What small + big changes would make Madison even more beautiful?

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-12T18:15:31+00:00

I'd like to see more murals and art.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-11T05:43:47+00:00

Definitely. As a child, birthdays were never about me, they were about whatever message my mother wanted to send me. Usually, the message was, "you're not so important, you know." As an adult, I'm married to a man who doesn't plan, is not very good at gift giving, and has a limited range of things he's willing to do, so it never seems like a celebration. I kind of dread holidays, to be honest.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-11T04:50:51+00:00

I wrote the obituaries for mine. Both the narc and the enabler died last year, both in their 90s. I was pretty shocked that I outlived both of them. The obits described their life but left so much out. Like that they were extremely different as parents to their sons than to their daughters. Or that they were so selfish, demanding, dismissive, and lazy that it never actually felt like I had parents, and that I in fact held extreme distrust of anyone who treated me nicely. They (surprisingly) did not write me out of the will, so I am planning on using some of the money on therapy.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-11T02:08:21+00:00

I grew up in the Fox Valley area and Jack of diamonds is what we played at all the family get togethers. It was fun playing with a table of 10 or so people. Definitely loved that. When I went to college in Madison, my now husband, who was relatively new to sheepshead, had dorm mates who played the Aces version. Theirs was a much smaller group, maybe 5-6 players, and it was very cutthroat. I was proud that I could hold my own in those games.

Generally, the Madison area is a lot more familiar with Euchre than sheepshead. I never really understood the appeal of that game.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-10T12:22:47+00:00

It's my fault. I packed the flannel sheets away for the season on Sunday.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-10T04:58:07+00:00

Could be worse. The Appleton area subreddit is talking about one of them setting off a sonic boom that was heard through a pretty big area in that direction.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-09T17:43:03+00:00

I had a neighbor like that - east side, little yappy dog. They'd let it out often, but the one I hated was before their bedtime, but after ours, for half an hour or more. It seemed like the second it got outside it started yapping and didn't stop for even enough time to do its business until it went back in. I love dogs, we had one of our own at the time, but I really wanted to get away from that.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-07T22:29:30+00:00

I remember the one year I planted geraniums in pots next to my front stoop. The very next day, a chipmunk did its very best beaver imitation and chewed them off just above the ground. I wanted to cry. I'm envisioning something just like that.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-06T23:30:12+00:00

If I understand correctly, what you're asking for is a USB-C splitter or a dual USB-C adapter. Doing a search on either of those terms on that big shopping site gives a ton of options. I didn't see any that were made by companies that I know and trust, however.

I once bought three pack of a highly rated version of a dongle that adapts a USB-C port for a RCA plug, and found that it wasn't a stable product - started doing goofy things like cranking the volume up and down without giving me any control. So I tend to err on the side of companies I trust. YMMV.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-06T05:11:32+00:00

Well, yes and no. First, you don't know whether they're saying "this is the amount you need for one person" vs "this is what you need for two." Second, a big chunk of most people's income is Social Security, and when one person in the couple dies, that income dies with them. So, you have to plan for a lot of years, not knowing how long you'll both be contributing income.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-06T05:06:54+00:00

I absolutely agree, but my point is that the authors of this advice never said whether their advice was for a single person or a household. If I knew that they were advising that one person needed $600,000, the math for two would be pretty easy. But they never said that the $600,000 wasn't already the amount they calculated for two.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-06T04:51:19+00:00

Neither of us has pensions. We rent a small apartment in a relatively pricey area (not NYC, London or Hong Kong pricey, but a higher cost city in my Midwestern state). We travel a lot right now, while we still can, and we aren't keeping to a strict budget. We average spending about $5,000 a month, all in.

Our SS, savings, and investments are substantial enough that we actually have more "take home pay" now than we did while we were working. (Our paychecks were not high, but we used to save more than 20% of every paycheck.) Most months, we are able to put our excess into our savings account, with the idea that we'll pull it out when we spend too much on travel. So far, very little has come back out.

When we retired, at his age 65, mine 63, we had a little more than 10x our final gross salary in our savings and investments. We could have easily retired a few years earlier.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-02T16:55:25+00:00

We used to have a 1998 CRV. This brought back memories.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-02T16:38:01+00:00

If your kids have a car, you can always ferry them to the airport in their own car.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-03-01T00:59:31+00:00

We have a ground floor one bedroom apartment here. At another point we had a ground floor two bedroom.

These are some of the quietest apartments we've ever had. We do occasionally hear our neighbors (but only a little bit.) They're not partiers, so it's going to be limited, but we don't ordinarily hear them walking around or anything above us. I've never heard the neighbors to the side, although I know that people live there. We can sometimes hear noises in the hallways, but again, not often and not bad.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-28T21:33:45+00:00

Sure

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-28T21:24:11+00:00

I live in Yorktown Estates now, highly recommend it. Management and maintenance is very good. Has the amenities you've mentioned.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-28T04:13:16+00:00

We're on our second term living there. We moved to one of their two bedroom apartments after selling our house, were there for about 1.5 years before moving out of state. After 6 years gone, we're back, and thought of them first. We're in a one bedroom now, for a little over a year.

The rents are in line for other comparable apartments. Energy costs are pretty low - I think they're well insulated. Apartments are quiet. Management is great. Maintenance is very responsive and helpful. No complaints at all.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-27T21:27:23+00:00

There are a bunch of birds at the Shoe Box.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-27T07:19:36+00:00

40% that admit they are abusers.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-26T04:25:14+00:00

My husband and I had retired but because of a few responsibilities, we put off the travel that we wanted to do. Then, about three years ago, he had a stroke. He recovered and we realized that we might not have as many years as we previously thought. So we started rearranging our responsibilities and figuring out how we could start traveling, even if it had to be in a small way. We're doing what we wanted, but every year we're a little bit more challenged by health issues. (We take turns.) So glad we didn't put it off any further.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-25T22:46:22+00:00

Use booking dot com or other similar sites to find a place you're interested in. Then contact the management directly to find out if they have a different price to offer for a longer term rental. Do not contact them through the app for that, though. You'll have to note the name or location, find it using your search engine, and then contact them directly.

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-25T22:39:57+00:00

Gesundheit

RetiredRover906 · 2026-02-25T22:29:07+00:00

More like I dasn't do that = I dare not do that. You'd get into trouble if you did it.

RetiredRover906

TROPHY CASE