I am writing this on Friday, 11/29.

We are certainly thankful to hear that Glen and Tao are both out of the hospital. Our Thanksgiving was less exciting than that. While brushing my teeth Monday, my back had a major spasm. I spent most of  the day laying flat on my back. Fortunately, I was up and about by the time I had to to drive to the doctor’s appointment at 4:30. Doc gave me a muscle relaxant and a referral for PT. By Tuesday morning, I felt much better. Never has a doctor accomplished so much by doing so little.

Gymnastics

The Reeds showed up Tuesday. Fortunately, they had decent weather and little traffic for the trip up. We had some nice family time and one of Danita’s great dinners. Jul especially liked the potato salad.

Resting the Back

On Thanksgiving, Elizabeth and I spent a little time in the morning resting our backs. Then we got things rolling (thanks mostly to Danita). The weather forecast for Wednesday was awful. We decided to see Disney’s new movie “Frozen” in the morning. We had an unexpected cartoon before the movie. It started out just like an old Mickey Mouse cartoon, complete with a small display in the middle of the screen. It quickly morphed into a full-screen color cartoon that was quite funny. Then we went over to the clubhouse to watch a DVD movie in the afternoon.

Pre-Turkey Trot

Jul signed up for a 5K Turkey Trot in Catonsville Thursday morning. Bryon has been practice running with her and decided he wanted to try a 1 mile run. Mark decided this would be a good time to strut his stuff. Pat, Elizabeth, and I went down to cheer them on. Here we are in the gym, waiting for the race to start.

Jul and Bryon at the start

Here’s Jul and Bryon at the start of the race.

Turkey Trotting Mark

And here’s Mark strutting his stuff.

Turkey Trot Celebration

Unfortunately, the temperature was pretty cold (mid 20s). It was way too cold for Elizabeth. So instead of greeting the great runners at the finish line, Elizabeth and I did our celibrating in the gym. In the mean time, Pat was to meet Jul and Bryon at the 1-mile mark to take Bryon and let Jul finish the 5K. Unfortunately, we never found the finish line. Mark saved the day by running backwards after finishing his 5K and meeting Bryon at the mile-and-a-half point. All’s well that ends well. Everybody had a great time.

Elizabeth, Bryon, Addi, Suzanne

Bud, Ed, Lynne, Pete, Joe, and Suzanne and Addi represented the Schmauses at dinner. We had all the trimmings, including saurerkraut. Ed & Lynne brought a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie for desert.

Parachute Game

After dinner, we played the “drop a parachute from the balcony” game.

Shooting Parachutes

It didn’t take Mark long to add interest to the game by trying to shoot the parachutes down.

Friday, we enjoyed the DVD “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” at the clubhouse. The Reeds left after lunch, planning to stop in Richmond overnight to enjoy the Christmas lights at the Botanical Gardens. We enjoyed the company a lot. But it was also nice to get everything back to normal. Overall, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Now that my back is feeling almost normal, I have my first PT appointment on Monday. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, Nov 24. There are no pics this week. This will be a short note.

The haulers came as scheduled. It took them 2 hours to pack everything into their truck and drive it away. Bud and Danita are already receiving pictures showing the progress on redoing Bud’s floors.

Danita is well into the Thanksgiving cooking, preparing and freezing meals that will be used immediately before and after Thanksgiving. We’ve had one major change to our plans. Tao is suffering from kidney stones and therefore Ryn and Tao will not come. We’ll miss them, and we wish Tao a speedy recovery.

Mom reports that Glen is back in the hospital with pneumonia. We wish Glen a speedy recovery also.

My back was doing better, but still sore. I was able to do a few things. I even got a couple of short bike rides. Suddenly my back got much worse yesterday. There was no reason for the setback that I can tell. Fortunately, I’m still capable of switching the fireplace on. That’s a good thing because it’s gotten quite cold here. I feel so bad, I might call the doctor tomorrow.

I hope this finds most of you doing well, and Tao and Glen recovering rapidly.

I am writing this on Sunday, Nov 17. You can see the pics at www.quarkleaf.com.

Rebecca and Pete clowning around

This week was a concerted effort to finish Bud’s move. Danita and I spent all day Friday and Saturday at Bud’s house. Danita sorted through stuff, deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. (With healthy input from Bud, of course.) I moved stuff around. I didn’t do as much as I wanted, because my back was bothering me quite a bit. Thursday, I stuffed my car with the last of Bud’s stuff. I had the trunk, back seat, and passenger seat completely packed. I drove over to his new apartment. It took 4 trips with a cart to get it all moved into the apartment.

Rebecca and Suzanne

Sunday, all the Schmauses — in descending age order: Bud, me, Danita, Ed, Lynne (Ed’s wife), Lynn (Danita’s sister), Joe, Tonie (Joe’s girl friend), Pete, Rebecca, Suzanne, and Addi — went to Leona’s anniversary Mass, then we went out for an excellent breakfast. After that, we all went to Bud’s house. Ed and Lynne rented a truck. Pete and Joe both had stuff stored in the basement, which was moved to the truck. Ed had a few tools in the basement. Several family members took some things they wanted. All the junk furniture was taken out to the curb for bulk pickup, metal recycling, regular recycling, or trash pickup. All of this is on Monday. By the end of the day tomorrow, all of this stuff should be gone, gone, gone. Rebecca took a group picture. If I get a copy, I’ll update the blog and let you all know.

