Note: There are no pictures this week.

I got rides in last Saturday and Sunday. Then temperatures plummeted. Highs have been in the 20s. Monday I took advantage of the cold weather and took my bike in for a checkup. I managed to get a couple of days of exercise. Our neighborhood clears the streets if we get 2″ of snow or more. We had two snows of 1″ each. So I got exercise two days by pushing snow around. Baltimore snows tend to be wet and heavy. But the temperatures were so cold, the snows were dry and light, making a push broom the preferred tool. I saw my neighbor across the street out with a snow shovel. I walked across with my broom and did 80% of his drive while he was huffing and puffing with his shovel to do the other 20%.

My retirement is about to change quite a bit. I have been volunteering at the club house. There’s an occasional emergency (we have no Internet!), but mostly I make sure the backups are working. The hardest part of the work is walking over to the club house and back. This week I interviewed at CASA and at Habitat for Humanity. Both said they are interested.

CASA is through Re-Serve. That means they pay Re-Serve $15 an hour. I get $10 of that (less taxes and whatever other withholdings). If Maryland social services feels a juvenile should be removed from their home, they go to court. The judge can ask that an independent advocate for the youth be assigned. CASA is a non-profit that finds and trains volunteers to be youth advocates. Their office is old and very crowded. Because they are downtown, parking is an issue. Their budget is minimal. And they devote approximately $0 a year to IT. They have over a dozen computers, all quite old. They are all running Windows XP because none of them are capable of running a more modern operating system. Many volunteers bring their own laptops in because CASA’s computers are so abysmal. CASA scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with enough money to pay for 8 hours a week from now until June. Needless to say, they have quite a long list of issues.

Habitat for Humanity is at the opposite end of the non-profit spectrum.They renovate old houses to develop affordable, decent, low-cost housing. You have probably heard of them because President Jimmy Carter is a high-profile supporter. In our area, they have become quite large. They are well-organized, but like everybody else they have plenty of IT issues.

I haven’t actually started at either place. I accepted at CASA Friday afternoon, apparently after the executive director went home to beat the snow. Habitat is supposed to send a consultant’s report for me to review before I start doing anything. We’ll see how these opportunities work out in the real world.

We usually go out to dinner Thursdays. This week, we went upscale to Baldwin Station (a renovated train station in Carol County). It’s one of our favorites. It’s too expensive for us to go to frequently, but the food is great and Danita had a “buy one get one free” coupon. Friday afternoon and evening we had the second snow “storm” this week. I declared a household snow emergency. We broke out a nice red wine and ate junk food while watching TV Friday evening.

We got bamboozled for Sunday breakfast. Last Sunday, we went to Bob Evans for breakfast. Applebee’s is right next door, and we saw a  bunch of people over there for Sunday Breakfast. Without checking, we decided that Applebee’s must have an early Sunday brunch, and decided to go there this morning. When we got there, we found a large crowd in front of us, but there was no food. It turns out that the local Applebee’s allows various groups to do fundraisers by selling breakfast. This group was planning to do a pancake breakfast. But they wouldn’t be starting for half an hour. We were ready to eat right away and ended up at La Madeline’s. This evening we’ll be going over to the clubhouse for a pot-luck dinner.

It’s time to set the itinerary for our Alaska trip. The 2013 ferry schedule has been published.  Danita took a cut at an itinerary, then found a copy of Mitchner’s book “Alaska” at her Dad’s house. I decided it would be a good idea to read the book before working on the itinerary. This story is a real fast mover for Mitchner. He blasted through the first 50,000 years in 50 pages flat. I’m about 1/4 of the way through. So far, I’ve learned quite a bit about the history of the Aleutian Islands. Then one of my library E-books came in. I only get those for 2 weeks (non-renewable), so I put “Alaska” aside while reading my library book. So many things to do … so little time.

I hope everybody is doing well.

There wasn’t a lot of news this week.

The week started out nicely with a Ravens win. We don’t usually watch football, but we watched the game last week. We’re glad we did, because it was a heck of a game; and made nicer with the Ravens moving on to the AFC championship later on today.

Wednesday, I went to the dentist and had the right half of my mouth cleaned. This was the second half of my periodontal cleaning. This one was a little harder for me. The dental appointment was Wednesday morning. Shortly after I got home, I started feeling under the weather. I was OK, but just under the weather. Things were better by late Thursday.

We had Circle last Sunday and a party at the club house Friday.

