The week started off wonderfully. Our neighborhood had three food trucks Sunday evening (BBQ, Mediterranean, and Gelato). The food was good. The weather was perfect. A few neighbors joined us in our driveway. It was an extremely pleasant evening. This is the last social activity for our neighborhood this year.

We had our first class Monday. We covered a brief biography of Fitzgerald and Hemmingway, followed by a discussion of the first half of “The Great Gatsby”. There are over 80 people registered for class. 72 showed up for the first class. The Zoom servers seemed to choke. Things got better after most students turned off their video. The instructor encouraged comments from the class, but of course with such a large class, only a small number could offer comments. The instructor has an interesting way of handling comments. He puts on a thoughtful face and lets the student have their full say. Then he generally says something like “I agree” or “That’s insightful”. Immediately after that, he extends the comment to include other points. Sometimes he says something like “That’s an interesting reading”, following that with a viewpoint that is more plausible. We learned quite a bit.

We found two presentations from the Walters Art Museum. One was about Islamic metal work. The other was about ancient glass. Both were quite interesting. Unfortunately, the ancient glass was immediately after lunch. We used our very comfortable setup in the TV room with our reclining chairs. I had a predictable reaction. I still managed to catch enough that I knew the answers to the questions the audience asked. The presenters faced quite a challenge because until a few days ago, the building was closed. They had to do their presentation from photos that were taken pre-COVID.

Danita started a virtual class for people who are care givers for parents.

I did my fall cleaning of the deck, porch, and garage. That’s a 3-day job for me these days.

Thursday Bluetooth stopped working on my Dell laptop. It was particularly irritating because I had just cleaned my desk and removed all nonessential wiring. I had to go back to a wired mouse. This happened precisely 17 days after my extended warranty expired. How do they time these things so precisely?

Mark asked us what our plans are for Thanksgiving this year. That triggered a discussion we had been putting off. We finally decided to celebrate at home without visitors. Usually Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It certainly won’t be a traditional Thanksgiving.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had a little more activity this week, but it still felt quiet. We attended a Zoom orientation for our upcoming classes at Osher. The maximum number of attendees for a Zoom meeting is 300. They filled the session to capacity. I was surprised how hard it was for the presenters to get attendees to mute their microphones. Who can attend a 300-person Zoom meeting and not realize that their background noises and side-bar conversations bother other attendees? The presenters talked for 45 minutes. We will get Zoom links for the class one business day before the class. We will get a link for the class syllabus and other handouts. They could have sent a two-paragraph Email. But we got to check out our new setup for watching Zoom on our TV. It worked fairly well. We can’t read the chat messages on the TV because the print is too small. I noticed the video occasionally froze on the TV when it was not frozen on the computer. But the audio was very good. The Bluetooth speaker worked very well. Class starts tomorrow.

(I held my small laptop in my lap for the camera and connected video the TV through what Microsoft calls Miracast. This is a WiFi-direct technology. I used WiFi to get the Zoom video, then Miracast to forward the video over WiFi to the TV. I used WiFi channel 165 in the 5 GHz band because I can pretty much guarantee none of my neighbors use it. Routers bind 4 channels together to get faster data rates. There are 9 channels. That’s two groups of 4, plus one left over. I used the one left over.)

We had a plumber come in to take care of several small things. The biggest was to replace the 10-year old sump pump. Unfortunately, we’re not done with the plumber. He broke the backup sump pump. It’s probably just as well. The sump water was quite dirty. The backup pump is simple. (It’s powered by water pressure.) But it still has valves and seals that probably would need replacing soon. The plumber will have to come back.

We had a condo board meeting. There was lots of talk about sliding doors to the deck, and people who have decks that need repairs, and houses with a leaky balcony. It sounds like we won’t get our new doors this year. We’ll see.

I got a shingles shot. I felt under the weather for one day. The next day I did a 45-mile bike ride. We had an evening with the Jonses.

This evening our neighborhood is sponsoring food trucks. We will have three trucks — BBQ, Mediterranean wraps/salads, and Gelato.

Next week the pace will pick up even more. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There’s not a lot going on here in Columbia. In honor of the holiday, we’ll be eating hamburgers and chips. Grandma Utz’s hand dipped potato chips, of course. There is simply no reason to eat mediocre chips.

We got approval from the condo to change our screen door. That took 5 weeks. Our existing door is a “full view door”. The new door will still be full view, but it we will be able to switch between screen and glass simply by pulling a handle. On our existing door, I have a lot of trouble managing the heavy glass and removing the snap-in inserts that hold it in place. The new door was controversial because it has a thin horizontal bar across the center of the door. Never mind that several other house have done the same. It had to be thoroughly discussed.

