We had an entire week without tornadoes in Howard county, but we did have a severe storm with high winds. Trees were down all over the place. Roads were closed. 3000 people were without power. The only effect to us was an evening’s loss of internet. Within 2 days, the roads and power were restored. Columbia has over 100 miles of pedestrian trails. Our neighborhood is “land locked” by major roads. I use a couple of trails to break out when I ride. It was easy enough to walk around the downed trees. I figured it would be a week at least before the trails were clear. But they were clear by the third day. That surprised me.

The contractor said the construction on Mom’s house should start next week. Mom is looking forward to that.

Danita sees the doctor tomorrow. Until now, Danita has received treatment for her symptoms. She’s hoping that tomorrow will be the beginning of finding the cause.

I’m getting a crown Tuesday. Our dentist does the entire crown in one sitting. I go in at 9 AM and I’m home for lunch, complete with a permanent crown. (And a pretty hefty bill. But hey, that’s life.)

We had a neighborhood concert/pot luck dinner last night. We don’t have another party until Friday’s Grill & Chill (bad hamburgers and good neighbors).

Danita successfully applied for Medicare. That was harder than it sounds. She kept getting a message that she couldn’t be verified. She called the help line, and was told she had to un-freeze her credit report at Equifax. That should have been streight forward, but Equifax switched from a PIN verification to a password verification, and we weren’t able to get the switch-over to a password to work. Danita finally called Equifax to un-freeze her report. We’ll have to fix the password later. Danita is also also applying for her pension benefit at Raytheon and Honeywell.

We decided to pay for access to shows on cbs.com for the summer. They have several series that are not broadcast, and are available only online. Yesterday, Danita was watching Bonanza on ME TV and I wanted to watch Twilight Zone on cbs.com. There being only one TV, I decided to watch Twilight Zone on my computer. Somehow, I accidentally switched the TV to Roku mode. It was no big deal, but it sure surprised both of us.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita is still not doing very well. She is looking forward to her doctor appointment June 10. It seems like a long way to go.

We gave a “Lunch & Learn” presentation Thursday. Typically a resident will talk about their career. Danita and I decided to offer a joint presentation based on our experience as National Park Service volunteer rangers. It was a lot of fun. That evening we went to a BSO concert. We were surprised the musicians weren’t sitting on the stage playing around with their instruments. When the musicians filed in, many in the audience gave a standing ovation. We didn’t know this, but the BSO management had announced earlier in the day that the summer concert season is cancelled, the concert season is changed from 52 weeks to 40 weeks, and the musicians will not be paid for those 12 weeks. There was a lot of emotion in the audience. When we got out in the lobby, we checked for news articles on our phones. The BSO is over $16 million in debt. Maybe the management is taking a prudent step. Anyway, it was a good concert.

We’re not through talking about Thursday yet! After we got home, Howard County had their second tornado, exactly one week after their first tornado. Tornadoes are rare in this part of the country. Having one in the summer is unusual. This one was a little further to the west — about 15 miles from our house. Only a few buildings were damaged, with plenty of trees down and power outages.

I’m moving on to Friday, but it turns out I’m not quite through with the tornado. The weather Friday was gorgeous, so I decided to do an out-and back (same roads both ways) to that area. It’s a route I ride about once a week. The objective is to ride 20 miles to the Glenwood Library so I can eat a Royal Farms sub and a bag of chips, then return home. Riding out was fine. Coming back, the road was blocked because a tree fell on a car. Considering the traffic at that spot is typically one car every couple of minutes, that is a quite unusual event. I ended up taking a 30-minute detour to get around the road closure.

Moving on to today, I thought the aftereffects of the tornado would certainly be over, but I was wrong. It is another beautiful day. I did a ride to Ellicott City. This is another ride I do once or twice a week. The objective is to ride a circle route of about 20 miles total, taking many hills as possible, and see whether The Breadery has any chocolate-raspberry muffins. (They didn’t, I had to settle for a 3-cheese scone.) I had to take a walk in the woods to get to my scone. A tree had fallen earlier in the morning, taking a power line down and closing the street.

That’s plenty of excitement for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This being the Sunday before Memorial Day, it is the day of the Parkton Cup Invitational, and Danita and I have scored a coveted invitation! Mark and Jiajia are in town to prepare the US physics high-schoolers for the international physics competition and were able to spend the afternoon with us. Here’s a pic. There are some more on the website.

Danita is still experiencing her mysterious pains. She seems to be doing a little better. She’s able to do most of the things she normally does. Her next doctor appointment is in two weeks.

