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What are the qualities of a good day for you? I'm talking about an ordinary good day, not the birth of a child or getting promoted kind of good. What has to happen for you to go to bed with a smile on your face?

For me, good days almost always come after a good night's sleep. Although I can almost always fall asleep easily, I'm turning into one of those old people who can't seem to string together eight hours to save my life. Today, I managed to sleep until almost 4:30 AM, which is the latest I've been in bed all week.

Although the presence of coffee does not guarantee a good day, the absence of it almost assuredly means getting anything done will be extra challenging. Today, we had coffee, so there was no crisis. I also just ordered one more shipment of Barry's Tea before our Amazon Prime subscription expires in a couple of weeks. Somehow, I ended up with four boxes of this delectable nectar from the Emerald Isle. I switch over to drinking it mid-morning and continue to make a brew every couple of hours throughout the day.

I like being productive. These days, in retirement, I can pick out my projects. The primary one I'm working on now is organizing nearly 100,000 photos, a lifetime's worth from several generations. It gives me a unique opportunity to come up with new technical solutions while being submerged in the great memories old photos bring back. That's digital photos going back to the 90s, the quantity of which drastically increased when we got smartphones. It's also massive amounts of DSLR shots from a time when I spent many hours a week pointing and clicking at anything remotely interesting, including trips all over the country to take photos. Finally, there are scanned family snapshots going back decades for both my wife and me.

I like my solitude very much, but I also relish family time. One of our daughters and her husband are going to a concert tonight (Disturbed) and we agreed to watch their kids overnight. They live a couple of hours a way, but made the drive all the way here to drop off their offspring. I was prepared with plentiful snacks and drinks. As soon as their folks left, I proposed a trip to the old school arcade in town, to which they instantly agreed. We spent a couple of hours playing pinball, skee-ball and trying in vain to extract loot from claw machines. Nobody whined or complained. My granddaughter, age five, got a little teary when she failed to win a stuffed animal, but her heroic high school aged brother deftly cheered her up immediately by giving her all his tickets for her to redeem at the prize counter.

The evening was spent eating food I didn't have to cook in a house remarkably calm despite the presence of young people. The only loud noise was the kids laughing at each other. Wonder Woman went to bed early since she has to work tomorrow. In the morning I'm taking the kids out for pancakes at my favorite diner, which is right down the street. I'm eagerly awaiting another good day.

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