Its was a week of puzzling surprise, crushed expectations, and recovery.

I got my new hearing aids Friday. The left hearing aid buzzed when I use the Waterpik. I got a replacement left hearing aid, came home, and — surprise! — it buzzes when I use the Waterpik. The old hearing aids never buzzed. Nobody can explain this mystery.

I ordered two shirts from the Docker online store on October 15. Delivery was just 5 days away. October 24 comes and goes, and the shirts are still in a truck somewhere in the mid-Atlantic area. Finally, the shirts were delivered on Saturday, the 25th. Except that there was no package on my porch, or under the bushes, or on either neighbor’s porches, or in the mailbox, or anywhere else. Now I have to wait 48 hours before I request a refund. Pooy on them. So much for retail therapy.

This afternoon, we went to hear the Navy band give a concert. When we got there, we found the concert is cancelled. I was crushed. We immediately went home, where I recovered from my distress by practicing a little ice cream therapy. (Recommended by grandfathers for all manner of life’s little disappointments.)

We definitely don’t want any surprises or disappointments next week. Construction is scheduled to start at 8 AM Monday. Most of the first week will be demolishing the old, making way for the new.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our dryer has a long vent pipe. The result is air restriction which makes the dryer less efficient. We ordered a ventless dryer a little over a week ago. These use a heat pump. The heat pump warms air to pick up moisture from the clothes. Then it cools the air to force the dampness to condense into water. The water goes out a hose that takes it to the same discharge pipe the washing machine uses. It’s a slick system we first heard of from Ryn. The dryer came in this week. It runs fine.

Today we attended a concert at Howard Community College. We heard two piano concertos — one by Mozart and one by Beethoven. They polished off the afternoon with Beethoven’s second Symphony. They did a very good job. The concert started at 4 and was on the long side. By the time we got out, we decided to eat dinner at La Madeline’s.

Other than that, it was a laid back week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Hurrah. Amazon finally agreed to refund the money for the fraudulent book purchase. If this had ben physical books, the process would have been trivial. But it was for E-books, which are easily downloaded. One has to work hard to get a refund when no physical things are involved.

We had a wonderful brunch at the Baltimore Museum of Art. After being fed, we heard a presentation about oriental art. I have in the past wrote about “art speak”, where people use common words in unusual ways. If one isn’t in the know, it can be hard to figure out what the speaker is saying. This time the presenter was over 60, the emcee in his 40s. The younger man was fluent in art speak. The presenter spoke standard English with only a few individual art speak words sprinkled here and there. I guess this is as much about age as art.

We had a very good Gyro / Greek food truck this week. We also had one of our neighborhood parties. The party had chicken lasagna, which was OK, and some very interesting deserts.

The movie house near us is offering $5 ticket Tuesday. We decided to take advantage and watched “One Battle After Another”. It was so bad, we walked out. The movie had good reviews, but it wasn’t for us. If you go the movies, don’t glance at the number of stars. Read some of the reviews.

My hearing aids are OK, but they don’t help at all when I am in noisy environments (such as a neighborhood party). A couple of weeks ago, my audiologist blasted out flyers about new, better hearing aids that help in noisy environments. I was skeptical, but my hearing aids are going out of warranty soon, so I visited the audiologist. I got a pair on loan. I was quite surprised. I heard almost everything at our table during the neighborhood party. Are the hearing aids really that helpful? Was I simply having a good evening? I don’t know for sure, but I decided to spring for the new. I will buy the new hearing aids this week. It helps a lot that my health insurance pays most of the cost.

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

We went to a piano recital at UMBC Last Sunday to hear Beethoven’s “Hammer-Klavier”. The description left out one critical piece of information. This work is 45 minutes long. They didn’t tell us that until we were seated in the auditorium. Too long, too long.

SOCA (our association name) has phones that use wired service that is no longer supported. We want to switch our phones to some kind of internet service. I spent several hours with some of the SOCA board members and our property manager. There’s lot’s of confusion.

Somebody helped themselves to some children’s books from Amazon using our credit card. Amazon promised to investigate and get back to me in 48 hours. They didn’t, so I reported the fraud to our credit card folks. It’s hard to prove anything because these are E-books. There’s nothing to hold or touch. In the mean time, the bank invalidated our credit card. We should receive a new card within a week. In the mean time, they sent the new credit card number so we can pay our online bills.

Ted Hartka passed. He was 85 years old. He is Danita’s first cousin. We went to the funeral yesterday (Saturday). We didn’t know any of Ted’s relatives. We saw Ed and Lynne. All four of us decided not to go to the reception. The funeral was at our old church near Kingsville. We took Cromwell Bridge Road to get there. Afterwards, we drove by Jamie’s, purveyor of very good subs and milkshakes. Strangely, at 10 of Noon there were no cars in their parking lot. We drove on and had lunch at the Sunshine Grille. We came back via Harford Rd, pausing for a drive-buy of our old house. It’s looking pretty good. The only thing we could tell about the back is that the fence surrounding the back yard has been removed. There wasn’t much change from Cromwell Bridge all the way down to Joppa Rd. They put in a very confusing circle at Harford and Mt. Vista. The Buddhists are building a temple on Mt. Vista at the Harford Rd intersection.

Today we had dinner at Ed and Lynne’s. Rick and Suzy are in town, but Suzy isn’t feeling well, so they decided to stay home. We decided not to pass up a great dinner and good conversation, so just the four of us had dinner together.

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