I cheated. My official retirement date was 1 June 2002 but I had a ton of leave & permissive temporary duty, so I achieved the military's legendary 100 days off starting in February. No fuss, no retirement ceremonies, no big farewell party, just an Aloha-Friday BBQ with the department and then I dropped out of sight. The rest of the command knew my official date was 1 June so when the vigilante posse finally formed I'd been long gone.
My first day of ER wasn't much different. I woke up at the same time, did the same morning routine, saw the kid off to school, and just never got around to going to work. I was chronically fatigued-- the two-hour afternoon naps took a month to decay to the current 30-60 minutes. Spouse and I did a lot of neighborhood walking and pool swimming that first couple months. I did a lot of reading and cleaned the heck out of my desk files. We started renovating our master bathroom but instead of cramming it into a week of 10-hour days we stretched it out with two-hour mornings for months.
The time off was unexpectedly timely. I was free to visit an uncle who was dying of cancer, and when my grandfather died during that trip I was able to change plans to be at his funeral. I reconnected with branches on both sides of the family who I hadn't seen in decades.
A month after I started leave I had lunch with about a dozen of the command's civil-service employees. That was nice because they could see me relaxed & wearing civvies while I could hear their new stories. We wouldn't have been able to do that if we'd had the lunch before I left.
On 1 May I had my last haircut.
On 1 June we celebrated with family surfing lessons.
Otherwise there hasn't been any blowout partying or victory tours. I think when you're raising a kid it's easier (and much less fuss) to just have a "normal" home routine built around school & kid activities. In another thousand days spouse and I can start whooping it up on our own...
Just curious what some your you RE's did on your first few days of retirement.
