pm to get ready for dinner. People start lining up for the early bird about 3 pm, but we get there by 3:45 because we’re late eaters. The dinners are very popular because of the large portions they serve. We can take home enough food for the next day’s lunch and dinner, including extra bread, crackers, packets of mustard, relish, ketchup and Splenda, along with mints.

At 5:30 pm we’re home, ready to watch the 6 o’clock news. By 6:30 pm we’re fast asleep. Then we get up and make five or six trips to the bathroom during the night, and it’s time to get up and start a new day all over again.

Doctor-related activities eat up most of our retirement time. I enjoy reading old magazines in sub-zero temperatures in the waiting room, so I don’t mind.  Calling for test results also helps the days fly by.  It takes at least a half-hour just getting through the doctor’s phone menu. Then there’s the hold time until we’re connected to the right party.  Sometimes they forget we’re holding, and the whole office goes off to lunch.

Should we find we still have time on our hands, volunteering provides a rewarding opportunity to help the less fortunate. Florida has the largest concentration of seniors under five feet and they need our help.  I myself am a volunteer for ‘The Vertically Challenged Over 80.’ I coach their basketball team, The Arthritic Avengers. The hoop is only 4-1/2 feet from the floor.  You should see the look of confidence on their faces
when they make a slam dunk.

Food shopping is a problem for short seniors, or ‘bottom feeders’ as we call them, because they can’t reach the items on the upper shelves.  There are many foods they’ve never tasted. After shopping, most seniors can’t remember where they parked their cars, and wander the parking lot for hours while their food defrosts.

Lastly, it’s important to choose a development with an impressive name.  Italian names are very popular in Florida.  They convey world travelers, uppity sophistication and wealth. Where would you rather live: Murray’s Condos or the Lakes of Venice? There’s no difference. They’re both owned by Murray, who happens to be a cheap bastard.

I hope this material has been of help to you future retirees. If I can be of any further assistance, please look me up when you’re in Florida. I live in the Leaning Condos of Pisa in Boynton Beach.

And then there are Murphy’s Laws…

Murphy’s office laws

• The printer is either out of toner or there is no paper only when the client asks for 10 copies of a 120 page report by evening.
• The CD drive will not be even detected only when you want to cull out information from some CD. Just the day before that, you would have been playing music and it would have worked fine. If the Drive is working the CD would be corrupt/Scratched.
• The network would snap just when you were explaining an important point over a NetMeeting conference call.
• The telephones won’t work when you need to call long distance urgently.
• Either that or somebody would be talking to his girlfriend on the only long distance line.
• All mails except the most important one, which was sent way before, will find their way into your inbox.
• The client will call only when you had left for a coffee break. And when you call back, he/she won’t be available in office.
• When its a busy day for you, all your colleagues would be chatting just outside your cabin.
• When you don’t have much work… all your colleagues will be busy.
• Your Security will insist on you leaving by 7:00 on the very day when you have to stay till 10:00 to meet an important deadline.
• The display settings on your computer will play havoc only when you have to finish a presentation by afternoon.
• Of all the vehicles in the parking, yours would be most difficult to take out when it is an emergency.
• Only when you want to piss urgently would all the urinals be taken.
• The office assistant would be on leave only on the day you need him most.
• The client would not have gone through the report/brief before attending your well rehearsed presentation.
• The better your presentation, least the impact.
• When the telephone operator leaves the board on night mode all the calls would land only on your desk.
• When you are attending a client call on a colleagues desk, and need to jot down urgently, none of the pens on his desk would write if not you wouldn’t find a piece of paper within your reach.
• You’d find the important Phone number/e-mail ID you had been looking for, only after you had got in touch with that person by some other means.
• When you are out of office, the most important of phone calls would be attended by the least concerned of your colleagues who wouldn’t even care to ask who it was.. or wouldn’t remember.
• Only on the rarest of the days you come late, you’d bump into your boss smoking at the entrance.
• The floppy which worked perfectly alright few minutes ago on your machine will not open in your boss’s or client’s machine.
• The coffee machine will be empty, when you need coffee most.
• After a really hard day of work, when starting your car at 11:00 pm in the night to leave office, you’ll realize that you’ve run out of gas.
• Corollary: It’s only after you run out of gas, you’ll remember that the nearest gas station is at least 5 miles away.
• The stapler will be out of pins when needed.
• The frequency of mailing performed by a person varies in inverse proportion to the amount of work at hand
• The authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of functions in his pocket calculator.
• Assaf’s Laws of Paperwork
  • When there are two possible forms to fill out on any given matter, the wrong form is always filled out at first
  • The wrong form is not discovered until it has been signed by all parties concerned, sealed, and delivered.
• Assaf’s Corollary
  Once the right form has been filled out, signed by all parties concerned, sealed, and delivered, it turns out it was filled out wrong.
• Paper is always strongest at the perforations
• The 90-90 Rule of Project Management:
  The first 90% of a project requires 90% of the allotted time. The remaining 10% takes another 90% of the allotted time.
• When reading this page at work your boss will pop-up (behind your back) and ask you why aren’t you working.
• Rule #1: The boss is always right
  Rule #2: If the boss is wrong refer to rule #1