We started the week with a savory pie for dinner on pie day (3/14). We left for NC Friday morning. We got in a little late and got caught up in rush-hour traffic. We arrived a little late but in good shape. Bryon had soccer games Saturday and Sunday. We didn’t have any big adventures, but we did get to see the movie Zootopia. It was a lot fun and everybody had a good time. We came back on Monday with no incidents or even heavy traffic. The visit is really about the pics, so here they are.

Pi Day Dinner

Bryon in the Soccer Game

Bryon in the Soccer Game

Liz Being Liz

Liz Playing Restaurant Waitress

Bryon playing restaurant chef

Screen Time on Bryon’s tablet

There are no pics this week.

Danita’s stress level is quite high. Retiring is a big change for her, of course. She’s only had two jobs, and she’s had this one for 16 years. It’s also a big change for her subordinates. These are people she cares about. She’s hired all of them. She’s worked with them for quite a long time. They had a staff meeting Tuesday. After several months of knowing Danita is leaving, the center directors presented their plans for how the organization will move forward. And they blew it. They still don’t know what they want to do. Some of the things they have started just don’t make sense. When asked (several times by several different staff), the directors gave non-answer answers. There was angst rolling on the floor Tuesday afternoon. Friday Danita had a clean-up party. The office staff go through paper files, sorting everything into Keep / Discard / Shred. This is basically an all-day party, so things were a little better going into the weekend. That’s good because it made our Friday evening neighborhood party more enjoyable. Besides the Friday party, we also hada Circle dinner party yesterday and a BSO concert today.

Next week is spring break for the university. Danita will work during spring break, swapping those days to take a couple of days off for our road trip. One of the things Danita will work while alone in the office is her application for emeritus status. It’s unusual for administrators to get emeritus status, but she was the acting center director for JCET and was recognized as Presidential Award winner one year. There is precedence for administrators to get emeritus status at UMBC. She has a pretty good chance.

The road trip should be fun. We’re going to see Jul, Pat, and the grand kids. We’re leaving Friday the 18th and returning Monday the 21. There just might be some pics next week.

It seems so banal to write about the weather week after week, but our weather continues to be so — un-banal. After our dusting of snow last week, we switched to unheard of warm temperatures. We had two days in the 80s, crushing all previous records for high temperature. The forecast is for temperatures to drop a little, but stay well above normal. It makes for great bike riding, and it’s nice to be able to open the house up during the day.

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

First Bonus – Last Weekend Outing

Weary Herakles

A “Weekend Outing” is an outing one could do any time, but it is done on the weekend because that’s the time that doesn’t conflict with work. An example is visiting an exhibit at an art museum. Our trip to the National Gallery of Art in DC to see “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World”. The exhibit will be closing soon, and we went to see it Sunday. We got there just as the museum opened. We saw all the art, but didn’t linger. By the time we were done at 1, the gallery was quite crowded. It will probably be our last weekend outing, because the gallery would certainly be less crowded on a week day.

Portrait of a Man

We have a tradition of visiting DC when the weather is very cold, very hot, or otherwise lousy. This time it was dry in 50, which is very nice compared to our norm. It was an excellent show. I didn’t take my camera, but I wish I had. When I went to steal pics off the web, I found the images to be quite small. I’m sure I could have taken better pictures with my camera.

The technical work, emotion shown, and style make all of these amazing works of art. I’m including my top 4 favorites from the show.

#4 – Weary Herakles – The technical work and emotion make this a stunning piece of art (as most of them were). This made #4 because of how it humanized a heroic icon.

Dancing Faun

#3 – Portrait of a Man – The art experts claim that nobody knows who this man is. And from the photo, one would probably agree. But seeing it in person, I couldn’t help but notice this was a dead ringer for Ted Kennedy. How did they know?

#2 – Dancing Faun. I thought this was the best piece of art in the show.

