Book Review of the Ghosts of Christmas Present by Rod Kierkegaard Jr and JR Rain

I was honored to get a pre-read before the launch of the Ghosts of Christmas Present, some what of a sequel to the Dead Detective.

I’m not a fan of short stories because they are well, short!  But I loved this one as it filled in some questions I was left with after reading the Dead Detective.  The collaboration between JR Rain and Rod Kierkegaard was superb in the Dead Detective, and carries over to the Ghosts of Christmas Present. 

 I loved finding out that Richelle is preggers and her baby has the soul of her dead rabbi friend and tadaa... she is dating a 100 year old ghost.  A nice twist is that our pregnant Zombies body is healing because of the baby. OK, so I've teased you without telling you all of it, you'll just  have to read it.  One thing I can promise you it’s too short, and will leave you wanting for more, as in a real sequel.   

This short story is a nice easy read for your holiday plane trip, car ride or just curled up by the fireplace. I do recommend that you read The Dead Detectives first.   Negative, too short, positive, it answered a lot of questions I was left with from the Dead Detective. I give it 5 stars

A. A. A. D. D. - Classic Retirement Syndrome

One of the crazy things I have discovered since retirement, is I still try to organize and plan things. While I lie in bed in the morning, just as I am getting ready to get up to start my day, I talk to myself and plan out what I want to accomplish. Then I get up with every intention of executing what I had so carefully planned out on my mental list. 

However the reality is that on my mental list I had planned on only cleaning the guest bedroom and both bathrooms.  But when I began dusting the guest bedroom, I thought, “Well it’s a better use of my time since I am dusting anyhow to dust the whole house.”  Then I notice the floors in the hallway are also in need of cleaning, so I decide while I have out the stuff I might as well do all of the floors. And so it goes until I come to the end of the day and you guessed it, I ended up cleaning the entire house.

It is now very late in the day, and I find I’m very tired.  I then complain to BFF Hubby that I’m really tired, to which he replies, “You need to get in retirement mode.”  “What the heck does that even mean?” I ask.  So BFF hubby explains patiently to me it means that it doesn’t all have to be done in one day! Hmm, interesting theory, which explains his ability to stay up late, sleep in, and do absolutely nothing if he so chooses, interesting as I think to myself, he just might have something here. 

So I agree with BFF Hubby and say, “You’re right!”  I mean after all he has been retired for the last three years, so he must have this perfected. My little sister gave me advice; she tells me she calls it “Patti Time.”  My Mother-in-law's advice was to remember there is always tomorrow.  I think when I was in the regular world, pre-retirement, we used to call that last one procrastination.

This “retirement mode” sounds much easier than it actually is. I think it’s that old habits have to be unlearned and changed. When you are working, you have a limited amount of time to accomplish everything that needs to be done, and in the past, I always had to clean the entire house in one day. Well that’s not entirely true; the reality was that I had a house cleaner.  It had been over 10 years since I actually cleaned my house; <grin> no wonder I became overwhelmed with the simplest tasks.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I decided to look upon these old learned habits as an opportunity to purge, to rethink my priorities and to be intentional about starting new habits.  Ha, like sleeping in, or at least not hopping out of bed at 4:30 am every morning like the Energizer Bunny.  I decided retirement was my time to make my “new normal” and hey I figure I can make it any way I want it to be, there just doesn’t appear to be any rules!  WOW I love the big fresh start; the clean slate that retirement affords me.  I love the idea that I can get up every morning and start over any way I choose.

After all of this self-discovery I read a humorous article/ joke on the internet, and as with everything you find on the internet, I have no idea who to credit.  It was just so perfect, and it made me laugh so I decided to share it on my blog, not to mention it reminded me ahem, of a few people I know.

It appears there is a new disease called A. A. A. D. D. - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how it manifests itself:

I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide my car needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mailbox earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the rubbish bin under the table, and notice that the bin is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the rubbish first.
But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.  I take my checkbook off the table, and see that there is only one check left. 

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of coke that I had been drinking. 

 I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over. I see that the coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye: they need to be watered.  I place the coke down on the work surface, and I discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers.  

I set the glasses back down on the work top, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone has left it on the kitchen table.  I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the lounge where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers. I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:
The car isn't washed, the bills aren't paid, there is a warm can of coke sitting on the work surface, the flowers don't have enough water, there is still only one check in my check book, I can't find the TV remote, I can't find my glasses and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.  Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm really tired. I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail. PS. I just remembered, I left the water running...

Oh dear, I think I may be in trouble, better phone the doctor right away, I may have that syndrome.  Now where, oh where, did I put that phone?

Stay with me, as we traverse through this retirement journey, or as I like to refer to it “my longest coffee break."  I'm just sayin’…

Life is lived on levels and arrived at in stages.

