Our clubhouse has a large room used for a lot of different activities such as parties, exercise classes, and Monday Morning Men’s Club. Those of us who participate in Men’s club dedicate ourselves to the major issues of the day. The main requirement is that each member must be willing to bring bagels when it’s his turn. Since the room is used for many purposes, furniture is rearranged several times a day. Scooching furniture around marks up the bamboo floor. Some people wanted to refinish the floor. Others felt that would be a waste because the floor will quickly be marked up by schooching furniture. The wrong side won, and the floor was refinished. Being a powerful force in the community, some men arranged for the refinishing to be started on Tuesday, finished by Friday, with the room available for use Monday morning. Unfortunately, the work ran late. And there was a major miscommunication. The floor has to dry a full week to get maximum protection from the new protective coating. As a result, Men had to meet in the clubhouse living room last Monday, and maybe even again tomorrow. This was a serious inconvenience, because everybody who comes in to make a cup of free coffee in our clubhouse kitchen can kibitz — without ever bring bagels, and even if they aren’t men. There’s a silver lining to every cloud. We turned the living room fireplace on. Hopefully this travesty will be quickly corrected.

Another effect of the floor work is that our Chinese New Year party was not held Friday. It is rescheduled, and Danita and I won’t be here when they finally have it. Our neighbors the Jonses (yes, we have to keep up with the Jonses) and we were so disgusted that we went out to Mission BBQ for dinner. Danita wanted to walk, but besides being rather cool, winds were 20 MPH. Because the Jonses help with daycare for their grand kids, they have child seats in both cars. We had to drive our *gas* car 2 miles to get the 4 of us to dinner. As Jeff said on the way back, “the car could be warmer”.

The weekend isn’t a total loss. We’re having a neighborhood concert tonight. The large room is still closed, but the concert will be in the living room. Music, appetizers, desert, and wine. Life is starting to look up.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had a Circle luncheon Thursday. Our big thing was a concert at the symphony last night. The Brahms and Respighi were wonderful. The other piece was Helen Grime’s Percussion Concerto that was getting its US premier. Colin Currie, the percussionist, was fabulous. But I couldn’t stretch my 19th century brain to encompass the 21st century music.

Danita and I both saw the doctor. Apparently, we’re both still alive. For some reason I don’t quite understand, the doctor has to rate my mental status. (Or maybe there is a reason I’m not quite aware of?) He asked me what I thought he should write. I said “hopeless”.

The fireplace works. The extra table is gone. We went to a neighborhood lunchen talk.

The most interesting thing we did was to visit the National Aquarium animal rescue center, which is across the inlet from their main building. They started offering these tours to members on weekends recently. They allow up to 12 on a tour. Our tour had 4. Besides Danita and me, there was Nolan and his mom. One must be at least 8 years old to take this tour. Today is Nolan’s 8th birthday. It turns out the aquarium doesn’t rescue all that many animals. Most of the animals in this facility are being quarantined before being placed in the main exhibit, or recovering from a sickness, or taking a time-out for being ill-behaved. One of the interesting tanks we saw had 3 rock fish which were too large for the exhibit. I would be severely tempted to cook them. Apparently, the aquarium plans to keep them in their tank for as long as they live.

One of the more fun moments was near the beginning of the tour. The guide asked us his first question: “How do you think we transport fish?” I piped up and suggested “In a plastic bag of water.” I was 100% correct! Unfortunately, I didn’t keep my mouth shut after that. It was the only guess I got right.

We had a good time. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Norman Stifler died. His funeral was at Oakcrest Thursday. Norman was Danita’s uncle, married to Bud’s sister Catherine. Norman was a body builder, Marine, and a Lieutenant in the Baltimore City Fire Department. Catherine was a nurse who earned her PhD. It’s an unlikely combination of backgrounds for a successful marriage, but there’s no doubt they loved each other. When Catherine was suffering from Alzheimer’s, Norman was with her constantly. RIP Norman.

I have a couple of small projects coming up this week. Our fireplace doesn’t turn all the way off. A small flame burns all the time. A fireplace expert will be in Wednesday. Now that we have a nice new table and chair set, we have more tables and chairs than we need. The Habitat for Humanity ReStore will pick up our excess Friday. I had to disassemble the table to get it downstairs. I’m going to have to move it upstairs and assemble it. Assembly is likely to be more difficult than disassembly (matching up screws to holes in the table top).

We’re having lunch with the Chaprnkas Monday. Tony and I usually have lunch the first Tuesday of the month. Since this is the holiday season and Monday is a holiday, we decided the four of us should have lunch this month.