Drunk Herakles

#1 – Drunk Herakles. With or without a camera, a picture just can’t do this one justice. One has to see this in person to appreciate how the mighty Herakles is teetering on his perch. Only by using his mighty club can he avoid face-planting himself. The work is unusually complete. Even Herakles’ stone seat is original. The only thing missing is the wine glass that was originally in his right hand. (I’m thinking that was red wine.) The combination of great art and great humor made this my favorite piece.

Second Bonus – Two fun web sites

Here’s a couple of web sites I found to be interesting.

First, a video of a magnificent marble music machine. This Rube Goldberg actually makes entertaining (and good) music.

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2016/03/03/469027281/be-amazed-by-this-marvelous-music-machine-powered-by-2000-marbles

Second, OK Go’s music video Upside Down & Inside Out. Besides being good music, the video is shot entirely in a weightless environment. The link includes a short story about the video, a link to the video itself, and a link to a “How we made it” video. It also has links to two more of their videos, including what may be the most amazing Rube Goldberg contraption of all time.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/03/01/468682736/ok-go-weightless-science-art-and-joy

There are several pics this week, and there’s no real apparent purpose. If you look at them, you might start to think that my old camera stopped working, and I got a new one, and I wanted to play with it.

Late Winter Hurrah

After several beautiful days with temps in the 60s, we got another spate of snow. It wasn’t much. When we got up Friday, we found an inch or so on the grass and nothing on the streets or sidewalks. That’s too bad, because Danita was hoping for at least a late opening.

Danita in her office

I got this picture of Danita in her office because we went to dinner in Catonsville Thursday, followed by a concert at UMBC. UMBC has a beautiful, very high tech music concert hall. The performers were a violin – cello – piano trio performing classical music. They were very good, which was sad, because the concert was not well attended. Students in Music 303 were require to attend (they had a sign-in sheet). They were polite, but it obviously was not their normal genre of music. I think Danita and I might have been the only people in attendance who didn’t have a formal relationship with the UMBC music department. The trio definitely deserved a larger and more appreciative audience.

Smith Island Cake (PB & Chocolate flavored)

As good as the concert was, I don’t want to overlook the dinner, which was also excellent. We went to the Catonsville Gourmet Restaurant the previous week, and we liked it so much we went back on Thursday. The food was still excellent. It included my first-ever taste of Smith Island cake. This is an 8-layer cake. The cake was a little dense and heavy, with plenty of icing between the layers. It was quite good.

Count Down Chain

Danita’s time at work is getting very short. The count-down chain no longer drapes over the door. The pic was for the last day of February. Now it doesn’t even loop back up to the door frame. It just limply hangs on the wall beside the door. Next week will be the last that she works 5 days. We have a road trip planned, then there’s some time off for Easter. Her two bosses are still acting like a deer caught in the headlights. There is a real possibility that Danita will retire before they even decide on a plan for how to organize the office after she leaves. Danita doesn’t mean to be an enabler, but she did give them an out of sorts. Her last day of work is March 31. But she has so much vacation that she will stay on the payroll for two months (keeping her employee medical for those two months). She told them that if they had an emergency, she would come in for a day (and not charge vacation).

Our last bit if news is that we are going to Russia in July. I kept on hearing news that the Ruble was down because of low oil prices. I looked it up, and it is down a lot. Recent historical norms had the Ruble at 30 to the dollar. Now it is 75. So we’re flying to St. Petersburg, staying there for several days, taking a river cruise to Moscow, staying in Moscow for a few days, then coming home. It will be a 2-week trip. St. Petersburg and Moscow are reputed to be two of the most expensive cities in the world. Our hotel rooms will cost less than an equivalent room would cost in Baltimore. How can we pass up this opportunity?

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

There are no pics this week.

You might have heard we had quite a rain early this week. We weren’t affected very much. Danita went through some heavy traffic. We never lost power and we weren’t flooded. I was able to ride the day after the rain stopped. Of course, I stayed away from River Road and other low-lying areas.

