Ed & Lynne hosted Christmas dinner twice this year. Ryn was coming down to visit with us on Christmas Day and got to Ed’s place before dinner. We had a nice Christmas dinner. The Reeds came up Saturday. Sunday we all went back to Ed’s place for another holiday dinner, this time including Ed’s kids and grandkids. Ryn left for a community in Virginia this morning; the Reeds will leave to go home tomorrow. A couple of pics are below. More pics are on the website. Keeping labels synced with pictures is difficult. There’s a new version of my web site software that should improve this before we have another big party.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

1: Julia, Pat, Bryon, Danita, Elizabeth, Ryn
2: Jul and Pat
3: Bryon, Danita, Elizabeth
4: Danita, Elizabeth, Ryn
5: Addie (back), Suzanne
6: Pete and Joe
7: Mark, Pat, Danita, Ryn
8: Ed, Lynne’s back
9: Toni, Rebecca, Maisie (the star of the party, Joe and Toni’s baby)

Not a lot happened this week, other than furniture assembly. I managed to put 4 dowel pins in the wrong holes. I had to drill them out, which went well. I found myself offering half my kingdom for a dowel pin. The big-box hardware store has countless square feet, but doesn’t dowel pins in the sell the size I need. I could order them online, but wasn’t sure how they are measured. (Don’t laugh — 2 x 4 timber is actually 1.5 x 3.5.) I bought a bag of the wrong size dowel pins to make sure I knew how to measure dowel pins in the table kit so I could order new dowel pins that would fit in the table.

I ordered a variety box of 270 from Amazon. The box contained pins the right diameter, but they were too long. I needed a dremel tool to shorten them and chamfer the  edge. After recovering from my mistake, I found a hole that was not drilled correctly (fixed with my drill), a dowel pin that was the wrong size (already had that covered), and a leaf that wouldn’t sit flat because fitting blocks were the wrong size (my new small hand circular saw came to the rescue). All in all, I needed some tools that weren’t on the recommended list. If anybody needs dowel pins, let me know. I have plenty in a variety of sizes.

The chairs didn’t have any factory defects, but one chair had obviously been returned. The chair had an extra layer of shrink-wrap, and the hardware bag had a hole in it. That would have been OK, except the previous owner had managed to cross-thread three bolts. I called Ikea to see if they could send me some bolts, but they have an unusually high volume of calls. Regrettably, they can’t take mine. Click. So we have an excellent table and three chairs. Ikea has a generous return policy, but it requires a trip to College Park and I’m not in the mood to be on the road this close to Christmas. I’ll return it next year.

Christmas traffic is as angsty as ever in this high-stress holiday season. Thursday, we went to Bowman’s Restaurant in Baltimore for a Circle lunch. (It was one of the few times we have been in Bowman’s that wasn’t a funeral. That place seems to be the official funeral restaurant of the Hartka family.) Somebody got so frustrated they started honking their horn in the Harbor Tunnel because traffic was moving slowly. It’s certainly angsty enough to keep me off my bike until after Christmas. Better to stay home, assemble furniture, and replace the bike chain.

Speaking of bike chains, I think I’ll replace mine now.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

All our Christmas stuff is received and wrapped (thanks to Danita). The house is decorated (thanks to Danita, again). Well, there is one small thing that is delayed or lost. We’ll get that squared away (Danita again!).

We went to a wonderful show at the Meyerhoff yesterday afternoon. The Baltimore Symphony played Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker while Troupe Vertigo did a cirque acrobatic show loosely modeled after the ballet. We had very good seats. The cirque was incredibly good. The troupe has a website with some pics and a video, but it does not even begin to do them justice.

Our self-Christmas present this year is a new kitchen table and chairs. We’ve been using the same table we had in the breakfast room of our house in Kingsville. The old table is very long in the tooth. The legs are pigeon-toed. Some of the finish has warn off. Chair fabric is hopelessly stained. Back in Kingsville, our breakfast room wouldn’t comfortably take a normal 3 ft x 5 ft table, so we had that old table custom made to 3 ft x 4 ft. We moved it to Columbia because our house can’t comfortably fit a standard 3 ft x 5 ft table. (Sound familiar?) Expandable tables less than 5 ft long are hard to find. our new table is from Ikea. Here’s a sign that we’re getting older. Instead of tying boxes to the top of our car, we paid to have the table delivered to our home. It should arrive tomorrow. Then I get the pleasure of assembling it myself.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Christmas shopping is done. Some of the gifts have already arrived. Wrapping paper is purchased. Let the holidays begin.

We attended an interesting presentation at the Walter’s Art Museum last Sunday. Eric Cline talked about the collapse of bronze age civilizations In 1177 B.C. He has some interesting ideas. His book on the subject is available, but I think we got the general idea.

Tuesday evening I attended our security committee’s presentation about camera doorbells such as the Ring doorbell. Our large clubhouse room can seat about 130 or so. We had a standing room only turnout. The presentation presented a lot of enthusiasm. I think I may be the only person who attended and won’t be buying a camera doorbell. I’m thinking about Orwell’s “1984”. In the novel. citizens were spied on by the Big Brother government. One of Orwell;s genius ideas is that the government got people to pay for and install the spy devices, by including them in things people wanted. Do you want a wall-size TV? It’s expensive, but you can have it. It comes complete with cameras and microphones. We’ve outdone Orwell by quite a bit. We carry cell phones with microphones and GPS. If we leave home without our phone, it’s no problem. Fitbits record our location and heart rate. We have smart speakers that listen to what we say. The Ring doorbells automatically make their video available to the police. Now I can’t walk down the street without multiple cameras recording me. I admit the government might not be using this stuff to spy on us. But it wouldn’t be very hard.

I bought an advance copy of Turbo Tax. There are significant changes this year. I am not sure I understand all of them. An advance copy should let me estimate 2018 taxes and help me decide what to do to optimize myself for 2019. Unfortunately, the interesting part of Turbo Tax is not available. They warn that because of the massive changes, it is not likely to be available before mid-January. At least I don’t feel so bad about being confused about some of the tax changes this year.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.