Exciting week in our progress toward retirement and relocation.

Magic numbers:  This last Tuesday was 100 days left in my final semester teaching at TMCC.  Perhaps because I am in “short timer mode” and nostalgic during this semester, these numeric milestones cause me pause when I reach them.

The event reminded of Chapter 100 from Tom Robbins’ “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.”

“Well, here we are at Chapter 100. This calls for a little celebration. 

I am an author and therefore in the same business God is in: if I say this page is a bottle of champagne,  it is a bottle of champagne. Reader, will you share a cup of the  bubbly with me? You prefer French to domestic? Okay, I’ll make it French. Cheers!

Here’s to the one hundredth chapter! Hundred.

A cardinal number, ten tunes ten, the position of the third digit to  the left of the decimal point, a power number signifying weight, wealth and importance. The symbol for hundred is C, which is also the symbol for the speed of light. There are a hundred pennies in a dollar, a hundred centimeters in a meter, a hundred years in a century, a hundred yards on a football field, a hundred points in a carat, a hundred ways to skin a cat and a hundred ways of cooking eggplant.”

As a joke a decade ago I had a “Retirement Countdown Clock” sitting on my office desk which counted down days my 30 year anniversary of public service.  I would carry the joke further  every few years by sending e-mails to friends and colleagues with the subject line, “My pending retirement . . .” and explain that there was only 3,650 days (or fewer days as time passed) until my retirement and I would make my best effort to visit and make my good byes in the “few” remaining days I left.  I am now in the “double digits” of days left at the college and there really is only a few days to make time to say good-bye to all those friends and colleagues.

Tuesday of this week also marked 125 days until our target departure date.  Our countdown is rapidly working its way down.

Official Paperwork:  On Friday, Tracy and I drove to Carson City to file my final retirement with the Nevada Public Employee Retirement System (PERS.)  While I had previously given the college my notice to retire, I also needed to complete and submit my retirement application for my pension with PERS.  My retirement application had some complexity because I have an overlapping 16 years of law enforcement (Police/Fire retirement) and 20 years of college teaching (Regular retirement) for a combined total of 32 years credit of public service.  The application was also an exception because most Nevada college and university faculty contribute to other retirements systems like Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA–CREF) and not PERS. The forms are now signed, notarized, and filed.

I have now officially “pull the pin” and the “fuse is lit” for my retirement effective January 7, 2013.

Cheers!