An ingrown toenail has been bothering me for over a year. I finally went to the podiatrist Thursday and got it clipped. He claims to have a magic substance that keeps the nail from growing back, so it shouldn’t bother me again. So far, it’s healing very nicely. The doc said I could ride Friday, but it was cold and windy, so I used my “medical condition” as an excuse to stay home. The low last night was near 20.I plan to go out tomorrow, when the high will be 60. That’s an improvement of 40 degrees in about 30 hours. Unfortunately, it won’t last long. It promises to stay warm for several days, then drop below freezing for at least a week. We might even get a little more snow.

I finished my website training class today. I had two participants. The woman passed. The man is pending getting his homework done. The guy is behind. Why am I not surprised? I have one more session starting Thursday, March 3. This session will also have one man and one woman. Will history repeat itself?

We only have two special activities this week. We went to a jazz concert at UMBC last night. Tomorrow we have a neighborhood party.

I get a general interest magazine from my professional society, IEEE. They had a particularly good magazine this month. There are three articles some of you may be interested in looking up. All three are written for laymen. All three discuss points that have not been discussed in the general press. Here are some links, if you are interested …

If you are interested in cars that drive themselves, you may be interested in this:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/selfdriving-cars-will-be-ready-before-our-laws-are

If all-electric cars are your thing, here’s something you should know:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/a-tesla-in-every-garage-not-so-fast

Last but best of all, if you think computers might get smart, check this out. Or if you aren’t interested in Artificial Intelligence, you will probably at least enjoy the beginning of the article, about beer reviews.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-neural-network-that-remembers

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are a couple of pics this week.

Our big news is the trip to Acorn. Kathryn got a grant to take a trip from Eastwind to help Acorn with their butchering. Acorn is an intentional community and is not far from Charlotsville, VA. So we went down to visit. It was both a lot of fun and quite an adventure.

Ever Popular Tulip Poplar Log

Saturday morning, I went out to enter points in the GPS, and the car didn’t start. I charged the battery and Danita drove the car to the dealer to have them check it out. I gave Danita a ride back home and went off to teach my web posting class. We were having lunch when the dealer called and said the car is OK. We are puzzled as to why the battery discharged overnight, but so far, the car is fine. We left a half hour later than planned, picked Mark up, and ran into agonizingly bad traffic in DC. We arrived so late we decided to go to dinner before checking into the hotel. It’s a good thing we were delayed, because Kathryn was just finishing her work for the day when we arrived.

Waterfall with ‘Not Potable’ sign, making this a Foul Water Fall

When we finally got to our hotel, there were two Scrabble games. Danita and Kathryn teamed up on Mark. After two games, they were exactly tied. Sunday we decided to walk the 2 mile Saunders-Monticello Trail. It’s an easy trail, and we enjoyed walking the two miles. About the time we turned around and walk back, it started raining. It stopped raining shortly after we got back to the hotel. Fortunately, we had time to grab a shower and a change of clothes before we had to check out. We spent some time hanging at the hotel, then we took Kathryn back to Acorn and drove home through some more agonizingly slow traffic.

At the second-best Peace and Meditation Bench

We had an excellent food this weekend. Everybody had a different dinner Saturday, and everybody enjoyed their food immensely. Our hotel offered a very nice free breakfast, with donuts, bagels, eggs, bacon, and more. For lunch, we went to a diner and had  club sandwiches. The chips were mediocre, but the sandwiches were sublime.

And that’s the end of this week’s story. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Thomas

When Jul was a senior at Parkville HS, we had Daniella Vilche from Chile live with us. Daniella just had a baby boy, Thomas. I pulled this picture from Daniella’s Facebook page.

We did it. We went to a restaurant on Valentine’s day. Right after Church we went to Mimi’s for breakfast. We should have known they wouldn’t accept the coupon. Fortunately, we were early enough that the place wasn’t crowded. We were able to sit and enjoy an extra cup of coffee. There were still plenty of empty tables when we left.

We haven’t eaten at home much this week. Thursday was dinner out night at “On the Border”. Friday was a Chinese New Year party at the clubhouse. Saturday we went to the Bauman’s for a Circle dinner. Today we’ll have dinner at home because we have to. We’re going to a BSO concert this afternoon. Then we have a Jazz Band concert at the clubhouse this evening. We just have time to come home and have a bite to eat between the two.

