Our year in Review: 2016 Part 1/January thru July

Although a lot of newsworthy events occurred this year I really want to record what it has meant for me personally. As 2016 wound down, I have to say I thought of it as a very good year for me and Vladi. We can mark it as the year we were able to retire at virtually the same time and begin the adventure of enjoyable leisure travel in fairly good health. We had so many adventures, that I have to break my review into 2 parts because otherwise it would just be too long. So please enjoy part 1 as I work to finish part 2.  We feel truly fortunate. 

Let’s start this story in January.

On January 19, I celebrated my 57th birthday with a trip to Las Vegas.

One of the items on my bucket list is to see as many of the different Cirque du Soleil performances that I can. The show that I most wanted to see, “Ka” as recommended by Vladi’s daughter, Olya, was on a break in January so we got tickets to see “Zumanity,” which was recommended by my friend Tracy. She described it as funny and sexy, which we thought would be right up our alley.

We booked our stay at the Four Queens on Fremont St. where we have stayed before because it is not as expensive as the hotels on the strip. The first time we stayed at the Four Queens was when we were first dating and the accommodations were not the most important thing on our minds. This time, we found ourselves kept awake at night by the noise of Fremont Street, which has entertainment going on into the wee hours of the morning. We keep saying that someday we will splurge and stay at one of the fancier places, but I really don’t know if that is ever going to happen. I think Las Vegas just doesn’t hold that great of an appeal for us anymore.

Unfortunately, right before our trip, the germs were running rampant at my job and just before we left I was beginning to feel a tickle in my throat. By the time we got to Vegas, I had a full-blown cold and it was cold and rainy for most of our stay. We tried to make the best of it. Vladi was very solicitous of my health, but darn it, I wanted to have fun. We had a great Prime Rib dinner the first night we were there, and felt like we’d hit a kind of jackpot when the bill only came to $30 for both our dinners of prime rib, baked potato, vegetables, wine and beer.

We had an UrbanAdventurequest to do while we were there and we had fun with that, but I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been feeling under the weather. I got really tired and cranky. We saw the Cirque du Soleil and it was funny and sexy just as Tracy said, but it probably wouldn’t have been what I’d choose if I had done more research.

Neither Vladi nor I get much pleasure out of losing money gambling, so we didn’t do too much of that, although we did play a little bit. And I particularly sought out the Ellen slot machines which took everything I fed into them very cheerfully. When I sat down to play at a roulette table I was actually winning for a little while, but I made the mistake of continuing to play and as they always do, the table turned against me.

I love food. And one of my favorite things we did on this trip was during the adventurequest when we stopped to have lunch at a little place that was recommended in the game. It was a little French Bistro in the Bally’s Hotel & Casino and the food was out of this world. The bistro didn't serve any alcohol and I thought that a nice glass of asti spumante would be the perfect accompaniment for the meal (besides making it LOOK really pretty) and Vladi was my hero by finding a nearby place where he was able to get it. Yum!

On the first day of February, Vladi, Christy, my friend Janeen and I got to attend the Ellen Show with standby tickets that Vladi was able to obtain by diligently requesting them online. 

We had to show up early and wait until all the confirmed ticket holders were checked in and then on a first come, first serve basis, the rest of the seats for the show were filled in. Vladi and I got to sit together, and Christy and Janeen sat together but on the opposite side of the audience. It was great fun. The guests were Judge Judy and Sia (the girl that hides her face behind her bangs) and we got a free CD at the end of the show. I hope we get tickets again sometime (but confirmed ones, so we can all sit together.)Later in the month, Jessica visited California to take pictures for one of her friends and came to spend a day looking for sea glass at the beach with me and Vladi and Christy. It is always fun to spend time with Jessica. We had such a good time.

In March, Christy turned 30 and I spent most of the month gathering letters and pictures for a birthday book that I made for her. “30+ letters of love for your 30^th birthday.” Pretty much all the family and friends that I asked came through with a great letter for her and I searched through my pictures and facebook and wherever I could think of to find pictures to accompany the letters. I love doing stuff like that.

April was rather uneventful other than trips to the beach with the dogs.

Which we always enjoy.

In May, I was struggling with the stress of my job and at one point, Vladi told me I should look into how much more time I needed to put in before I could retire. He had not been working for almost a year and a half after he injured his hand and all efforts at surgery and physical therapy had been exhausted with no significant improvement. He was awaiting word on whether he was eligible for social security disability, which he had been told by other friends who had applied, was almost always denied the first time around. So, I made an appointment with the person in charge of retirement at my union and found out that I was eligible to retire under the Rule of 85 (a formula of age plus time of service). I was cautioned that if the Trust Fund ever got into real financial trouble, anyone who had retired by this rule before they were 60 was in jeopardy of having their pension payment reduced. I decided it was worth the risk. I really wanted to stop working. So I put in my notice and within another week or so, Vladi was notified that he was eligible for social security. We were ectatic! It took a little time to get all our papers filled out and notarized and sent off, but step by step, it all came together.

