I haven ‘t been here in over a year. I haven’t felt like writing. We’re living life here, and it doesn’t seem very exciting to talk about things that are very ordinary to us. But I have had a recent experience that is probably well worth talking about, a medical emergency of a detached retina in my eye. I will tell that story in upcoming posts.

But what else has been going on in the last year? We get up, take care of the daily chores, do errands, go out a bit. Wait, there is more to tell about going out. Hops is a bar down the street, and I have been organizing the bands for live music every Tuesday and Thursday. It started with a birthday party that I thought needed live music and grew from there. But in the beginning, I only looked at it as something that might be entertaining. Now we have discovered so much talent here, so many awesome musicians, and so much great music. We have all these wonderful new friends, and it has been life changing for us. There are seasoned musicians, and new musicians who I feel like we are watching grow up. I never thought, going in, that it would be such a wonderful thing for them, and even more for us

Our band is only playing once a month now, if that. I am very happy to sip a sangria and watch others work, but we’re not ready to totally retire. And, with all our new friends, we have opportunities to include others in our gigs that we didn’t have before and that can be fun.

Then, there is the gym. Planet Fitness opened at the mall near us ($14.97 every 2 weeks for the higher level membership with all the perks). My good friend lost her husband last July. Her family thought it might be healing for her to go the gym, so they bought her a membership. She asked me to along and that’s how it started. Now I have found a personal trainer there who I love a lot, and I feel myself making progress and getting stronger. At my age, and hoping to live strong and healthy, this is very important to me.

My bicycle days may be over. The gym is safe, air conditioned, and has much more than the leg exercise that I get with biking. This city is growing all the time. Many of my favorite routes have too much traffic to enjoy any more. As much as I love biking, it’s probably much more sensible to park my bike. Even though I don’t always feel it, I am turning 74 in a couple weeks. I don’t have the stamina I used to have, and healing from anything takes longer. So yeah, in some ways I do feel my age and try to be sensible.

So these are the main changes or new things in the last year. I’ll send this off, and start telling about my recent adventures in upcoming posts.