In mid-May, after I’d had about 3 1/2 months to settle into my retirement, I spent an amazing week in Utah with UTadventure, traveling to beautiful scenic sites with a team of very talented fine-art models. I finally got to see some of the amazing geography and geology of Utah that I’ve heard about for many years but had never seen in my commutes straight across the state, or in and out of Salt Lake City. I also got some wonderful opportunities to shoot lots of pictures, and to collaborate with some creative art inspired people.I shot more than 5000 pictures, so I’m going to have lots of fun work ahead of me going through them and fine tuning the results.
I flew in a day early to get settled, and Uber’ed myself into downtown Salt Lake City to have dinner at a restaurant I enjoyed when I used to visit SLC for work at the University. The first day of the tour started the next day with a get together lunch followed by a sunset shoot in the sand dunes of Little Sahara Recreation Area (BLM land). 
It was kind of amazing to see these sand dunes suddenly appear in the midst of what seemed like otherwise flat semi-green Utah desert. It was also my first chance to experience photographing art models nude in nature. This generally went quite smooth throughout the trip, with the tour leader Dmitriy keeping us pretty much away from the public and keeping models aware of members of the public that might be wandering near so that they could cover up. The models were great to work with, with seeming boundless energy and creativity. We shot till dark (or a little past into the blue hour). After that we had a little picnic with some sandwiches we’d grabbed a lunch, then we headed back to the hotel in SLC. This gave us our first hint of a lot of hours in the van each day, but it was a good first day.
I officially began my retirement on Thursday, and not much time elapsed before I hit the road on my first adventure. On Friday, I headed down to LA to attend a two day 
The workshop was built around doing three different “looks” for the model each day, with the goal and setup were described by Holly, followed by her doing some shooting and observing her directing the model. In addition to Holly and the model, there were more crew including a lighting grip, a makeup artist, as well as some other helpers. It gave you what it felt like to be working with a professional crew. After Holly went through her example, each of the students had 6-7 minutes to shoot, with any needed guidance being given by Holly. We had one model for the entire workshop, the very lovely 
Holly’s parents’ ranch where we were shooting had some great locations. I managed to get some really nice images, and learned some things as well. I enjoyed the experience very much. Day 2 was structured just like day one, but some of the students were different for both days.
I made it through Christmas this year without getting sick again, so a good trend is underway. As 2017 comes to a close, it marks the end of my LX year, and my primary working life, but I hope also signals the start of new opportunities and a new era of living. Since I’ve pretty much had some sort of job or predefined structure to my life for the last half century, I have some anxiety as to what is coming, but I’m also excited about the freedom I’ll have to pursue new interests and live life in a new way. I just have to make sure I don’t let my sedentary tendencies and procrastination take over. I’ll miss the folks I work with, and that will probably be one of the hardest parts of this life change. 
Since I was near the Florida Atlantic coast I decided to do a little sightseeing at the beach before I headed inland for my Monday meetings. I spent a few hours visiting the 
I managed to piggy-back a little sightseeing onto a business trip to Florida, and today I got to visit the 
In another extended season running into the fall, I managed to see quite a bit of theater this year and hit some fun milestones as well. I saw a total of 21 plays this year, 14 productions of Shakespeare plays, and 7 other plays, produced by 7 different theater companies, in 3 different states. The big milestone after 30 years was that I completed seeing all the Shakespeare canon of 37 plays. The count of live Shakespeare productions I’ve seen is now at 155. 
Tonight I took BART and trekked into the city to see what will likely be my last play of the year, Hamlet at 
Tonight I saw the last play of this year’s 
Superb! This has been quite a week+ of wonderful plays at 
Tonight I saw a very enjoyable production of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor in the outdoor Elizabethan Theatre. It was very funny and comical as expected. Falstaff, the supposed super-randy old man was played by a woman, K.T. Vogt. I’m always a bit skeptical of that to begin with, but she was very funny and carried it off. The production was infused with a lot of music, basically a lot of snippets of 80’s pop hits. It was both funny and fun and really added to the play.