I am writing this on Sunday, 10/20. There are no pics this week.

Danita only went to her Dad’s house one day this week. That was Monday. I stayed home doing chores. I used my bike to do most of my chores, but when it came to taking several boxes of books that had come from Bud’s house to Goodwill, I decided that there can be a pretty convincing advantage to using a car. With a trunk.

Tuesday I had my once-every-other-year appointment with Dr. Ludmer, my rheumatologist. When we moved to Columbia, I changed all my other doctors. But I like Dr. Ludmer a lot, and I only see her every other year, so I drive up to Towson every once in a while to pay her a visit. I was out of the doctor’s office by 9:30 and Tuesday was a beautiful day. I decided that as long as I was going to be in Towson, I might as well take full advantage of it. I brought my bike and took a ride that starts at Oregon Ridge in Hunt Valley. I had an old 60-mile route that I saved from many years ago. I didn’t have time to ride that long, so I made some changes to take 10 miles off the route. The changes worked out splendidly. I spent a good amount of time riding through Baltimore County farms and horse country. Most of the rest of the time was in the wooded areas surrounding Pretty Boy Reservoir. I spent a small amount of time in residential areas, and passed exactly one eatery, which just happened about lunch time. The roads were all great. The weather was amazing. The countryside was beautiful. The lunch was fine. I got back home in time to make our yoga class.

I intended to take another long ride Thursday. I found a new group of cyclists, “Cycle2Health”. They are retired folks who are also accomplished cyclists. They have a group ride every Thursday. There’s generally a short, easy ride for beginners and a longer, more difficult ride for experienced riders. Unfortunately I made a mistake and went to where the prior week’s ride started. I was 15 minutes early for the ride, but much more than 15 minutes away from this week’s ride. So instead of a long bike ride, I ended up riding to the grocery store to pick up some lunch food. I hope to be more successful next Thursday, if the weather forecast holds.

Friday was the annual Howard County Senior Expo. This is held at one of the local high schools on a teacher professional development day. I like to go for several reasons. They often have an interesting keynote speaker. They have a free performance by the “Capitol Steps”. They give out free flu shots. And I get to ride up to the front door while everybody else parks at the mall and takes a shuttle bus. (This because I ride my bicycle instead of driving the car.)

This year the speaker was a neurologist who talked about preventing memory loss and dementia. His recommendations: Many factors influence memory loss. One’s risk of Alzheimer’s is 2%. The risk doubles if a close relative has Alzheimer’s. However, the risk goes up by a factor of 16 based on lifestyle choices. Exercise. Eat well. Sleep well. Avoid stress. Use your memory. Meditate.

The Capital Steps is a renowned singing/comedy group that “… has been putting the ‘moc’ in democracy for 30 years.” They do a wonderful parody of current events. The auditorium was packed, and everybody was in stitches. An sample joke: Russia’s leader Putin was planning to attend a conference with Obama, but he couldn’t go because he got “snowed in” (Snowden).

Instead of going to Bud’s house yesterday, we had Bud to our house, along with Ed and Lynne. We had our annual sour beef dinner. We could have invited a lot of other folks, but with so much going on in Danita’s family, we wanted to keep the dinner small. It was really great food. Danita made candied nuts and cheese straws for snacking. The sour beef was as good as it ever gets. She had cooked carrots and onions (one of my favorite veggies), sesame asparagus (very good), as well as the traditional coleslaw. Ed and Lynne made the dumplings. (Bud prefers their more traditional recipe.) For desert, Danita made lemon bars which were served with either ice cream or sherbet and raspberries.

I used my “go to” wine store to come up with the wine. It’s not so hard to find a red wide that goes well with sour beef. The challenge was finding a white. (Lynne only drinks white wine. Some people would say this is not right, but who am I to judge? I drink red wine with fish, for crying out loud.) I ended up with both wines being from Germany, which along with the Oktoberfest beer option made it a theme dinner.

While Bud was here, we took advantage of our internet connection to work on his “change of address” list.

I don’t usually write about upcoming events, but I’m making an exception this week. Danita is attending a conference in New Orleans, and I’m tagging along. We’re leaving Saturday, 10/26 and returning Wednesday, 10/30. We’ll have all day Sunday together in the Big Easy. Then Danita will be attending the seminar during the day while I look for ways to goof off.  I don’t think I’ll have to work very hard. We’ll hook back up for dinner. The good news is that we’ll be together in the evening when New Orleans wakes up. The bad news is that we’re not night owls. Life is just filled with challenges. Here’s our itinerary:

Saturday: Southwest 661 BWI – MSY, 1:20 PM to 4:50 PM

Hotel: Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, 500 Canal St

Wednesday: Southwest 2352 MSY – BWI, 2:05 PM to 7:40 PM

My Email service is still not working. To be honest, I’ve mostly been waiting for it to fix itself, and I expect to be busy most of this week. I’ll post to the blog site most days that we’re in New Orleans, along with pics, but you probably won’t get the email. If you want to see the posts, please check in at www.quarkleaf.com. It’s too hard to separate the pictures from the text manually so I can send an email. (Or maybe I’m just too lazy.)

I hope this finds everybody doing well.