Mostly, the weather was mild for January. The week stared with several days that were cloudy and in the 40s. Then it got down right nice – sunny and 50. I got a good amount of riding in. I didn’t get much riding in over the holidays. By last week, I was definitely down in my speed and ability to do hills. Early this week I went out looking for bonus hills to build my climbing ability. A couple of streets I usually ride on are closed for construction, so I had to take detours. This caused me to find Oella Rd, which goes to the town of Oella. This is a 19^th century mill town right next to Ellicott City. The mill was re-built into apartments and looks modern. But the houses and streets have the patina of history. Oella Rd is a pretty good hill in its own right. But once in Oella, the narrow back streets are hilly enough to earn respect from any West Virginian. I’ve had some great rides and have my bike legs pretty well tuned up. That’s good because the weather is taking a turn for the colder. I could ride when the high is 28, but I don’t see how it would be considered fun.

Here’s a picture of the entrance to Oella. It’s hard to realize how steep the hills are from a 2-D picture.

Bomb shelter or basement?

This shows a different kind of walk-out basement. You can’t tell too well, but there’s a generously wide sidewalk over the basement doors. It looks like the basement could double as a bomb shelter. It’s hard to get a good persective on this shot, in part because I was standing on the edge of the steep part of the hill, which was behind me and to my right.

Oella Row Houses

Here’s a shot of some Oella row houses. A couple of them had stained glass on the doors, but I couldn’t get a good shot of them because of the angle of the sun.

Us at Green Market

The big news this week was certainly our visit at West Palm Beach. After an uneventful trip down, we started our first day, Saturday, with a bang. We visited the Green Market, which is right next to the boating dock. Theirs is not an every-day boating dock, as you can see from some of the yachts in the picture below.

Mom & Danita at Green Market

WPB Yachts

Mom Downloading Pics

Sunday we had originally planned to go on a water taxi tour. Unfortunately, they were forecasting showers. While the showers never developed, I personally chickened out on getting into the harbor in a small boat when there was the possibility of a squall. It turned out to be a quiet day. I spent some time installing printer drivers for Mom’s laptop computer, then giving Mom pointers on downloading pictures from the Internet and printing them out. For most of us, using the computer is not associated with exercise. But in WPB, Internet access that requires something more than dial-up starts with a trip to the clubhouse, ensuring at least some physical activity is associated with computer use.

Mom and Kincachoo

Monday was our busiest day. We went to McCarthy’s Wildlife Sanctuary. This is a place that accepts exotic animals that need a home. McCarthy’s is out in the sticks. All the roads in the area are unpaved gravel, but they are in good shape for gravel roads. People do all kinds of crazy things such as try to hand-raise a tiger, or have a monkey for a pet (besides all the other disadvantages you might have heard of, they like to mark their territory), or bring home a baby turtle that will grow to be 300 pounds. The only way to see the Wildlife Sanctuary is to take a tour with a guide. Guests are permitted to handle some of the animals. We didn’t handle any of the 500-pound tigers, but we did stand withing a foot of them, with only a chain link fence between us. The guide got some of the tigers to jump up on the fence and gave them belly rubs through the fence. For an additional fee, guests can participate in a tiger petting session. After almost 2 hours at the sanctuary, we went to a tea house for lunch. In the evening, we had a rip-roaring game of Parcheesi.

Tuesday it was time to go home. Danita had an important work meeting and I had a doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, our plane had an electrical problem. This being the busy winter travel season for FL, alternate flights were booked up and spare airplanes were not available. At Noon Tuesday, instead of being at home, we found ourselves in the Fort Lauderdale airport. US Air gave us the $150 taxi ride between airports. After we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, they sprang for another $150 got us a nice hotel (Homstead Suites). We found a bakery a block from the hotel that turned out to be very ethnic (some kind of a middle-eastern place — all the customers spoke some flavor of Arabic, and the women all wore traditional Arabic head coverings). The food was quite good. I can’t remember the last time the two of us were able to have lunch for just $9 (including 2 Cokes). The hotel had a free dinner which was adequate and better than I expected. We finally made it home (via Philadelphia) early Wednesday afternoon.

Our club house got new hardwood floors in the office and craft room. This was needed for the office especially. Seven years of heavy use had made the carpet quite dirty. The new floor is quite an improvement. Unfortunately, when they moved everything back in, they found that they didn’t have Internet access. Carol, the events coordinator, called me for help. That would have been fine, but at the moment I was standing in the WPB airport trying to figure out how we would get home. When I got over to the club house Wednesday I found Steve (another resident) trying to put things back together. Nobody knows how the network in the clubhouse works, but working together Steve and I got it working in about an hour. Now that it’s easier to scoot desks away from the wall, I spent some time documenting how everything is connected for our future reference. I found that we actually have two internet services. We might be able to save the association a couple of bucks by consolidating.

