The Rotterdam is the newest ship in the fleet. It’s a big ship. The auditorium is very modern with impressive capabilities. We saw a dance troop performance that was visually stunning. Yesterday was a sea day, so we had a gala dinner. Danita and I both chose escargot and filet mignon steak. The food has been wonderful.

Today we visited Grand Turk Island. The water is relatively shallow until is reaches an under-water cliff, where the depth increases from about 100 to 7,000 feet. You can see a well-defined line of dark blue water where the depth increases. We really enjoyed our tour guide. He is genuine, knowledgeable, and kind.

The most fun thing we did (other than mini golf) was an air boat ride in the Everglades. Our guide was amazing at spotting wildlife. There’s no pics. On the up side, there was no risk of me dropping my phone in the water. Fact I did not know: Alligators aren’t ever the apex predictor. A 5 foot alligator would seem to qualify. But they are prayed on by 10 foot alligators. It seems there isn’t anything an alligator won’t eat.

Everywhere we went there were draw bridges, and usually they were up. We would sit in line waiting a very long time only to see a rather small boat pass through. We thought draw bridges were only for sail boats. But it turns out there is almost no clearance under the drawbridge. Even a row boat would have to have the bridge open to get through.

We also visited the Dauer car museum. It was a great collection of GM and Ford cars, with an emphasis on Cadillac. We found Danita’s dream car (not): a green woody station wagon.

There were a dozen restaurants within an easy walk of our hotel. Mostly they stayed away from fast food (although that was also available). Our best find was TooJay’s, a NY deli run by actual NY Jews. Danita ordered French Onion soup. It was as good as anything one can find in Paris. Our other great pick was another NY Jewish deli called the Mayor’s Deli. I ordered a club sandwich, which was a big mistake (as in, the sandwich was too big to eat at one sitting).

The nerds also provided some amusement. Here’s what happens when engineers do graffiti.

It’s time to board the big boat. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale yesterday. Our car was one of the last to be unloaded from the car train, but we still had plenty of time for one quick stop. There is a glitch with our hotel room. The room and the hotel are fine, but when I made the reservation, they advertised free parking while on the cruise. When we arrived, they said the free parking was no longer available. I’ll be talking to the manager tomorrow (since today is a holiday).

We’ll be goofing off in Ft. Lauderdale for the next few days. We don’t board the ship until Jan 4.

A dozen Christmas pics.

We were moving stuff to the car, preparing for a trip to Good Will, when Danita missed a step. She fell on the garage floor which was both cold and hard. She bruised her hip and pulled a muscle. She had difficult mobility for the rest of the day, but she’s recovering well. She still has some discomfort.

We were planning to spend this afternoon at Ed & Lynne’s. We were going to stay overnight, go to 10:00 mass at their church, then head up to Mark’s. Unfortunately, Ed & Lynne were exposed to Covid. They are testing negative, but the recommendation is to stay isolated a few more days. We cancelled the time at Ed’s. Instead, we’ll watch the broadcast of our Church’s 4:00 service today, then drive to Ed’s Christmas morning. We’ll exchange packages on the porch, then go on up to Mark’s. Fortunately, everybody who will be at Mark’s has not been exposed and is testing negative. We’ll stay overnight and return Monday. We’re looking forward to meeting Jiajia’s parents. Jiajia informs us that westerners have great difficulty pronouncing her parents’ names. She suggest we call them “Jiajia mama” and “Jiajia baba”. It should be an interesting day.

We’re doing well at getting everything together for our vacation. We have our lists of what to pack. We have all the medications we are going to need. As usual we found a couple of small items that would be helpful that we didn’t have. Fortunately, Amazon offered to deliver both on Tuesday, so we don’t have to face the maddening crowd of seasonal shoppers.

As everybody knows, it’s really cold outside. Our high today is in the teens, but the wind makes it feel like single digits. Weather that invigorating is nothing less than an invitation for a bike ride. So that’s exactly what I did today — on the stationary bike in our clubhouse gym. ;-)

I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas.

We had a nice holiday week. We had a couple of dinners with friends. We took Mom to a concert at Charlestown. We heard a group called “The Suspicious Cheese Lords”. They are an acapella group of men that sing Christmas and seasonal oldies. How old? It varies but you won’t go wrong if you think 16th century. Songs were sung in their original language. The program provided English translations. Songs covered the gamut. The oldest tune dates back to pre-Christian times. A couple of more recent tunes were used for sing-alongs.

Charlestown is Erickson’s original community. It was built around a Catholic seminary. When the church sold the property to Erickson, they restored the chapel to it’s original condition. They made a first-class job of it, as you can see here. As you might imagine, the acoustics was perfect for Christian music from the 1500s.

Poor Mom has had a lot of doctor appointments recently, including four between last and next Friday. Today we visited her audiologist. Since the audiologist is near us in Columbia, we went to a couple of stores and got a few things Mom needs.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita had quite a successful week with Mira. They played together for two days. Then it was time to try to put Mira back in daycare while Danita was at Mark’s home on standby. It was quite successful. I drove up Friday and took Danita home Saturday. I was granted the privilege of reading some books to Mira Friday evening. This week Jiajia has a lot of flexibility, due to the holiday slowdown. The big news is — Jiajia’s folks are coming from China to visit. It’s going to be a long term visit. The preliminary plan is to stay 5 months. We plan to meet them before we go on vacation.

