There’s not much to report this week. Mom had two doctor appointments. The Korean food truck was good. Danita and I both had spicy pork Bibimbap – a rice bowl with meat and vegies. We enjoyed it. Friday we had a wine and snack night instead of going to the neighborhood party. The good news is that the number of new COVID cases in Howard County has dropped. The board re-opened the clubhouse for eating. We’ll be attending future parties now that they can be indoors.

They are doing construction on the Jones’ house next door. Taking the stone down was a very noisy process. I’m sure it will be even more noisy when they start doing it on our house. They removed a few boards from our downstairs porch to give them access to the entire back wall. Here’s a pic.

It’s been a quiet week. I usually take a day off riding on the weekend. I decided to take off Saturday on the theory that forecasters could forecast the weather a day ahead. Bad move. I’ll still get a shorter ride in today.

We had the Greek food truck yesterday (very good Gryros). We have a Korean food truck coming Wednesday. We haven’t had this food truck before, but guess what? They feature grilled meat. Suprise! Anyway it’s an excuse to have dinner with other adults. There’s a neighborhood party Friday (bad hamburgers and good conversation). We won’t be going. They’re still doing these outdoors, due to the number of new COVID cases. We have an outdoor area with heaters, but it’s not large enough, so they’ll be using an outdoor area without heaters. The forecast is for 50s and showers. We have to pay in advance. It doesn’t sound like a ton of fun.

The construction crew is coming. Our porch and deck are cleared for action. Anticipation is building about the forthcoming demolition. I might get an unanticipated benefit. I painted the downstairs deck with oil based paint. That was a mistake that can’t be corrected. One can’t paint latex over oil. It turns out the crew will have to completely remove the deck boards. I get two benefits. First, I never figured out what keeps the deck from sliding down the hill. Now I’ll be able to see what the previous owner did. That could be good, that could be bad. We’ll see. Either way, I’ll finally know. The other thing is that the construction foreman said that when they reassemble the deck, they can put the floor boards upside down. I will be able to paint raw wood with latex paint. Yea!

Apparently our electric Leaf has been suffering from lack of attention. After we had the driver door handle fixed, the (rather expensive) 12-volt battery died. I suppose the electric heat pump, bun warmers, and other devices (all of which are electric, obviously) take their toll. The car is almost 5 years old. Then my bike decided it was also being neglected. I was going down a really cool hill when one of the brakes stopped working. I only need one brake, so everything was fine. After we got the Leaf back, I loaded the bike into the car, only to find the shop was closed for a big bicycling event. I’ll try again tomorrow. In the mean time, I’m walking to get my exercise.

The company we use to host our neighborhood web site had a webinar about website security. They convinced me I have some catching up to do. It will be a lot of work, but I’m going to spread it out, doing a little bit at a time. First, I need to draw up a list.

Other than that, everything is more or less normal. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The last couple of days have been dreary weather-wise, but is was a nice week nevertheless. Mom got her hearing aids. They made an immediate and large improvement in her hearing. We went to an audiologist off the Charlestown campus to get the discounts offered by Mom’s insurance. The audiologist we saw used to work at the Charlestown campus, so she had lots of experience working with older people. She did an excellent job in understanding Mom’s needs and offering very practical solutions. This was definitely a case where the high cost was worth it. It takes a person a long time to adjust to the hearing aid and get the full benefit. We’ll be making frequent trips to the audiologist, including one this coming Thursday.

I saw my cardiologist last week. He gave me a two-year warranty on my heart and kicked me out. ;-)

We had a neighborhood Chill ‘n Grill with bad hamburgers and good conversation. Unfortunately, they decided to put us on the covered porch downstairs near the pool. There was enough room for 50 of us to be under cover, but the noise level was much higher than it was when we were upstairs. All the concrete walls and glass windows reflected noise. Everybody was having problems hearing other people at their table. They were slow setting out the desert, so I did a little reconnoitering. I saw Pumpkin pie and either Apple or French Apple pie. They hadn’t even started cutting the pie slices, so it was obvious desert wouldn’t be served for quite a while. I’m not a lover of pumpkin pie, and neither of us are lovers of most commercial apple pie, and we just happened to have some very good ice cream in the freezer. So we left a little early and enjoyed desert by ourselves.

We got big news last week. The construction project will start working on our building this week. They basically work on two units at a time. There are 6 units in our building. We will be in the last group of two. I’m guessing they will get to us early in November and be done before Thanksgiving. They will remove stone from the back of the house and keep on going as long as they find water damage. So far, other units have had to have all the stone removed. Then they build scaffolding to support the deck, separate the deck from the house, and repair all the wood rot, including the ledger board that holds the deck to the house. Then they put everything back together using new stone. (It’s not real stone. It’s spun cement. For reasons I don’t understand, they can’t use the old stone.) Some of the rot was caused by improperly installed flashing. Other was caused by the doors to the deck leaking. Like most of our neighbors, we have taken the option to get new doors. They actually put up a plastic sheet wall 5 feet inside the house so they can do their work. We are promised a lot of noise and vibration. We are advised to clear out the work area and take pictures off the wall so they don’t dislodge themselves and fall. (Banging and falling pictures. Sounds kind of like a haunted house.) Of course most of our neighbors have already been through this process. I’m grateful the construction on our unit is likely to be done before the weather turns bad. Things should move quickly. They’ve finished most of the other buildings, so we benefit from the problems they solved repairing earlier buildings. They have one more building to do after ours. We are very lucky to have a great condo board. They have found solutions to many issues and have taken care of every detail.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We are doing our northern loop this week. Tuesday we drove to Ryn’s farm and had dinner at the farm house. Wednesday we got the two-bit farm tour and went on a short hike. Thursday we went to Bull Run for a longer hike and visited a historical museum. Friday we drove down to Mark’s, stopping at Steam Town with train and trolley museums. Saturday we took a walk along the river at Sunberry. Of course there were plenty of dinners, lunches, and ice cream treats. Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast out and head on home.

The farm Ryn lives at is doing well. Ryn is developing imaginative and effective land management techniques, based on part with goats eating brush and geese eating grass. Myra is crawling everywhere and getting into plenty of trouble.

There are some pictures on the web site. I hope this finds everybody doing well.