This week has been a little more active than usual. I visited Mom twice — once to get her MD ID and once for an off-campus doctor appointment. Tomorrow I go back to meet a Riderwood IT person about the very slow internet in Mom’s apartment. Bud was exposed to COVID. He’s half way through a one week quarantine. So far, so good. We had the “Greek on the Street” food truck yesterday. That food is too good for our health. ;-) The monthly condo meeting lasted an extra hour. For some reason, there were several protracted complaints about things that were decided months ago. I was amazed at the personal details people will talk about in a public meeting. Next month the board will present the 2022 budget. I can’t imagine how that will go. The biggest excitement is just ahead. I’m leaving soon to help count the collection at our church. We have a brand new procedure. Nobody knows exactly what the new procedure is, but it promises to be complicated and confusing. I told Danita I expect to be home in time for dinner. ;-)

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had lots of eating out this week. Panera offered me a free bagel and also offered me $2.00 off. The last day of our free coffee was today. So Tuesday, Danita and I went to Panera for breakfast — free coffee for both of us and a free bagel for me. Then we went to Panera again this morning — free coffee for both of us and $2 off for me. Then we came home to cancel our coffee club. We were both offered another 3 months of free coffee, which we both accepted. We noticed that less than half the tables were occupied, but the “to go” bags were overflowing their designated area.

We also went out to dinner Tuesday. We went to Bowman’s with the Tony and Donna Sochurek and had dinner on the porch. The road traffic on Harford Road was noisy, but we had good food and great conversation.

Friday was a neighborhood Chill ‘n Grill. They had a two-piece light jazz orchestra which thankfully kept the volume down. We were able to eat and converse while the band played on. Everything — food, drinks, tables, and entertainment — was outdoors on the deck. The weather was delightful. Nobody knows what we will do when temperatures fall, or if it happens to be raining during an event. But we had a good time Friday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a quiet week. Ida came through and dumped a bunch of rain. The only significant damage in Maryland was a tornado that hit a section of Annapolis. Before Ida, we were getting a heat index over 100 regularly. After Ida, temperatures dropped significantly. We’re dropping into the 50s at night and getting up near 80 in the day. In addition, the humidity is lower. It’s quite comfortable. The big difference for me is riding in the afternoon instead of the early morning.

I was supposed to help count

With Covid taking off, our neighborhood put restrictions on the clubhouse. Everybody in the clubhouse must be masked at all times. That means no eating or drinking. We have an outdoor porch where we can have activities. It has an awning and even has sides that roll down. But we can only seat 20 or 25 under the awning. There’s more seating under the stars, but bad weather can put a real damper on that. That was quite a curve ball for the social committee to handle, but they’re working on possibilities. In the mean time, the Jones will join is for a “do your own food truck” this evening. We’ll get food from a local kabob place and eat it at the Jones’.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Mom’s condo is sold. This was a minor miracle. It’s common practice in Florida for condo bylaws to give the board the right to approve buyers. The bylaws allow any reason for accepting or rejecting a buyer, but in practice this is about whether the buyer has enough money to pay the monthly fees. Our buyer has a bank account with $400K in it and owns an apartment building in NYC, This should have been a shoe-in. But they have very little Social Security and no pension. The buyer ended up submitting three years of income tax returns and putting two years of monthly payments in escrow. Through it all, the board made themselves unavailable, accepted only paper documentation, refused to set up meetings for delivery of documentation, and in general made the process unbelievably difficult. Fortunately, the buyer really wanted the condo. After three contract extensions, the board finally accepted the buyer. This was one of the most stressful periods I have had.

After closing, it was time to transfer the utilities, cancel Mom’s insurance, etc. The easiest way to do this is for me to be in the room with Mom. I make the call, Mom identifies herself and says I have her permission to speak for her, and I do the business. It wasn’t that easy. I spent from 9:30 to 3:30 with an hour out for Mom’s doctor appointment. In addition, the bank chose that day to flag Mom as a potential fraudulent account holder. It seems her phone number and address didn’t match information at the credit bureaus. They were threatening to close the account that would soon hold the proceeds from the condo sale. In many cases, I would say this was a wise security measure. But Mom and I opened her new account in person at a branch. We presented all manor of identification and security. In person.

