Bucket List…

The Trinity test site in New Mexico (I went to Oak Ridge last year & Hanford in 2019)

If you want to actually see the Trinity site and not just the (small) museum/white sands, then you have to go on the two days of the year that they open it to the public. For 2024 that is April 6 and October 19th.

https://home.army.mil/wsmr/index.php/contact/public-affairs-office/trinity-site-open-house

My Bucket List - mostly filled

My bucket list perspective is likely different from many of you in that it is mostly completed now at 80 years of age. Hope I don't bore you too much.

My earliest buckets began during grade school / high school years when I wanted to earn some money. Being a farm boy I was able to raise chickens and sell eggs, raise and sell hogs and sheep, and work for neighbors baling hay, cleaning soybean fields, and helping during harvest season. Obvoiously there were literally buckets of you-know-what and bags of livestock feed to be carried.

In HS a new bucket was to be able to continue my education through college. This bucket was filled by continuing the tasks I had begun in grade school and high school, and by earning a AB degree and most of a MA. Then a new bucket became paying off college loans which I accomplished in ten years.

My bucket for a successful career actually spilled in a very short period. My work in my chosen field of study (Sociology/Psychology) terminated after less than a year in a single position and I never looked back. This lead to a number of years in bookkeeping and accounting using self-taught skills and subsequently to a couple positions in Credit Management.

During my time in Credit Management I got to see a computer for the first time in my life. A few weeks later I started a new bucket as a programmer trainee which lead to 42 years of work in IT as Programmer, Systems Analyst, Depertment Manager, and finally years as a Database Administrator jointly responible for over fifty database server instances at a Fortune 500 company.

Another bucket was the goal of having a cabin in the Roocky Mountains. In 2003 my wife and I bought a 10-acre historic mining claim at 11000 feet elevation in the Colorado Rockies and built a real log cabin we were able to enjoy on vacations and all summer after retiring.

My travel bucket list included my first visit to Colorado following my first year in college when a friend and I traveled from Illinois to Colorado/Wyoming/Montana driving, eating, and sleeping in a used 1962 Ford Falcon 2-door. We spent about $100 each on that trip.

My wife and I got to visit the Virgin Islands on our honeymoon when we married at 36 years of age.

During my IT years one employer treated my wife and myself to an expense-paid vacation to Hawaii after a major IT project. Later we were able to go back for another vacation to several more islands on our own.

One year we decided to visit Alaska so flew up there and did an extensive tour including traveling the Dalton Highway along the pipeline route and got to walk across the Arctic Circle.

Toward the end of our bucket list we visited Europe twice. First time we drove with another couple east from Amsterdam around Germany, Austia, Switzerland, northern Italy, and back through France. Second visit we did a riverboat cruise again from Amsterdam all the way to Ukraine and Romania where my wife had employees for her graphic design business.

Our domestic bucket list involved raising four sons who are now ages 53/54/57/57. Three of the four enjoy successful IT careers and the fourth owns an HVAC company.

About all that remains on my bucket list is cleaning up my Quicken data beginning with a couple investment holdings my Dad began for me in 1943, all my earning/spending data from 1986 when I began Quicken, and accounting for every cent of my retirement savings.

The only other remaining bucket is the ice bucket holding our bottle of wine on the deck or patio on many afternoons. We call that 'merlot time'.