2015 Part 1

I think it's time to start a new ADIP tradition - an annual "year in review" post. Something to tie up the old year and tuck it neatly in the drawer. Making space for all that fun waiting in the new year.

And, there's another good reason for doing this. During my work life, especially after 1991 when I left the IRS Collection Division and went to the Quality Office, the question I most heard from others was "Just what do you do, Mr. Burk?" I always felt that the question was posed in a tone that was really asking, "Do you actually do anything, Mr. Burk?"

I learned early in my IRS career that looking busy, important and concerned was just as useful (if not more so) than actually being any of those things. So my response to this thorny question was usually something like "I could tell you, but I'd need a slide presentation and a laser pointer." Then I would quickly duck into my office and fake being on a conference call until the inquirer tired of waiting for me and moved on. Sometimes, you just have to outlast hardships.

So, as an effort to be more forthcoming about "what I really do" in retirement, what better medium to employ than the blog. So here goes. It'll likely take more than one post to cover the great breadth of my productive goings on over the last year. Ergo, the Part 1.

January

For many years (since the mid-90's I would guess) Nancy and I and the kids have spent a couple of weeks in Florida over the holidays. We would visit my parents, see friends, often drop by a Disney resort for awhile, and generally recharge for the new year. Things haven't changed much since retirement other than we now only pack for two. Last January, after spending New Year's with our friends the Dyles on Captiva Island, we headed over to Disney's Bay Lake Tower for a couple of days with my mother Dolores and sister Wendy. Here are a few shots from The Happiest Place on Earth. First, of my mother and me continuing the family cribbage tradition (see previous post Hanging with the Ps).

Next, a shot of me, Mom and Wendy sitting on the Bay Lake Tower dock, waiting for a boat ride to the Magic Kingdom.

And my Bride and I enjoying the bus ride to Disney's Market Place.

Here's a final shot of my computer-savvy mother checking her laptop for emails from the grand kids or any updates on Tiger bull pen signings.

Upon returning to Michigan in mid-January, Nancy and I headed up to Wiser Times to check things out. First, a shot of the new garage taking shape, right there in the midst of winter (see previous post The Barn).

Wiser Times is a fun place in the winter. There aren't many people around (read none), and the main entertainment is watching the lake thaw by lunch and refreeze by happy hour. But you have to like peace and quiet to really enjoy it. Here's a shot of the house in winter,

and winter, from the house.

Late in January, we rescued this little darling from the K-9 Stray Rescue League.

We named her Coco. It took about 30 minutes for her to work her way into the heart of this family, as shown in this shot from the day we picked her up.

The month ended with a session of our Music Night Federation tech team, which meets between each of our musical evenings to burn and package the collections from the previous event (see previous post Music Night). It's a crack squad, with everyone coming to The Lab prepared to perform their various functions with a high degree of skill. Here's a shot of the key players - myself, Quinton "Graphics" Anderson, and Jim "Disc Man" Wyatt.

And a shot of me fulfilling my primary function (the same basic role that earned me all of those rude questions from my IRS coworkers).

February

February was a slower-paced month, but it had its moments. It started with a big snow storm rivaling the blows of 2014. Here I am with my arsenal of snow tools, fresh from a victory round.

Coco continued to charm us with her playful personality. This was an early sighting of what we now call her "dead mouse" position.

And a couple more typical poses.

I'm getting the idea that this dog fits my personality just right. But she likes activity, too, especially around her 4:00 pre-dinner frenzy period. Here's a shot of Coco and her main caregiver enjoying a winter walk on the beach. She loves the snow (Coco, not the caregiver).

One development that was less charming than our new puppy was a semi-frozen pipe in our attic. It didn't turn out too badly, as the application of some heat tape and cleaning out the faucet filter solved the problem. But crawling through umpteen inches of insulation in the unheated attic while toting the necessary tools and supplies, in fairly close quarters, was a more demanding chore than I have become accustomed to. Here's a rare pic of me in full Mr. Fix-it mode.

March

In March we headed back to Florida, as is our way. This time we had a rare passenger - Coco. My mother wanted to meet her, so along she came. Here she is in her travel suite.