This leaves quite a bit of decent furniture and lots of “stuff” in the house. Riderwood recommended some haulers, who take everything left in the house, donate what they can, and throw the rest away. The haulers work with four charitable organizations, including Habitat of Northern Virginia. That makes it a lot easier to let the stuff go. I’ll go over to Bud’s house one last time at 9:00 Wednesday to let the haulers in. That will be just in time to let the painters go to work starting Friday.

Suzanne and Addi playing on the bulk trash pile

A few other things happened earlier in the week. My neighborhood has a list of frequent visitors. These are people placed on file so they can visit after 8 PM without the guard having to call the family to get permission to let them in. I learned that they didn’t have a good way to generate a usable list for the guard. I suggested adding it to our database. They agreed. I got that coded up. I’ll be installing it next week.

I tried riding a little bit. I only got 4 miles. My back is in too bad a shape to permit riding. Hopefully, now that all this moving stuff is done, I’ll be able to get back to riding in a week or so.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 11/10. There are no pics this week.

Bud moved as planned. Danita did a fabulous job of organizing what would move and what wouldn’t. Everything went perfectly. Bud slept at Riderwood Friday night. Now the focus is getting the living area of his house empty so we can get painters in to do their work. The big decisions are made (such as which pots to move and which to leave behind). Now there is a sort of everything that’s left behind — especially papers. I can help by carrying sorted stuff around the house and putting it in various piles (donate, trash, take to Riderwood). Danita and I spent the last two day’s at Bud’s old house. We will also be there all day Monday. We hope that we will have the sorting of the living area done Monday. Then we’ll give Bud a week to move stuff around between the piles. We’ll  be back Friday to start working on the basement. Next Suday everybody will be there. We’ll go to Leona’s anniversary funeral mass, then have brunch. After brunch we’ll move stuff out to it’s designated destination. I’ll send Bud’s new address and phone number soon. We don’t have confirmation on his new phone number yet.

Early last week I got a little careless and hurt my back. I missed Yoga Tuesday. My rule: don’t attend yoga if Mountain Pose is a challenge.(That’s standing on both feet in good posture.) By Friday, I was feeling pretty good, and went on a Cycle2Health ride. It was 15 miles to the ride start, 30 miles for the ride, and 15 miles home (60 miles in all). The weather was windy and cool but otherwise good. It was an area I hadn’t ridden in before. It was the end of the fall foliage season. At the end of the ride, I joined the group for lunch at a pub. It was much more than I normally spend on a biking lunch, but the food was quite good. Overall, it was a great ride.

By the end of the day today, my back was sore again. I’m pretty sure I will miss Yoga again next Tuesday.

Last week I wrote about cutting the cord. When I actually called Verizon to cancel our service, they suddenly had some lower cost plans available. We decided to switch to a plan that has the same internet and phone service, but the TV is local channels only, with no “on demand” programming. Our monthly bill is substantially reduced. We keep our home phone number, and get all the Baltimore and DC channels. I’ve been working on improving our home network because Danita’s computer doesn’t get a very strong Wi-Fi signal in the TV room. I ordered some stuff and should get that all squared away sometime next week.

Finally, I think I might have fixed the Email problem with my web site. I guess I’ll find out pretty soon, because I’m about to hit the “Publish” button.I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I’m sure bundling has been around for a long time, but McDonald’s certainly perfected it. Buy a sandwich and a Coke, get the fries for free. What if I don’t want the fries? (Or the salad, or whatever other substitute they offer). What if I want a Coke and hamburger? I feel like I’m getting ripped off. In the case of McDonald’s, it turns out to be to my benefit. I’m better off drinking water.

Verizon FIOS offers TV, phone, and Internet. Buy all 3, get one free. Danita and I could live with the bundling. But that’s not enough for Verizon. Three years ago, the bundle was $99 / mo. The price is exactly the same today. Except the price we actually paid 3 years ago was $115 / mo. Today, it’s $133 / mo. Verizon announced they’re adding another $8 / mo (which is really closer to $8.50, when sales tax is included). Enough! I decided to see if we can cut our costs.

Using our cell phones instead of the home phone is a no-brainer. When we started, pre-paid cell service was $1.00 / minute. That quickly went down to $0.25 / minute. Then it went down to $0.10 / minute. With a 1-year card costing $100, we will never use 1,000 minutes. Using the cell phone instead of the home phone adds a grand total of … lets see … calculating … carry the 1 … $0 / mo.

TV is more confusing. Going on-line, I found all kinds of advice. Buy a box (anywhere from $35 to $120), buy a monthly subscription (Hulu+, Netfix, Amazon Prime, etc) and give up the TV subscription. Except that for all of these options, we wouldn’t see all the shows we currently watch. The main issue for us is CBS, which blocks their most popular shows from Hulu+. But I noticed that all the networks we watch are offering all of their shows on their own web sites, completely free. So the best way for us to cut the cord is to carry the laptop downstairs and connect it to the TV. If we don’t want to get up to start the next show, we can get a longer cable for $10. That’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a $100 box and a $8 / mo subscription.

I think I’ll get a better chance of talking to somebody on the “A” team if I wait until normal business hours. I’m calling Verizon tomorrow. I’m thinking we’ll cut our monthly bill in half. We’ll see.

We’re looking forward to a good time this afternoon. Duane Sabiston has an art opening. It should be fun.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.