This week one piece of news overshadows everything else that happens in the week. Mark and JiaJia came for a visit and stayed overnight. I could have gotten a picture at the cake tasting. Or our marvelous lunch at Catonsville Gourmet. Or our informal snack of Greek Spinach pies. Or Mark’s attempt to “cheat” at Scrabble. Or Mark’s victory dance when he thought he had the game-winning move. Or his disappointment when he found his ultimate move didn’t fit on the board. Or even the nice breakfast we had at Panera. But all I got this lousy snap in our kitchen. Thanks, Mark and JiaJia, for a delightful day.

Last Sunday we saw the movie “Knives Out”. It’s a great movie — lots of surprises and full of fun. We also went to dinner Thursday to use a free entree at Houlihans. I sure do like their meatloaf. Then Friday we had a neighborhood party. To be honest, the food was not all that great. But the company was good and we had a good time. Yesterday we went to the Sabiston’s for a Christmas open house. We saw a lot of people we know through Marriage Encounter that we haven’t seen in a long time. Tonight we’re having home-made calzones — cheese, sausage, onion, and red pepper. Woo-hoo!

Having gone out Friday and Saturday, we decided to stay home today. After a week of rain ad yuck, the weather today was quite good — sunny and 50. I got a nice ride in. We’re back to rain and yuck tomorrow.

The work on our neighborhood computers has a light at the end of the tunnel. I went to a board workshop last week and got everything I requested approved. I have one more meeting with requests in January. One can only do so much in one night. I cover 3 or 4 points in a meeting. I set up a meeting with our office manager Tuesday to go over some things. Danita was “suspicious” when she saw a meeting with another woman at 11 PM. Stupid computers. I said 11. It should have known I meant AM.

Mark and JiaJia are in Lewisburg. We’re looking forward to seeing them Friday. They’re coming down to talk to wedding vendors.

That’s a lot of excitement for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had some amazing food this week. We started on Sunday with the Moosewood gnocchi. It is absolutely fabulous. Then Danita made a wonderful dinner with no good name, but it had pasta, peas, mushrooms, prosciutto, and a some red pepper to give it a little bite. That was pretty darn good. Each dish made 2 dinners. But wait … there’s more. Saturday we went to the Army Preservation Jazz Band concert with our neighbors. This is a “big band” and they did a bang-up job on seasonal music. Afterwards, we came back to our house to have some of Danita’s most excellent chili. And we enjoyed a very nice conversation with our neighbors. My goodness we ate well this week.

We didn’t have an official neighborhood party this week, but there was a clubhouse tree trimming event. This is a mostly ladies activity. Danita went and had pizza and cookies. I went out for a burger.

I spent plenty of time at the clubhouse working on computers, including 4 hours today working with another resident, Joe, on our WiFi network. We weren’t able to implement all of Joe’s plans, but we did a very nice job. We now have a strong WiFi signal throughout the clubhouse, out on the deck, and all around the pool. Plus we got rid of 3 pieces of equipment. We both think it came out very well.

In addition to all that, this week includes the first Friday in December. We went to Bob Evans for our traditional Christmas shopping. Danita was well prepared with suggestions. We sailed through the list and went home to actually order the stuff. Our shopping was completely done by Noon.

And just to have one more kicker, I got a free entree and desert at the Silver Diner for my birthday. So we went to the Silver Diner for breakfast this morning. For desert, I chose a Smith Island cake with chocolate icing, which we enjoyed after finishing up the gnocchi.

Who could ask for more than this in one week? I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Ed and Lynne hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year. It was a small dinner — Bud, Danita and I, Pete and the girls, and the hosts. We had delicious meal and a good time. I didn’t take any pictures because everybody looks just abut the same as they did a few weeks ago at the sour beef dinner.

Eichenlaub Hotel Columbia, located at 8800 Endless Ocean Way, is proud to announce upgraded rooms. We changed the standard beds to queen size. Now visitors can relax in the commodious style of queens around the world! We accidentally went to the mattress store on the second to last day of the month, and found our mattresses delivered the very next day. It had something to do with a monthly sales quota, or so they said. I knew one bed frame was capable of adjusting to queen size. I checked the other bed frame and saw it was also adjustable. It turns out the second frame could adjust down to twin, but couldn’t adjust up to queen. Fortunately, the store is right down the street and had plenty of frames in stock. I had to drill new holes in the headboards. The wood where I drilled the holes is thicker, so I also had to go to Lowe’s to get longer bolts. So in other words, it was a typical project.

I’ve also been doing upgrades to our neighborhood computers. I installed disk cloning software to create a full disk backup. If a computer crashes or is hit with malware, we can quickly restore all the software in one go. We also added an air gap backup to protect against ransomware. There’s lots more to do, but I’ll work on in in bits and pieces here and there. The most urgent things are done.

Tony and Donna are friends from Circle. Donna’s dad moved to hospice care last week and died a few days later. He was 98, a true WW II veteran. I recon’ he did good enough. We’ll be at his funeral Tuesday.

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