We had a fun week with the grandkids. Now we’re exhausted. We had a couple of “interesting” experiences this week. We spent a couple of days in the Lancaster area, staying at the Red Caboose Hotel. The second day we decided to go to the Turkey Hill Ice Cream Experience on Linden St. We set the GPS and took off for adventure. It turns out that Linden St. in the Lancaster area is like Voltaire St. in France, or Lincoln Park in Iowa. After half an hour of driving, we found ourselves on the wrong Linden St. The highlight of the Experience is making a pint of your own flavor of ice cream. After that the entire pint of ice cream is promptly consumed. These are timed tickets with every time slot filled to the max. We took off for the correct Linden St. We arrived, walked directly to our ice cream lab, and they closed the door behind us. I don’t generally enjoy standing in lines, but standing in line is a lot less stressful than sliding in at the last second.

Liz took a flight home Saturday morning because her school starts early. Bryon decided he wants to spend a week with Ryn working on the farm. So I drove Bryon up to Gibson, PA where I would meet Ryn and transfer Bryon. To break up the 4-hour ride, we stopped at the Echo Dell Cave. It was a nice tour. Smart phone cameras are absolutely amazing. I got several very good available light pictures just holding the phone. Somehow the electronics takes a long exposure while un-jiggling the picture to compensate for my jiggling hands. As the tour was about to end, I walked into the ceiling. Then I fell on my butt. I remember thinking “I hit my head, why am I going to fall on my butt?” Then I bruised myself and made my pants absolutely filthy from the wet clay floor. The head wound bled. It being a head wound, there was blood everywhere. I made a bee-line for the outdoors with blood all over my face and hands. I went up the 71 steps. The Echo Dell folks sent somebody out to give me a hand. They gave me a roll of paper towels, two ice packs, free passes for a future visit, and a bottle of cold water. The wound didn’t bleed for long. I was able to clean the blood in their wash room. Then we ate our lunch at their picnic table (as planned) while I held ice packs on my head (as not planned). I didn’t have a spare pair of pants, so I washed them out in the hotel as best I could.

Ryn and I had a lot of fun working out an elaborate transfer process for Bryon. It involved encrypted messages, flashing lights, beeping horns, and more. It was so complicated we ended up just using the token I created by tearing a playing card and mailing one half to Ryn.

Danita and I will drive up to Gibson together next weekend. On the way back, we plan to stop at a car museum. Hopefully, that will be safer than a cave.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Bryon and Elizabeth are visiting us this week. We’ve been doing many fun activities. Our biggest surprise was driving from the Baltimore Zoo to Mom’s place at Charlestown. Our GPS took us through some neighborhoods I have never before visited. I actually saw three men sitting on a porch passing around a brown paper bag. Fortunately, we had no mishaps. Here’s a picture of us with Mom, and another with Ed, Lynne, Addi, and Suzanne. Tomorrow we’re driving up to Lancaster. We are staying at the Red Caboose Hotel.

Danita tried the Roving Radish. She got two meat dinners. Each dinner has everything you need to cook, down to the spices. Food is locally sourced where possible. There is enough food for two nights with additional leftovers for a lunch or two. The ingredients are high quality. The cost is quite reasonable. One dinner was quite tasty. The other was OK.

I made progress with Mom’s I-Bonds, sort of. Mom wanted to send her paper bonds in to TreasuraryDirect so she could retitle them to be in her trust. I sent the bonds and waited 4 weeks as indicated by their website. At the end of the 4 weeks, I saw zeroes everywhere in her account. TreasuryDirect doesn’t accept Emails unless you have an open case. So I called as soon as they were open. I was rewarded with a wait time of only 45 minutes. The advisor verified the bonds were logged in June 10. He said I had to allow 13 weeks for processing. If 13 weeks doesn’t sound ominous enough, the end of the 13 week wait will be 9/11. <Queue ominous background music.>

I had my post-op eye exam from my cataract surgery. I passed. My vision is excellent. I could get progressive glasses with a mild correction and wear them all the time. Or I could get readers and spend my days wondering around looking for my glasses. I haven’t decided what to do.

