I’ve had plenty of computer time this last few days. I became concerned because if our office is hit with a ransomware attack, we would be in pretty bad shape. The board approved a security review with an outside consultant. Of course, they brought up plenty of issues for us to address. I’ll be asking for the office personnel to do a few extra things, plus changes that will take a lot of my time, plus $1500 for software and hardware. The board will have to approve this. Sad but true, my time is the least important element to the board.

The report that the outside consultant wrote looks well organized, but it’s not. There is a summary page followed by discussion and recommendations. They aren’t in the same order. Some issues are in the summary, some in the recommendations, and some are in both. Things are plopped on paper without any numbering scheme (not even page numbers). I wrote my own document reorganizing the blob into recommended actions in order of importance. I didn’t want the board to think I am making up stuff, which means I wanted to provided cross-references. I ended up modifying the consultant’s report by adding page numbers and numbered annotations. The consultant actually did an excellent job in the review. It’s just that he isn’t a very good technical writer.

As usual, every step of the process was slightly delayed. I started the process late in August. Now we’re in the holiday season, with several board members preparing to go south for the season. The consultant presented his report early Friday. I wanted to make a first-cut presentation to the board tomorrow evening. Technically, I didn’t get things done in time, and it’s not on Monday’s agenda. But I have excellent support o the board. The Vice President suggested a way to start deliberations Monday even though this isn’t on the agenda. We’ll see how things go.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but I also launched a volunteer computer support service. Residents can make an appointment to meet me at the clubhouse. I’ve gotten some nibbles, but the restrictions have limited usefulness. Sessions have to be in the clubhouse because the board has insurance that covers volunteers, but only if the activity is on board property — i.e. in the clubhouse. This is a serious limitation to those residents who use desktop computers, or want something configured to the WiFi in their house. Of four requests, I have been able to help one resident.

Danita’s preparing for a colonoscopy today. It’s not exactly the most comfortable thing, but we’re grateful for good medical services.

The rain of the last few days is clearing up. It’s time for a ride. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We started our week with a Circle lunch/dinner. Everybody brought even more food than normal. We had at least twice as much as we could eat. And it was all very good.

Then Danita made meatloaf for dinner. Not only is it one of my favorites, but I also got 3 days of meatloaf sandwiches at lunch. How can life get much better?

Wednesday Houlihan’s announced they were having their $9 meatloaf special. We like to go out to eat in the middle of the week. So I had another meatloaf dinner, and another meatloaf sandwich for lunch.

This morning, we went to the Walter’s Art Gallery for a breakfast. They invited everybody who was a member for 20 years or move. It wasn’t awesome like the other food this week, but it was nice. They had bagels, pastries, drinks, etc. They had a new exhibit open this morning. We were the 5th and 6th people to see the exhibit.

This afternoon, we had a dinner that is even better than meatloaf. We had a sour beef dinner with potato dumplings, wine, beer, and more. There was more of everything than we could eat. The Schmaus family was here, including Rick and Suzy from Texas. It was a wonderful time, and a perfect end to a fabulous week.

Since we got home Monday afternoon, we felt like we had a short week. It’s incredible how many little things we had to get done after being away for an extended weekend. I spent a long morning trying to get the clubhouse WiFi working poolside. I ended up doing a chat with technical support. They bumped it up to “level 2 support”. I’ll wait until Tuesday before sending our access point back from whense it came. There are other ways to make this work. We had a neighborhood party Friday — pizza, meatballs, sandwiches, and libations. This afternoon, we went to the Walter’s Art Gallery to attend a lecture about Roman bread.

Danita and I drove to Staunton Thursday. It was rainy and some of it was heavy, but we managed to avoid the really heavy rain. The really good thing about the rain is that it ended Thursday night. We had solid sunshine for the rest of the trip. We watched the play “The Willard Suitcases”. It was based on a sanitarium that closed in the early 1900s. Years later, dozens of suitcases were found with photos and personal effects of some of the patients. The play made up a story about a dozen of the residents and set each story to song. We saw a picture from the suitcase while listening to the story. It was really quite good.

Friday we completed our trip to Jul’s house. Saturday, we took the kids out to play mini-golf. Both kids got through well over half the game before becoming silly and just knocking the ball around. They wanted to see the movie “Adams Family”, so off we went in the afternoon. The kids enjoyed the movie, but I don’t recommend it for adults. The funny skits were drawn out until they weren’t funny. And instead of letting the monsters just be monsters, the movie decided to moralize about accepting people that are different than us. You could see the moralizing coming from a million miles away. The best part of the movie was that it ended 90 minutes after it began. Later on that day, Danita found the old Adams Family TV show on Amazon Prime. We watched a couple of episodes. They were very funny and quite entertaining. Everybody had a good time watching those.

Sunday we went to the Carolina Raptor Center. We saw exhibits about flight, an owl and a vulture walking around and flying, and of course dozens of raptors in aviaries. Pat did the cooking this weekend. He certainly knows how to make great tasting meals.

We left Sunday evening and drove to a hotel in southern Virginia. The rest of the trip this morning was uneventful. We took the Appalachian mountain route both ways. It’s a pretty time of the year. The temperatures were much colder today. We got a hard frost overnight. But the car has an excellent heater. Other than when I pumped gas early in the morning, we had a pleasant and comfortable drive home.