As I re-read the past few posts for the upteenth time, I notice that I had better pay attention to more than lay-out. Spell-check is great, but it is limited and can not help with the wrong form of the word (advise v. advice) and words that get mistakenly cut (intra-species v. intra-species communication). It is time to attack this challenge from a different angle or from more than one angle. Stay tuned folks, the campaign continues.

Rats! As one can clearly see from yesterday's post, the spacing strategy did not work. This means I will be indenting my paragraphs from now on. Let's see if that effort can also be subverted by some unseen force or formatting.

Carol took the plunge today and applied for Social Security Retirement Benefits effective 1-1-12. That means as my neighbor puts it "We be pensioners come the new year." In Mr. P's musings, he often wonders why certain words fall out of fashion and we all have to learn the new vocabulary. Has intra-species really been improved? Part of it may well be attributed to political correctness. I will grant you that some of those changes have been long in coming. Other examples make me think of the opening chapter of "The Virginian," where the distinction is made between smiling and not smiling when one calls someone an SOB. It has been some 40 years since I read those words. I think they have real merit, but I still haven't brought myself to try that advise out when I meet a new neighbor. Maybe when I am a little older.

Now what? I just previewed this post and found that the indents disappeared. Have the grammar gods changed the rules of written discourse? I'm not asking for much; I just don't want run-on paragraphs. My thoughts are specious enough already. I think it is time to sign off, take responsibility for what I can change, accept what I cannot change, and watch the Brewer's game.

Another day - another milestone.

Today I completed the on-line application for Social Security Retirement Benefits to start with the New Year. With each one of these steps anticipated with a certain anxiety and completed with a feeling of satisfaction, the reality of the pending revised state of affairs settles in. I only hope it is a good fit all around. A few significant details remain: medicare supplement insurance for myself and COBRA coverage for the spouse. I also need to work up a 2012 budget. It will be preliminary until some of the expenses are firmed up.

What makes for a good fit under the pending circumstances? It probably behooves me to settle on some criteria, otherwise my evaluation of fit will depend upon the whim of the day. Add a dash of lifelong impulsiveness and one has the recipe for trouble.

As folks can see from my last two posts, I have struggled with the spacing between paragraphs. The extra space between paragraphs is to compensate for not indenting. I don't know why it became a problem just then. I hope I have it figured out. Do you think it might be the doings of a high school English teacher reaching back from the beyond?