We were planning to attend a Lurman Woodland Blues concert this evening. Unfortunately, the Blues band cancelled. They got a Rockabilly band instead, whatever that is. The probability of rain this evening seems to be going up. We decided to nix the concert. We had a nice neighborhood concert at the clubhouse last night, along with wine and cheese. It was a good time.

The big news is that Danita and her siblings decided that her dad, Bud, should move. He will be moving into BrightView. This is a lot closer to where we live. We think their program will be a good match for Bud’s Alzheimer’s. There’s mountains of paper work, evaluations, medical tests, and logistics. It’s a busy and stressful time for Danita.

It was great to have dinner with Dani, Gayle, and Mom. Fortunately, the weather was good. We picked a restaurant with outdoor dining and chose a Monday, because restaurants are usually least crowded on Mondays. I can’t imagine what this place is like on the weekends, because it was definitely hopping on Monday. It’s easy to see why. The food was unique and quite good.

We had an unusual neighborhood event. One of the cyclists invited neighborhood cyclists to a 20 mile bike ride to Savage Mill Mall. Six of us took the ride. I’ve made this ride many times. It’s mostly on trails. It is very well shaded. And it terminates at a bakery. I had given up on the bakery. Their food was expensive and not very good. What I didn’t know is that the bakery was taken over by Roggenart. I ate my food bar while everybody else had a nice pastry. Lesson learned.

I’m not sure if I’ve already said this, but I stopped supporting our neighborhood’s office computers. I still support our website and a resident database, but all other computer support has been turned over to Bob. This week we hired a new events coordinator. We needed a new Email address and a few other changes. It felt very strange, because people were still sending requests to me. I kept on forwarding requests, questions, and answers between the players. I hope we finally have everybody wired up so requests go where they should go next time. One nice thing — Bob called me with a question about about our office network. I was on the Savage Mill ride and didn’t return the call for a couple of hours. Fortunately, the documentation I had written included the information he needed. He was able to do everything without my help. It’s nice when effort becomes useful.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’re having plenty of entertainment last week and this. Last Saturday was a concert at Lurman Woods. We attended the last symphony concert of the season Sunday. We had a total if three food trucks this week. We’re leaving in a bit to attend the play “Night Watch” at Essex Community College. When we get home, it’s a free ice cream party at the clubhouse. Dani and Gayle are down visiting Mom. We’re all going out together for dinner Tuesday.

With all that excitement, there’s no room for news! I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Navy Sea Chanters last Sunday were quite good, but they only did one sea chant. I guess all the other chants weren’t suitable for a family concert in a church.

We had a bang-up day planned for Friday. It was sunny and very hot. I took an easy bike ride on well-shaded trails. I was just about to turn around and head home when my gear shifter stopped working. The cable broke. The bike has four cables. This is the most important one. There is no such thing as a jury rig fix for a broken cable. Good thing it was an easy ride. There were a few hills I had to walk up, but it wasn’t all that bad. When I got home I drank water in the air conditioning for a while, then I removed my jury rig bike rack and took off for the bike shop. It’s almost all down hill from our house to the bike shop, but I still had to some walking to do. Danita gave me a ride home. By the time we got home and had dinner, we missed the Marine Corps band concert. After dinner, we went downstairs to watch the last of our recorded TV shows for the season. About half way through, the shows were preempted by the President’s comments following the mass shooting in Texas. We could have streamed the show, but it felt like the perfect ending for a bummer of a day. We called it quits.

Today is perfect weather — cool and sunny. Too bad I won’t be riding.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had a busy week. Bud will be needing memory care before long. When he goes to memory care, we will move him to a facility that is closer to Danita and Ed. Way back when, Bud chose Riderwood because it was close to his church and his old neighborhood. Riderwood is a bit of a drive for Danita, and it is a heck of a drive for Ed. We spent the week visiting memory care providers that are close to Danita and a shorter drive for Ed. It was a rough week for Danita. We found two providers that look like a good fit. That’s good news. We wrapped up the week on a lighter note with a neighborhood party last night.

