There is one pic this week.

The weather continues to be a wild rollercoaster. The most exciting day was Wednesday. They were forecasting snow, and we actually got some. It ended up not sticking to the roads. But we knew that if there was more snow than predicted on the most heavily traveled day on the calendar, Danita could end up having a very rough time coming home from work. So she decided to work at home. We decided to go to Bob Evans for breakfast, using a week-day only BOGO. While we had breakfast, we did most of our Christmas shopping. (Thank you, Amazon). Everything except one item has already arrived. After breakfast, we went home and Danita started her work. That evening, I declared a snow emergency. It can be a hard life, watching TV, skipping the commercials, drinking that red wine, and eating those snacks.

Thursday was our smallest Thanksgiving ever. Bud ended up going to Danita’s sister’s house, so it was just Danita, Mark, and me. Friday was a holiday for Danita. She went down to visit her dad while Mark and I went to see a movie. We saw the Hunger Games, “Mockingjay Part 1.” We both enjoyed the movie.

Advent Hike

We officially transferred our Church parish from St. Louis in Clarksville to Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) in Ellicott City. OLPH is much closer to us than St. Louis, and their parish seems to be more active. OLPH has a hiking club. Today was their annual Advent hike. They walk through Patapsco park, then visit an order of nuns for prayers and singing. It was a lot of fun, and the weather was perfect. We went on this hike with about 40 other people. Here’s a picture of Danita and some of the hikers at the nuns’ graveyard.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are a few pics this week.

We had rain on Monday, then it got frigid. Highs Tuesday and Wednesday were below freezing. Thursday was a little better, with highs in the low 40s. Then it was back to being cold Friday. At least we didn’t have any snow. Riding has been limited.

But there’s lots of other stuff going on. Danita and I went to see the movie “Interstellar” last Sunday afternoon. I thought it was a great movie. I don’t think Danita enjoyed it as much as I did. Part of that might have been because of her allergic reaction. The roof of her mouth was irritating her and she started having some other symptoms. I would have left the movie early, but she didn’t say anything until after we were home. She must have reacted to some cleaning chemical they use.

Fine Arts Building – “Thumbprint of God” or wrinkled plans?

Friday we went to a concert at UMBC. They built a fine new arts building. I think the outside is ugly. One wall has a huge dent, which the architect calls “The Thumbprint of God”. I think the plans got wrinkled and nobody noticed. The inside of the building is beautiful. It includes what must be the ultimate concert hall. It’s large for a campus their size, seating 300 people. To keep sounds from other parts of the building from disturbing the concert, the hall is totally self-contained — a building in a building. The heating and air conditioning is done without using fans, so that fan noise won’t interfere either. They have the capability of “tuning” the hall for the number in the audience and the type of music. The musicians giving the concert had been on campus giving masters lessons. The concert was as good as the hall.

Saturday was the neighborhood Thanksgiving party. SOCA provided the turkey and sodas. Neighbors brought the sides. So many people came, they had to set up tables in the vestibule. Our family Thanksgiving dinner will be the smallest one in many years. We will have 4 — Bud and Mark are coming. Ed & Lynne are going to Florida to visit Lynne’s parents. Her mother is suffering from dementia and is in a care facility. Their boys will both be visiting their in-law families.

This afternoon we will go to Duane Sabiston’s art reception. http://blog.duanesabiston.net/. Dot has been through some very tough times with her health. But things seem to have turned the corner. She is optimistic of getting a kidney transplant this year. You can read her posts here, if you create an account. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/dotsabiston.

Cool Book of the Week: “The Martian : a novel” by Andy Weir. Interstellar was a cool movie, but like most science fiction, they made stuff up. This book is totally within the realm of known science and probably technology. And the author gets his facts right. His story respects the time it takes and the possible routes for a ship to move itself from Earth to Mars, and how many calories per square foot one can get by growing potatoes, and every other detail that would be involved in living on Mars.

Cool Tool of the Week: I’ve been playing with our trip to China. Half the fun is in the anticipation. I noticed that most of our hotel rooms will have internet access, but not WiFi. Every device we own requires WiFi. Even my laptop does not include an internet jack. Obviously, we HAVE to have a device that turns Internet into WiFi. ;-) I found the Edimax N150 Wireless Personal Hotspot and Travel Router (BR-6258nL). It’s a terrific device. At just $20, it’s an unbelievable device. It has more features with access to more settings than anybody would ever need from such a thing. Yet, it is set up to be drop-dead easy to use. Of course, the proof is in the pudding. Having a device that works in my home is nice. Having a device that works for 3 weeks in China is not yet proven. I predict amazing things for my $20. We’ll see.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are a few pics this week.

