I started the week by wrinkling the car. I was in my doctor’s parking lot. I didn’t see her. She didn’t see me. The car’s going to be in the shop for a while.

Asparagus Quiche

The weather Tuesday was threatening — rain and sleet, with temperatures hovering near freezing. That drove our Circle luncheon from 9 to 0. The forecast was for the rain to start later in the afternoon. Danita had some food prepared and ingredients for the rest. We ate pretty well.

We had snow Wednesday. It wasn’t all that much snow, but the state went nuts. Howard county closed schools 3 days.

The second half of the week went a lot better. We had a nice dinner at Church Thursday with the last Discovering Christ. There were those perfect grilled cheese at Church Friday with Stations. We served at a Church Italian sausage dinner Saturday. Tonight we’ll be going to a neighborhood potluck dinner.

We’re looking forward to going to Jul’s for Easter this year. Ryn is coming down Thursday morning. We’ll pick up Mark Thursday afternoon. Friday we’ll drive to NC. Monday we’ll drive back home. There’s too many of us to all fit in Jul’s house. We’re staying at our first Airbnb. It’s close to Jul’s house, and Mark will have a private room to work on his thesis.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This wasn’t a very good week for Danita. She went from fine to really sick in just one day. The doctor said it wasn’t strep and it wasn’t the flu. She was sick most of the week. Danita missed all her normal activities last week. By Saturday, she was feeling better. I got only mildly sick — just some coughing. That was good because Saturday evening was our neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day party. It turned out not to be the best party we’ve ever had. The cabbage looked pretty sad. There were few takers. We had a Keltic band. They spent a lot of time fiddling with their electronics and telling bad stories. And bagpipes simply shouldn’t be played indoors. The strangest thing to me was that they used a small (not as loud) bagpipe for one song and it worked pretty well. But the guy really wanted to play the real deal, so he did. We left at intermission.

I spent a couple of days working on our neighborhood database. We have a photo book for our pool, so we can verify that that people from other neighborhoods don’t start using our pool. It was based on pasting printed pictures on paper, sliding them into plastic sleeves, and putting those into a 3-ring binder. I pulled the photos into our database. As we started using it, some issues surfaced. I’ve been correcting those issues. I wanted to get a camera designed to take the ID photos, similar to the cameras used for driver’s licenses and by just about anybody who uses photo-IDs. The association finally ordered the camera. It should come in this week. I’ll hook it up to our database. That should finish up the project.

We’re going to have a couple of nice days next week, followed by 1 to 3 inches of snow. We are planning a spring luncheon for Circle Tuesday. We never anticipated we might have problems with snow cancellations. We’re in a minor quandary about how much food to buy. If we buy too much, we won’t be able to eat it up before we leave for Assateague. Sigh. First world problems…

That’s the news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a standard week. We had the perfect snow Monday. When we looked out of the back window, we saw snow clinging to the trees, sparkling in the sunshine. When we looked out the front window, we saw clear streets. Both were beautiful in their own way.

I got several projects done recently. The first was backups on our website. They aren’t working the way they are supposed to, but we are getting daily backups placed in our neighborhood’s Dropbox account. I had to use a Linux Cron job to get the backups to run automatically at midnight every day. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it sure works.

Charge Timer

Another other project was a timer for the car charger. We want to charge our car battery to 80%, then stop. It should help the battery last longer. The car *should* be able to do this for us. The car’s manual says it *can* do this for us. But it *can’t*. We have a simple formula to know how long to charge the car, and we were using the kitchen timer to remind us when to unplug the charger. But sometimes we would forget, go downstairs, and not hear the timer. I wanted to install a timer that would turn the charger off automatically. That requires a relay that will handle 240 volts at 40 amps. They make such things, but I thought I would have to go to a specialty supplier, spend a small fortune, and wait 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. When I actually started looking, I found that these relays are easy to get and cost about $20. They are used in air conditioners. That made this a straightforward project, and I finished it this week.

The business end. That black thing in the middle switches 240 Volts at 40 amps.

The last project was our doorbell. The builder put our doorbell button on the wrong side of the door. When we installed the storm door, the door bell was hidden. Only the most persistent people would open the storm door and reach inside to push it. It’s easy to install a wireless doorbell, but there was another issue. When we are downstairs watching TV, we can’t hear the doorbell chime which is upstairs. I didn’t want to install a doorbell if we couldn’t hear it. I’ve been thinking about this from time to time since we moved in, coming up with Rube Goldberg contraptions that would let us hear the doorbell downstairs. Finally, I did a doorbell search on Amazon. These days, they make kits with one button and two chimes. I plugged one chime into an outlet in the basement, the other chime upstairs, and attached the doorbell button next to the door with two screws. It took about 10 minutes to do the whole project.

That’s the news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

My big news this week was a 4-day, 3 night trip to beautiful West Palm Beach, FL. Mom provided free accommodations plus plentiful and excellent food. The weather in FL was great. There was a little rain, but that ended about the time I got to Mom’s house. The rest of the time was 70 to 80 degrees with gentle breezes. Our most important accomplishment was finding a first-class restaurant. It’s called “This is it Cafe”. It has great reviews, so we went there for breakfast. I knew it was going to be good when the waitress asked if we wanted our bacon normal or crispy. The servings were huge. And the special was unbelievably cheap. We got 2 eggs, bacon, potatoes or grits, toast, *and* coffee — all for $5 each.

This trip was mostly about legal papers. We visited lawyers and banks, called financial investment firms, and visited notaries. We got it all done with a day to spare. That last day was largely spent planning TGNLT (The Great Northern Loop Trip). The TGNLT will be in late June, right after Danita and I get back from our volunteer stint at Assateague. Dani, Mom, and I are all getting together in Baltimore for a couple of days of partying. After we’ve painted Baltimore red, we’ll go on up to Maine and check out Dani’s new cabin. It should be a lot of fun. Of course, it is necessary to reserve air tickets in advance to get decent prices. That requires coordinating everybody and deciding which flights to take. It took several hours, but it’s done. We’re all looking forward to a first class hoot.

The trip home Friday was uneventful, but I was quite lucky. By Saturday morning we had 30 MPH winds with gusts up to 60 MPH. Apparently they were still landing planes in that weather, but it wasn’t exactly uneventful. One flight reported that just about everybody on the plane threw up. Schools and such were all closed. There was no “Stations” service Friday night. Our church is still closed today. They are one of some 130,000 people in Howard County that don’t have power. Fortunately, the power at our house has not been interrupted — so far. The winds should die down late this afternoon.

My other news this week is about taxes. I was all ready to file taxes early in February, but the Feds weren’t. That’s OK. It’s not really important to file taxes early in February. It’s only important to be the first one to file against my SSN. ;-)

We bought that E-car this year, which means we qualify for a $7500 tax credit. Of course, one doesn’t get the full credit unless they owe at least $7500. My goal was to adjust our income so that we would owe $7500 in taxes. I did pretty well. We owed $7516. It turns out the E-car form was the last form that was holding up our taxes. It was released a couple of days ago; the taxes are filed.

Now that we’re no longer employed, we don’t have withholding. And I don’t think we’ll be getting any more of those E-car credits. That means we have to pay quarterly estimated income taxes. Getting that all set up took as long as figuring out our taxes. Hopefully, it should be easier in the future.

That’s almost too much news for one week. It’s a good thing I’m retired so I can handle all this stuff. I hope this finds everybody doing well.