I’m writing this on Sunday, March 2. There are two pics.

We’re having variable weather. The low Friday night was 11 degrees, which matched the record for the coldest day of the year. Yesterday and today, the high was in the 40s. It started raining late this afternoon. They say we’ll be having a significant snow tonight and Monday. It will be the last one of the season, because we are down to our last snow emergency kit.

This screen was painted by Dee Herget, who painted the front door screen for our first house.

After extensive investigation, I installed an alarm system. It monitors the water level in the sump and gives an alarm if it rises too high. It also alarms if the house temperature falls below 45 degrees, or if there’s a power failure, or if the batteries need replacing. When it detects an alarm, it calls up to 3 phone numbers. It needs to plug into the phone line to make the calls. For some strange reason, the builder didn’t put a phone jack in the sump room. (Imagine that, if you can!) However, there’s a phone jack across the hall. I spent three days doing the installation. One day to snake the wire from the sump room, over the ceiling, and into the furnace room. One day to go through the furnace room wall and along the baseboard to the jack in the “media room” (AKA grandchildren’s play room). The third day was installing the alarm in the sump room. I attached the water sensor to a piece of 2 x 2 and screwed that to the bottom of the sump cover. And, of course, I spent several hours playing with the alarm.It’s not a toy if you don’t play with it!

A less traditional screen painted by Dee

It’s been a nice week, but today was a prize-winning day. We started out with Church and a Bob Evan’s breakfast. Then a nice bike ride in the balmy late-morning hours. We went to MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) for an exhibit of painted screens. From there, we walked about a block to attend a BSO concert. We heard an all-Mozart performance, ending with his “Jupiter” symphony. We finished our day with a BOGO at Baldwin Station, one of our favorite restaurants. The dinner was very good, and we got home before the rain turned into messy, slushy stuff.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.