There are no pics this week.

We have plenty of news, but the headliner this week is healthcare. We’ve had hot and muggy weather. Thursday morning, I was working with a Comcast tech on the clubhouse internet. Danita went for a bike ride. I got home and decided to go on my own bike ride. About half an hour into my ride, I got a call from Christy (our office manager). Near the end of her ride, Danita stopped to talk with a neighbor. While talking, she suddenly collapsed. There was nothing for me to do but turn around and ride half an hour back. I found Danita at our local hospital. She was suffering from heat exhaustion. We spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in the hospital’s air conditioned room. I was quite impressed with the quality of Danita’s care while she was in the emergency room.

Though it all, neither Danita or I were overly concerned — until the stupid alarm incident. For whatever reason, the monitor kept on alarming. I got permission to silence the alarm as long as Danita was alert. So I was standing near Danita’s bed with my finger on the silence button. During one alarm, Danita decided she didn’t want to try to talk over the beeping and closed her eyes for a short rest. This caused a moment’s panic when she didn’t immediatly answer my query. Later, while the nurse was in, the stupid machine decided Danita had “flatlined”. Since Danita was actively working with the nurse, that was an obvious false alarm. There’s no doubt that the technology we have doesn’t yet match the tecehnology we should have.

Yesterday Danita felt the effects of the fall, but otherwise felt fine. She certainly felt well enough to attend the neighborhood cookout last night.

The other healthcare news is a little surprise we got about the cost of Medicare. Danita officially retired July 1. She will continue her health insurance through UMBC, and I will continue to participate in her medical plan. However, I am required to use Medicare as my primary insurance. We’ve known all this since before I retired. The surprise is, the cost of medicare is based on your income *2* years ago. Near the end of the year two years ago, we converted some investments into cash. The plan is to live on the investments for a while, because every year we delay social security, our monthly payments go up by 8% (up to an age of 70-whatever). Since we we obviously plan to live a very long time, we want  as many of those 8%-a-year increases as we can get. All of which is working out exactly as planned, except for the capital gains. We knew we would take a hit on income taxes for the capital gains. We didn’t know the cost of my medicare would be obscenely high for the next 6 months. Oops. Hopefully, this will all be over in January.

My beloved tablet, which is only 6 months old, died suddenly. When we were leaving the hospital, I used it to look up a phone number. When we got home, the screen was cracked. None of the touch functions worked. That made the tablet totally useless and left me totally disgusted. Fortunately, inexpensive and good selections are readily available on Amazon. I had a new tablet sitting on my doorstep when we came home from the cookout. Hopefully this will last much longer than 6 months. These handy little devices aren’t so cheap if they don’t last a few years.

I have been quite busy for the last month working on our clubhouse computers. I installed a new WiFi, set up a new computer for Christy, and did a general cleanup. Comcast is coming in to install a new modem Monday. I will oversee that, make a couple of configuration changes, and document what I did. That will complete the project — just in time for us to leave for Russia Tuesday.

Which leads me into our last news item for the week. We will be traveling July 12 – 26. We will be in St. Petersburg for a few days, then on a river cruise 7/16 – 22, then spending the rest of our time in Moscow. Our phones don’t work in Russia. The only way to reach is us by Email, or to call the emergency numbers highlighted in yellow on the attached itinery. We will have access to internet at our hotels in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but there is no internet service on the cruise. I will write a daily blog, but if we don’t find free WiFi when we are docked, I woun’t be able to send them out daily.

We aren’t taking our computers with us to Russia. The only device we will have is my brand-new tablet. I’m practicing my blogging skills on the tablet. (I did this entire blog on the tablet). I find the tablet to be extremely portable, and sooner or later it can get everything done — typing, editing pictures, Email, etc. It’s just that everything takes longer. I generaly wake up early and have lots of time for computer-ing in the morning. We’ll just have to see how it goes. I’ll get each day’s blog published sooner or later. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from us very much for the next 2 1/2 weeks.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.