Thurmont Ride

The week started off with two of the nicest days anybody could want. Monday was sunny and warm, with low winds and highs in the low 60s. This was a perfect day to drive up to Jerusalem Mill and do my 50 mile ride around Baltimore County. It was fun to visit the old stomping grounds. It’s a tough ride because of the length and the number of hills. It’s also a lot of fun because I vividly remember when some of these hills seemed to be very difficult, such as the hill going up to the Loch Raven Dam. Now they’re just hills. Kingsville is not an area that changes much. I had lunch at Jamie’s. The sandwich is exactly as it was when we lived there. Unfortunately, so are the tables out on the patio. They are getting pretty grungy.

My kids might remember this lake at the base of Catoctin Mountain (but not these fishermen)

Tuesday was about 5 degrees warmer, which meant that the highs in Thurmont were near 60. So I drove up there and did a ride I heard about online. The ride is a triangle. It starts in Thurmont and goes up Catoctin Mountain, past the turn-off for Cunningham Falls, past the turn-off for the Houck Camping area, up to the top of the ridge — which is also the Washington County boarder, and is also 7 miles of continuous up-hill riding. It would have been nice to stop at Cunningham Falls, but I didn’t start until 11 (to let the temperature warm up), so I didn’t have time for the detour. It’s beautiful country and a great ride. After the first 7 miles, I enjoyed a bracing downhill run into the valley.

We did some hiking / rock scrambling along this stream

From there, the ride turns North to go up the valley to Cascade, MD. (And it includes 3 more miles of climbing.) This little town is a stone’s throw from the PA border, and is also the home of Ft. Ritchie. The base was closed in 1998. Today, it is hopefully listed as “Office Space Available”. It’s pretty clear there have been no takers so far. This was the most isolated part of the ride. I rode for miles with no houses and no cars on the road. The only sign I was in a civilized area was the pavement under my wheels.

Was Ft. Ritchie, now “Office Space Available”

The last leg is a downhill run back to Thurmont. It’s fast and fun. The country is just as pretty as the rest of the ride. But I have to admit I was enjoying the downhill run quite a bit. There’s no doubt this is country. I didn’t pass a single Starbucks. I felt fine when I got home and even made it through Tuesday night Yoga in good shape.

Wednesday was a day of rest for me. I returned my “Personal Amplifers”, those things that aren’t quite hearing aids. They worked as advertised, but they didn’t let me turn the volume down when watching TV, and they didn’t help me hear people in noisy rooms. On the other hand, the video recorder has been a great success. Danita got a new crown Wednesday. Our dentist has all the latest dental toys, which is how Danita got her crown in one 2-hour visit. The dentist used an imaging laser to build a model of the tooth. The image was sent to a milling machine to make a ceramic crown. After a quick fit check, the crown was baked, then cemented to her tooth. The entire procedure, including a little cleanup work with the drill, was done without pain killers. Her mouth was sore for a couple of days, but it was much quicker and less disruptive than the traditional procedure. While Danita was recovering from her crown, I went to another retirement planning seminar. I know, I said no more of these. But this one had an interesting variation on the theme. This *is* the last one. Probably.

Wednesday was also a transitional day weather-wise. By Wednesday evening colder temperatures had come in with some rain showers. We even had a few snow flakes in the mix. Highs for the rest of the week were in the mid-40s. The sudden drop in temperature made the bike rides quite bracing.

Friday we had a neighborhood party. We had pizza, meatballs, salad, and sandwiches. And cookies for desert. The ladies in charge decided to mix up some sangria, which was quite popular. Danita’s off to visit her dad. After that, we’re looking forward to a quiet weekend. Maybe we’ll go see that new movie “Interstellar”.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

I’m Famous. I was on TV. I went to vote midday Tuesday. A cameraman from one of the local TV stations had just set up, and asked if he could record me. Mine was one of the clips that made it onto the news. I never saw the clip, but several people told me I was on.

We went to an awful event this week. The UMBC humanities department had their keynote presentation Wednesday afternoon. The subject was “Pottery and Ancient Dance”, about the ancient Greeks. It should be an interesting topic, and the speaker was quite informative when she answered questions from the audience at the end. But the actual talk was terrible. Her presentation was rapid and dry. She would mention somebody’s name and assume that the audience had read their work and know what their view of Greek pottery was. I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. I ended up sleeping through much of it.

Other than that, it was a pretty standard week. We went out for dinner Thursday and Friday, and breakfast this morning. We’re going to a neighborhood potluck dinner tonight.

My big news is that we got a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) for our TV. We time shift shows by watching them online. Lately, it hasn’t worked very well. The shows would freeze, often in the middle of a commercial. Shows on CBS would be OK. We could shut down our web browser and restart it. The show would remember where it was and start where it left off. But one show we watch, “The Flash”, isn’t on CBS and wouldn’t remember where it was. We could skip segments of the show, but we had to re-watch each of the commercials. We don’t use a cable box. We have just the local channels. The FIOS cable plugs directly into our TV. So I ordered this DVR. When it arrived, I learned its tuner isn’t “cable ready”. It really needs a TV antenna signal. So I ordered a “leaf” antenna. This looks like a piece of plastic, a little larger than a sheet of paper, white on one side and black on the other, with a wire sprouting out of the bottom. Our TV is in the basement, so I used painter’s blue tape to tape the antenna to the top of the basement window. Amazingly, it worked pretty well. Of course, I wanted to make it work better.

