We have really great news this week. Danita is feeling much better. Danita’s been out of the easy chair and sleeping in out bed for most of the week. The Prednisone did the trick. Her rheumatologist is already starting to taper her dose down. She’s still working on her range of motion, but most of that is at home. She’s cutting the PT down to once a week.

I had some bad news. Wednesday, I ran my bike off the edge of the road. It had a bit of a drop and I ended up splayed across a grass field. I was in the last quarter of one of my more challenging routes, rolling down hill and feeling good when it happened. Danita was taking her dad to a doctor, so I decided my best option was to ride home. I wimped out and took the easy, 5 mile route instead of the fun and challenging 10 mile route I had planned. The bike got a bent crank arm. I got bumps and bruises to my upper body. The doc patched me up with some butterfly bandages. I’m getting around pretty well, but it still hurts when I laugh. So Danita’s in our bed, but she’s sleeping alone because I’m downstairs in the easy chair. This recovery thing is a little slower now that I’m over 70.

We don’t have any neighborhood parties this weekend, so we plan to go to a play at Baltimore County Community College tomorrow. Tomorrow is a “5th Sunday”. We try to do a special breakfast. This week, we’re going to a Mexican restaurant on the other side of the tracks. This place is a real hoot. It’s a short drive to the prison and several truck stops. The shopping center it’s in is just a pawn shop short of perfection. But the prices are good and the food is great. We had dinner there one night and had a great time. I understand the place had even more atmosphere when it was located in the back of the gas station. Monday I’ll go back to see the doc. I’m healing up pretty well, so I expect to be thrown out with an admonition to stop doing foolish things. Monday evening I’m giving a neighborhood presentation about how one can save money by “cutting the cord”.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita is still feeling pains. The prednisone has helped, but it hasn’t been the miracle cure that it is for some patients with PMR.

Danita and I met her siblings at Bud’s place for a father’s day dinner last Sunday.

I had a very unusual event happen this week. Our shower door has been droopy. It got worse, and I called in some experts. They found that the door wasn’t properly reinforced. The entire 65 pound door was being held up by screws in wallboard.So the men drilled out the old plugs, installed new plugs as a temporary measure, and went to their next appointment. An hour or so later, there was a short in the bathroom. There is a switch for the closet light on the other side of the wall from where the men drilled. I figured they nicked the wire. I removed a piece of the wall and found the wire completely undisturbed.

But there was still the short. I removed the wiring from the switch. Still a short. How about the closet light fixture? No.I removed wiring from the bathroom fan. No joy. I tried the fixture over the vanity. Nope. Could the breaker be defective. I took the electric panel cover off and swapped breakers. The breaker works fine. There aren’t many possibilities left. There are 3 switches on the other side of the bathroom. I took the first one out, no problem found. When I took the middle one out, I saw the darnedest thing. There was a sliver of the hot wire exposed where it went into the switch. The safety ground wire was right next to it, and part of it had melted. That switch sat inside the wall for 10 years with no problems, then decided to short shortly after those guys drilled the wall on the opposite side of the bathroom.

Fixing the short was easy. But I still had a bunch of stuff torn apart, with parts on the floor and wires sticking out of walls. The light fixture over the vanity was so cheap I couldn’t reassemble it. But I got everything else put together. When I was done, the light fixture in the closet didn’t work. Danita and I went to Lowe’s and didn’t see anything we liked. So we went out for pizza. When we came home, I ordered the fixtures from Amazon. The closet fixture was a breeze to put up and worked perfectly. The vanity fixture was even better. It was the same size as the original fixture. You can’t see any of that ugly discolored drywall around the light. It was much better built and therefore much easier to install. The best feature was the drop cords that suspended the lamp near the base plate while I connected the wires with my “other two hands”. I finished the installation just in time so that Danita and I could go to a condo party. We had a food truck with pit-beef, pulled pork, and other foods of that ilk. The weather was perfect.

Everything in the bathroom is back in place, except for the bracing for the shower door. Unfortunately, the screws are right next to an existing stud, so I can’t just insert a 2×4, because the screws will be at the edge and won’t get a good bite on the wood. I have a workman lined up to help, but it’s a small job and I have to wait until he has time in his schedule.

Now we’re all set to attend the neighborhood concert Sunday, with snacks, desserts, and libations.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita is still suffering from her mystery pains, but things are starting to look up. She saw a rheumatologist who said she probably has PMR. That’s what I had some 20 years ago. The best way to diagnose PMR is that it responds very quickly to prednisone. Danita started her regimen Friday evening. Fingers crossed! She’s still doing her PT, mostly working on range of motion.

Our condo (Kendall 1) had some really great news. When the contractor built our houses, they installed some of the flashing upside down. This allowed water to leak into affected houses. The symptoms weren’t obvious for years. When the symptoms became obvious, it took time to figure out the cause, find an engineering company to do a study, and do a test repair on one unit. The condo sued the builder. The builder brought in the subcontractors and the architect. Then the builder merged with another company, and we started all over again. This has been going on for the last 3 ½ years. Residents who want to move out have been able to sell their houses, but it was tough. Most banks wouldn’t offer a mortgage. Most sales were cash deals. About a week ago, the board announced that they have settled the suit in arbitration and they are very satisfied with the deal. Residents don’t know what the deal is yet because the final papers are still being drawn up, but it’s obviously a multi-million deal. So far as I know, my unit isn’t affected. But the condo will be carefully inspecting all units to make sure. We haven’t even started planning the repairs. The general hope is that we can start construction next spring, with construction lasting about a year. After that, we’ll have to work on some sidewalk and street repairs we’ve been putting off. With heavy construction equipment moving in and out, those repairs are expected to grow. We have some residents with professional experience in the construction industry. We’ll be calling on their expertise as we move forward.

We’ve had some delightful weather. I got a nice set of rides. That’s good because it looks like it will be a rainy week coming up.

Danita’s been working on her retirement papers. She’s made good progress, but somehow the package sent by Raytheon got returned as undeliverable. I’ve been working on my minimum withdrawal from my IRA, which is with TRP (T. Rowe Price). It’s a slow go. I linked our savings account to my IRA funds. TRP had to do micro-transactions for verification. After the micro transactions, I didn’t receive the Email that told me what to do next. I went to their website to see if I could figure it out, and found their login system was down. I called customer service and they fixed me up. I’m all set to buy more funds from TRP, but I have to wait another week before I can move funds out. After that, I’ll be able to set up an automatic annual transfer. And after that, I’ll be able to set up charitable contributions directly from my IRA, so the donations don’t count as income. That last is important because the new tax laws are very unfavorable for Danita and me. My goal was to get all this done before July 1. It’s going to be close. Fortunately, there’s noting special about the July 1 date. It’s just a goal.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

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.