The big news in Columbia is the tornado that struck last week. It touched down in Clarksville and followed Rte 32 to Columbia, a distance of about 10 miles. There were trees and branches down all over the area. Some very dramatic damage occurred within 5 miles of us. If you go to the website, you will see a picture of the tornado cloud near the Columbia Mall, and a picture of a tree that cut through a house like a knife through butter. Fortunately, there was only one injury, which was not life threatening. You can see some interesting pics on the website.

After all the bike riding I’ve done, I thought I had seen it all. But I had three special challenges this week. The first was a machine that created huge clouds of dust. It was supposed to be a street cleaner, but in this case it was only creating dust. It drove slower than a bike, but not slow enough for me to pass. So I just hung back and endured the dust as best I could. The second was a squirrel. Squirrels can be quite dangerous to bikers. They can get caught up in the spokes of a wheel, spin around, and hit the fork. When that happens the spokes experience a sudden force in a direction they are not designed to handle. The end result is a ruined wheel and an immediate transition from vertical to horizontal for the cyclist. Squirrels are nothing new for me, but this one was at the entrance to an intersection. There was a lot of “interesting” traffic absorbing my attention. When I finally noticed the squirrel at the last moment, it seemed to me it was running much slower than squirrels normally run. Fortunately it was just fast enough to prevent a close encounter of the first kind. The third and most distressing unusual encounter was a tractor in a field. (Yes, there are farms in western Howard County.) Normally this is not a problem, but in this case, the tractor was upwind. And it had a huge tank filled with an unknown liquid with a large boom on the back spraying the field, and everything else that was downwind. One spot on the boom was leaking an evil-looking foam, like some strange rabid monster foaming at the mouth. The farmer was well separated from the spray. I was riding up hill. Going faster to pass sooner was no more of an option than holding my breath. It was a tough week for biking!

I hope everybody has an excellent Memorial Day holiday.

Last Sunday Addie and Susanne had their first communion and their baptism. We went up to Ed’s house for the ceremony and party. The priest at Ed & Lynne’s church is being reassigned to our church starting July 1. It was fun to get a preview of how he conducts mass. As their retirement project, Ed and Lynne laid a new hardwood floor in their family room. They re-used some Brazilian Cherry. They also replaced the big old wood stove hearth with a much smaller quartz hearth. It was a lot of work, but it came out beautiful.

Danita was going over to Riderwood twice a week because of Bud’s doctor appointments. That’s finally over, but the doctor appointments have been replaced with PT appointments. Danita’s pills haven’t improved her mysterious pains. She’s approaching this as a long term project. She’ll be getting some blood work done, and she is also going to start PT. Danita’s been able to get gentle exercise in the pool the last couple of days. She finds it helps quite a bit.

Mom’s looking forward to getting her house fixed. We’re told they will design the kitchen this week, and will also start fixing the master bedroom. Mom went to talk the Century Village real estate office about what improvements would do the most to increase the value of her house. The results she got were quite surprising (to me, anyway). People who buy in Century Village don’t mind having press board kitchen cabinets, as long as they aren’t 30 years old. The improvement they find most desirable is tile floors throughout the house (including the bedrooms).

Friday morning was “Bike to Work” day. I don’t work, so I don’t commute to work. But everybody who bikes was invited. They had food to eat and swag bags. Friday afternoon, we had a Circle dinner at the Bauman’s. We have our first warm days of the year. The high today was 85. I went for a ride this afternoon. My poor body was so used to riding in cool weather, it couldn’t quite get the sweat engine cranked up. I’m sure tomorrow’s ride will be better.

I would write more, but it’s getting to be time for our neighborhood party. We have a concert with wine and cheese, followed by deserts. It’s a tough life, but somebody has to live it.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’re having a lot of rain. I finally got 3 days in a row without rain and put a second coat of paint on the porch.

Danita is feeling a little better, but she has low energy and still has pains in the morning & evening. She goes back to the doctor Wednesday. She’s continuing to visit Bud twice a week because of his doctor appointments. So Danita is quite busy.

Mom’s house reconstruction has finally started. She signed a contract Friday. The kitchen designer is the next step.

We had a neighborhood party Friday. This morning, we went to the Preakness balloon ascension at the Howard County Fair Grounds. They are planning to have all-day activities with rides and junk food galore. We got there about sunrise. They spent about 45 minutes dithering about the weather. They decided to set up the first balloon, which is used for tethered flights, and see how things went. Things went well, and about 10 or 12 balloon trucks drove out onto the field and started launching. The idea is to launch balloons one at a time, so the first is safely clears before the second starts inflating. Unfortunately, shortly after the second balloon inflated, the wind picked up and they shut everything down. It must have been frustrating for the balloon folks.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

No big crowds this year

Muddy Midway

Safety Tip: Keep the flame away from the fabric

First Balloon

Second Balloon

There have been lots of doctors appointments for Danita. She started suffering from mysterious pains two weeks ago. The doctor gave her some pills. So far, the results have been somewhat less than miraculous. Bud had two doctors appointments last week. He has mohs surgery coming up on Monday. We finished up this week with a colonoscopy for Danita yesterday. Who ever knew that staying healthy is so hard? I think we’ll be enjoying our neighborhood party this evening.

