We had a little more activity this week, but it still felt quiet. We attended a Zoom orientation for our upcoming classes at Osher. The maximum number of attendees for a Zoom meeting is 300. They filled the session to capacity. I was surprised how hard it was for the presenters to get attendees to mute their microphones. Who can attend a 300-person Zoom meeting and not realize that their background noises and side-bar conversations bother other attendees? The presenters talked for 45 minutes. We will get Zoom links for the class one business day before the class. We will get a link for the class syllabus and other handouts. They could have sent a two-paragraph Email. But we got to check out our new setup for watching Zoom on our TV. It worked fairly well. We can’t read the chat messages on the TV because the print is too small. I noticed the video occasionally froze on the TV when it was not frozen on the computer. But the audio was very good. The Bluetooth speaker worked very well. Class starts tomorrow.

(I held my small laptop in my lap for the camera and connected video the TV through what Microsoft calls Miracast. This is a WiFi-direct technology. I used WiFi to get the Zoom video, then Miracast to forward the video over WiFi to the TV. I used WiFi channel 165 in the 5 GHz band because I can pretty much guarantee none of my neighbors use it. Routers bind 4 channels together to get faster data rates. There are 9 channels. That’s two groups of 4, plus one left over. I used the one left over.)

We had a plumber come in to take care of several small things. The biggest was to replace the 10-year old sump pump. Unfortunately, we’re not done with the plumber. He broke the backup sump pump. It’s probably just as well. The sump water was quite dirty. The backup pump is simple. (It’s powered by water pressure.) But it still has valves and seals that probably would need replacing soon. The plumber will have to come back.

We had a condo board meeting. There was lots of talk about sliding doors to the deck, and people who have decks that need repairs, and houses with a leaky balcony. It sounds like we won’t get our new doors this year. We’ll see.

I got a shingles shot. I felt under the weather for one day. The next day I did a 45-mile bike ride. We had an evening with the Jonses.

This evening our neighborhood is sponsoring food trucks. We will have three trucks — BBQ, Mediterranean wraps/salads, and Gelato.

Next week the pace will pick up even more. I hope this finds everybody doing well.