For me, sitting around and watching TV is OK as long as I have access to the Internet but it does disconnect one from outside contacts since we live back in the woods and only need to venture forth for supplies. Jan. and Feb. are the worst since I do not have a heated garage. For several years I have been fortunate to go back to teaching part time and use the salary for my car so I have lined up a one course deal for the Spring Semester and then again two compressed semesters in nine weeks for the Summer. I taught Summer classes for over thirty years but skipped last year to complete a book (so far we have sold a grand total of 268 copies, mostly to libraries!) but in 2008 I went back to teach Summer school again. This is a tradeoff since it messes up vacation plans and I can't work on the car as much but few others want to teach in the summer and I have been able to use the money for my car while liviing off my State Pension. However, Virginia is now showing a 3.2 $ BILLION shortfall so there is concern about the long range future of the pension so maybe I better save a little of the salary from part time teaching. Apparently the pension fund depends partly on CSX stock so ship by rail on the east coast to help me out! The good side of the tradeoff is that it is great to be around college age kids and teaching the same old calculus problems does keep my brain functional since I would not use that sort of thinking otherwise. As mentioned above I hated the pressures of trying to get outside research funding and internal politics from a Department Chair and Dean so the first two years were joyous to get away from migraines but teaching is the fun part of the job. The "get money, get money" pressure was surely a pathway to a stroke or other health problems. I plan to try to catch up to the latest research on Lithium batteries in a liesurely way since that looks like the way of the future for electric cars but now I don't have to write grant proposals which are a lot of work but usually lead to a rejection anyway!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder