Late Snow
It was a lot of rain. Not surprising that the Patapsco flooded near Elkridge. But Snow at the end of March? Shortly after this pic, I did the only possible reasonable thing. I closed the blinds, turned on the lights, switched on some music, started the fireplace, and sulked until it was time for the chilli cook-off. The chilli was good. We even got a bonus movie afterwards — “Rush”. The snow quit. But it’s still raining.
I am writing this on Sunday, 3/23. There are no pics.
Danita had two days off at the beginning of the week for the university’s spring break. Instead of going back to work Wednesday, she had a colonoscopy. Everything was fine. We had a neighborhood party Friday. The temperature Saturday went up to almost 70. I got several nice rides in. We were planning to go to the Spotlighters theater today for our anniversary, but we didn’t buy tickets soon enough. So we’ll content ourselves with a dinner at Portalli’s. Danita went there for one of the interviews. She liked it a lot. The gnucci is homemade and shows great promise.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.
I am writing this on Tuesday, 3/18. There are no pics.
Here’s a hard-learned lesson from our years of parenting. When going on an adventure, one does not discuss what the adventure is until safely inside the door. Our last day at Jul’s was Sunday. As forecasted, it was rainy. We planned to see the Lego movie. I broke my parenting rule in spades. I told the kids what we were going to do. I give the kids glow-in-the-dark Lego T-shirts to wear on our adventure. We did well on the drive to the movies. But when we got there, they were sold out. There’s nothing like two kids standing in the rain crying to make one feel like a grand parent. We didn’t have a backup plan (another good idea for the good parent.) Working on the fly, we took the kids for ice cream. Jul and Pat were house hunting. Danita called Jul and got the location of a Red Box. We stopped at the Red Box and got “Monster University”. Then we watched the movie at home. Monster University is a good movie. The kids were totally absorbed. But of course, nothing could match the promise broken.
We had a non-refundable hotel reservation a couple of hours up the road. The forecast was for the precip to continue, changing to ice and snow in the evening. So we had dinner a little on the early side and blew out to the hotel. It was a tense ride, with one eye on the car’s thermometer and one on the time left to reach our destination. As it turned out, the precip had just started to turn when we arrived.
When we woke up in the morning, the world was covered with ice. The hotel was OK; the free breakfast was edible; the internet service was abysmal. By mid-morning, crews had cleared the ice and accidents from the major roads. The forecast called for more wintery stuff on-and-off until 2. After 15 minutes of chipping ice of the car windows,we took off to see how much closer to home we could get. The first part of the ride was miserable driving. The roads were OK, but the windshield wipers and washers were frozen. Stuff was kicked up off the road. We stopped for lunch near Staunton. I found clean snow to wash the windshield. Cabin and engine heat was able to melt a lot of the ice on the car while we ate lunch. When we came out, a few minutes with a window scraper had everything freed up. The rest of the drive was without incident. We got home about 5:30. Our area had a good 6″ of snow. Fortunately, streets and sidewalks in our neighborhood were completely cleared by the time we got home.
So much for my “rule” that it doesn’t snow after the Ides of March.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.
I am writing this on Saturday, 3/15. There are lots of pics.
Waiting for the parade to get to us
Mom and Dad were gone. What can we do on St. Patrick’s Day? Go a parade, of course. The weather was great. The trip was great. We left the house and drove to the light rail station. The train was so crowded we couldn’t get a seat. Within a couple of stops, it was packed. Many people at stops closer to downtown didn’t take that train to the parade. We got a good spot with a great view of the parade. After half an hour, the kids were ready to move on, so we went to the funnel cake vendor. Then it was a few chicken fingers, and time to go home. When we left, the parade was still going on. Bring on the pics!
Dancing Girls
Elizabeth’s Ring
Pretending to water ski behind a boat (boat was on a trailer)
x
Unicyclist with puppet dog
Strange Character
Eating Funnel Cake
End of the line – everybody off
Whoever said “Beware the ides of March???”
I am writing this on Friday, 3/15. There are 2 pics.
The trip down to Jul’s was one of the easiest we have had. It was sunny and cool, but not cold. The drive was without incident. One of our stops was Statesville, about an hour north of Jul’s. After buying gas, we walked downtown. They have an attractive city and some interesting architecture. They have one of the nicest looking community college I’ve seen. Here are a couple of buildings we saw. The house was divided up into rental apartments. I think it would have made a great B & B. I would have paid extra to sleep in the turret.
