Last weekend I went to Lewisburg to bring Danita home. I left very early Saturday to get north of where they had weekend interstate closures. That turned out to be a great idea because I decided to have breakfast just two exits north of the closure at the “Round the Clock” diner. If you want to eat a a diner, this is a very good one. There are lots of customers. Most of them are regulars. Many of the waitresses and customers know each other. Food is good and portions are plentiful. Highly recommended.

Grandparents helping with babies didn’t work as well as we would have liked. If Baba or Mama were in the house, Mira was not content to have her grandparents take her out, or play a game, or read a book, or even go to the kids museum. (The kids museum is a sure-fire Mira pleaser.) That’s what your parents are for. In other words, she was acting like a two-year old. Mainly, Danita was able to do some cooking. We had a nice dinner out. We drove back on Monday with no serious slowdowns. I put some pics on the web site.

This last week we’ve taken care of lots of little things, including Covid boosters. We’ve enjoyed several days of warmth, dryness, and fine fall foliage. It’s added a nice dimension to my bike rides. A large cold front arrived this morning. We expect several days of rainy cool weather. It’s probably the end of fall foliage. There’s a couple of pics on the website.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a busy week. I offered a training class for a new person posting to our community website. Our Nissan went in for service. We had a new car charger installed. I visited the dentist. I visited the cardiologist. (He kept on saying “You’re looking good”. I guess he doesn’t get to say that very often.) But there was more than that.

Danita and I went up to Mark’s. Danita is staying to offer a week and a half of help. The ride up was slow, the ride home was a lot slower. There was traffic, there was rain, and I-83 was closed at York! It took 20 minutes to get around the closure. Maia is as cute as a button.

Rick is on his way back from South Carolina to Germany. He flew into Baltimore this morning and has most of the day waiting for his connecting flight to Germany. We visited Ft. McHenry and had dinner with Mom.

We made it home, but it took much longer than we expected. There were several construction projects between Dulles airport and home. We spent some time driving 10 MPH. All in, we were up for 24 hours straight. It took several days until we felt acclimated.

I was behind schedule on my fall chores, plus the car charger needed to be replaced. We should have most of the major stuff done by the end of next week. That’s a good thing, because next Friday Danita and I are going up to Mark’s. I’ll come home Saturday, Danita will stay at Mark’s to give a hand.

We tried a new place for Sunday breakfast. It’s called the Broken Egg Café. They have restaurants in 16 states, but this is the first one near us. The food was very good. The prices were high, but in line with the food. The location was very strange. They are in a brand new mixed retail / residential development. You can’t see the café from the street. Parking is about a block away. We had to walk by a construction trash dump to get there. But it’s a nice place if the weather is good.

I spent the day today cleaning the deck. This normally takes a couple of hours. I managed to bang my finger against something. It made a very small hole, but it refused to stop bleeding. Blood was on the deck. It was mucking up the pressure washer handle. Danita helped me with a band aid three times. I took a 2-hour break so it would have time to scab over. Finally we taped an absorbent pad over the leak. Through it all, it kept on bleeding. After I finished the deck, and put everything away, and checked the tire pressure for the car, and all that guy stuff, it finally slowed enough that a band aid was sufficient. I haven’t had this much fun since Plavix.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our official tour start time was 1 PM, due to a bicycle race that closed a lot of streets. Danita and I went out during the morning to visit the Hagia Sophia one more time. We were there early, and had plenty of time to walk around and look. There’s a few pics on the web site. In the first picture, you will see that the Muslim equivalent to the alter is off center. When they converted the building to a mosque, they found that a centered “alter” didn’t point to Mecca. So they moved in 8 degrees clockwise.

We took a ferry to the Eastern side of Constantinople and had a good lunch (but no where as good as yesterday). Then we walked around some food stalls. It was a cool, rainy day. Danita and I got a little burst of rain in the morning. It more or less rained the entire time of our tour. Our guide offered us some time to walk around and take pictures, but nobody’s heart was in it, so we came back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we fly home. We leave the hotel at 4 AM, expect to get home somewhere around 2 PM. I hope this finds everybody doing well.