Dummy that I am, I’ve been giving some thought to what the heck I’m going to do when I semi-retire.

Or, narrowing it down, I’ve been giving some thought to what I’m going to do when I semi-retire apart from hiding from my wife, who likes to keep busy and keep me busy while she’s busy. This for my own good, of course.

On that note, being married sometimes kind of reminds me of my time in the Field Artillery more than 30 years ago now, when hiding from NCOs to avoid getting put on detail was both an art and a science.

Anyhow, I’ve hit upon two things, which are sort of similar and should be lots of fun.

Hobbies, you might call them. First, I’m going to go get my old aluminum boat back from the pond up in Emmanuel County where it’s been sitting for lo these many years waiting on me to come get it. Then I’ll put it in the yard and paint it something striped and look at it a lot. That’s because I like to look at things and think about what I might do with them if I ever get around to it. Boats, being pleasing to the eye, are good for that sort of heavy-duty pondering.

Second, I believe I’m going to start up a bro country band and annoy the neighbors and so what if I can’t play an instrument or sing? I’ll fit right in with the rest of the bro country crowd. Besides, I can’t write either and I’ve been doing it for decades now.

The thing boats and bands have in common is both will require names and I think I’ll be good at naming things. What’s more, you can use the same name for both in many instances – a band can be both plural and singular, and so, one supposes, can a boat, but if not the singular of a plural will do.

So, I think I’ll call my band the Heinous Dwarves and my boat the Heinous Dwarf. That’s a name, I suspect, by which some folks already refer to me, and they are accurate in their description. I am occasionally heinous in appearance and frequently a dwarf, though not technically.

In that vein I’m kind of like a certain local congressman, who to my mind has always closely resembled a slightly oversized elf, or would if he put on an elf suit when he went on Fox News to gripe about the Democrats.

Sure he’s not technically an elf, but he could pass for one if push come to shove and some unruly large middle schoolers with beards got hold of him and made him be an elf. That said, I should hush because there for the Grace of the Big Guy Upstairs go I. Being funny looking and short is one reason I tend to avoid middle schools.

Here’s a short list of names with a lot of blather about them. I didn’t intend this column to go this way, but there’s not much I can do about it at this point.

•The Heinous Dwarf (Dwarves): It would be fun to sail about local waters in an aluminum boat called the Heinous Dwarf, getting in the way of big fancy $100,000 twin outboard rigs operated by smug boaters in visors, dayglo fishing shirts and sunglasses with strings on them. The cool boaters, us heinous dwarves will call them, before we let them have a burst of the salty language unleashed by a retired weekly newspaper hack pretending he’s a dwarf pirate king, and a heinous one at that.

“Avast, ye scurvy Sperry wearing bilgesucking pretty boy lassies, drive yon boat over there, not here. Out of me way!”

And yep. The Heinous Dwarves will also make a great name for my new bro-country band. Our first song will be called, “Have You Seen My $700 Yeti Lawn Chair (I left it over there)?”

•The Rannygazoo(s): I stumbled across Rannygazoo some time back and it just sounds like the sort of thing I’d like to do, whatever it is. Where’s Jeff? Oh, he’s off rannygazzooing about in a field somewhere.

•The Pot Pie(s): A longtime family friend had a dog named Vito and he fed it pot pies for supper. That was cool. What was even cooler was the dog knew what a pot pie was, and all his owner had to say was “Pot pie, Vito!,” and Vito would explode in a paroxysm of joy. Besides, I tend to like a good pot pie myself, or, if I’m really hungry, pot pies and I think chicken is probably my favorite. But this is a great name for either a boat or a band, or even a solo act.

Remember Meat Loaf? I’ll be Pot Pie.