We’ve been planning trips and reserving hotel rooms, both for our Texas Tour and our trip to Italy. We still aren’t done, but we’re getting close. Our great bargain is in Baton Rouge. For less than $500, we are getting 3 days in a suite with a real separate bedroom (door and all), made-to-order hot breakfast, manager’s reception in the afternoon (with wine), indoor pool, plus normal amenities such as parking and WiFi. Queue “Blue Bayou” in the background.

The big news this week — I got my first Social Security check. Money in the bank. Every month. Woo-hoo!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’re having our first snow of the year. Original forecasts were for the snow to stop early this morning with 1 – 3″ accumulation. We’ve had at least 4″ so far, and it looks like it will snow most of the day. They say we could get 8″ total. It’s certainly enough that Danita and I stayed home today. We missed our Bob Evans breakfast, but we might don our boots this afternoon and walk to a Long Horn dinner, thanks to Mom’s gift card. It’s plenty good enough and an easy walk.

I feel pleased with myself. I was able to repair my Sony STR-VX22 stereo. It was no big deal, but I was happy to get it working. This vintage unit is circa 1982. This was the second repair. The first was around 1985 or so. It still sounds great. Way to go Sony. https://classicreceivers.com/sony-str-vx22

We spent a lot of time planning the details of our Italy trip in August-September. The only thing we had in place was the air tickets over and back and the cruise. We’re flying over early and staying late to visit Florence, Vienna, Pisa, and get a couple more days in Rome. We found our first choice hotel in Vienna was full and some other hotels are selling their rooms at a good pace. The cruise is now totally full. We’ve planned Florence, Pisa, and Venice. Danita is nailing down the last details of our extra days in Rome and looking at what we want to do when we dock at the other cities. I’ll reserve hotel rooms today.

We had a neighborhood party yesterday and won’t have another one until Saturday. It’s a tough life, but somebody has to live it.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Greetings from West Palm Beach. Mom had a plumbing leak in her master bath. By the time it was discovered, there was a good amount of mold in the bath and part of the bedroom. Mom was distraught. Gayle came down to help out. Progress was minimal because of the holiday season. Just as Gayle was leaving, Mom had a second unrelated leak at the kitchen sink. Mom and Gayle dried it up and rinsed with a Clorox solution and thought everything in the kitchen was OK. I came down Wednesday to meet with the contractor, sign a contract, and get stuff out of her bedroom. Just as the contractor was leaving, he noticed the kitchen has mold. Mom took the second mold infestation pretty hard.

Things are made more difficult because Mom’s insurance company is slow to pay. Mom has to front the money for mold remediation. After the insurance company reimburses that cost, Mom will use part of the money to start the reconstruction. The whole thing is quite a mess. It will be months before everything is put back together. We don’t even know how much the contractor will have to remove from the kitchen to get all the mold.

We spent  most of the weekend out of the house, visiting farmer markets and such. Spectacular weather made it easy to be outside.

I am flying home tomorrow. I can talk with the contractor from Baltimore. The insurance company has a letter from Mom giving me permission to talk on her behalf. It meets their stated requirements, we’ll see how well it works. The contractor will remove mold in the master bedroom next week. Hopefully Mom won’t have too hard of a time next week.

Ed & Lynne hosted Christmas dinner twice this year. Ryn was coming down to visit with us on Christmas Day and got to Ed’s place before dinner. We had a nice Christmas dinner. The Reeds came up Saturday. Sunday we all went back to Ed’s place for another holiday dinner, this time including Ed’s kids and grandkids. Ryn left for a community in Virginia this morning; the Reeds will leave to go home tomorrow. A couple of pics are below. More pics are on the website. Keeping labels synced with pictures is difficult. There’s a new version of my web site software that should improve this before we have another big party.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

1: Julia, Pat, Bryon, Danita, Elizabeth, Ryn
2: Jul and Pat
3: Bryon, Danita, Elizabeth
4: Danita, Elizabeth, Ryn
5: Addie (back), Suzanne
6: Pete and Joe
7: Mark, Pat, Danita, Ryn
8: Ed, Lynne’s back
9: Toni, Rebecca, Maisie (the star of the party, Joe and Toni’s baby)

Not a lot happened this week, other than furniture assembly. I managed to put 4 dowel pins in the wrong holes. I had to drill them out, which went well. I found myself offering half my kingdom for a dowel pin. The big-box hardware store has countless square feet, but doesn’t dowel pins in the sell the size I need. I could order them online, but wasn’t sure how they are measured. (Don’t laugh — 2 x 4 timber is actually 1.5 x 3.5.) I bought a bag of the wrong size dowel pins to make sure I knew how to measure dowel pins in the table kit so I could order new dowel pins that would fit in the table.