Coco turned out to be an excellent rider, snoozing in her cozy nest with out a whimper or growl during the entire 1200 mile trek. Unfortunately, Coco didn't make it to Disney, our ultimate destination this trip. Instead she spent a few days at Happy Tails, the Florida kennel that services her Uncle Baxter, my mother's Boston terrier.

Shed of the dogs, the family headed over for a stay at Disney's Bay Lake Tower, the Vacation Club facility near the Contemporary Resort. Most of our theme park time was spent at the Magic Kingdom as my grandchildren Leili and Cyrus were in tow. Here's a shot of us in line for Thunder Mountain. At Disney, enjoying yourself in line is a critical skill.

After several hours cruising the park, we headed back for a dip in the Bay Lake Tower pool, the grand kids favorite venue of the whole visit.

We returned to the park later that day, hitting the new Fantasy Land area until we couldn't take it anymore. Here's a shot of the big kids on Dumbo, always a crowd pleaser.

We ended the trip to Disney with a party in the room, enjoying one of the family's favorite dishes, homemade tacos.

We closed with the customary family photo, this one covering four generations. In front from left to right is Cyrus, Ted, Leili, Dolores and sister Wendy. Behind is myself, Christy, Nancy, sister Cindy, Cathy and Matt.

We finished up this visit to the Sunshine State with a few days on Captiva Island with our friends the Dyles and the Wyatts. Here is a shot of Dave (on the left) and Jim, manning the BBQ.

And a shot of the group, from left to right yours truly, Robyn, Jim, Nancy, Dave and Mary.

April

April saw us back at our homesteads, recovering from the cold weather. Coco continued her adjustment to life with the Burks, as this shot of her helping with the annual cottage leaf burning shows,

as well as this pic of her helping with a texting problem on my so-last-century, slide-out-keyboard dumb phone.

The high point of the month was traveling to Austin for the wedding of our dear friends Sue Gallego and Jesse Villegas. I was honored to have prepared and delivered the music for the wedding and the reception, with generous input from the musically-enlightened happy couple of course. Here is a shot of Sue and Jesse walking down the aisle. Well, actually, it was a garden walkway.

And taking their vows in this beautiful hillside outdoor chapel.

The reception was held a couple of days later at Sue and Jesse's home. Here's a pic of Sue (in front) visiting at our table of good friends, from left to right around the back Leah (daughter of Jan and Miguel Rodriguez), Miguel, Gary and Dawn Hill, Nancy and Jan. A very good time was had by all.

What is not pictured here is that shortly after this photo was taken, Sue and Jesse arranged to have a hail storm completely blow down the tent canopies on the deck, forcing the party goers to run for cover. But with the help of my trusty iTunes library and the couple's new Boom Bucket (a stand alone speaker system that was our little groups' wedding present to the newlyweds), we were able to continue the party on into the night indoors (the house stereo that had been re-wired out to the deck for the gathering was totally trashed by the hail). It was a night to remember.

On a less amorous note, I did have another run in with a household issue that required the use of tools. When we tried to install the new stove we bought for the cottage, we discovered that the new stove had no recess in its rear panel to accommodate the roughly 3" by 6" 220 volt plug box hanging out of the wall at the rear of the stove cavity. To fit the stove into its rightful place, I had to attack the wall with a hammer and chisel and carve out a recess in the wall to house the plug box. Here are some shots of the before and after. Surprisingly, it turned out well without any need of medical supplies.

The great plug caper, as we call it in the family, was quickly followed by the great stove hood caper, which also required me to exceed expectations. The new stove, now nested neatly in its niche, was begging for an upgrade to the unattractive, dingy black, thrift-store-grade stove hood. So, breaking with tradition, I leapt into the breach, actually read some instructions, and wrestled that tricky little devil into place. Here's the proof.

April also saw the completion of our new barn, including the inside construction of the bonus room, which we have dubbed "the loft". Here's a final shot for April of Nancy and I having our first Wiser's happy hour in our new digs. So glad it was finally done.

Well, that's quite enough for 2015 Part 1. And for those of you who have actually wondered just what Mr. Burk does, you now know what a busy little fellow I can be, when I'm not careful. I need to work on that.

Part 2 coming soon.

