There is one pic this week.

Hello from our clubhouse. Being in the clubhouse is becoming a real habit for us. We had a party here Friday night. Then another one Saturday night. After we got home, hurricane Bill came through our area and brought an amazing thunderstorm. We went out on the back porch to watch it. It was quite a show. Lightening would strike, seemingly freezing the rain drops and suspending them in mid-air. I even saw a fox walking by, totally unconcerned by the rain (but much more concerned about my pocket flashlight). When we went back into the house, we found all our Verizon services didn’t work. I decided power was probably out somewhere, and we went to bed. This morning, Verizon was still out. I called them on my cell phone. I waited over an hour for somebody to answer before giving up. We went to Panera to get breakfast and use the internet. I started a chat with a Verizon person. After quite a bit of back-and-forth, she asked me to manually reboot our “ONT box”. I lost my patience, reminded her we had no services, told her we were at a coffee shop, and asked her to schedule a technician. She said somebody will be out Thursday (4 days from now). I’m not too happy with Verizon at the moment.

After counting money for our church, I started poking around. I found wasps had built a nest in one of the Verizon boxes. I don’t know if that caused our problem, but I figure it’s not a good thing. I sprayed them, then decided to come over to the clubhouse to use the public Wi-Fi while I let the wasps die for a while.

There’s travel in our future. Next week, we will go to North Carolina and stay at “Monroe Mansion” (Jul’s). The grandkids are lacking day care Monday, so we’ll have an unusual schedule. We leave Saturday morning and return Tuesday. There just could be some pics when I get around to writing after we get back.

Alaska Cruise

Danita wants to take a very specific 2-week sea cruise to Alaska. Of all the cruises offered, only Holland America has one that visits one set of ports going north and a different set going south. Most cruises visit only one set of ports because most people don’t stay on the boat two weeks. They take the boat for one week in conjunction with a land tour. Danita has had her eye on this cruise for a long time. We decided to postpone the cruise and take the “hard” trips while we are younger. But Saturday we got a piece of junk mail from Holland America. Buried in the middle of a boring brochure was an offer to take this cruise at half price. Danita doesn’t miss much, and she certainly didn’t miss this. Even the internet didn’t offer the discounted price. We called up, found the deal is real, and took the offer on the spur of the moment. Buying the cruise “on a whim” was very stressful for us (in a good way). We seldom spend money without weeks or months of research. Of course, Danita had done her research over a year ago. Still, we would have normally waited at least a week while carefully considering all the ramifications.

We’re leaving August 23 and returning Sept 8. We’re especially looking forward to visiting Kodiak and Sitka, which are not usually stops for a cruise. We have a night at the Fairmont Hotel included in our cruise, which we’ll use to adjust to west coast time and as insurance against airline delays. On the way home, we found that flying on Labor day is quite expensive. We decided to stay a day in a hotel, because the savings in air fare more than pays for the room. We don’t have our return hotel picked out yet, but it won’t be at the Fairmont when it’s on our nickel. Boat Wi-Fi is expensive. And while I’m sure the ice is impressive, I doubt that endless pictures of ice are very interesting to anybody else. I probably won’t be posting daily.

We had quite an experience buying the air tickets. The cruise line couldn’t come close to the airline price offered by Southwest, so we decided to buy our own air tickets. We had everything all lined up, ready to hit the “commit” button, when Danita suggested we check one last possibility. The last possibility didn’t make sense, so we went back to the earlier tickets. This time Southwest said they couldn’t honor the price and offered us the tickets at $1,000 more. Each. (That’s $2,000 total.) I got disgusted and closed the computer. A little while later, I went back and got the tickets at the price we were originally offered. Who can understand these things? Not me, for sure.

That’s a lot of news for now. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are two pics this week.

Adirondack Park Loop

Last week I wrote about the cool and rainy weather. This week we’ve had the air conditioning on almost all week. Highs are in the 90s and it is quite humid. This is the earliest I can remember turning on the AC. Last year, we didn’t turn it on until August. But the bike riding was good. I did my first 100 KM ride. (Actually, it was 100.95 KM, but who’s counting?) I usually cross this milestone much earlier in the year, but weather, travel, and lack of urgency all contributed to more relaxed riding this spring. I don’t think I could do another 1,000 mile bike tour. But it’s just possible I’ll be able to do a 350 mile “bike & hike” in the Adirondacks in September. I’m looking at a loop route that goes up the east side of the park and comes down the center.

