Here I am, back again. I suddenly find myself with a TON of extra time. The reason? I got laid off the other day (June 26, 2025, to be precise).
The kicker is that I was two months away from having 35 years in. And another kicker is that I’d planned on retiring at the end of 2025 anyway.
My employer announced a few weeks ago that some employees (out of around 40,000 ish) in research departments had already been affected, due to the cuts the administration in Washington had made/was making, and that another 500 would be cut. So it looks like around 650 people were let go. What’s frustrating is that, other than research cuts, the cuts on which they’re basing these layoffs are non-existent. I think it comes down to wasting money (who knows how much money they wasted on DEI programs).
The department I’d been with since July 2008 cut around 20% of its staff. Some of the cuts kind of made sense, and some were complete surprises. No idea what the selection criteria were (hopefully age wasn’t one).
Interestingly enough, I was in this department because I got laid off in May of 2008. Before that, if a department eliminated a position, you were guaranteed a job in another department. I got to be one of the first people to experience the new policy in which the laid off employee only got priority applicant status for jobs in other departments. So I was able to go on interviews that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to go on otherwise, and as a result, I got the job (that I was just laid off from).
What I’ve Been Up To
I spent about 10 years being the webmaster for the speedway at the Nashville Fairgrounds (formerly the Tennessee State Fairgrounds). About 20 years ago, I gave that up due to some conflicts that prevented me from devoting the time to it that I felt it needed. I continued to follow NASCAR, but eventually just got tired of it. Trying to emulate stick and ball sports, NASCAR changed the points system so that they had a “playoff”. And they kept changing rules. And some of the drivers I was semi-interested in retired. So, I just lost interest.
Then from around 2010 until maybe 2023, I got involved in leather craft. It’s something that my dad did back in the ’70s (which is why I knew it was a “thing”). I’d gotten tired of going through “leather” wallets and belts every six months and one day I said to myself “I can make my own better than that”. So I went to Tandy and bought a beginner kit, which contained a belt blank and a wallet blank. I’m wearing the belt as I type, and the wallet is in my left rear pocket. I joined the South Central Leathercrafters’ Guild shortly after getting the beginners kit, and then for some reason, they elected me as president in 2013. I served as president until 2021 (or was it 2023?). Anyway, because of the low number of members, I found myself doing a lot of the work to get the guild’s name out there. But between the Covid shutdown and just a seeming lack of interest in people joining the guild, I pretty much lost interest in leather craft. The fellow who took over the presidency has done an excellent job and the membership is going back up.
Early Retirement
So, I’ve basically retired six months early. I figured I’d resurrect the blog and just post stuff that occurs to me.
Current interests include 3D printing, genealogy, and travel.
Earlier in June, I bought a Bambu P1s 3d printer, and it’s been pretty slick. In 2020, I’d bought a Creality CR6 SE printer and printed a few things with it, but it wasn’t exactly user friendly. If a print didn’t come out right, you had to figure out if you sliced it wrong, used the wrong filament temperature, or any number of things. The P1s worked right out of the box. Other than a few user errors (like not clearing the print bed off before starting another print), it’s worked perfectly. And it’s at least twice as fast as the Creality printer.
I’ve been doing genealogy research off and on since 2000. It’s something my dad had gotten into shortly before he passed away, and I was able to get the files he’d created and use them. Tracking down ancestors is an ongoing process. I’ve managed to trace an ancestor who was in the Revolutionary War (David Lawson).
We’ve been fortunate enough to do some travel over the last few years, including some overseas travel that I never in a million years thought I would get to do. In the early 2000s, we took a handful of cruises to the Caribbean, and those were really great trips. In 2007, we went to Oceanside, California to visit some family, and then to Las Vegas. We did a 10-day Caribbean cruise in 2008. And we got to do a Thanksgiving cruise in 2013 with a friend (who I’d been able to reconnect with after losing touch in 1990). In 2019, we discovered a local company (See America Tour) that offered bus tours across the US. We took their tour to South Dakota with our oldest granddaughter and got to see Mount Rushmore among other things. In 2021, I came across an Italy tour for early 2022 that I couldn’t pass up. We also did that tour with our oldest granddaughter. We visited Rome, Assisi, Florence, Pisa, and Venice. In December 2022, we went with See America Tour to New York, with our oldest and youngest granddaughters. In October 2023, we again took our oldest and youngest granddaughters with us on a cruise around four of Hawaii’s islands. And our most recent trip was to back to Italy on our own, in February 2025. We’ve put a deposit down with See America Tour for a cruise in May of 2026 that starts in Rome, goes to Greece and Turkey, then back to Rome. But that was before I got laid off, so I’m not sure we’re going to be able to do that trip.
So, I’m Blogging Again
Since I’m not actively job searching, I’m at home all day. In addition to learning how to design 3d models, I plan on doing more genealogy research. And I’ll be blogging about things that capture my attention. I’ll also be posting pictures from our travels and maybe talking about that some.
So stick around.