Danita and I are going back to school. We have signed up for a class at Osher. This is a program from Johns Hopkins targeted to retired people. I think the entertainment aspect is probably as important as the academic content. We will start with Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby”. We’ve already started to prepare. There are two movies. We watched them both. We wanted to attend the 2-hour class in the comfort of our TV room. When I tried it, I could get the picture on the TV, but the sound came from the laptop. That is very sub-optimal. So I bought a Bluetooth speaker. I was planning to test it all out on the Men’s Club Zoom this morning, but I forgot until Men’s club was half over. Oh, well. I’m sure it will be fine.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There’s not much going on. Danita’s enjoying the pool. I’m enjoying the bike. I saw an aggressive driver while I was riding the other day. You know — breaking hard, accelerating hard, switching lanes. That wouldn’t be all that unusual, except one of their rear tires was flat. It was making a heck of a racket. The rubber was flopping around. It look like it wouldn’t be long before large chunks of rubber would be flying off. I don’t see how the driver could not know that something was wrong. Fortunately, the driver went one way and I went another. I’ll never know what happened next.

We spent an evening at the Jones’, staying 6 feet apart.

I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m losing weight. I’ve been between 180 and 185 for the last 5 years. Almost exactly a month ago, for a reason I don’t understand, I weighed 179.8. It probably has something to do with not having neighborhood parties. That’s the first time in years that I was under 180. I took that as an opportunity to get back to my old weight of 169. According to some weight chart I found decades ago, that’s he highest weight that wasn’t considered obese. I’ve done pretty well. I’m down to 171. Just two more pounds to go.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had some wonderful weather this week. It was not too humid, and temperatures were a little below average for August. Cold temperatures make my bike rides a short in the winter. Usually I start building up more endurance in the spring. This year when we got back from vacation everything was shutting down. That includes public toilets in libraries, senior centers, and even the spot-a-pots in county parks. That limits options. When parks opened back up, it was outrageously hot and humid. But I did what I could. My favorite endurance ride goes to Glenwood. It’s a beautiful 45 mile route that runs through Howard County farms and rural areas on excellent cycling roads. It’s largely an easy ride with a few moderate hills for a little zest. The sandwich shop at the terminus went out of business. Libraries and senior centers are still restricted. But the nearby county park is open. This week I did the Glenwood ride for the first time this year. It was fabulous.

A couple of days later I was doing my favorite hill ride. I was surprised to see a road was recently closed. Too bad, it’s a well shaded road that has a moderate grade to the top of the hill. I decided to take the alternate road up Ilchester Hill. This is the toughest paved hill in Howard County. Young men with too much testosterone hold time trials up the hill for bragging rights. Any one of them would drop me in a moment. But I made it up. It was a fun challenge.

Danita found an interesting presentation put on by the Walter’s Art Museum. It was about pre-Colombian art. The conservator was investigating the sounds made by some of the objects. Here’s an example on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4fsnl-SBWU. Here’s another YouTube with modern versions. https://twistedsifter.com/videos/inca-whistling-water-vessels-mimic-animal-calls/

Other than that, it’s life as usual. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The weeks are getting very quiet. We got Bud to the last of his doctor appointments. No more doctors for Bud for months! Hurrah! We went over to the Jones one evening. We’re both getting our exercise — me on the bike and Danita at the pool. Other than that, we’re staying in and staying un-infected.

The ants are gone! Woo-hoo.

Celebrations aren’t the same these days. Danita got herself takeout Chinese for lunch today. And something yummy from the bakery for after dinner tonight. She didn’t want a take-out dinner. She’ll be going over to the pool today to spend an hour checking that folks entering have their super-secret wrist band. Happy Birthday Danita.

I’m still playing around with computers in our clubhouse. Hopefully I’ll be done next weekend.

As most of you know, we have a deck in the back of the house, and a porch below the deck. In 2012 we turned our deck into a roof. When it rains, I can sit on the porch and supervise the rain. As part of the project, we put a super fancy floor on the deck so it never has to be painted again. Now the condo is repairing water damage to the houses. The question was, will they have to tear up the deck to repair water damage on our house, and if so who will pay for replacement? The engineer our condo contracted with visited our house this week. They won’t have to tear up the deck. That makes everything very easy. Our doors to the deck have water damage, so we will be replacing those. We had a choice of wood or fiberglass doors. We chose fiberglass. They’ll be plenty good enough for the time we’ll be in the house. Consumer Reports actually rated the Pella fiberglass as more waterproof than the wood. And they’re quite a bit cheaper. We could have had our doors “repaired” at no cost. But that would only ensure they don’t leak water. The damage to the door would still be there. And since we are spending no money traveling and precious little on birthday parties, we won’t have problems paying for new doors.