Family Business

First, a disclaimer. I love my family. All of them. Even the ones whose perspectives on life I don't really understand. I'm proud of most of them, and I try not to judge any of them. But I've learned a few new things about being family since my transformation to "idle savant".

It's often said that you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. Eh, maybe. That may have been true years ago, when multiple generations often lived under one roof and people didn't get out or away from each other much. 

What I've found in our highly mobile and geographically dispersed families of today is that despite the fact that we can't choose family, we can and do pick and choose the family members we spend time with and look after, much the same as we do with our friends. So with one exception, I view family and close friends pretty much in the same light. That one exception is that if you decide to sever relations with a family member, there can be a lot of estate planning paperwork involved.

Another condition I've noticed is that aside from outward appearances (your mother’s nose, your father’s hairline), it’s often hard to believe that kids of the same family are from a common gene pool. I’m talking widely disparate interests, inclinations, beliefs and behaviors. Perhaps it’s the result of living in such an open and electronically connected society. The forces that influence each of us seem to be less clear and quite unpredictable, from an early age.   

So during this emeritus period of enlightenment, I have refined my position on "nature versus nurture".  My current thinking is that genetics, while likely determining an individual's potentials (intellectual, physical, emotional), is way less important than environment. This is mainly because the vast majority of us (yes, I'm speaking mainly of and for myself here) achieve far below our genetic limits. Rather, what we decide to try and find the will to see through to conclusion has much greater impact on our lives and those around us than anything encoded within our genes. 

Thus, while families can be said to give us our basic biological framework that defines the limits of our potential, how we each develop and navigate that potential is largely up to us. Not to say that individuals may not face obstacles in achieving their goals or, in some cases, just getting through the day. They certainly can and do. And some of those obstacles would undo the best of us.

But I’ve come to believe that for most of us, where we are today is due more to our choices than our origins. And tomorrow, we each have to make more choices (these days mine seem mostly to do with which meds to take at which meal and do I want my next specialist appointment in the morning or afternoon). The downside for me, unfortunately, is that having come around to this point of view I can no longer blame my shortcomings on my forefathers or on some cosmic particle that may have maliciously rearranged my chromosomes.  

One final thought on families. The idea of passing things down from one generation to the next seems to be gradually fading way. We all have stuff, sometimes a lot of stuff, from past generations that future generations may not have much interest in. I’m talking antique furniture, silver, china, crystal, collectible figurines, jewelry, wind-up clocks, art, old photographs – you get the idea.

Now I’m sure that some of our kids do value these items, want them, and will when the time comes give them nice homes. But today’s lifestyle is much less formal than that of our ancestors. Fancy dinners and formal family gatherings are few and far between, and for the most part have been replaced by family rooms full of Doritos and designer beer. Dragging out the Lenox and the flatware has given way to Chinet and finger food.

Don’t get me wrong. I love modern informality, and I don’t mind that the flat screen television has replaced the oak dining table as the center of family gatherings. I just think we have a lot more stuff from our own and previous generations that will have a hard time relocating when we take our turns in assisted living. I’m especially worried about my collections of laser disks and cassette tapes.

Grosse Pointe Charles

The Barn

I've been absent from the blogosphere for the last few weeks, heavily engaged in but not finding time to write about eminently blogable events - a trip to Florida, the annual Burk family picnic, hosting Floridians and Texans at Wiser Times, the 28th edition of the Spinner Invitational, another trip to Florida, and my 50th year high school reunion. During this time I've had very little time in front of my keyboard. And what I did have I indulgently used to rest my brain through one of my favorite activities - looking for more cowboy/dinosaur movies on ebay.

But finally, I've dropped out of warp drive and slowed to half-impulse, so it's time to catch up on a few things that need to be documented for posterity. Let's start with this way overdue item - The Barn.

When Nancy and I first acquired Wiser Times in 2005, it had two outbuildings. Both were extremely tired storage sheds. The first was in such bad shape that we had it torn down in the first few weeks. It was a roughly 8' by 10' wooden mini-barn that stood on the slab on the road side of the cottage now occupied by our grill-area picnic table. And as far as I can tell from a search of our extensive photo archives, we have no picture of this ailing structure (in this shutterbug-happy family, that's quite an affirmation of disregard).

