It was a full week. We had dinner out on Wednesday, taking advantage of a free entree at Houlihan’s. The coupon was for Danita’s “half birthday” (titled Halfday Birthday to You). Never mind the lame marketing. It was a great discount, and they have the best restaurant meatloaf in town. Thursday was Discovering Christ at Church, with a satisfying beef stew dinner.. Friday was “Stations” with a tremendously good vegetable soup and St. Louis’ famous grilled cheese sandwiches. Yesterday was the Chili Cook Off at Church. (Pay no attention to the rumours that I had more than one desert.) We took Mark and Jiajia out to breakfast this morning at the Silver Diner (most excellent food and delightful conversation, as always). And tonight is the neighborhood comfort food potluck. Here’s hoping somebody brings meatloaf!

But the real excitement begins tomorrow. I’m flying down to see Mom in the morning, returning Thursday afternoon. It’s a packed 4 days of nonstop activity. Don’t tell anybody, but a little birdie told me that there wasn’t room on one page for everything on my to-do list, so Mom hand-wrote the rest on the back of the page. It’s going to be non-stop action for me for sure this week — and, of course, a lot of fun also. Danita will be holding down the home front by herself this week. She’s delighted devastated that I won’t be here for 4 whole days.

I have to sign off and do some exercises to build my endurance. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Last week I talked about moving our neighborhood website. The website is moved, but I’m still tweaking things. The backups aren’t working exactly the way I want. Hopefully I’ll work that out soon. Other than that, I am quite pleased with our new host provider.

The weather folks are forecasting snow to start this afternoon and continue through the night. Everybody’s all atwitter about how much snow we’ll get. I’m supposed to help count money after Church tomorrow. We’ll have to wait and see whether I make it or not. Fortunately, we have plenty of toilet paper. We moved our Sunday breakfast out to this morning, because Sunday breakfast out is just that important.

This is Lent. One of the traditions of Lent is a small personal sacrifice. This year, we ended up with an unintentional un-sacrifice. We are attending a weekly series at Church on Thursday evenings, so we moved our dinner out night from Thursday to Wednesday. The weekly series includes dinner, so we are eating out on Thursday also. The dinners at our Church are very good. We like to go to Stations of the Cross on Fridays, which includes a good Catholic meatless dinner (alternates between fish and grilled cheese). All of which is another way of saying we are eating out more than ever during Lent this year.

The first “Stations” was last night. We timed our arrival so that we would finish dinner just before the service. When we got to Church, there was a sign on the door saying that the dinner was cancelled “due to unforeseen circumstances”. We didn’t have time to go home, eat, and come back for the service. We ended up driving out and back, missing the service, and eating at home. Fortunately, Danita had a frozen vegetarian pizza available.

The traffic was amazingly bad. We had several instances of people jumping lanes, cutting in traffic, etc. One person was in a left-turn only lane, stopped, and put on their turn signal just as we were about to pass them on the right. I did an emergency stop, then we did a reverse Mexican Standoff while we both waited for the other driver to go ahead. This incident is remarkable because the offender had a “Student Driver” sticker on their bumper, but there was only one person in the car. I concluded that person was probably a driving instructor, and they are imminently unqualified for that responsibility. I felt like I should be driving with my flashers on, a day before the snow starts.

I volunteered to offer IT assistance for CAC (Community Action Council of Howard County). CAC is the non-profit that runs the Howard County food bank. They immediately asked me to do some work that requires a software license. I found a 7-day free trial and did the work, then let them know I would need CAC to provide me a license to do more of this work, which costs $15/month. CAC is pennywise, a common trait of non-profits. They didn’t even respond. I thought that was the end of that gig.

But they came back for more help. They use program to share files with members of the Board of Trustees. It works well and it’s cheap ($10/month), but it is being phased out. They need another way to share files securely. They asked me to do some research. There isn’t a similar program that they can afford. But I came up with a way for them to meet their objectives for free. They got back with me right away saying they like my idea. The key person left for vacation. (The Email literally said, “I am leaving for vacation in 3 … 2 … 1 …”). It was kind of her to let me know. We’ll see what happens when she gets back.