We were supposed to take Bud to the doctor Tuesday. During the tropical storm. It takes several minutes to transfer Bud between the wheel chair and the car. There is no under-cover parking at this doctor. The doctor was very kind and postponed the visit to next week with no penalty.

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

The driveway picnic last Sunday was great. Most of the neighbors came. We have shade in the driveway in the evenings. Everybody had a very good time. We have a gelato truck coming tonight. We’re looking forward to it.

Last week, we got ants. They were on the stove top. They were in the pantry. They didn’t get into a lot of food, but they were a nuisance. We repackaged food and moved some of it to the refrigerator. We wiped up ants. And wiped some more. We got ant traps. Then we got “better” ant traps. In a few days, we were rid of the ants. Whew.

Danita made the best muffins. Chocolate toffee. We had them with split pea soup. They were so good, we were both a little piggy and had two. It’s a good thing, because when I got up the next day, there were thousands of ants all over the muffins. They weren’t in anything else. But they were all over the muffins. So we did more ant wiping. We ordered “better-est” ant traps. There were so many ants that I could finally see where they were coming into the house. This should be a big help when the better-est traps come in later on today. There’s no ants around today. But we’re not taking any chances. Everything is sealed or in the fridge.

Netgear is a company that makes network equipment such as routers. Somebody found that just about all Netgear routers have a serious security flaw. Netgear announced that our router is so old they aren’t going to release a fix. We have had several updates before this one. I understand that nothing can be support forever. But this router is only 3 1/2 years old. I think that’s a little harsh. There is open source software one can load on a router to give it new life. It’s called OpenWRT. Unfortunately, our Netgear router isn’t supported. So I purchased a new router. Made by TP-Link. I don’t know that TP-Link will be any better than Netgear. But I did make sure that OpenWRT will run on the new router. That doesn’t mean it will still be supported in 2023, but it’s a hope.

The rollout of the new computer for our office is going well. Our office manager found one glitch, which I was able to patch the same day. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’s fine for now. Yesterday I installed the software used to control the gate at the guardhouse. It seems to be fine. There were no complaints last night that I know of. I asked the office manager to issue a new card. I’ll make sure the new card works after the gate closes at 8 PM Monday. A vendor will be in this week to move software used to control the clubhouse doors. Next weekend, I should be able to re-configure the office manager’s old computer for our social coordinator. This project still has a way to go, but everything is moving smoothly. Smooth is more important than fast.

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

One of the office computers is old enough that we should retire it. After over 6 months of discussion, the board approved a new computer. I spent most of the weekend installing software and moving files. Hopefully, the day-to-day office functions are ready for use. We have two sets of security access cards. I’m holding off on changing those until we’re confident the computer is running well.

Danita and I took Bud to a dermatology appointment Wednesday. We’re down to just one more doctor appointment for Bud, in a couple of weeks. Woo-Hoo! Ed and Lynne dropped Addie and Suzanne at our house while they visited Bud Friday. We took the opportunity to set up a Zoom with Bryon and Elizabeth. All four kids seemed to enjoy it. B & E start school next week.

Mark and Jiajia visited yesterday. We had an excellent brunch and a very nice time talking. Plus we got to see their new car. It has plenty of room for a baby car seat. They were going to stop at Ikea on their way back home to look at baby furniture. Jiajia is in her new job as assistant dean. It didn’t take her long to learn what it’s like to work with faculty.

This evening we’re having the first neighborhood social function since the pandemic started. Two food trucks are visiting. We can’t all sit in the clubhouse like we used to do. Some people will sit on the porch. We have pool umbrellas set up in a couple of visitor parking areas. I’ve invited the people in our building to join us for a picnic in our driveway. All outdoors with proper social distancing, all providing our own everything (including chairs). Of course.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had a socially distanced meal with Ed, Lynne, and their grand-girls this week. Ed and Lynne took Bud to one of his doctor appointments. They dropped Addie and Suzanne at our house. The girls largely entertained themselves. Danita prepared dinner wearing a mask, to make sure she didn’t accidentally infect the food. And I attended still another board meeting about the office computers. It was a good meeting. After about 6 months of discussion, the board approved a new computer. Then Ed & Lynne stopped on their way home and we had dinner together, socially distanced 6 feet apart, with two set of serving pieces.

Danita has personal good news this week. She took her last prednisone pill. She has some minor issues, which will hopefully slowly fade into history.

Thursday our neighbors came over. We sat on the back porch, 6 feet apart, with our own snacks and drinks, and had an evening of conversation.

WBAL TV is still not working. I re-arranged the TV antenna and found that we can record the DC station. That shows promise.

All in all, it was a good week. I hope this finds you doing well.