I used to have dreams that I died at my desk. Once I turned in my notice, I don't have those dreams anymore. <Grin>

One of the most interesting thing to me while I awaited the final days, were the  questions that everyone felt necessary to ask me, or warn me, not sure what the points were.  They asked me such things as:

• Once you retire, what are you going to do about your identity that is so dependent on work?

• How will you relate to your relatives and friends who are still working while you are living the life of an aristocrat, sometimes known as "The Life of Riley"?  

• What will you do with your new-found leisure time if you have never learned how to enjoy leisure activities?

I think people either meant well, where jealous, just mean spirited people in the first place, or they want you to tell them the answers so they will know what to do when they retire.  Everyone had a story about a parent, uncle, friend etc., and what happened to them when they retired yada yada yada. 

 As they all imparted their wisdom, I kept thinking in my head, the best thing you can do is ignore them, but please by all means regale me with your pearls of wisdom.

So the final week finally arrived!  If you think it was hard working before, you can well imagine how my last week was. My team was awesome; they had arranged a party almost every day of the week. Tuesday at the main campus, Wednesday we went out to lunch and Thursday a party at the Jamboree building. I was very touched at how many people came by to wish me well.

One of the things I had casually mentioned was the only thing I wanted for retirement was my office chair.  When we purchased Herman Miller chairs for the campus, 12 years ago they brought in a sample chairs, one such sample had remained in my office for12 years. The chair needless to say had sentimental value to me. I felt since it didn’t cost the company anything, the request was reasonable, right?

So the gang went out to lunch to our standard place the Pizza Kitchen, and they gave me a funny gag gift, it was a horn for my golf cart, too funny!  

Well during all of this I learned, of course after it was too late for me to benefit from the knowledge, when you officially retire for SS, it only has to be your birth month. I thought I had read somewhere that you could not retire until after your birthday, so I stayed two weeks longer than I needed too! Argh you have no idea how mad I was at myself for this, really, I could have left on June 1^st!

The last day finally arrived!  I went into the office on Thursday, said I am not going to come to the office tomorrow, I will just do my official meeting with HR, get my final checks and I am out of here. Yahoo! So Thursday afternoon, my boss called me into a conference room for our final hand off, keys AMX and VISA cards, computer etc. Then the whole team came in and walked me to the elevator.  As I was going down to the parking garage I was thinking to myself, well darn I didn’t get my chair and that was kind of anticlimactic.  

As I went to get in my car, I said what the heck; it was completely filled with balloons, so much so that it was impossible to get into the car.  As I was pulling out my cell to call the team, Viola they arrived with the ding of the elevator, all laughing hysterically. So we began the fun task of clearing out the balloons, and one of them said did you see in the back?  As I opened the back to clear the balloons, I saw my quilt from home, wondering what the heck, how did that get in there?  During this whole thing I was trying to figure out how they had got into my car, since I had locked it.

They fessed up, it seems that one of them drove all the way out to my house in Banning and got the keys and quilt from BFF Hubby!  Pretty sneaky! As I removed the quilt, low and behold there was my chair.  I can’t tell you how happy that made me.  Off I went with the best sendoff ever!!

The fun and  celebrations continued as my Mother in law and BFF hubby not only had a birthday party for me, they also threw a retirement party at Sun Lakes!  It was pretty awesome!!  I was so relieved my retirement was finally here!!! So here I am, finally arriving at the exact  place in my life where I should be ,right now! I’m happy and I’m scared, but that makes me know that I am being challenged and the best is yet to be!!

Stay with me, as we traverse through this retirement journey, or "my longest coffee break."  I'm just sayin’

Book Review of The Dead Detective by J.R. Rain

I was much honored to be provided an advanced copy of this book to read and review, as I am a huge J. R. Rain fan.   I have to be honest, based upon the title; I most likely would not have chosen this book as I thought it was going to be a typical “Guy” detective story.  I  confess I am a huge Castle fan, but would not have read the Castle books originally, if I had not first seen the series on TV. 

Imagine my surprise as I began reading this book,  What...it's a Zombie paranormal story!  But don’t be misled by that, as it is not about your typical Hollywood brain eating Zombies, and the characters even make reference to this. 

As typical with JR he quickly draws you into the character.  I knew I was in it for the long haul when it began with the main character saying “you know you’ve had a really bad night when you wake up inside of a chalk outline.”  The character is shockingly,  a female detective named Richelle.  And as in the Samantha Moon series, this author writes from a female’s perspective and really nails it when the character is worried she will have to get her suit dry-cleaned again.

I found myself so enthralled with the character and her story I continued reading well into the night, I had to see if Richelle was  going to make it or not, solving the mystery of who shot her, as she wanders in and out of the afterlife working with ghosts.All the while Richelle must hide from her co-workers etc that she has no heartbeat or pulse and is perpetually cold.

This is a must read for paranormal lovers, it is one of the best Zombie stories I have read.  I can’t wait for the sequel as I must find out how Richelle continues on this journey. Does she stay a zombie, how does she live, there better be a sequel soon! 

J.R. you did it again!   I give it 5 stars.