Statesville Building
We arrived about 4, just as Jul was pulling up with B & E. Our big activity was dinner, which turned out to be quite an adventure. Traffic to the Rusty Onion pizza parlor was heavy and slow. The restaurant was busy. Fortunately, a party of 6 was just finishing up as we arrived. They got us seated quickly. Danita was ready. She and Jul had the pizzas all picked out, and she had the waitress enter the pizza order before taking drink orders. It didn’t take long until we were all settled with food in our bellies. By the time we got home, it was bedtime for some household members.
Pat and Jul finally got through settlement on their old house. They’ve put looking for a new place into high gear. They have appointments to see 4 places today. I guess we’ll just have to come up with a way to entertain the kids while Mom and Dad are out.
I am writing this on Sunday, 3/9. There are 2 pics.
I offered a seminar on computer security Friday. It went well. I had a dozen attendees. I’m offering a second session tomorrow evening at 6, for the folks who work during the day.
Heart Shaped Bamboo
We had a second super Sunday this week. The switch to Daylight Savings Time puts us an hour ahead of many other people. That’s good because we like to go to Miss Shirley’s once in a while. We think it’s the premier breakfast restaurant in the Baltimore area. A lot of people agree with us, which makes it a pretty crowded place. But this is one week of the year where we’re an hour ahead of many other folks, and we can enjoy a nice, uncrowded, leisurely breakfast. This evening, we went to circle. The Sochureks hosted dinner for circle. When we arrived, we were surprised to find out it was in honor of our 40th anniversary. The dinner was quite good. The Baumans gave us a heart-shaped bamboo plant and a totally amazing chocolate cake. The Bertches gave us some beautiful roses and a card that Mike made by hand.
Roses from Mike and Rose
Things have been breaking with great regularity lately. The front fender broke on my bike. A replacement is on order. Two of my bike lights stopped working — one on the back, and one on the front. I spent quite a bit of time looking for good replacements. I ordered what I think will be very good lights, but they need to charge from a USB power source. I decided to mount a new shelf near the bike and string a power cord across the garage so I can plug the bike into the charger when I get home from a ride. It was a fun little project. I had enough spare stuff that the cost was nearly nothing. While I was out getting the few little things I needed, I also got 6 9-volt batteries and 6 AA batteries so I could change the batteries in all or smoke detectors and CO detectors.
One of the toilets stopped working. That leaves us with 3 working toilets — one on each floor. My idea was to just close off that bathroom and use the other toilets in the house. Danita was not amused. So I spent much more time examining toilet innards. I found a cool kit that lets standard toilets have two flushes (half flush for most of the time and a full flush for solids.) That’s on order and should arrive soon.
When I was parking in front of the Sochureks, I hit the curb and blew out a tire. Who would have guessed — I’m the only person in circle who can change a tire. I’ll be getting that tire fixed right away, because next weekend we are going to NC to visit the kids and grand-kids. It should be a lot of fun, and we just might have some pictures for the next post.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.
I’m writing this on Sunday, March 2. There are two pics.
We’re having variable weather. The low Friday night was 11 degrees, which matched the record for the coldest day of the year. Yesterday and today, the high was in the 40s. It started raining late this afternoon. They say we’ll be having a significant snow tonight and Monday. It will be the last one of the season, because we are down to our last snow emergency kit.
This screen was painted by Dee Herget, who painted the front door screen for our first house.
After extensive investigation, I installed an alarm system. It monitors the water level in the sump and gives an alarm if it rises too high. It also alarms if the house temperature falls below 45 degrees, or if there’s a power failure, or if the batteries need replacing. When it detects an alarm, it calls up to 3 phone numbers. It needs to plug into the phone line to make the calls. For some strange reason, the builder didn’t put a phone jack in the sump room. (Imagine that, if you can!) However, there’s a phone jack across the hall. I spent three days doing the installation. One day to snake the wire from the sump room, over the ceiling, and into the furnace room. One day to go through the furnace room wall and along the baseboard to the jack in the “media room” (AKA grandchildren’s play room). The third day was installing the alarm in the sump room. I attached the water sensor to a piece of 2 x 2 and screwed that to the bottom of the sump cover. And, of course, I spent several hours playing with the alarm.It’s not a toy if you don’t play with it!
A less traditional screen painted by Dee
It’s been a nice week, but today was a prize-winning day. We started out with Church and a Bob Evan’s breakfast. Then a nice bike ride in the balmy late-morning hours. We went to MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) for an exhibit of painted screens. From there, we walked about a block to attend a BSO concert. We heard an all-Mozart performance, ending with his “Jupiter” symphony. We finished our day with a BOGO at Baldwin Station, one of our favorite restaurants. The dinner was very good, and we got home before the rain turned into messy, slushy stuff.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.