We are in a drought period. Last week with high temperatures with a “real feel” of up to 110. Then we got rain. I know we are in a drought, but we’ve had plenty of rain, rain, rain. Enough already! The weather finely turned today. We are looking forward to a week of nice weather.

We haven’t done much this week. We had a food truck Thursday. A neighborhood party Saturday (bad hamburgers, sides and deserts provided by attendees). Tonight we will go to a Jimmy Buffet tribute band in Catonsville.

I sold my recumbent trike. I still had a bike carrier designed to let me haul the bike on the back of our car. It is large and heavy. It’s so heavy that it comes with wheels. That’s a good thing because there is no way I could pick it up. I put the carrier on Craig’s List. There was no response. After two weeks, I re-listed it. Again it drew no response. In desperation I put it up on our local Facebook group, offering it free to anybody living in our neighborhood. The very next day, a guy in Virginia called. He drove over hour to get here. We played around with it until he was satisfied it was OK. He paid cash. That’s a good thing. It’s not a ton of money, but it’s good to get a little cash. What’s much more important is that he wants to use it. He likes to drive to a group ride, take the bike off his car, and ride with his group. It’s good to know the carrier will be used. Also it gives us a little more room in our very cramped garage. Yea!

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

It was a quiet week. Last Sunday we went to Essex Community College to se the musical Xanadu. I am always pleasantly surprised at the quality of their presentations.

Unless you are living under a rock, you know that this weekend is the 250th birthday of our country. There was music, fireworks, and amusements all all kinds. That made this weekend an ideal time to stay home. There had to be some pretty heavy and widespread partying. We had about half the normal number of people at Mass this morning. We went to IHOP for our Sunday breakfast. It also had notably fewer patrons. No doubt aspirin consumption this morning was off the charts.

I hope all are fully recovered from your celebrations and all are doing well.

IT was a big week. We started things off with an invitation only event. Ed & Lynne and Rick and Suzy came to our house for a BBQ dinner. We had a special guest, Marie, Suzy’s Mom.

Moving to the bicycle front, I have been riding a recumbent trike because my neck bothered me on a conventional bike. These days I am riding fewer days and taking shorter rides. Riding a 2-wheeler is more fun. I wondered if I could go back to a 2-wheeler. I went exploring and found Trek did a great job with their Verve 2 bike. It’s known as a hybrid, which has a more upright riding position. Every bike manufacturer offers a hybrid bike, Trek did a terrific job.

I can only own one bike at a time. (Our garage is that small.) I put the trike up for sale and sold it in two days. With a nod to my advancing age, I chose Trek’s step-through frame. I’ve had a couple of rides so far. No neck pain! A new bike means new accessories. Over the coming days, I will get new pedals, a rack, and a few other odds and ends. What a great new toy.

Old people have lots of nostalgia. This bike is almost the same color as our first new car — a 1975 Datsun B210 “Honey Bee”. The Honey Bee was an entry level car for sure. It had a heater but no AC. We paid extra to get an AM radio. We got great service out of that car. So here’s my nod to nostalgia. Trek Versa 2, I dub thee “Honey Bee”.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We went to a play at Essex Community College. It was a very good one-act comedy.

The Greek food truck came on Friday. Three of our neighbor households came over to enjoy a food truck dinner with us. Lately we’ve been thinking about how good it would be to have one of Danita’s homemade cheesecakes. Unfortunately, the two of us couldn’t eat an entire cheesecake. Fortunately, Danita was inspired to use our neighbors to help us with our task. Oreo Cookie Cheesecake. Yummy.

I hope all are well.

Bryon graduated from high school. For the celebration dinner, Bryon Liz and Pat decided to share a 60 oz steak. No, this is not a typo. You can see the steak in the pic. They ate it all.

– 60 oz steak

Here’s a pick from the graduation.

I hope all are well.

It was an uneventful week, but we had a nice time today. The Baltimore Museum of Art had three Matisse exhibits at the same time. We had breakfast at the Paper Moon Cafe, then visited the Matisse. The exhibit I enjoyed the most was about his painting of the Stations of the Cross. The Stations depict 14 scenes from the last days of Jesus’ life. Matisse spent 3 years learning about the Stations traditions, making dozens of drawings for each station panel. When he was satisfied that he could create the panels by heart, he painted his drawings on the wall of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, using chalk attached to an 8-foot bamboo pole.