My second cataract surgery was last Monday. Everything went well. I was driving Tuesday. My vision is much improved.

Schools are out or will be out soon. The weather is warm. The days are long. It’s the summer season. We attended our first outdoor concert at Lurman Woods last Sunday. It looks like this weekend will be rainy and mushy. We probably won’t go this weekend. But we’re looking forward to hearing the US Navy band Sea Chanters, performing indoors Sunday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Sunday ushered in days of perfect weather, so naturally I spent a good chunk of the morning locked in a windowless basement room counting money. Afterwards I spent the afternoon driving. We went down I-81, enjoying the scenic Blue Ridge mountains on the way to Roanoke. Roanoke was a very good destination because it’s on the way to Jul’s house, Bryon was being confirmed Tuesday, … AND … there were negative COVID tests all around. Woo-Hoo. For dinner, we enjoyed al fresco dining at a very good Mexican restaurant next door to our hotel. The weather was still picture perfect. The food was plentiful and good and cheap. We topped our dinner with large fried ice creams. Back at the hotel, the indoor pool was filled with kids and Moms. Danita wisely chose to use the pool early Monday morning, and had the pool all to herself.

We got to Jul’s on Memorial day. This was an unusual visit. We hadn’t been there since COVID. It was the tail end of a holiday. We weren’t taking the grandkids on any adventures. But we managed to get into the swing of things eventually. Bryon’s confirmation was at 7. The priest gave a very good homily about the sacraments in general and confirmation in particular. When Jul asked Bryon what kind of cake he wanted, he said he wanted Chick-fil-A nuggets. So we that was dinner. I was surprised how good they are. Jul picked up a cake at the last minute. Bryon has an unusual name with unusual spelling. Based on past experiences, Jul decided it was better to leave the inscription to just “Congratulations”.

We took two days going back. Going up I-95 was less scenic and had heavier traffic, but it let us stop at Bud’s on the way home to drop off clean clothes and pick up dirty. We stopped overnight in Richmond. The hotel wasn’t nearly as nice. But we took the opportunity to visit the Edgar Poe museum and we found a pleasant restaurant for dinner. We were back in town, safe and sound Thursday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Mom had a CD in her trust at Chase Bank. The CD matured recently. Chase send a letter saying if we didn’t want to roll it over, we could call or visit a branch. We wanted to sell the CD and move the money to Mom’s Chase savings account. We called. The customer service rep could not sell the CD. So we went to a “local” branch, about half an hour away. Not counting the driving, it took them two hours. As an apology, they gave us a free cloth bag. It isn’t very sturdy. I can’t imagine a bank that is harder to do business with. As a topper, I checked the account today. The CD is gone. The deposit to savings is marked “pending”. Pending what? Its moving money between two of Mom’s accounts. I can’t imagine why the transfer is pending.

The construction on the back of our house is finally done done done. I spent some time cleaning up some junk behind the house. A few years ago, I tried to paint the porch. I did a terrible job. We hired Pete to paint it for us. It looks great. The contractor will be doing a few days of work on the front of our house, probably starting next week. We won’t have access to our garage during the day, but they move the scaffolding away every night. That will let us charge the Leaf. The contractor will be working on the other buildings most of the summer. After this is all done, we have a huge mud field behind our house. All houses have to be cleaned and painted. Our road needs some work. Some people have stone falling off their walls. There’s probably a bunch more. I know everything will be put in good shape eventually. Still, it’s destressing to think about.

The yard junk put a big dent in a 55 gallon trash bag. In addition, plastic drain pipe was brittle from 10 years in the sun. That filled the rest of the bag. I also had a huge foam block that used to be in our Honda’s trunk where the spare tire is now. I put all this together today and made my first dump run in many years. I still miss Car Talk.

Our big excitement was last Sunday. Joe and Toni were up from Texas to attend a friend’s wedding. All the Schmauses got together at Ed’s house for lunch. The food was good. The conversation was better. There are a few pics on the website.