Two more tasks done. Freedom almost comes calling.

We've been busy wrapping up loose ends since selling the audiology practice last December. Two [more] milestones have been achieved. And not a day too soon as far as I'm concerned. I'll take it as a birthday gift.

We cleaned out the storage unit that housed spare business gear and records. Phew. One nagging monthly bill is done and gone. Below is the almost-there shot, with Barb celebrating. After shedding all that deadweight in the storage shed, Barb still thinks she has four pounds to rid from her frame. Damned perfectionist.

Here's the "finished, let's board-up-this-frickin'-place" shot.

In the last two weeks we also resolved all outstanding insurance claims. Yep, your medical insurance company will string out paying your medical providers for up to 6 months when they can (and not much can be done about it by the provider). Imagine if after putting in a weeks work your employer said they'll send a paycheck to you in 6 months.

Now you have a sense of what medical providers deal with. Constantly.

Also, since all electronic insurance payments have finally cleared the bank, I gleefully closed all our checking, savings, ACH, and merchant accounts that we had with the big-bank thieves. Finished moving the last of our accounts to local banks today - who don't do all the nasty, shit-head things that big banks do to people.

Made a point, though, of thanking many of the branch employees for their fine service and smiles over the years. They are the poor souls caught in the middle between putting food on their table and screwing people over by following management "orders".

By the way, I'll go preemptive here: Don't dare tell me, "Well, they can always quit if they hate what they are doing so much!" To which I'll respond, "Bull shit". When you have bills to pay and make the money they do, it isn't always easy to just walk away from a job. Put the blame where it deserves to be. Not on the employees. Put it on upper management where it belongs.

Enough of this. Barb and I are on our way to discovering what it is like to not have the hassle, and joys, of owning a business (our new part-time recording play-thing doesn't count as a business in the same sense). Feels strange right now, but am enjoying what our increasingly simplified life has been like during the last few months.

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The biggest problem I am having with this retirement thing is knowing what day of the week it is. Your thing on big banks, my fingers would be sore saying all I would like to say, but for the most part agree with you about the locals (always an exception). Yes, they need a job and while doing it have resolved that they can be who they are and treat people with respect. That goes as far as one manager who after 29 years quit after he delivered the bad news to us as well as one other company. He couldn't stay with the corporate giant who had bought the local bank when he was put in the position of being the bad guy and just a puppet. Hope we can get together sometime soon.