I don’t have any pics of the art, but here’s one of the diner. It’s just as weird as ever. I hope all are doing well.

Last Sunday, we went to Ed & Lynne’s “Parkton Cup” Croquet party. All the usual people were there, including surprise visitors all the way from Texas, Rick and Suzy.

— Croquet Finals

After the eating and after the croquet, we took Mira home for a one day / two night visit at our house. This was the first time Mira was separated from her parents. Here’s Mark and Jiajia pretending to relax as we take away their oldest child.

— Mark and Jiajia. What could go wrong?

Danita did the most to entertain Mira because I drove Dani, Gayle, and Mom to Kohl’s because Mom needed some clothes. The trip was wildly successful. So was the après shopping lunch.

— Après shopping lunch

— Fun and games with Grandma. Trust me, baking a red, white, and blue cake is much more fun than magnetic darts.

After that, Dani and Gayle flew home. We took Mira back to her parents. It was a lot for one week. We may never top it. But we got this week off to a decent start. We went mini-golfing. This is a particularly interesting course, with good use of the hills, imaginative hazards, and the world’s longest mini golf hill — a long downhill with banked turns. We haven’t been to this course in many years. It’s still a lot of fun, but it desperately needs maintenance.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Everybody loves a good party. We had a a regular blowout, I was having trouble predicting how the clubhouse WiFi worked when we made changes. I finally realized what we were seeing is the router somehow changing in response to the changes in demand. Is it MIMO? Or Beam Forming? Or something I don’t know about WiFi 6e? It’s obvious I was getting nowhere. I decided to just start streaming and see how the network holds up. I was pleasantly shocked. I had the gym TV, my computer, and my phone all streaming video. My predictions were that the network would fall apart. Instead, everything worked without a hitch. I decided I didn’t have to understand why the network did what it did. I only had to verify it would do what we want.

I invited four guys to join me in the clubhouse. We all brought laptops and tablets. All together, we had 9 devices running. Our goal was to stress the network until it failed. We had many variations of Zoom meetings and streaming movies. No matter what we did, the network calmly re-adjusted itself and offered perfect service. That’s about three times more load we would normally expect to see.

The WiFi party was an outstanding success. I’ve been working on this for a couple of months. Now it’s all buttoned up. Just in time for …

Dani’s visit! Dani and Gayle are in the air as I write this, on the way to the airport. They want to take Mom shopping, and have some family meals, etc. Dani doesn’t like driving in Baltimore. So I will do the driving. As i happens, they will be here during Ed and Lynne’s annual party. Plus we will take Mira for a couple of nights for her first time away from her parents. And my counting team is doing their thing on Sunday. It’s kind of like Mission Impossible. We have a plan that will let everything happen, with tight schedules all the way through. Hopefully, it will be completely unlike the last minute SNAFUs the Mission Impossible team encounters. Every. Single. Time. Really. We all know that pros make things look easy. Mission Impossible is on the edge of disaster for the entire 90 minutes of the movie. I think we can do better than that.

I hope all are doing well.

A week or so ago, Danita attended a retirement expo. This week she learned she earned a door prize. It’s a very nice one, as you can see.

We also attended the annual event for retired UMBC employees. We heard a very strange song written for the alto flute. When it takes longer to explain a piece than it takes to play it, you’re in trouble. ;-)

We also attended a more traditional neighborhood musical evening. One of the residents has a strong background in theater. She wrote and performed her creation for us last evening.

I’m off to clean the pollen of the porch. I hope this finds everyone doing well.

We like to go out for breakfast on Sundays. Unless it’s mother’s day. That’s the worst possible day for us to eat out. This year, Danita made some of her magnificent mixed berry scones. Hmmm, delish.

The next time you come to visit, you might have problems finding us. The tree guys are scheduled to take the old tree out tomorrow. I haven’t received a confirming call. Hopefully they’re still on track.

I also dealt with some smartphone issues. My Google Fi device had been struggling with battery life. An occasional unresponsive screen required me to reset the phone. I discovered that our $20/month “upgrade subscription” didn’t actually offer any savings; the cost of an upgrade was the same as a new phone minus the subscription fees I had already paid. To add a little salt to my wound, Google had a sale running where I could buy a better model for even less than the upgrade deal. I purchased the better phones. And I canceled the upgrade subscription.

That’s the news for this week. I hope all are doing well.