I have planned stops for all my bike rides. The “easy 100K” I rode yesterday includes a food stop at a place that used to be a gas station. They still have the pumps, but they don’t sell gas. There’s no trouble remembering where the place is — one can smell the grease a mile away. I was riding early to get home before a possible T-storm in the afternoon. In the past, the place has not been crowded. Yesterday I found out that 10 AM on a Saturday morning is prime breakfast time. The most popular thing ordered was a hamburger with a fried egg on top. They have hispanic women doing the cooking. One woman will sometimes be working hard and simultaneously conducting two different conversations in two different languages. But you have to listen closely to catch the English, because it sounds a lot like Spanish if you’re not paying attention. These ladies are big, and they like putting a lot of meat on a sandwich. I had a ham and cheese, and was the only person who ordered something that wasn’t grilled. It’s good food, but I take mine outside and sit on the curb to eat. The inside has grease everywhere.

Toy Bird

China is filled with cheap things to buy. One of them is toy birds that fly by flapping their wings. These are a variation of the balsa wood planes with rubber-band propellers. They’re really cool, really cheap, and look like a lot of fun. I bought 3 for about $5. My neighbor watches their two young grandsons everyday. I gave them one of the birds. They gave it back because they couldn’t figure out how to assemble it. That started “the challenge”. I would work on it for a while, then go do something else. After a couple of weeks, I had it pretty much figured out. But I had ruined the bird with my mistakes. The second bird had a poorly formed molded plastic piece. I successfully built the third bird. You can see it here, being held by granddad with the older grandson standing behind. They suggested starting flights with “medium power” (20 turns), so that’s what we did. The bird fluttered its wings as it slowly descended to a soft landing, which was pretty successful. But when we went to pick it up, we found the tail had completely separated from the frame, and the main wing had started separating from the frame. So much form 3M’s “strongest and best glue”. (Which, by the way, cost twice as much as the 3 birds.) But I had a lot of fun playing with it.

We saw lots of movies this week. I got “7 Years in Tibet” with Brad Pitt from the library, so we could play “I was there.” We had a neighborhood party yesterday. Afterwards, our movie hound showed Adam Sandler’s “The Cobbler”. It was a good movie, perhaps the only good movie Adam Sandler stared in. After Church Sunday morning we went down to College Park to take Mark out to breakfast. Then we saw the current box-office favorite, “Spy”. It’s the first funny spy spoof ever made. And, it’s a very, very funny movie.

Last year the spring on our garage door broke. I got Danita’s car out of the garage, but I dropped the door when trying to put it back down. The bottom panel got wrinkled a little bit. All that would probably have been fine, but several of our neighbors have garage doors damaged so badly that they can’t possibly be opened. The association maintenance committee got on a tare, and we got caught up in the hoopla. Two garage door companies said there’s nothing wrong with the door, but that makes no difference to the association. Danita and I put in a request to install garage doors with windows. If that’s approved, we’ll upgrade the doors. Otherwise, I’ll replace the panel.One thing’s for sure. It will be months before the association rules on our request. That bent panel is sure to be bothering some of my neighbors all summer long.

Danita had a 3/4 crown Thursday. Her mouth still feels “different”, but she’s already feeling better. It’s amazing the dentist can do work like this done in one visit.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pictures this week.

Last week was rainy and cool (around 60). It was no weather for riding. So I spent my time looking at options for the SOCA web site. I made great progress. I think I’ll be ready to make recommendations after one more phone call. Besides that, I finished all but the last presentation of “inside your router”, which will be Wednesday evening.

One of the restaurants we like is starting a weekend brunch. They offered 50% off. We don’t normally go out to eat on Saturday, but we went for lunch. After lunch we watched “San Andreas” in 3-D. Danita is an aficionado of disaster movies. This wasn’t a candidate for best ever, but it was a darned good disaster movie. We had a great time. Saturday evening we went up to Ed and Lynne’s and showed off our China pictures. Today we had our last BSO concert of the year.

The weather is looking better for riding this week. In the mean time, I hope everybody is doing well.

There are no pictures this week.

Last week was rainy and cool (around 60). It was no weather for riding. So I spent my time looking at options for the SOCA web site. I made great progress. I think I’ll be ready to make recommendations after one more phone call. Besides that, I finished all but the last presentation of “inside your router”, which will be Wednesday evening.

One of the restaurants we like is starting a weekend brunch. They offered 50% off. We don’t normally go out to eat on Saturday, but we went for lunch. After lunch we watched “San Andreas” in 3-D. Danita is an aficionado of disaster movies. This wasn’t a candidate for best ever, but it was a darned good disaster movie. We had a great time. Saturday evening we went up to Ed and Lynne’s and showed off our China pictures. Today we had our last BSO concert of the year.

The weather is looking better for riding this week. In the mean time, I hope everybody is doing well.