The worst agency was the Palm Beach Water Authority. I called them up. They said they would call back within 30 minutes. They did call back, but it was quite a bit longer than 30 minutes. When they called back, they insisted Mom couldn’t close her account until we downloaded a picture of her driver’s license. After I did that and called back, they promised to return the call in “one hour, two minutes, and 53 seconds”. I found this an astonishingly precise estimate. Which of course they missed by a mile. Two hours and 35 minutes later, I had given up and was starting to pack my things. They finally called and told me I had to read the drivers license number as a security measure. That wasn’t very hard. What a ridiculous “security” procedure. Even the title lawyer added excitement. The condo settled at 4:30 Thursday. They didn’t wire the money to Mom until the early afternoon the next day. That added four phone calls, two Emails, and a copy of the wire transfer authorization to the day’s activities.

But it’s all done now. We’ll get the final power and water bill in a month. The homeowners insurance will send us a check for the unused insurance within a month. The appliance repair contract is cancelled. The bank decided Mom isn’t some kind of a hacker / thief. And the sale proceeds are in Mom’s bank account. I don’t want any more days like yesterday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This was quite an eventful week. Somebody told me that Stanford Grill has a really great meatloaf. I checked the online menu. It included meatloaf. Danita and I decided to go try it out. We needed reservations. A couple of weeks later, we decided to try it again, with reservations this time. We received oversize laminated menus. One side was drinks. There was another quarter page of drinks on the other side. There were appetizers, salads, entries, and deserts. But there was no meatloaf. That’s not the end of the world, but the prices were also higher than other places in town. We decided to leave and went to Red Robbin. No reservations needed there. But it turns out that while the prices at Stanford Grill were higher, they weren’t all that much higher. It’s hard to keep up, I guess. Never mind. There’s no better way to make up for a slightly disappointing evening than really great desserts from the bakery down the street. We had Chocolate Oreo Cheese Cake and Chocolate Tuxedo Cake. Yummy.

Our other misadventure was our electric car. The Nissan Leaf has been an incredibly great car. But even E-cars need maintenance sometimes. The dash board was telling us to rotate the tires, and the driver’s door handle was falling apart. So I set up an appointment, asking them to do their thing and also fixe the door handle. When I brought it in, I told the write-up person I wanted them to do their thing and also fix the door handle. Imagine my surprise when I got a text from the dealer, stating they found the door handle needs to be repaired, do I want them to repair it?

When I picked it up, I found the safety check was free, the tire rotation was $20, and the door handle was $360. That’s $140 for the door handle and $220 for labor. It seams they had to do some pretty major surgery to get to the door handle. It’s a very nice door handle. It looks good. It has a black button. But I would have never believed it is so very special. The other thing I noticed is that they didn’t have to order any parts. I’m guessing I’m not the first person to have their door handle fall apart. Hopefully they gave the the improved door handle.

We’re going to 4:30 mass today so we can enjoy the weekend in style. We have a neighborhood concert and dinner tonight, and a free birthday breakfast tomorrow at First Watch. After that, this is my Sunday of the month to go to Church and help count money. I’m sure glad I spent all that time watching Sesame Street.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This was the weekend of the Parkton Cup. We gather at Ed and Lynne’s house, play croquet, eat food, and drink drinks. The weather promised to be very hot and then rainy, but it cooled off early and the rain never occurred. We even had some sunshine. Ed and Lynne remodeled their house. It was a stunning job. The prize for the furthest travel went to Rick and Suzy, who came from Texas for the wedding and stayed a week for the Parkton Cup. There’s a few pictures on the website.

Mark and Jiajia have been married for a year and a half, but thanks to Covid, they did not have a ceremony or a reception. They corrected that this weekend. The Reeds came up Friday. Kathryn and her friend Cicada arrived a couple of hours before the ceremony started. Having company gives Danita an excuse to do some cooking. Among her creations was a sausage bread that came out particularly good. The Reeds, Kathryn, and Cicada stayed at our house while we stayed at the hotel. You can see a few pics if you visit the web site. Poor Mira was completely overwhelmed. She demanded that only Mark or Jiajia could hold her, no matter what. So Mark held her during the ceremony. Either Mark or Jiajia held her the entire weekend, with only a few short exceptions. The ceremony and reception were flawless.

This morning, Danita and I hosted a breakfast at the hotel. We were very pleased with the quality and quantity of food. The service was impeccable.

Dani and Gayle couldn’t make the ceremony, but they met us at Mom’s place just a half hour before we arrived. They plan to spend a few days with Mom. Their major objective is to take Mom clothes shopping, but I’m sure they will end up doing many other things to help Mom get settled.

