We had a fun week with the grandkids. Now we’re exhausted. We had a couple of “interesting” experiences this week. We spent a couple of days in the Lancaster area, staying at the Red Caboose Hotel. The second day we decided to go to the Turkey Hill Ice Cream Experience on Linden St. We set the GPS and took off for adventure. It turns out that Linden St. in the Lancaster area is like Voltaire St. in France, or Lincoln Park in Iowa. After half an hour of driving, we found ourselves on the wrong Linden St. The highlight of the Experience is making a pint of your own flavor of ice cream. After that the entire pint of ice cream is promptly consumed. These are timed tickets with every time slot filled to the max. We took off for the correct Linden St. We arrived, walked directly to our ice cream lab, and they closed the door behind us. I don’t generally enjoy standing in lines, but standing in line is a lot less stressful than sliding in at the last second.

Liz took a flight home Saturday morning because her school starts early. Bryon decided he wants to spend a week with Ryn working on the farm. So I drove Bryon up to Gibson, PA where I would meet Ryn and transfer Bryon. To break up the 4-hour ride, we stopped at the Echo Dell Cave. It was a nice tour. Smart phone cameras are absolutely amazing. I got several very good available light pictures just holding the phone. Somehow the electronics takes a long exposure while un-jiggling the picture to compensate for my jiggling hands. As the tour was about to end, I walked into the ceiling. Then I fell on my butt. I remember thinking “I hit my head, why am I going to fall on my butt?” Then I bruised myself and made my pants absolutely filthy from the wet clay floor. The head wound bled. It being a head wound, there was blood everywhere. I made a bee-line for the outdoors with blood all over my face and hands. I went up the 71 steps. The Echo Dell folks sent somebody out to give me a hand. They gave me a roll of paper towels, two ice packs, free passes for a future visit, and a bottle of cold water. The wound didn’t bleed for long. I was able to clean the blood in their wash room. Then we ate our lunch at their picnic table (as planned) while I held ice packs on my head (as not planned). I didn’t have a spare pair of pants, so I washed them out in the hotel as best I could.

Ryn and I had a lot of fun working out an elaborate transfer process for Bryon. It involved encrypted messages, flashing lights, beeping horns, and more. It was so complicated we ended up just using the token I created by tearing a playing card and mailing one half to Ryn.

Danita and I will drive up to Gibson together next weekend. On the way back, we plan to stop at a car museum. Hopefully, that will be safer than a cave.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Bryon and Elizabeth are visiting us this week. We’ve been doing many fun activities. Our biggest surprise was driving from the Baltimore Zoo to Mom’s place at Charlestown. Our GPS took us through some neighborhoods I have never before visited. I actually saw three men sitting on a porch passing around a brown paper bag. Fortunately, we had no mishaps. Here’s a picture of us with Mom, and another with Ed, Lynne, Addi, and Suzanne. Tomorrow we’re driving up to Lancaster. We are staying at the Red Caboose Hotel.

Danita tried the Roving Radish. She got two meat dinners. Each dinner has everything you need to cook, down to the spices. Food is locally sourced where possible. There is enough food for two nights with additional leftovers for a lunch or two. The ingredients are high quality. The cost is quite reasonable. One dinner was quite tasty. The other was OK.

I made progress with Mom’s I-Bonds, sort of. Mom wanted to send her paper bonds in to TreasuraryDirect so she could retitle them to be in her trust. I sent the bonds and waited 4 weeks as indicated by their website. At the end of the 4 weeks, I saw zeroes everywhere in her account. TreasuryDirect doesn’t accept Emails unless you have an open case. So I called as soon as they were open. I was rewarded with a wait time of only 45 minutes. The advisor verified the bonds were logged in June 10. He said I had to allow 13 weeks for processing. If 13 weeks doesn’t sound ominous enough, the end of the 13 week wait will be 9/11. <Queue ominous background music.>

I had my post-op eye exam from my cataract surgery. I passed. My vision is excellent. I could get progressive glasses with a mild correction and wear them all the time. Or I could get readers and spend my days wondering around looking for my glasses. I haven’t decided what to do.

We were planning to attend a Lurman Woodland Blues concert this evening. Unfortunately, the Blues band cancelled. They got a Rockabilly band instead, whatever that is. The probability of rain this evening seems to be going up. We decided to nix the concert. We had a nice neighborhood concert at the clubhouse last night, along with wine and cheese. It was a good time.

The big news is that Danita and her siblings decided that her dad, Bud, should move. He will be moving into BrightView. This is a lot closer to where we live. We think their program will be a good match for Bud’s Alzheimer’s. There’s mountains of paper work, evaluations, medical tests, and logistics. It’s a busy and stressful time for Danita.

It was great to have dinner with Dani, Gayle, and Mom. Fortunately, the weather was good. We picked a restaurant with outdoor dining and chose a Monday, because restaurants are usually least crowded on Mondays. I can’t imagine what this place is like on the weekends, because it was definitely hopping on Monday. It’s easy to see why. The food was unique and quite good.

We had an unusual neighborhood event. One of the cyclists invited neighborhood cyclists to a 20 mile bike ride to Savage Mill Mall. Six of us took the ride. I’ve made this ride many times. It’s mostly on trails. It is very well shaded. And it terminates at a bakery. I had given up on the bakery. Their food was expensive and not very good. What I didn’t know is that the bakery was taken over by Roggenart. I ate my food bar while everybody else had a nice pastry. Lesson learned.

I’m not sure if I’ve already said this, but I stopped supporting our neighborhood’s office computers. I still support our website and a resident database, but all other computer support has been turned over to Bob. This week we hired a new events coordinator. We needed a new Email address and a few other changes. It felt very strange, because people were still sending requests to me. I kept on forwarding requests, questions, and answers between the players. I hope we finally have everybody wired up so requests go where they should go next time. One nice thing — Bob called me with a question about about our office network. I was on the Savage Mill ride and didn’t return the call for a couple of hours. Fortunately, the documentation I had written included the information he needed. He was able to do everything without my help. It’s nice when effort becomes useful.

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