This was a busy week. Our community has a database with the passcards issued to each resident. We also have a paper 3-ring binder “pool book” with pictures of about 500 residents who have pool passes. These pictures are taped onto pages which slide into plastic sleeves, like a photo album from the 1966. The database and pool book are managed entirely separately. Our property manager pointed out this represented a lot of duplicate work for our office manager. So I created an electronic pool book which can be printed on paper if desired. I had the office manager scan the pool book pages, and I pulled photos from the scans. All 500 are loaded in the database. Whew. In the process, I found that photos for residents in over 40 of our houses are for people who have either moved out or died. I can see that in most cases, new people have moved in. But we don’t have their photos. We have several hours a day when the pool is open without a lifeguard. These hours are “residents only”. The county requires that we verify that everybody swimming during this time is a resident. So now the board has a great crisis. Do they try to get the photos for these folks? Or do they give up on the pool book and use another way to identify residents? Time will tell. No matter what they do, there will be less work for the office manager next year when the pool opens.

We also booked the majority of our France trip. I booked all our hotels. I spent so much money so fast that I triggered the credit card fraud flag. Citibank contacted me with a computer-driven phone call. The caller ID came through as “unknown”, which is usually a junk call. I almost didn’t answer it. I had to verify the purchases. Then I had to call Expedia and verify the charges went through.

I also purchased the air tickets to get to France. That took quite a long time. I know that airfares are not rational, but this is ridiculous … we can fly from BWI to Paris for $300 each. The flight connects through either Detroit or Atlanta. Or we can fly direct from Dulles airport (west of DC) for the same price. A third option I considered was getting to Atlanta ourselves and taking the direct flight from Atlanta to Paris. That way we could spend the night in Atlanta and avoid a 12 hour flight. We decided not to do that when we saw the airfare leaving from Atlanta was over $600. How is it possible that we can save $300 each by flying from BWI to Atlanta? This is on Air France, a major carrier. If you figure it out, please let me know. We ended up opting for the direct flight. The hassle and expense of getting a ride to Dulles is more than offset by saving 5 hours on the flight, not to mention the risk of missing the connection or having bags lost in the plane transfer.

The next big thing is to reserve tickets for our cave tours (to see the 40,000 year-old cro magnon art). This is important because the demand for cave tours exceeds the supply. Tickets will become available Tuesday. Another thing we have to do is get ourselves from NY, where the ship docks, to home. This was another surprise. We can take the train for $85 each, which is much less than the cheapest airfare. Even the Acela (express train) is cheaper than flying. We’ll probably cheap out on the tickets and take the extra hour to get home. I didn’t buy the tickets because it appears that Amtrak doesn’t discount tickets under any circumstances. Every ticket on every train is exactly the same price, as far out as their schedule shows. We just might wait until we’re at the train station to buy the tickets.

For New Year’s Eve, we’re going down to the basement and watch a movie. Cashews and red wine might be available. We won’t have to fight a bunch of drunks driving home. We won’t have to try to talk in a noisy party. We can go to bed whenever we want. Heck, the recliner chairs are comfortable enough that we don’t even have to walk upstairs when we decide to go to sleep. And we just happen to know that if we fall asleep in the chairs, the TV will eventually turn itself off. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Here’s wishing everybody good health and good times in 2018!

It was an easy week here in Columbia. We had our first snow fall, with an inch or so of snow. The streets were clear, but we decided to have our first “snow emergency”. (Red wine goes good with snow!) We also spent some time getting ready for Christmas.

Our community’s property manager proposed a change in our database that would make it easier for us to manage our swimming pool passes. Incredibly enough, we got everything approved in a one-hour meeting. I spent a lot of time this weekend updating the database. The hard part of the changes are made. I have to add a couple of reports and smooth the rough edges. After that, there will be several hours of grunt work while I load 1,000 photos into the database. I’ll start next year and do a little at a time. I should have it done in a couple of months.

I hope this finds everybody doin well.

It’s exciting times here in central Maryland. It’s snowing. So far, we’ve had a light snow that doesn’t stick to any paved areas. But we know it’s a major event, because Howard County closed all their public buildings and cancelled all activities therein. That includes Centennial High School. And it includes the Jazz Ambassadors, the Army field band that was going to perform there today. And that means the Chaprnkas won’t be coming to the concert, and we won’t have dinner for them.

Given the obvious severity of the weather, there was only one option. But we didn’t have any snow emergency kits. Shame on me! I got out early enough that the stores weren’t crowded and made it back unscathed. Danita mailed the last of her Christmas cards just before lunch. Now the hatches are battened, and we’re ready for up to three snow emergencies.

A few things happened besides the snow. We took Mark out to breakfast Sunday and met his girlfriend Jiajia (pronounced “Jay Jay”). She’s a delightful young lady, working as an associate professor in physics at Bucknell University.

Thursday, we went to Bob Evans and did our Christmas shopping. (Sadly, they closed the Mimi’s in Columbia.) We wanted to have everything ready to drop ship. Unfortunately, a couple of the things we selected didn’t have gift wrapping available. We think we selected a wrong option while we were on Amazon. We had to ask Jul to do some wrapping for us. We’ll try to do better next year.

Our other activity was a neighborhood party at the clubhouse yesterday evening. There was plenty of food and lots of libations, but for some reason the people were louder than normal. We were able to talk, but it was hard to hear.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s the big news of the week. I rode my bike. Danita went to exercise classes. We did our chores. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This was a big week, at least for us retired folks. In chronological order:

We’re going to France. We’re not sure when we’re leaving. We’re not sure what we’re going to see. But we know for sure when we’re coming home. We will take a repositioning cruise on the Queen Mary from England back to the US in October. The general plan is to fly to Paris, take the train to Provence, drive up to the Loire Valley over a period of weeks, then turn the car in and take the train back to Paris. (I’m not crazy enough to drive in Paris!) We’ll stay in Paris for a while, then take the chunnel train to London. We have our ticket for the return cruise. I thought we were reserving well ahead. But our first choice of rooms were all booked. We had the choice of stepping down one step, or going up. We said “What the heck” and stepped up. It was a hard decision, mostly because we had trouble paying for a balcony to cross the Atlantic in October.

I’ve been having a little trouble with vertigo. It’s a re-occurance of what I had about 35 years ago. Back then, I saw a GP, an ENT, and a neurologist. The neurologist knew what my problem was and knew I could do rotations to fix my problem; but he never gave me a name for my condition, and his description of the rotations left a lot to be desired. I finally got better after a month or two. This time my doctor’s assistant knew I have BPPV (Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo). She recommended a place to go to get the rotation done. That didn’t work out, but there’s lots of information on the web. I did one Epley Maneuver and kept my chin up for one day and two nights. That set me straight. BPPV is caused when calcium stones in your ear get stuck in your ear canal. I’ll never know what caused the first occurrence, but apparently once you get BPPV, it is more likely to recur. I’m thinking that going to Yoga 3 times a week may not be the best idea for me moving forward. There’s too many downward facing dogs.

“plique-a-jour” bowl

Today we went to the Walter’s art museum to get a free brunch for 20-year plus members only. Who says there’s no advantage to getting old? While we were there, we toured the Faberge exhibit. What caught my eye was a “plique-a-jour” bowl. This has enamel is applied in cells, but with no backing in the final product, so light can shine through the enamel. I didn’t have my camera, but here’s an example I stole from the internet.

Tomorrow we’ll take Mark out for breakfast for his birthday. It is said that we will meet his girlfriend, Jia Jia.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.