It was a nice week. We watched the Superbowl commercials. We even watched the game. We had the usual assortment of foods. Our “ace” this year was rootbeer floats with rootbeer float flavored ice cream. I had my semi-annual checkup. Apparently I’m still alive. There were no neighborhood parties this week, so we went to a Shriver Hall concert held at the BMA. (The world does tend to get a little confusing at times.) We heard a flute recital. To be truthful, I didn’t enjoy the concert all that much. But it was interesting. My take-away was how hard it is to be a musician. The flutist and the pianist were both world-class musicians. The flutist was the principal flutist at the York Symphony Orchestra. The pianist was a piano teacher. If they don’t qualify for food assistance, they’ve got to be close to that line.

We had some heavy rain followed by high winds (gusts well over 30 MPH). Fortunately, we didn’t get the tornadoes and sever weather some areas west and north of Baltimore got. I went for a 3-mile walk on a paved trail after the rain stopped but during the high winds. I saw a tree fall in the woods. I was surprised how quickly it all happened. I got a good appreciation for how people can get hit by falling trees.

My success in drone flying has been less than astonishing. One of the problems I have is knowing which way the drone is pointing. When it’s a couple of hundred feet away, all I can see is a black blob. I can tell it to go forward, but where that takes the drone depends on which way it is facing. A gust of wind can temporarily affect its direction, and if it’s facing towards or away from me, I can’t always tell which way its moving. Even if it’s flying to the side, by the time I figure out where its going, make a correction, observe the drone and note that I turned the drone the wrong way, and make the opposite correction, the drone has moved a lot. And many times, I’m in trouble. I got some acrylic paint and painted the bottom of the drone. The left half is red, the right half yellow. It was a big help, but not as big as I expected. However, when I managed to fly it into the woods, the bright colors made it much easier to find. We’re expecting to have some more rain this week. That will give me time to paint the top of the drone also. Just in case it crashes upside-right.

Our big news is our upcoming trip. We’re flying to West Palm Beach Wednesday the 19th. We’ll spend some time with Mom, then sail to San Diego via the Panama Canal. This is a week of getting prescriptions filled, clothes packed, and other last minute preparations — including hopefully a much easier way to contact us. Thanks to Google’s Fi phone service, we expect to be able to call the US for pennies a minute. We’ll know for sure by the end of the week.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.