There’s not much going on. Danita’s enjoying the pool. I’m enjoying the bike. I saw an aggressive driver while I was riding the other day. You know — breaking hard, accelerating hard, switching lanes. That wouldn’t be all that unusual, except one of their rear tires was flat. It was making a heck of a racket. The rubber was flopping around. It look like it wouldn’t be long before large chunks of rubber would be flying off. I don’t see how the driver could not know that something was wrong. Fortunately, the driver went one way and I went another. I’ll never know what happened next.

We spent an evening at the Jones’, staying 6 feet apart.

I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m losing weight. I’ve been between 180 and 185 for the last 5 years. Almost exactly a month ago, for a reason I don’t understand, I weighed 179.8. It probably has something to do with not having neighborhood parties. That’s the first time in years that I was under 180. I took that as an opportunity to get back to my old weight of 169. According to some weight chart I found decades ago, that’s he highest weight that wasn’t considered obese. I’ve done pretty well. I’m down to 171. Just two more pounds to go.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had some wonderful weather this week. It was not too humid, and temperatures were a little below average for August. Cold temperatures make my bike rides a short in the winter. Usually I start building up more endurance in the spring. This year when we got back from vacation everything was shutting down. That includes public toilets in libraries, senior centers, and even the spot-a-pots in county parks. That limits options. When parks opened back up, it was outrageously hot and humid. But I did what I could. My favorite endurance ride goes to Glenwood. It’s a beautiful 45 mile route that runs through Howard County farms and rural areas on excellent cycling roads. It’s largely an easy ride with a few moderate hills for a little zest. The sandwich shop at the terminus went out of business. Libraries and senior centers are still restricted. But the nearby county park is open. This week I did the Glenwood ride for the first time this year. It was fabulous.

A couple of days later I was doing my favorite hill ride. I was surprised to see a road was recently closed. Too bad, it’s a well shaded road that has a moderate grade to the top of the hill. I decided to take the alternate road up Ilchester Hill. This is the toughest paved hill in Howard County. Young men with too much testosterone hold time trials up the hill for bragging rights. Any one of them would drop me in a moment. But I made it up. It was a fun challenge.

Danita found an interesting presentation put on by the Walter’s Art Museum. It was about pre-Colombian art. The conservator was investigating the sounds made by some of the objects. Here’s an example on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4fsnl-SBWU. Here’s another YouTube with modern versions. https://twistedsifter.com/videos/inca-whistling-water-vessels-mimic-animal-calls/

Other than that, it’s life as usual. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The weeks are getting very quiet. We got Bud to the last of his doctor appointments. No more doctors for Bud for months! Hurrah! We went over to the Jones one evening. We’re both getting our exercise — me on the bike and Danita at the pool. Other than that, we’re staying in and staying un-infected.

The ants are gone! Woo-hoo.

Celebrations aren’t the same these days. Danita got herself takeout Chinese for lunch today. And something yummy from the bakery for after dinner tonight. She didn’t want a take-out dinner. She’ll be going over to the pool today to spend an hour checking that folks entering have their super-secret wrist band. Happy Birthday Danita.

I’m still playing around with computers in our clubhouse. Hopefully I’ll be done next weekend.

As most of you know, we have a deck in the back of the house, and a porch below the deck. In 2012 we turned our deck into a roof. When it rains, I can sit on the porch and supervise the rain. As part of the project, we put a super fancy floor on the deck so it never has to be painted again. Now the condo is repairing water damage to the houses. The question was, will they have to tear up the deck to repair water damage on our house, and if so who will pay for replacement? The engineer our condo contracted with visited our house this week. They won’t have to tear up the deck. That makes everything very easy. Our doors to the deck have water damage, so we will be replacing those. We had a choice of wood or fiberglass doors. We chose fiberglass. They’ll be plenty good enough for the time we’ll be in the house. Consumer Reports actually rated the Pella fiberglass as more waterproof than the wood. And they’re quite a bit cheaper. We could have had our doors “repaired” at no cost. But that would only ensure they don’t leak water. The damage to the door would still be there. And since we are spending no money traveling and precious little on birthday parties, we won’t have problems paying for new doors.

We were supposed to take Bud to the doctor Tuesday. During the tropical storm. It takes several minutes to transfer Bud between the wheel chair and the car. There is no under-cover parking at this doctor. The doctor was very kind and postponed the visit to next week with no penalty.

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

The driveway picnic last Sunday was great. Most of the neighbors came. We have shade in the driveway in the evenings. Everybody had a very good time. We have a gelato truck coming tonight. We’re looking forward to it.

Last week, we got ants. They were on the stove top. They were in the pantry. They didn’t get into a lot of food, but they were a nuisance. We repackaged food and moved some of it to the refrigerator. We wiped up ants. And wiped some more. We got ant traps. Then we got “better” ant traps. In a few days, we were rid of the ants. Whew.

Danita made the best muffins. Chocolate toffee. We had them with split pea soup. They were so good, we were both a little piggy and had two. It’s a good thing, because when I got up the next day, there were thousands of ants all over the muffins. They weren’t in anything else. But they were all over the muffins. So we did more ant wiping. We ordered “better-est” ant traps. There were so many ants that I could finally see where they were coming into the house. This should be a big help when the better-est traps come in later on today. There’s no ants around today. But we’re not taking any chances. Everything is sealed or in the fridge.

Netgear is a company that makes network equipment such as routers. Somebody found that just about all Netgear routers have a serious security flaw. Netgear announced that our router is so old they aren’t going to release a fix. We have had several updates before this one. I understand that nothing can be support forever. But this router is only 3 1/2 years old. I think that’s a little harsh. There is open source software one can load on a router to give it new life. It’s called OpenWRT. Unfortunately, our Netgear router isn’t supported. So I purchased a new router. Made by TP-Link. I don’t know that TP-Link will be any better than Netgear. But I did make sure that OpenWRT will run on the new router. That doesn’t mean it will still be supported in 2023, but it’s a hope.

The rollout of the new computer for our office is going well. Our office manager found one glitch, which I was able to patch the same day. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’s fine for now. Yesterday I installed the software used to control the gate at the guardhouse. It seems to be fine. There were no complaints last night that I know of. I asked the office manager to issue a new card. I’ll make sure the new card works after the gate closes at 8 PM Monday. A vendor will be in this week to move software used to control the clubhouse doors. Next weekend, I should be able to re-configure the office manager’s old computer for our social coordinator. This project still has a way to go, but everything is moving smoothly. Smooth is more important than fast.

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