I’m typing this note on my brand new Microsoft Surface Go. I thought I was more-or-less keeping up on what modern computers can do. Boy was I ever wrong. In looking at small travel computers, I learned that one can by a laptop dock that will simultaneously charge the computer (up to 45 watts), provide video for two external monitors, add 5 USB ports, plus throw in a 1 Gbps Ethernet port. The doc works on most laptops through a USB 2 or USB c port.But wait, there’s more! The laptop can send or receive video for one external monitor wirelessly. I had no idea. I won’t be buying any docks for my Go. The mission of this computer is to run Windows on a platform that is as small and portable as possible. I’m quite pleased with my selection.

In the mean time, I have some issues to work out. Danita and I use Dropbox to share files, especially about travel. Dropbox decided to limit their free plan to synching files to no more than 3 devices. We have 5 (my two computers, my phone, and Danita’s phone). We have an Office 365 subscription which gives us a huge space on Microsoft OneDrive for free, but Microsoft stores those files in the clear (not encrypted). They scan the files for nasties and Intellectual Property violations (i.e. stolen movies). We don’t have deep dark secrets, but I find that kind of creepy. Plus it would include detailed travel plans. If anybody has suggestions, let me know.

Mom has been waiting since Christmas to get her house fixed. The problem is her insurance. The insurance situation in Florida is well known, but her insurance company is supposed to be one of the worst. We might have good news. The contractor she selected cut a deal for 150 of their clients last week. Now that the deal is cut, we have to wait for the money to start flowing. It seems like genuine progress to me. Time will tell.

I’ll close this with a tip I picked up from “King Lear”, a movie on Amazon Prime with my favorite bad guy, Anthony Hopkins. “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.” That’s good advice from an ancient master.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I spent quite a bit of time on Mom’s computer this week. Her new ISP, Atlantic Broadband, installed her new router and TV box. They connected her computer and printer to the new WiFi. But they didn’t install the printer on the computer. I wasn’t surprised they didn’t install the printer. I ran the HP driver/software package. It found and “installed” the printer, but Mom couldn’t print anything from her computer. The document would just spool out to the bit bucket. I tried a couple of different things, but no dice. Geek Squad will be at her house Thursday. They might install the printer through a USB connection. Whatever Geek Squad decides to do, I decided I should remove all traces of my work, Removing the printer and software is easy. Removing all printer drivers is more difficult. Mom’s computer doesn’t have the printer management console (maybe because it’s Windows home edition). Windows 10 has changed a lot, so things posted on the Internet don’t always work. I’m confident I backed everything out, but it took a few hours.

The back porch needs to be painted this year. Before it is painted, it needs to be cleaned. It’s especially dirty because the plumber did the pre-installation work for the hot water heater on the back porch. (The temperature was very nice, but there was a light rain. The plumber really appreciated being able to work outside where there is plenty of room with a roof over his head.) Plus some bird had decided it would be really cool to practice low altitude bombing on the center of the porch. Before the porch is cleaned, the deck above it should be cleaned. There are some areas of the deck I haven’t been cleaning, and I noticed they are kind of gross. So it’s become quite a project. So far, everything is clean down to the porch floor. The porch floor has been pre-cleaned, but needs a good brushing down. I have the better part of a gallon of paint from 4 years ago. I went to Sherwin Williams to get a gallon of that paint, only to find they don’t carry that product any more. I had to buy 2 gallons of their new, improved product. Plus they don’t accept old paint so I have to figure out when the dump will be open for unneeded paint. I’ve put in two hard days of work so far (hard for me, anyway). I figure I have two more days to go.

While I was cleaning the porch, a borer bee came by looking for a nifty place to build a nest. It was lousy timing for the bee. I was holding a pressure washer nozzle. But I figure they’ll be back. Borer bee chemicals available over the counter aren’t all that effective. It costs a small fortune to have a pro come out. Plus one visit is never enough. What a pain.

My counting team was scheduled to count the collection at Church this week. We got extra help, but it still took longer than usual to finish counting. Danita left to pick up Bud. I’m home alone for the moment. When Danita shows up, we’ll go up to Ed’s for Easter dinner.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’ve had great weather, with mild temperatures and occasional rain. Spring certainly is an enjoyable season.