I’ve started a new training session for a couple of people who volunteered to post on our web site. One of the trainees, Charlie, said his wife ordered Chinese take-out for dinner Saturday. He would have preferred to spend $10 at the clubhouse rather than $22 for the carry-out. Plus, he and his wife would have had neighbors to eat with. I kind of agree with Charlie.

We’ve had a spate of cold weather. I was out riding last week in 25 degree weather because that was a respite of warm temperatures before the coming cold. The low last night was 8. It’s coming up on lunch time, and it’s still not up to 20 yet. Tomorrow we’re due for some precipitation and some warmer air. This is where it gets a little dicey. One forecast has snow Monday, with temperatures getting above freezing about midnight and the precip turning to rain Tuesday. The trick in the forecast is exactly when the temperature will get above freezing. If the cold weather takes hold, we could be in for a very sloppy week. At least the cold temps are good for insect control.

Fortunately, even pessimistic forecasts say we’ll be all cleared up by the end of the week. That’s a good thing for us, because Ryn is at the Acorn Community Farm in Virginia this week, helping them process their meat. We plan to pick Mark up, then drive down to Charlottesville. We’ll link up with Ryn for dinner Saturday and have a day of family fun Sunday.

I got the new website security system installed Saturday morning. I had a couple of little glitches, but it went pretty much as planned. I had written to all our website posters to let them know what changes to expect. Primarily, instead of seeing only the pages they could edit, they would see all 83 pages. They would have to do a search or scroll through the page list to get to the pages they can edit. Two of them wrote back and said they couldn’t find their pages. Sigh.

Well, I would write more, but there’s not much more to say. And we do have to get ready for the BSO. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

We had decent weather this week. The roads were clear, and I was on them. That’s not to say the rides were uneventful.

I checked the forecast early Monday morning and saw rain would start about 1. I planned to leave about 10 for a 2-hour hill loop. I checked the weather again close to 10, and saw the rain had been delayed an hour. I decided to start my normal 4-hour Monday ride, with a weather update at a McDonald’s about half way out. When I stopped at the McDonald’s, the rain had been delayed another hour, so I went on to my normal Monday destination in Glenarm. I looked at the weather while eating lunch. Rain was forecasted to start about 6, and certainly no earlier than 4. That’s how I knew the stuff I ended up riding home in wasn’t rain.

Tuesday was a much nicer day — a little cooler, but sunny. It was a perfect day for my normal Tuesday 4-hour hill loop. Unfortunately, I got a flat. It was caused by one of those little glass shards that are the byproduct of all those fender-benders occurring when roads are snowy. I considered myself lucky for two reasons. First, I got the flat just as I was pulling into my lunch place. They have a wonderfully large and sunny parking lot with plenty of out-of-the-way space for flat fixing. Plus, as a bonus, I didn’t get the flat Monday in the middle of heavy showers.

Another reason I was lucky Tuesday was because my bike pump almost stopped working. Air was leaking out of the top of the pump. But if I angled the pump a different way, the air didn’t leak and I could inflate the tire. So I got my flat fixed, plus I got a new pump within two days. Thank-you, Amazon. Bike rides for the rest of the week were blissfully boring.

I have been working for many weeks on software for our website directory. I settled on a program called Ultimate Member. I’ve been working on it in a test website on my laptop. I finished working on Ultimate Member, and did a test install on our production website. Our production website has separate pages for each of our 6 condo boards. It uses a security program called “UAM” to prevent somebody in one condo from accidentally changing information for another condo. That’s when I saw that Ultimate Member conflicts with UAM, allowing anybody to change information anywhere on the website. I either had to change the directory software or the security program. I turned to a different security program called “AAM”. UAM is much easier to configure, but ease of configuration doesn’t count for much if the security doesn’t work.

