Note: there are no pictures this week. I am writing this on Sunday, August 11.
There isn’t much that could compare to all the excitement of the last few weeks. It’s good to have things calm down a little bit.
Our neighbors watch their 2-year old grandson. For some reason, they are very concerned that I will hear noises from their house. (They aren’t concerned that Danita will hear noises. She goes to work!) I keep on assuring them that I don’t hear a thing, and that if I did it wouldn’t bother me at all, so long as I don’t have to change the diaper. I saw them outside Monday. They had traded the 2-year old for a 4- and 6-year old last week. They immediately asked if I heard noises. I told them yes, I heard a lot of noise last week, but from my grand kids, not theirs.
We’ve had a lot of rain this week. In keeping with my new philosophy of making sure I’m inside when it rains, I haven’t done much bike riding. I read a very interesting book. If you like spy fiction but find it unbelievable, you will find the truth much more unbelievable. Never the less, everything in “Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal” by Ben Macintyre is absolutely true. It’s about a British rogue who ended up working as a double-spy for MI-5 during WW II. I had read some of the story of Britain’s war-time spy network, but I had never come across this story before. Perhaps the most unbelievable part — the spy was run by MI-5 (internal intelligence), when by rights he should have been by MI-6 (foreign intelligence). It was a fascinating read but I still don’t understand those British intelligence departments. What ever happened to MI-1 through MI-4, anyway?
I did some work for Habitat this week. They were still having intermittent trouble with their VPN phones at one of their ReStores. (VPN phones use the internet instead of phone lines). I kept on swapping things around, trying to isolate the problem. Finally I did a swap that made everything stop working. That pretty much proved the problem was with the internet connection. I patched things up to work somewhat and they called the provider. With a “hard failure”, the provider quickly found and fixed the problem. Now we’re just waiting to make sure the issue doesn’t occur again.
My other gig is with Nick’s Place. They purchased everything they need to upgrade their computers. I’ll be going down Monday to set up the first 3 computers, then again Tuesday to do a little training. There will be several more visits after that.
Thursday was Danita’s birthday. We went out to one of our favorite restaurants, Baldwin Station. I had a perfect steak: better than Chris – Ruth’s at half their price. Unfortunately, Danita didn’t have as good a time. Fortunately, we had a neighborhood crab feast Saturday evening. That went quite well. They kept on bringing crabs to our table, and we kept on eating them. I only had one crab, but there was plenty of other great food available. We were sitting on the deck. The weather was perfect. We stayed and chatted until the mosquitoes were out in force.
On the medical front, I had a 24-hour EEG. I went in at 2 PM Friday. They glued wires to my head, hooked them up to a small box, and gave me strict instructions to act like a slug until late Saturday. I was just about all hooked up when a mother stopped at the checkout window across the hallway with her 5-year old daughter. The poor girl saw me and was all freaked out. I tried to make her feel a little more comfortable. Unfortunately, her mother was making things worse by hissing “don’t stare” under her breath. As if that would make a 5-year old stop staring. I took the hint and went straight home, calling Danita to ask her to pick up some milk. I spent most of the day Saturday watching old James Bond movies, streamed from Amazon for free, while Danita was down at her Dad’s. And I spent *all* of the day in our house behind closed and locked doors. Getting the wires off my head was almost like a spy operation. I had to go to the locked medical building at 4 and call the EEG tech on his cell phone, so he would know to come down and let me in. Fortunately everything worked out in a timely manner, and I had plenty of time to shower before the crab feast. It turned out to be more like a 48-hour test. I’m still finding buggers in my hair. I can’t imagine what people with long hair do.
Today we had a special breakfast. We had a loyalty reward for a free coffee at Panera — and Danita got a bonus of a free pastry for her birthday. So we went to Panera after church and had the cheapest breakfast ever.
That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.