We had a lot happen this week. We started last Sunday with a comedian/illusionist with  wine and desert. The entertainment was delightful. Some comedians have a sense of humor based on an edge of meanness. This person was not like that at all. Everybody who came had a great time.

Thursday our hot water heater failed. I was shaving and realized I needed more cold water than normal. I measured our hot water temperature. Instead of 120, it was 155. I used the web and the serial number to determine the water heater was 15 years old — it’s time for a new one. By the time I called the plumber, it was 4:45. They had a new one installed within 24 hours, which I thought was pretty amazing. We had to step down in capacity from 80  to 55 gallons. 80 gallon conventional electric water heaters are illegal in the US because they use too much energy. Plus, so much insulation is added that a new 55 gallon heater is just about the same size as an old 80 gallon heater. Did you notice a weird placement of the word “conventional” above? It turns out one can still by an 80 gallon hybrid heater. This has a heat pump to help heat the water. It uses much less energy, but the added cost and complexity only begin to describe the disadvantage of a hybrid unit. Plumbers fix water heaters, but they don’t know much about heat pumps. As a result, repairs are often trial-and-error affairs. The plumber told me he once had to make 4 visits before a hybrid unit was fixed.

I had the plumber add a “tank extender valve”. Plumbers are not permitted to set the water temperature above 120. The temperature setting is behind tamper-evident doors these days. A tank extender mixes cold water with the hot. The tank temperature can be set to 140, with the valve reducing the temperature to 120, with the net result of getting an extra 10 gallons in virtual capacity. After the plumber left, I turned the valve to increase the temperature as high as I could. I wanted 140, but ended up with only 135. I keep on thinking of the days of yore, when we were told that using a dishwasher meant the hot water should be 140 for health reasons. It’s easy enough to mix cold with the hot at the faucet.

Danita and I had scheduled a lecture at UMBC Thursday. I had to wait for the plumber, so Danita attended for both of us. According to the lecturer, the Chesapeake bay water level will raise 3 1/2 feet by 2080. It will be impossible to protect the popular islands (Smith’s, St. Michael’s ,etc.) Huge swaths of Dorchester County will be under water. It was a sobering talk.

Thursday evening, another resident and I gave a cybersecurity presentation. We had good attendance. Many people told me we did a good job. A few people told me they adopted one or more of the security measures we recommended.

We had an enjoyable neighborhood party Friday. We closed the week out by serving at a parish lasagna dinner yesterday evening.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had quite a week. Tuesday I saw my dermatologist. Wednesday Danita took Bud to see the cardiologist. Thursday Danita planned to eat breakfast with Margo, one of the women she worked with at UMBC. Those plans got changed when Bud called at 4:20 AM, confused and disoriented. Danita spent the morning with Bud, taking him to the Urgent Care. After a morning of tests, they decided there was nothing wrong. Meanwhile, I was calling Margo to cancel the breakfast.

Our street had a brunch at Bob Evans yesterday. I was talking with our neighbor. Carmel was going to go, her husband Jeff was staying home. I twice offered to give Carmel a ride. She twice said she would drive herself. Imagine my surprise when I was standing inside Bob Evans and received a call from Carmel asking where I was! Obviously her recollection of our conversation was different than mine. I was quite embarrassed. But it was all OK. Everybody had a great time at the brunch.

Danita found a new bakery/deli in our area. Of course we had to try it out. We went there for Sunday breakfast this morning. Their food is very good, with generous size servings. We were commenting on how unusual it is to see chocolate covered baklava. The owner overheard us and brought us two, gratis. It was as unusual as it sounds. But the chocolate croissant, elephant ear, and quiche was all quite good. They have very good looking cakes. Many of the cakes come in a standard size or an “individual” size. The individual size looks big enough to satisfy us both. I’m thinking we might find an excuse to pick up a desert before long.

We’re having a neighborhood party this evening. We’re going to see a magician/comedian. I think it sounds like a natural combination of talents. We don’t know how good this guy is going to be, but I’m sure we’ll enjoy the wine and deserts.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had quite a nice week. The weather was great, with sunny skies temperatures warming to near 70 near the end of the week. Our dinner out was Gyro sandwiches at Tino’s. This Italian restaurant has Greek Gyros that are as good as any I have ever had. We went to Stations at St. Louis Friday and enjoyed their most excellent grilled cheese sandwiches. (Simple minds are easily entertained!) We went to a Sunday afternoon musical at Spotlighter’s Theater downtown. We used to go to Spotlighter’s frequently when we were young. We haven’t been for many years. I forgot how intimate the theater is. It’s a theater in the round. They have a small stage with two rows of seats on all 4 sides. One corner has room for a 5 piece band, if they are very friendly. There is no way to go to this theater and not be involved in the play.