I am anywhere from four to ten years from retirement. I really do not like the idea of retirement. I do neither fish nor golf although I do not mind doing either, but on a once or twice a year basis, not every day. I would like to take up guitar and/or saxophone. I have a saxophone and Christian says I can use his old acoustic guitar–he moved on to classical guitar a long time ago. The problem with that is two-fold–I will always be really bad at it for everyone else but me and it still does not get me out of the house and fill my days with anything meaningful. So I have trying to figure out what to do.

I have been talking to my GaugeCam buddies. One of them is a tenure track professor at University of Nebraska. The other is still at North Carolina State University. There are lots and lots of research they want to do, but for which they do not have time, money, and or help that has the sometimes odd skills they need to do make it happen. We are talking now about whether it might be possible to start an unfunded PhD program that I can do as a hobby for now, then as a full time project after I require. If I do, I will FINALLY have something fun to talk about other than the trivialities of my life on my blog again. I am not sure whether or not it will work out yet, but I will start reporting on my efforts here.