We have a Radon pipe in the basement that seems to run to the roof. The Radon pipe doesn’t really do anything but provide a 4″ conduit from the basement to the attic. My first thought was to run a coax cable through the Radon pipe and hang the antenna in the attic. I got the stuff I needed, then I tried to climb into the attic. I knew there wasn’t a lot of room in the attic, but I thought there was enough room to let me crawl to where the radon pipe was located. It didn’t take long to convince myself that I will never be working in this attic. Even when I was young, it would have been an amazing adventure. There’s no way this old man is going to do more than gaze longingly in the general direction I thought I needed to go. By this time I had quite an investment in my little project. I needed a “plan B”.

We have a FIOS box on the outside of the house which is connected to a coax cable in the garage. Most of the rooms in the house have a plate with one or two coax connectors and one or two phone connectors. I started climbing around the utility rooms (we have 3) and trying to figure out how all these cables are routed. I found out that we have a video and a phone distribution panel in one of the utility closets. We’ve been living in this house for 4/12 years. One might think I would have figured this out before now. I guess I just never cared before. After studying the distribution panel, I figured out that I could hook the antenna to one of the jacks in the upstairs bedroom, and wire that to an unused coax connector that’s right behind the TV. Lucky me.

All I needed was some simple tools. I needed a stripper to prepare the coax cable, a crimper to mount a connector to the end of one of the unused cables, and some coax connectors. I also noticed my drill battery isn’t holding a charge, so I needed one of those. And the new drill battery is different than the old battery and needs a new battery charger. All that was supposed to arrive Monday, but it actually arrived today. On a Sunday! They must be gearing up for Christmas. Lucky me.  I spent the afternoon today running up and down stairs, figuring out for sure which cable is routed to which outlet, moving the antenna to various positions to see how many channels we can get, etc. It’s all done now. The antenna is cleverly hidden behind a curtain. We get a bunch of channels, and the DVR is merrily recording the shows we want to watch. More accurately, the DVR *says* it is recording our shows. We’ll figure out how well all this is actually working in a week or so when we get around to watching some of these shows. Oh, and about the drill battery — I never actually needed to use the drill. But I have a spiffy new battery for “next time”, all charged up and ready to go.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

The week started out with the weather so good, it was hard to believe we weren’t still in San Diego. I took the opportunity to get a couple of very nice rides in. The nice weather didn’t last very long. I remember several years where we made it almost (but never quite all the way) to Thanksgiving before turning the heat on. Danita and I were talking about turning the heat on Saturday night. We decided to wait, because Danita is doing a lot of cooking Sunday, and that always warms up the house. Come Sunday morning, the house was 62 when I got out of bed. That’s too cold. This just might be the earliest in the year we’ve had the heat on. I’m sitting at my desk looking out into the trees out back. As the newspaper weather forecaster wrote, it’s a really nice day if you’re inside looking out. Sunny with an abundance of multi-colored leaves falling from the trees.

On the heath front, Danita had dentist and doctor’s appointments last week. She’s doing fine, but her skin is bothering her so much she finally made an appointment with a dermatologist. My hearing isn’t what it once was. For the last several years, I have problems hearing people talk in crowded rooms. Danita thinks I turn the TV volume too high. (Plus, I turn the captions on.) I went to an audiologist a little over a year ago. She said my hearing was marginal and indicated I could experience some improvement with a hearing aid for my right ear. I found it hard to justify the incredible expense of a modern hearing aid for a marginal improvement. Last week, I ran across information on The Bean. It’s much cheaper than a hearing aid. If they don’t help, I can send them back within 30 days. I did some on-line reading. In addition to the usual “unbiased” personal testimonials, I found some reviews by qualified professionals. It appears to be a useful device that costs much less than a modern digital hearing aid. (It uses a K-amp amplifier circuit.) My pair should arrive today. You’ll be hearing my personal testimonial before long.

We had two events this weekend. Friday evening, we went to a BSO concert. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Our big news this week is the annual sour beef dinner Sun evening. Our guests this year were Bud, Ed & Lynne, Mark, and Joe & Toni. Danita made the sour beef, green beans, cole slaw, and a spice cake with caramelized apple topping. Ed and Lynne made the soft dumplings that Bud likes. Our featured drink was Weihenstephaner beer, from the oldest brewery in the world (founded in 1040 by Benedictine monks, of course). They make several varieties. I got “original”. Does that mean we’ll be drinking beer exactly like it was in the 9th century? I held off posting this so I could add some party pics. But last night I was having such a good time, I forgot to take the pics. Oh, well.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.