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Every day isn't a thrill but there are always things I look forward to I know will be a thrill. I hope I keep finding new things as I march on toward the undertaker in (hopefully not before) 2 or 3 decades.

A lot of people retire, then take part-time jobs because they're bored: they don't find new experiences and challenges interesting.  In my case, when I was working my way through college I wished I could be like the rich kids who didn't need to worry about having enough money to pay the mortgage while they pursued the things they were passionate about or new interests. This probably hit home a lot since I grew up in a poor family where music lessons, travel, gloves in winter, etc. were rare things.

I decided to make sure I would retire comfortably enough to be in that same situation as the rich college kids and do the things I never had the time to do through out life.

As I approached retirement in my 50's, I began taking classical piano lessons for the first time. When I began, I couldn't tell you where middle C was and there were limits to my ability to read sheet music. But I had always wished, as a child in a poor family, that I could play piano and, within a few years of intense piano instruction by a virtuoso and courses in music history, theory, composition, and improvisation, I passed the audition for the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins U's ACE Recital, playing Chopin's Prelude in E Minor.  That was a thrill:

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I hope I keep find new things.  I want to study creative writing at some point.

At 60, I began bicyling for the first time in decades.

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At 67 3/4, I did my first white water rafting last July (2nd row, far side):

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I returned to chess after being away for nearly two decades and played well enough to be accepted by Team Maryland, Team USA: Southeast, then the major one: Team USA on chess.com - and I've been having a blast and am playing better than ever.

In some ways, simple things are also thrills.

I finally got a 55" TV a few years ago - my previous ones were all around 32" max, that has such great color that me, slightly red-green colorblind, finally noticed that Marie almost always wears red or pink blouses on episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond.  That TV is a thrill.

I want to begin studying creative writing and get a couple short stories published.

I want to lose weight and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I want to do a lot of things - some certainly won't be attained but I know I won't run out of things that give me a thrill!

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