He retired a little over two years ago, and his son Sean took this picture as he came out of his home office. He was so happy to retire from a job that had become a slog. He’s told me many times (as all retired people seem to do) that he’s thoroughly enjoying his time without a full-time job.
Today it was my turn.
Yep, that’s my home office behind me, and I’m officially retired today. Unlike Mitch, I absolutely loved my job, the guys I worked with, and my clients. But it’s time to move on to the next adventure.
I’ll miss these yahoos on the Zing team:
But I know they’re going to do great, and the company will continue to grow and flourish. As for me, I plan to start my retirement with a bunch of summer trips, tons of ultimate, and then my move to Montana. Here we go!
The untimely demise of our van has made us think about buying a new car to replace it. We need something with all-wheel drive (for the Montana winters), some towing capacity (for the jet skis), and cargo/seating space (for our kids who aren’t really kids any more). After shopping around and test-driving several different vehicles, we settled on a Honda CR-V. We are, after all, a Honda family with our Odyssey, Accord, and Civic.
After a marathon afternoon of negotiating for a used one and failing (they didn’t want to meet our price), we opted for a new one. Laralee chose “lava red” as the color, and it’s pretty sharp.
We’re heading up to Breckenridge for a four-day weekend, and I figure we’ll spend a good portion of the drive figuring out all the controls and phone integrations and music settings and whatnot. Pretty cool stuff!
Zaque officially finished high school yesterday as he graduated from Skyline. We had beautiful weather, and his class was smaller than Alex’s or Kyra’s, so the ceremony went a little more quickly.
Here he is, walking onto the sports field:
And getting his diploma:
Afterward he posed with Grandma and Grandpa, Kyra, and of course Mom and Dad:
Congratulations to the youngest of the Schroeder Clan! Now it’s on to the next adventure…
Last night was the Longmont ultimate league tournament, and the end of many years running that league. Despite the fact that it’s the end of May, we’d had snow earlier in the week and it rained the entire day before. The forecast called for rain the day of the tournament as well, and I fully expected that we wouldn’t play because the city would close the fields. But the weather held, and we took the field in a 40-degree chill.
My team beat our first opponent handily, and started off strong in the second game, but then sort of imploded and lost the semi-finals. That team went on to take a dramatic victory in the championship game. Several of the players, including the captain, had never won a GRU league before, so it was cool to see them finally make it happen. One of them told me she’s been playing in GRU for 18 years and never won, so I was happy for all of them.
Despite the unseasonably cold weather, it was a fun evening. During a brief bout of rain, as the sun was setting over the mountains, we were treated to an amazing double rainbow. The pictures definitely don’t do it justice.
Since I’ll be gone in the fall, I won’t get to play in Longmont league again. I was touched when, just before the championship game, a big group of people gathered around me to present me with some t-shirts they’d all autographed. A few of my friends had taken the shirts around to all the teams that night, asking people to sign them. Even though I’ll play in the summer league, it’s sad to leave behind Longmont league. This one has been dear to my heart for a long time, and I love the spirit in the league and the camaraderie of the hundred or so people who play in it.
It’s been a few ultimate seasons since I won a championship, so it was fun to be crowned in last night’s indoor league.
Note the spiffy fanny packs… those were the prizes for the winners. Yeah. I promptly gave mine away to a six-year-old girl (the daughter of Sam, who’s on the far left in blue). And no, the score wasn’t really 115-9; the scoreboard was wonky all night.
To be fair, this wasn’t a traditional league. We used a “hat” format, where teams were randomly shuffled every week. One of my co-league-coordinators wrote a simulated annealing program (I don’t know what that means, but it sounds cool) which generated rosters based on skill level, height, weight, gender, and a few other factors. The idea was to create new teams that were relatively balanced, and it worked pretty well. Everyone scored points based on how their teams did in a given week, and at the end of the season the top players were considered the champions. In fact, I suspect it was pretty much random chance, though, rather than any particular skill on the part of the players.
All in all, it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing on teams with almost everyone in the league.
Several friends (who don’t know Dirk or Jen) have seen it and commented that I seem a little under-dressed. I guess that’s kind of par for the course with me.
That was a fun day, being a part of their wedding. Happy anniversary, old friend.
Today was my last day teaching seminary. It’s been four years of getting up at 5:15am every school day and spending an hour with half-asleep high schoolers. Four years of going to bed early, trying to sleep when I wasn’t tired but knowing I’d have to be up in six hours. Four years of spending two hours every day preparing a lesson. Four years of figuring out how to make the lesson engaging and interesting to those half-asleep teenagers. Four years of studying the scriptures in detail, and reading manuals, and researching church history. Four years of wearing a shirt and tie every morning.
And so after returning home from my empty classroom today, I deleted my 5:15am alarm for the last time. That felt good.
When I first received my call to serve as a teacher, my supervisor said, “welcome to the hardest and the greatest calling in the church”. She was right. It was hard… definitely the hardest calling I’ve had in my twenty-five years of service. And it was great… so much fun to be with a roomful of kids every day, so much to learn, and so many blessings from all of it. I’m happy to finish, but sad to see it go.
