books, chocolate, deliveries, clothes – Retirementally Challenged

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When the flotsam and jetsam of my brain don’t warrant a whole post of their own.

Book Festival

Our local Public Broadcasting station and an area university celebrated literacy and the love of books this past weekend by hosting a Book Festival. It did my heart good to see the large number of people at the event. Yes, there were a lot of gray heads in the crowd, but also a decent number of young people, making me a bit more optimistic about the future.

Crazy for Chocolate

I don’t know where I first heard about Dubai Chocolate, but the combination of rich chocolate, creamy pistachio, and a crisp pastry layer sounded delightful… until I saw the price: about $15 for a 150g bar. As I was looking at the store display and wondering who was crazy enough to pay that much for chocolate, a young lady walked by, grabbed a bar, and said, “Wow, I have never seen these this cheap!” So, of course, I had to buy one too. And, yes, it was yummy, but no, I’m not crazy enough to buy another one.

Delivery Options

An item my husband needed was only available online from a big box home improvement store. He had three options of how to have the item delivered: 1) It would be delivered to the store for pick-up, shipping was free but it would arrive in several days; 2) For an $80 shipping fee, the item would be delivered either the next day or a day of his choosing; 3) The item would be delivered to our door the next day for no shipping cost. His choice was obvious… I wonder if anyone chose option 2?

The 80/20 Wardrobe

We are in the middle of a house project that required me to empty my closet. I am lucky to have a large closet, so normally it is fairly tidy, but now my clothes and shoes are stowed all over the house, stuffed in other closets and piled on various flat surfaces. In addition to feeling twitchy about the disarray, I am confronted with the fact that I have far too many clothes. Some of them are now in my “to be donated” pile, but I realize that I need to be much more realistic about what I’m likely to wear going forward. Like many, I probably only wear about 20% of my wardrobe and, especially in retirement, comfortable and casual wins. I have no illusions that I can offload 80% of my clothes, but I’ll be busy this weekend seeing how close I can get.

How about you? Any fun plans for this weekend?