I installed AAM and spent several tedious hours configuring it for our website. That’s when I realized I did it wrong. So I spent several more tedious hours un-configuring it, so I could spend still more tedious hours configuring it correctly. Fortunately, everything looks good. I moved my biggest ally over to AAM to make sure everything works as expected. If everything looks good, I’ll move the rest of our folks over to AAM in the next week or so.

Well, retirement isn’t all work you know. Sometimes retired folks get to have fun. We went to a modern dance performance at UMBC last night. It was interesting and quite different than what we normally do. We’ll be watching the game tonight (and also the ads). We have a neighborhood Superbowl party every year, but we can’t really show video to a large audience. I like to actually watch, so Danita and I have our own private Superbowl party. We’ll be rooting for the Panthers, in solidarity with Jul & Pat.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

This is the week we broke out of Snowzilla. Danita was back to work on Wednesday. We were lucky. Some of the people Danita works with didn’t have their streets cleared by then. The public schools gave up and shut down for the entire week. Now that we’ve had our winter snow, the high this week should be over 60. Ka-Ray-Zee!

We did a lot of eating out, drank a lot of wine, and ate a lot of snacks. I remember in the old days everybody bought shovels, milk, and toilet paper before a storm. According to the news, these days the things stores sell most before a storm are alcohol and junk food. Maybe the old ways were better. According to an article I read, as he finished digging his car out, a man was offered $250 for his shovel. He didn’t accept the offer.

Here’s an old Baltimore tradition that is dying out. Many people in the city have to park on the street. When they dig out and go to work, they would put a lawn chair in the spot they dug out so nobody else would take it. Now local authorities are forbidding the practice, insisting that nobody owns a parking spot, and nobody can reserve one. People still put lawn chairs on the street, but now they write notes and tape them to the chairs. The news outlets have been publishing some of the better notes.

Moving on to our neighborhood web site, I was about ready to start loading resident information into our website’s database. One of the things  the board wanted me to do was to send a letter to each household, offering them an “Unlisted” entry so their name and address wouldn’t be out there for all our neighbors to see. Can you tell I think this is pretty silly, to hide a phone book entry that doesn’t even include the phone number? I drafted a letter and sent it to our technology committee for comment. One thing lead to another, and before you know it, we needed a privacy policy. I agree it’s a good idea, but it means a month delay while we draft a policy and ask for board approval. We have a new guy who wanted to join the Technology Committee. Guess who got stuck with the task of getting a privacy policy approved? Thank goodness for new guys.

We went to see Star Wars today. We went to the Noon show. We were amazed at how many cars were in the parking lot. We didn’t have any problem getting decent seats, but there were a lot of people in the show with us. We thought the movie was a lot of fun.

In a little while, we’ll be leaving for a neighborhood Chilli Cook-off. It’s just another name for a pot-luck dinner, where everybody who brings an entree brings chilli. Danita made a chocolate tort dessert. I licked the bowl, which is how I know it’s pretty good. (As if there was ever any doubt.) You can bet I’ll be at the desert table early to make sure I get a slice.

Tuesday is Groundhog day. It’s a stupid tradition, but it’s nice to start thinking of spring. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are pics this week.

Mom & Glen

Our news this week was big and bigger. The first big news was a visit to West Palm Beach. We had a wonderful time with Mom & Glen. We arrived around Noon Monday. This was Martin Luther King day and a holiday for Danita. The big activity for the day was upgrading Mom’s computer to Windows 10. After the initial shock of seeing so many changes in Windows, Mom was delighted to learn that the only real change for the way she uses her computer is how to shut the computer down. And even that is a pretty small change.

Mom & Danita

Tuesday Mom and I went out to pick up a new rug for their appartment. After that I installed a DVD player. During the summer when the “snow birds” go north, there’s not a lot if entertainment in Century Village. There’s a library very close to Century Village that has a huge collection of movies on DVD. They’re available to borrow for free, but they’re no good without a player. After the installation, we spent a lot of time practicing switching between the DVD and cable TV. Then we went to the library and borrowed “Kiss me Kate” from 1953 with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel — an oldie for sure but a very good adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”. For dinner, we went to a very nice seafood restaurant, Bimini Twist.

