A dozen Christmas pics.

We were moving stuff to the car, preparing for a trip to Good Will, when Danita missed a step. She fell on the garage floor which was both cold and hard. She bruised her hip and pulled a muscle. She had difficult mobility for the rest of the day, but she’s recovering well. She still has some discomfort.

We were planning to spend this afternoon at Ed & Lynne’s. We were going to stay overnight, go to 10:00 mass at their church, then head up to Mark’s. Unfortunately, Ed & Lynne were exposed to Covid. They are testing negative, but the recommendation is to stay isolated a few more days. We cancelled the time at Ed’s. Instead, we’ll watch the broadcast of our Church’s 4:00 service today, then drive to Ed’s Christmas morning. We’ll exchange packages on the porch, then go on up to Mark’s. Fortunately, everybody who will be at Mark’s has not been exposed and is testing negative. We’ll stay overnight and return Monday. We’re looking forward to meeting Jiajia’s parents. Jiajia informs us that westerners have great difficulty pronouncing her parents’ names. She suggest we call them “Jiajia mama” and “Jiajia baba”. It should be an interesting day.

We’re doing well at getting everything together for our vacation. We have our lists of what to pack. We have all the medications we are going to need. As usual we found a couple of small items that would be helpful that we didn’t have. Fortunately, Amazon offered to deliver both on Tuesday, so we don’t have to face the maddening crowd of seasonal shoppers.

As everybody knows, it’s really cold outside. Our high today is in the teens, but the wind makes it feel like single digits. Weather that invigorating is nothing less than an invitation for a bike ride. So that’s exactly what I did today — on the stationary bike in our clubhouse gym. ;-)

I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas.

We had a nice holiday week. We had a couple of dinners with friends. We took Mom to a concert at Charlestown. We heard a group called “The Suspicious Cheese Lords”. They are an acapella group of men that sing Christmas and seasonal oldies. How old? It varies but you won’t go wrong if you think 16th century. Songs were sung in their original language. The program provided English translations. Songs covered the gamut. The oldest tune dates back to pre-Christian times. A couple of more recent tunes were used for sing-alongs.

Charlestown is Erickson’s original community. It was built around a Catholic seminary. When the church sold the property to Erickson, they restored the chapel to it’s original condition. They made a first-class job of it, as you can see here. As you might imagine, the acoustics was perfect for Christian music from the 1500s.

Poor Mom has had a lot of doctor appointments recently, including four between last and next Friday. Today we visited her audiologist. Since the audiologist is near us in Columbia, we went to a couple of stores and got a few things Mom needs.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita had quite a successful week with Mira. They played together for two days. Then it was time to try to put Mira back in daycare while Danita was at Mark’s home on standby. It was quite successful. I drove up Friday and took Danita home Saturday. I was granted the privilege of reading some books to Mira Friday evening. This week Jiajia has a lot of flexibility, due to the holiday slowdown. The big news is — Jiajia’s folks are coming from China to visit. It’s going to be a long term visit. The preliminary plan is to stay 5 months. We plan to meet them before we go on vacation.

We just got home from a delightful performance at the Meyerhof Symphony Hall. The BSO played favorites while a cirque group did apparently impossible things with ropes, hoops, and bodies. It was a festive atmosphere. They even had a small music group in the lobby playing some pre-concert music.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Christmas shopping is done. We used to go to Bob Evans and do most of our Christmas shopping online. Unfortunately, Bob Evans no longer offers WiFi. So this year we went to Panera. Everything is purchased or ordered. We only have to wait for stuff to arrive.

I had quite a time with my computer last week. It was getting very slow from an accumulation of 6 years of junk. I decided it was time to wipe everything clean and install a fresh copy of Windows. I tried installing Windows from the internet. That failed. Then I tried reinstalling Windows from the recovery section of the disk drive. That not only failed, it also corrupted my user account. I had to make a boot drive, but I couldn’t find my thumb drives. I gave up and ordered another thumb drive, only to find my other drives. The boot drive did the job. Then more good news, Amazon lost the thumb drive I ordered. They issued me a refund. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, one of our access points stopped working. Then one of the network cables also failed. For a little while, I was beginning to think it would never end. But everything is up and running well. So far, we’ve had two days in a row with no computer problems. Woo-hoo!

So now I had a failed access point and also Mom’s old computer. (With all data securely wiped.) I didn’t want to put these in the trash. The local landfill has a special area for electronics recycling. I can’t listen to Car Talk when I go to the dump, so I did the next best thing. I put the stuff on my bike and rode my bike to the dump. Riding my bike to the dump in the summer is a lot of fun because I go right be the best snowball stand in the county. Alas, the snowball stand was closed. There will never again be a Car Talk episode. But it is still a fun ride.

We’re looking forward to a visit from Kathryn later on today. She and a couple of her friends will stop off for lunch this afternoon. Danita has split pea soup ready to go.

Our big news this week comes from JaMM. Mira continues to bite other children. She finally got herself suspended from day care. Danita is going up to Pennsylvania for a week. She will take care of Mira Monday and Tuesday. She’ll stay up for the rest of the week in case Mira does not do well when she goes back to day care.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.