It was a mostly nice week. We had a food truck dinner with the Jonse’s, a neighborhood trivia night (our team didn’t do very well this time), and a concert at UMBC. The concert was a string quartet. They played Mozart and Bartok. The hook was the Mozart’s piece is known ad “Dissonance”. Who knew Mozart wrote anything like this? Not me for sure. The Bartok was — well, we expect dissonance from him. One thing about this kind of music, you’ll never know if they got some of the notes wrong. As usual, the descriptions were nearly as entertaining as the music, with “intervallic relationships” and “palindromically arranged movements”. Someday I’ll have to look up what this stuff means.

Danita’s knee isn’t getting better quickly. She is doing less walking than a week ago. The good news is that she has good range of motion, and she can use the stairs.

I wanted to make a minor change to my bike. I ran into trouble and tried to solve it myself. That was a bad move for sure. Suddenly I had a bunch of parts all over the garage. It shouldn’t be that hard to put back together. It’s bearings and races. Somehow I don’t seem to be able to figure out how to put it back together. I’ll be taking a trip to the bike shop today, and also losing the best biking weather we will have this week.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The excitement this week started Thursday. The roofing company started. They weren’t scheduled to work on our roof until December. But they changed their minds, deciding to remove all the fake chimneys first. And they also decided ours would be the last chimney removed Thursday. Both of our cars had to be parked on the street. I was using one car to visit Mom, Danita was using the other for her PT. Danita moved her car, but I didn’t know because I was at Charlestown escorting Mom to her doctor. Danita tried calling me several times, but somehow my phone connected to Mom’s hearing aids. We kept on stopping to answer the phone only to have an unsuccessful conversation. Mom’s anxiety started taking off. Talking to Danita through Mom’s hearing aids, I was able to say I would call her back after Mom was at the doctor’s.

By 4:00, they hadn’t started on our chimney. I figured they would wrap things up and go home. I was wrong. The goal was to get my chimney down. That day. They started a little after 4, working like crazy. Time moved on. By 5 the sun was down. It was getting dark. The crews kept on working. By 6 it was dark out. The crew strapped headlamps to their heads and kept on working. 7:00 came and went. They tied headlamps to trees and posts and kept on working. They finally got done about 7:30. I have to had it to them. When they were done, our roof was totally waterproof and everything was picked up, except for one headlamp tied to our tree, bravely shining light throughout the night. Any stranger that decided to take a nighttime stroll would never guess roofers had worked on my house at all. Crews came back Friday to finish chimney removals. They knew exactly the best way to remove the remaining chimneys. They were more relaxed. All chimneys were down by 4:00. What an amazing crew. It was strange to see them walk on the roofs with no safety lines and concern, just as if they did it every day. ;-)

Although that was be far the most unique event of the week, it was far from all the excitement. We had a neighborhood party Friday (soup & sandwiches). We went with the Jonse’s and had a good time.

Saturday morning we had a free members only brunch at Gertrude’s at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The food was excellent as always. The talk was given by the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier. Her exhibit is about Baltimore community health workers, especially during COVID. Besides being a good artist, she is an excellent speaker. She gave a vivid description of what life was like for the under-privileged during COVID. Here’s one of her photos. What a powerful statement.

Saturday evening we attended the neighborhood volunteer dinner. Quite honestly, the food wasn’t very good. That’s not the main point, of course, but it would be nice if the food was hot and not dried out.

That would be enough for most retired folks, but we had more. This morning we had breakfast at Panera where we both had discounts. It was counting day at church. This afternoon, we attended a concert at UMBC. The Inscape Chamber Orchestra offered pieces by Shostakovich and others. The music was quite good, but the writeups these groups give themselves stretch the imagination. We heard the group “reach across genres and generations, and transcend the confines of the traditional classical concert experience”, which is something I might have missed if I hadn’t read the program.

It’s time for dinner here in Snowden Overlook. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There’s no doubt of the season. Some trees are still strutting their stuff, but most are dropping their leaves. This can make for excitement when riding on the bike trails — in places it is difficult to see where the pavement ends and the dirt begins.

Danita is getting better, but much more slowly than she wants.

We enjoyed a delightful sour beef dinner at Ed & Lynne’s Sunday. The food was great, the conversation was quite satisfying, and the drive was uneventful.

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