The second outbuilding fared somewhat better. It was a rusted steel shed on a partially disintegrated plywood platform nested discreetly in the stand of pine trees between US 23 and the back of the cottage. Here is a shot from 2007 of this fixer-upper and its humble owner.

Note the fact that the door opening is approximately eight inches lower than the top of my head. This unfortunate fact dis-endeared me even further from this wretched assembly of sharp edges, exposed metal screw tips, splintered flooring and twisted metal hangars, most of which hung right about eye-level. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that I had way more stuff crammed into this chipmunk hotel than the designers had likely contemplated. My aging cranium survived frequent trips into the bowels of this man-eater only because I placed (after a number of wounds - slow learner) pieces from an old Styrofoam noodle around the most lethal of the threats.

Despite my rocky relationship with this killer shed, it actually survived for almost ten years. It's only redeeming virtue - that it was there - turned out to be a powerful force. That and the fact that it was going to cost more to replace it than the cash I was laying out for first aid supplies.

The shed even had a rebirth of sorts in 2010. During one of my reorganizing fits (see The Purge) I cleaned a lot of old stuff out of the shed and reinforced the floor a bit. Nancy even gave it a fresh coat of paint. Here's a shot of her handiwork.

This is as good as the old eyesore ever looked, but this minor restoration only postponed the inevitable. The shed was just too small, too flimsy and too full of hazards to accommodate our needs and health care budget as I was still bumping my head on a regular basis during ingress and egress (there was even a rumor that the odd wrinkles and dents in the doors were remnants from an incident involving a large hammer after a particularly painful head banging episode; after binge-watching Forensic Files a few times, I'm pretty sure no one could ever really prove anything).

So last year Nancy and I finally concluded that we needed a new shed. That brings us back to The Barn. We started out by surfing the Web for replacement sheds. Wood. Metal. Plastic. We checked them all out. Nothing really grabbed us. So we expanded our thinking. Perhaps our gazebo builder (a local contractor named Dave) would put up a shed for us. It would be more expensive, probably. But it would be nicer.

We then moved a little toward the edge of the box. We entertain a lot at the cottage. Maybe we could have Dave add a small room at the back of the shed that could accommodate the occasional overnight guest? Sort of a bunkhouse. Yeah. That sounds cool.

Soon we had one foot over the edge. How about a garage? We could make it big enough to house the car and all of the items we were keeping in the shed. Wow. Yeah. Cool. Now you're talkin'.

Then - it was cocktail hour, and we stumbled totally out of the box. After filtering our thoughts through a couple of pre-mixed Wiser's Manhattans, it all became clear. We NEED the garage, the storage space AND a room for overflow company. Sure. What could be better? We should have seen this right from the start. Dave - here we come!

Before you could say "holy building permit", this beauty showed up in our back yard.

Okay. It wasn't quite that fast. First there was the builder's contract, plans, and (oh yeah) a check. Then a couple of two-steps with "Miss Dig" (turns out there are gas lines all over my backyard). The formal courting of the Greenbush Township Zoning Commission followed, and then the best part - removal of the old shed. I asked Dave to be gentle. He was. At the proper time, he and his backhoe took the shed down and relocated it to some secret used shed burial ground out in the great North American forest.

So over the winter we watched the birthing and development of what we now call The Barn. We were able catch most of the work on our roadside security camera which overlooks the work site. Here are some (of the hundreds of) shots of the "rising", just to give you the complete picture.

First, the newly poured slab and footings - 16' by 22'.

The initial framing.

The Barn is pretty tall, owing to above ground footings raising the garage ceiling to 9' and a full 8' ceiling in the bonus room. Considering the second floor joists and the attic space, the whole structure is over 20' high. A nice benefit of this height is a great view from the bonus room windows of the lake.

Next came the exterior walls and roughing in of the bonus room (which is fully insulated on all sides).

Then the roof and the siding and the 3' wide stairway to the bonus room on the north side of the building.

Once the stairway was done, we had the builder finish off the bonus room, which we now refer to as The Loft. Here are some final shots of the completed loft, garage space and surrounding area as they look today.
 

So there you have it. From the top, on our transition from rundown shed to a brand spanking new
barn. In 98 simple steps.

It's good to be back. Talk to you again soon.

Grosse Pointe Charles