Getting home late turns out to have meant that I missed some pretty good biking weather — 50 and sunny. It turned out to be rainy today, but I got a nice ride in Thursday, and the weather looks good for this weekend.

Last week I said I might have the opportunity through Re-Serve to help ACS with their web site. They decided they were taking the wrong approach and I lost the opportunity. That was a bit of a bummer, but I have to agree they had better options available. However, Re-Serve got another opportunity with an organization named CASA. Just by coincidence, they’re withing a block of ACS. We’ll see how this turns out.

I’ll end this post with some more pictures taken at McCarthy’s Wildlife Sanctuary.

At the entrance before the tour

Outside the stinky reptile house

We had some more Christmas fun with the Reeds. Elizabeth completed a shape puzzle which was purchased for Bryon. As you can see, she was quite pleased with her accomplishment.

We went on an adventure Thursday. We went to the Air Museum at College Park, the oldest airport in continuous use in the world. Both Bryon and Elizabeth had a great time. In spite of my cool new “fast shot” camera program, Elizabeth was faster. My best shot was blurred.

Jul and Pat went on an overnight date, leaving early Friday morning. We took the kids on a big adventure. Everything worked great, except I forgot my phone, so I didn’t get any pics. We started at the Fire Museum in Lutherville (just north of Baltimore). There we saw antique fire engines, got to ring a fire bell, spent time in the play room, and saw a train garden. By the time we were done, it was lunch time, so we went across the street to Friendly’s. The weather was pretty nice, so after a great lunch (with ice cream!) we stopped at a cool play ground on the way home. Of course the sun went behind the clouds as soon as we got to the play ground. But the kids had a great time. Danita and I got a pretty good amount of exercise just trying to keep up with where the kids were. We made it through the whole day without Mom & Dad, without naps, and without any breakdowns. It was pretty remarkable. It just goes to show the power of having ice cream after lunch.

Saturday the weather was back to white stuff, although it never got cold enough for the snow to stick to anything. We had a quieter day. Our adventure was going to the community theater to watch Toy Story 2, another of E’s presents. Jul and Pat got back in time for dinner. Elizabeth has this grandparent thing figured out. Safe in her mother’s arms, she started crying profusely. She turned to me and exclaimed through her tears, “I want to go on an adventure”.

After a very nice chicken curry dinner and some wonderful chocolate-covered chocolate balls Julia had made, the kids went to bed; Jul and Pat went upstairs, and Danita and I went downstairs to watch a Star Trek episode. When we came upstairs, we found that Elizabeth had been quite sick. Pat and Jul were finishing up cleaning. We had a tub filled with a drying port-a-crib mattress. Jul had started an emergency load in the clothes washer. We have a large tub on the main floor — larger than some front yard ponds. Danita filled that and used it as a soaking tub. Elizabeth went back to bed, but ended up spending most of the night being sick. Danita also got sick shortly after midnight. None of this bothered me any. I slept through it all, and didn’t learn about any of it until the next morning.

In spite of all the last minute excitement, Jul and Pat were able to get on the road fairly early Sunday morning, and arrived safely at home in an incredibly short time.

After 10 days out of the saddle, I got a bike ride in Monday. It’s amazing how quickly a 64 year-old body disintegrates.  I lost one or two gears, and at the end of a short ride my legs were sore. I goofed off New Year’s day and didn’t feel so great Wednesday. Today by Noon it was still near freezing. I rode inside on the rollers.

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve, watching one of the worst disaster movies ever made. What do you do with leftover champagne after the holiday parties? Drink Mimosas while watching the Rose Bowl parade and eating junk food, of course. The down side of that is that it pretty much means I’m not riding every day this year, starting on the first day of the year.

Today I had a phone interview with ACY. They are the folks that want somebody to re-do their web site. I can do most of the job they want, It wasn’t a slam-dunk. I should hear back from them next week.

We’re looking forward to an extended weekend with Mom in West Palm Beach.

This drawing was created by Elizabeth Reed and offered to me as a gift. If you want an original from this artist, you will have to contact her directly. She might be able to create something for you, but I can’t offer too much hope. Her creations are highly valued in some circles.