Glen and Mom (be sure to click this one to see it full size)

Wednesday we went out for lunch. We went to a hole-in-the-wall Greek place called Souvlaki Grill. It was a bit of a drive, and it wasn’t much to look at, but the food was very good. Mom and Glen weren’t up to going out Wednesday afternoon, so Danita and I went out alone to explore the South Florida Fair. Our favorite was the animal exhibits, especially the rabbits and chickens. They had an amazing variety of exotic breeds. We saw the best of the best. Every animal on display was an award winner.

Thursday we went out for breakfast. We visited a very good breakfast-and-lunch restaurant called Pete’s Place. We all had a great breakfast. Danita’s stuffed french toast was the most outstanding selection. Mom decided she didn’t like the rug we had picked up Tuesday, so after breakfast we returned it. On the way home, we stopped at a farmer’s market and bakery to pick up some honey. The market is close to Century Village and on the way home, but Mom & Glen didn’t go there often because it was run down. It was lucky we stopped because we found that a new owner had taken it over about three months ago. What a difference the new owner made. The place was popping with customers and overflowing with colorful, attractive produce. The bakery was well-stocked with freshly baked delicious treats. Glen is quite fond of apple turnovers. Mom brought some home and found them to be excellent.

Our flight home was Thursday evening. This was quite lucky for us because the great blizzard of the 2015 / 2016 season was starting the next day. Every last seat was taken. Our flight home was a little late, but otherwise uneventful. We had intentionally used up the food in our house before we left. Danita got up early Friday morning to go to the grocery store before going to work. She found Wegman’s had all hands on deck, desperately trying to keep the shelves stocked as everybody in the area laid in supplies for the big storm. She found most of what she wanted. I tag-teamed her and went out to more stores looking for those things Wegman’s didn’t have, while Danita went to work. It took three more stores, but I was able to get everything we wanted (including the snow emergency wine, naturally). UMBC closed the university at 1, and Danita was home an hour before the snow started.

Earlier this year, our power company offered a free energy saving thermostat. Its main feature is that it’s hooked up to our Wi-Fi so we can control it remotely. We decided to take advantage of this feature by setting the temperature back to 45 when we left. While we were in the WPB airport waiting to board, I used the airport Wi-Fi and my tablet to set the temperature back up to 68 where we normally keep it. It was a great idea, but it was so cold outside that when we got back, the house was only up to 50. That’s where it stayed overnight while we snuggled under an extra layer of covers. It took until 2 PM Friday to get the temperate back where we keep it. And that required running the fireplace most of the morning. I wanted to keep track of the house temperature but I was upstairs working on my computer. Running up and down the stairs wouldn’t do, so I spent much of the morning with my tablet open on the side so I could watch the temperature through the Wi-Fi.

The snow storm was our other big news for the week. It started snowing Friday afternoon and didn’t finish until Saturday evening. Depending on who you listen to, “Snowzilla” was the biggest snow  in Baltimore history. It was officially a blizzard. It dumped over two feet of white stuff. I remember “Snowmaggedon” of 2010, which dumped 3 feet of snow. But that was two storms back-to-back. I spent quite a bit of time moving snow off the deck. I was concerned that the weight of the snow wasn’t good for the deck. Besides that, snow was blowing up against the house, and I didn’t want it to start melting and leaking through the doors. Besides, what else was I going to do? Everything around here is still closed. UMBC announced they will be closed Monday. Our neighborhood streets and driveways aren’t cleared yet. If they were, the rest of the side streets around here are mostly still blocked.

We had a good time during Snowzilla. I spent a lot of time working on the new website feature. Danita spent a lot of time cooking. Last night we had a snow emergency wine and snack party. (I read that stores sell more junk food than anything else before a big storm.) We never lost power, we had plenty of supplies, we should be cleared out sometime tomorrow.

That’s plenty of news for this week. I’m off to a snow emergency ice cream party tonight. I hope this finds everybody doing well.