I better send this off, in case our impending snow takes down all communications. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our big news this week is that we will be volunteering at Assateague Island National Seashore. We will work April 4 through June 22. We will get one bedroom in a house, sharing the common living area with other park employees. This posting will be a little different. We will work 5 days / 40 hours a week. In addition to receiving housing, we are being paid $100 / week each.

The obstacle we had to overcome was internet access. The park is remote, with no cell phone service and extremely limited internet access. The only possibility for us to have our own internet connection is through a satellite dish. This is an amazingly expensive option. The contract is expensive. We pay extra if we use more than 10 GB/month. (That’s about 3 standard definition movies.) And we will not complete the 2-year contract, which means we will pay a hefty early termination fee. A significant chunk of our income will be dedicated to our internet access. Getting a dish installed required permission from the head of maintenance and the park chief.

In April and May, we will be working Mon – Fri with weekends off. We are told the park is booked solid with two school groups every day (one in the morning / one in the afternoon). As the school year winds down, we will transition to working weekends. We will be off May 4 – 6 so we can attend Elizabeth’s first communion.

But wait … there’s more. I manage our neighborhood website. We hired a consultant who recommended we use GoDaddy to host the site. It’s been nothing but a hassle. So I did a search for a better host provider and came up with SiteGround. The new provider is about twice the cost of GoDaddy ($100/year to $200/year), but they have a lot of satisfied customers. I expected months of delays while the board had lengthy discussions, reviews, and requests for additional information. Surprisingly, I got immediate approval. I will start the website move Monday. Hopefully it will go smoothly, solve our issues with GoDaddy, and not introduce new issues.

The weather this week has been lousy. I got only one bike ride in. But we’ve had plenty of activities. The Super Bowl was so good we actually stayed up and watched the entire game. We started a 6-week series at Church titled “Discovering Christ”. The series is on Thursday evenings and includes dinner, so we moved our dinner out night to Wednesday. We had the best Gyros in Columbia. Unfortunately, Columbia doesn’t have a Greek town. The Gyros are nowhere near the best in Baltimore. But they’re decent Gyros. Last night was a neighborhood Chinese New Year party. We have a neighborhood concert tonight. It’s a kind of Bluesy Jazz for Valentine’s day. It should be fun. Sunday we’ll go to an afternoon piano recital in Baltimore. The concert title highlighted Scarlatti, which isn’t very interesting. Fortunately, the pianist will also play Debussy, Schubert, and Liszt. We’re looking forward to a good time.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a quiet week. The weather has not been good, but I did manage one ride.

The big news is that I took our Leaf (electric car) in for service. The dealer we bought the car from was very upfront about the cost and available deals. But their service department does what they can to do unnecessary service (at my expense). The car is 1 year old with 4,000 miles. The dealer changed the brake fluid. This is recommended after one year if the car is in heavy use. They also talked me into changing the cabin filter (which costs somewhere around $100 for most cars). They used the Burger King ploy — the 15K package is only a few bucks more than doing the other maintenance items separately. As it happens, the filters weren’t in stock, so they knocked about $100 of the service cost. At the last minute, they got another $8 out of me because the FOB key battery was weak. After I got home, I found that the brake fluid should be changed every other year, and the FOB key every 18 months. At least the battery wasn’t a total waste. I decided to change Danita’s battery. The batteries cost $4 each.

One of the sales features of the Leaf is that it needs less maintenance. I’ll be visiting a different dealer next time, and I’ll be armed. It’s too bad more dealers don’t treat their customers like Honda does. Honda dealers are always telling me about recommended service, but also telling me when I don’t really  need it this time around.

I got a new gig at the Howard County Food Bank, where Danita volunteers. They wanted some forms modified so they can be filled out on the computer. I was happy to help. At least some office staff use Adobe Acrobat DC Pro. I downloaded a 7-day free license. I told them that if they want more forms done, they will have to provide me with a license. We’ll see how that goes. I think this might have been a one-off volunteer gig, because I’m not donating $15/month for my own license.

Today is Super Bowl. We’re toning down the party. It will be shrimp salad sandwiches and crab soup. Our parish Knights of Columbus make the crab soup every year. It’s quite good.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.