I ordered a variety box of 270 from Amazon. The box contained pins the right diameter, but they were too long. I needed a dremel tool to shorten them and chamfer the  edge. After recovering from my mistake, I found a hole that was not drilled correctly (fixed with my drill), a dowel pin that was the wrong size (already had that covered), and a leaf that wouldn’t sit flat because fitting blocks were the wrong size (my new small hand circular saw came to the rescue). All in all, I needed some tools that weren’t on the recommended list. If anybody needs dowel pins, let me know. I have plenty in a variety of sizes.

The chairs didn’t have any factory defects, but one chair had obviously been returned. The chair had an extra layer of shrink-wrap, and the hardware bag had a hole in it. That would have been OK, except the previous owner had managed to cross-thread three bolts. I called Ikea to see if they could send me some bolts, but they have an unusually high volume of calls. Regrettably, they can’t take mine. Click. So we have an excellent table and three chairs. Ikea has a generous return policy, but it requires a trip to College Park and I’m not in the mood to be on the road this close to Christmas. I’ll return it next year.

Christmas traffic is as angsty as ever in this high-stress holiday season. Thursday, we went to Bowman’s Restaurant in Baltimore for a Circle lunch. (It was one of the few times we have been in Bowman’s that wasn’t a funeral. That place seems to be the official funeral restaurant of the Hartka family.) Somebody got so frustrated they started honking their horn in the Harbor Tunnel because traffic was moving slowly. It’s certainly angsty enough to keep me off my bike until after Christmas. Better to stay home, assemble furniture, and replace the bike chain.

Speaking of bike chains, I think I’ll replace mine now.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

All our Christmas stuff is received and wrapped (thanks to Danita). The house is decorated (thanks to Danita, again). Well, there is one small thing that is delayed or lost. We’ll get that squared away (Danita again!).

We went to a wonderful show at the Meyerhoff yesterday afternoon. The Baltimore Symphony played Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker while Troupe Vertigo did a cirque acrobatic show loosely modeled after the ballet. We had very good seats. The cirque was incredibly good. The troupe has a website with some pics and a video, but it does not even begin to do them justice.

Our self-Christmas present this year is a new kitchen table and chairs. We’ve been using the same table we had in the breakfast room of our house in Kingsville. The old table is very long in the tooth. The legs are pigeon-toed. Some of the finish has warn off. Chair fabric is hopelessly stained. Back in Kingsville, our breakfast room wouldn’t comfortably take a normal 3 ft x 5 ft table, so we had that old table custom made to 3 ft x 4 ft. We moved it to Columbia because our house can’t comfortably fit a standard 3 ft x 5 ft table. (Sound familiar?) Expandable tables less than 5 ft long are hard to find. our new table is from Ikea. Here’s a sign that we’re getting older. Instead of tying boxes to the top of our car, we paid to have the table delivered to our home. It should arrive tomorrow. Then I get the pleasure of assembling it myself.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Christmas shopping is done. Some of the gifts have already arrived. Wrapping paper is purchased. Let the holidays begin.

We attended an interesting presentation at the Walter’s Art Museum last Sunday. Eric Cline talked about the collapse of bronze age civilizations In 1177 B.C. He has some interesting ideas. His book on the subject is available, but I think we got the general idea.

Tuesday evening I attended our security committee’s presentation about camera doorbells such as the Ring doorbell. Our large clubhouse room can seat about 130 or so. We had a standing room only turnout. The presentation presented a lot of enthusiasm. I think I may be the only person who attended and won’t be buying a camera doorbell. I’m thinking about Orwell’s “1984”. In the novel. citizens were spied on by the Big Brother government. One of Orwell;s genius ideas is that the government got people to pay for and install the spy devices, by including them in things people wanted. Do you want a wall-size TV? It’s expensive, but you can have it. It comes complete with cameras and microphones. We’ve outdone Orwell by quite a bit. We carry cell phones with microphones and GPS. If we leave home without our phone, it’s no problem. Fitbits record our location and heart rate. We have smart speakers that listen to what we say. The Ring doorbells automatically make their video available to the police. Now I can’t walk down the street without multiple cameras recording me. I admit the government might not be using this stuff to spy on us. But it wouldn’t be very hard.

I bought an advance copy of Turbo Tax. There are significant changes this year. I am not sure I understand all of them. An advance copy should let me estimate 2018 taxes and help me decide what to do to optimize myself for 2019. Unfortunately, the interesting part of Turbo Tax is not available. They warn that because of the massive changes, it is not likely to be available before mid-January. At least I don’t feel so bad about being confused about some of the tax changes this year.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.