May 20 was my official last day of work and I had the most wonderful send-off from my co-workers.

They made me feel very loved and special. 

It felt surreal to not have to get up at 4 a.m. everyday anymore but I got used to it pretty quick.

In June we received the social security back pay that Vladi was owed for the 18 months since he had been unable to work, so we decided to do some much needed work on our house. I have lived in this house for 24 years and have never painted the outside. It was in desperate need. So over the next few months, we took our house from looking like this:

To looking like this:

We still have a lot of work to do on the inside, but at least the outside looks pretty good. Although we haven't decided yet what to do with the lawn. 
It was around this time that we started thinking about renting or purchasing an RV. One of my dreams has always been to visit the many friends and relatives I have in all parts of the country. Vladi wanted to get out and explore, too, so we thought an RV would be an ideal way to do all that and take our dogs along for the adventure. So we started looking around and doing some research.

Also in June, Vladi's son, Sam, left with his friend Chase to go to an automotive school in Wyoming. 

We were empty nesters for the first time. Sam's program was supposed to take about 9 months to a year to complete and we were pretty sure he would come back to live with us for awhile when he was done, so we decided to hold off on doing anything with his room. Instead, we used it as a storage for items we planned to sell at a future garage sale.

In the beginning of July, Olya and Adam came down to attend the wedding of Olya's cousin, Dima. We took them out to dinner at our favorite Mediterranean restaurant to celebrate Gideon's 2nd birthday.

  
It was wonderful to have the freedom to go places and do the things we wanted without having to worry about having to get up and go to work. 
We are always on the lookout for dog-friendly restaurants and we found one in Santa Barbara that we visited with Christy a couple of times.

We also visited the Ventura Pier (and we're trying to learn how to take decent selfies.)

At the end of the month, we had our first big retirement adventure. I had made reservations many months in advance for a trip to the Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. I had wanted to visit this event ever since I had passed through the area years before and missed it by a few weeks. So we headed to Gilroy in the hottest part of the summer. It was also fire season. It felt like the whole 300 mile drive, there was smoke hanging in the air from various fires that were burning throughout the state.

Thankfully, the air conditioning in the Prius is quite good, so we were very comfortable even though it was 108 degrees outside.

But the blazing temperature made it a little difficult to enjoy the festival itself. On the day that we attended, we got there when it opened and started walking around to all the booths. It was already quite warm and the temperature climbed to nearly intolerable within an hour. We stuck it out for another hour, but even with sunhats and a water mister that we purchased, we were pretty miserable. We bought a few things and tasted all the garlic flavored items that we wanted to (including garlic ice cream which is not nearly as disgusting as it sounds) and after a total of about 3 hours, we left.

We had to park some distance away and were shuttled to and from our car by buses. When we tried to get out of the parking area, we were directed away from the direction we needed to go and were required to make a big circle to get back to our hotel. One part of the circle took us on the freeway past an RV dealer. We happened to see that they carried the Thor brand RV that we had narrowed our search to so we decided to stop and take a look. Lo and behold, the very first Thor RV we saw was the exact one that met all the criteria we were hoping to find. It was less than 30 feet, it had a king size bed, it had the bathroom all in one compartment, and it had light colored wood interior. We were so excited. We had not gone into the dealership with the intention of buying anything, but they had what we wanted and they were offering it at a good price.

So, yep, we bought it! We arranged to pick it up on the day that we would be heading home from our trip, which was the following week.
We had a couple of other things planned before we would be ready to go home.
One day we made a trip to Paso Robles to do another Adventurequest. We have a lot of fun with those. They are similar to a scavenger hunt in which you follow clues and solve puzzles based on items in a particular location. You learn about the city/town as well as see details of a place that you might otherwise overlook. They are all a lot of fun. 

While we were in Paso Robles, we visited a couple of their famous wineries and I picked up a few bottles of very nice wine.
Another day, we visited a Municipal Rose Garden in San Jose.

And on yet another day, we went to a Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA which is in the "Silicon Valley." 

We passed the headquarters of businesses like Google, Twitter, and NASA. It was pretty cool. 
We also decided to check out Jack London Square in Oakland and found it ripe with possibilities for another Adventurequest--although one has not been designed for it yet. It was a beautiful day.

And since we were so close, we paid a visit to Olya and Adam and spent a little more time with Gideon.

To be continued . . .