We just got home from a delightful performance at the Meyerhof Symphony Hall. The BSO played favorites while a cirque group did apparently impossible things with ropes, hoops, and bodies. It was a festive atmosphere. They even had a small music group in the lobby playing some pre-concert music.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Christmas shopping is done. We used to go to Bob Evans and do most of our Christmas shopping online. Unfortunately, Bob Evans no longer offers WiFi. So this year we went to Panera. Everything is purchased or ordered. We only have to wait for stuff to arrive.

I had quite a time with my computer last week. It was getting very slow from an accumulation of 6 years of junk. I decided it was time to wipe everything clean and install a fresh copy of Windows. I tried installing Windows from the internet. That failed. Then I tried reinstalling Windows from the recovery section of the disk drive. That not only failed, it also corrupted my user account. I had to make a boot drive, but I couldn’t find my thumb drives. I gave up and ordered another thumb drive, only to find my other drives. The boot drive did the job. Then more good news, Amazon lost the thumb drive I ordered. They issued me a refund. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, one of our access points stopped working. Then one of the network cables also failed. For a little while, I was beginning to think it would never end. But everything is up and running well. So far, we’ve had two days in a row with no computer problems. Woo-hoo!

So now I had a failed access point and also Mom’s old computer. (With all data securely wiped.) I didn’t want to put these in the trash. The local landfill has a special area for electronics recycling. I can’t listen to Car Talk when I go to the dump, so I did the next best thing. I put the stuff on my bike and rode my bike to the dump. Riding my bike to the dump in the summer is a lot of fun because I go right be the best snowball stand in the county. Alas, the snowball stand was closed. There will never again be a Car Talk episode. But it is still a fun ride.

We’re looking forward to a visit from Kathryn later on today. She and a couple of her friends will stop off for lunch this afternoon. Danita has split pea soup ready to go.

Our big news this week comes from JaMM. Mira continues to bite other children. She finally got herself suspended from day care. Danita is going up to Pennsylvania for a week. She will take care of Mira Monday and Tuesday. She’ll stay up for the rest of the week in case Mira does not do well when she goes back to day care.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. We had a great one this year. Mark, Jiajia, and Mira came for the weekend; as did Jul, Brian, and Elizabeth. (Pat wasn’t able to get time off from his job). Shirley, Ed, and Lynne joined us for dinner in Thanksgiving day. Danita made all our favorite foods.

Unfortunately, I missed the adventures this year. Danita, the Reeds, and JaMM went to the aquarium Friday. I had an appointment with the motor vehicle folks because I can’t seem to get my drivers license updated. I keep getting conflicting information and advise. For the moment, all I can do is wait until next Friday and see if it shows up.

It was quite an exciting visit to the aquarium. It was mobbed with people. Danita was trying to ham it up for a picture, but she tripped on a safety cable and hurt her hand. It’s nothing serious, but it sure is ironic to hurt yourself on a safety wire.

The other adventure was Saturday. Danita and the Reeds went to downtown Ellicott City to visit the B & O Railroad museum. This is a small but nice place to visit. It’s also free, which doesn’t hurt. The report was that everybody had a good time.

Mark ran a half marathon that was near Ed & Lynne’s house. I gave him a ride up. When he finished, he tried to call me to pick him up. He had Danita’s and my phone numbers mixed up. In addition, Danita was driving so Jul answered his phone. Mark’s phone signal was weak so Jul called me to let me know. It took me a while to figure out what happened. But I picked up Mark successfully. I drove him to Ed’s where we linked up with Jiajia and Mira. We had a very nice lunch. JaMM and I went our separate ways to go home.

I hope everybody enjoyed their holiday.

I don’t know how old our TV is, but I have the receipt with a delivery address in Kingsville. We decided to update our TV. We got a good price on a Samsung at Amazon. Plus they threw in free setup in the room of our choice. The TV picture looked great. Until one of the installers said I have a dead pixel. I would have been perfectly happy in my ignorance, if they had just kept their fat mouths shut. I didn’t want to send the TV back. Partly it was on the theory that the next one might have two dead pixels, but mostly it seemed to be a colossal waste. I called Amazon, and they gave me a 20% discount. I wonder what you get for two dead pixels. The new remote control is designed to help you get content from your streaming services (Netflix and such). That makes sense, because that’s the only way to get 4K video to display on your brand new 4K TV. But the remote doesn’t have any numbers. This is a serious inconvenience for us. We still watch TV on our TV. Without a number pad, we would spend a lot of time scrolling up and down to get the channel we want. I bought an old style Samsung remote with numbers for $10. The next thing was that our DVD player doesn’t have an HDMI output. It was strictly RCA cables. Our lofty TV is way too advanced to accept RCA cables, so I got a new DVD player. Now we’re down to one problem. The old TV is still in the basement, and we want it on the second floor. Are you feeling strong, Mark? (Hint.)

We also had several smoke detectors go offline. This isn’t an urgent problem. If there’s smoke, they will beep. But it would be nice if they would alert me while we are traveling. I traced the problem down to a many-years old WiFi access point. A new one is on the way.

We had a lot of activities at the clubhouse this last week. We only attended half of them. The best was a band called “Sons of Pirates”. They play Jimmy Buffet and similar music. They did a nice job. They kept the volume down to a comfortable level. It was a well attended event.

But wait … there’s more. The BMA had a members evening for an exhibition of John Waters’ collection of contemporary American art. There was free food, followed by a slide show tour of the exhibit, and then an interview with the man himself. Like many artists, Waters lives in a different universe than do I. But it’s a very funny, upbeat universe. Everybody had a great time. After the interview, we were invited upstairs to see the exhibit, along with a very large crowd of others. We decided we might come back another time when it’s not so crowded.

That’s a lot of activity for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.