When we got back to our house, we faced a crisis of unimaginable proportions. The hamburger food truck we planned on using for dinner with our neighbors was cancelled. We decided to do a two-family “self-drive food truck”. Jeff and I will get the burgers, and we’ll eat them at their house. That was the easy part. We’ll see how much futzing around is required to decide where to get the burgers.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Here’s a pic I took on the car train. Mom is in Charlestown. There’s a branch of PNC bank at Charlestown. She has a PNC bank account set up. Her direct deposits, online addresses, and online phone numbers have been set up. Her furniture is assembled and in place. Many pictures have been hung. The kitchen and pantry are organized. The TV and computer works. We lost one TV in the move. It was a small, inexpensive unit. Its value is less than the insurance deductible. As mom constantly reminds me, it’s not done yet. We’re working on it, but it will take some time.

Mom has made great progress finding her way around Charlestown. She goes to the restaurant and checks her mail. (She got a delightful card from Mark and Jiajia.) Tomorrow, Danita and I are going up to take care of a few things, but our main purpose is to make sure Mom gets on the bus to the grocery store. After that, I need to take some time to catch up at home. Plus our neighborhood office got a new router I need to install. And our website needs a large number of updates installed. Mom has her first visit with her new retina specialist Friday August 6. I’ll provide the transportation. Hopefully I’ll have time to visit the hardware store and get a few things Mom requested before then.

Today it was my team’s turn to count money at Church. Church staff did all the counting during the pandemic. They were delighted to have us start back up last month. This was our second time counting post pandemic. The staff requested several changes in our process. Our new associate pastor hasn’t mastered the fine art of opening the safe, so we got started late. Somebody seems to have taken a group of elementary students over to the sanctuary — I counted and wrapped 209 pennies in the poor box collection. (Lucky me to get the job of counting the Poor Box.) There was lots of discussion and quite a bit of tension. But everybody kept a positive attitude. We got the job done about an hour later than normal. I wanted to do a slow-mo walk out of the building, but it was raining so nobody would slow-mo with me. We’re still trying to figure out when we are next due to count.

I hope this finds everybody doing well. We are anxiously looking forward to Mark and Jiajia’s wedding celebration this weekend.

Everything is on the truck. The condo is locked up. We got to the Car Train 3 hours before the train leaves. There’s nothing to do now but wait for dinner at 7. We know the train isn’t insanely late because we’re in the lobby instead of waiting in a long line in the car. With luck, we’ll arrive somewhere near 9 tomorrow morning. Below you can see crew boss Paul shortly after he found out they missed a dozen glass figurines, and the shuttle truck with everything Mom owns.

With no wall hangings, no furniture, no rugs, and a ceramic tile floor, the living room had an amazing echo. Mom couldn’t stop yodeling. We were so early we stopped in Sanford for an ice cream lunch. It was excellent ice cream.

This is so unusual I wouldn’t believe it if it were in a movie. Friday, Mom’s garbage disposal started leaking. We were still trying to figure out whether it was a leak or a spill when an electrical outlet shorted out. There was plenty of smoke and stink. Fortunately, our realtor has a good handyman. He was able to stop by Friday. He verified the electrical problem was s short and made sure it won’t short again until he can fix it. Then he verified the leak was from a rusted-out garbage disposal. So as it turns out, it’s just two old things that gave up the ghost on the same day. Repairs will be simple. Mom was understandably quite upset, but she was settled this afternoon.

The condo sale is still a go. In fact, the deadline for the buyers to back out without losing their deposit was Friday. The buyers are back in NY. The kitchen should be patched up Monday. I’ll be down Tuesday.

Mom’s bank is Chase. They don’t have any offices in Howard county, and none near Charlestown. PNC has branches right inside Charlestown. Danita and I already use PNC. I figured this would be an easy deal. I made an appointment and went down to the bank. My “personal banker” set up an account for Mom, but ** surprise ** it’s on hold until Mom can be physically present to sign her name. Then he told me he could issue Mom a credit card. It turns out he couldn’t until Mom is present. Along the way, he said many other things that were anywhere from irrelevant to untrue while not providing a useful answer to any of my questions. Then he told me that West Chester Financial Advisors was using my social security number. He obviously couldn’t help with that either. I called the call center, who also couldn’t help. I escalated the issue and got to talk to a competent person a few hours later. It turns out a business EIN (tax ID number) can use the same digits as an individual’s SSN. The numbers are easy to tell apart. The EIN is xx-xxxxxxx, the SSN is xxx-xx-xxxx. The competent person told me the personal banker should have never said that. For one thing, I was authenticated to discuss my SSN, and not business EINs. I had no right to know West Chester Financial Advisor’s tax ID number. Unfortunately, I plan to meet with this same personal banker next week. Maybe he’ll be competent enough to open Mom’s new accounts. If not, we’ll be in Charlestown the next day. We can try the Charlestown branch.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.