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.

I bought this bookcase to act as shelving for our new utility closet. It didn’t fit. It didn’t even come close. It is down right ugly — not important for a utility closet but too ugly for any public area of the house. I ended up basically giving it away. Danita has been very kind not to remind me of all this. Bu that’s not what’s interesting. The person who took it wanted it “for her business”. She didn’t mentioned what her business is. She sent a truck with two women. It’s the most elaborate truck I ever saw. It had all kinds of railings and rubber stops that let the driver lock the bookcase in place, guaranteeing the cargo wouldn’t get damaged. It was set up to haul two large items about that size. My curiosity got the better of me, I asked. They are in the funeral business. The truck could carry two elaborate coffins. It turns out one of the office workers found a nice inexpensive bookcase. The other worker wanted one for herself. For whatever it’s worth, I know the bookcase has found a good home.

I know there’s some technical jargon in this story, but hang in there. You’ll get the punch line. Our clubhouse switched from Comcast to Verizon FIOS. We connected the Verizon router to our existing access point. Performance was terrible. I turns out that the router has a built in mesh controller. That is a super nice feature, but it absolutely refused to play nice with the access point. Looking for answers, I noticed the router has a coax port (like cable TV). The owner’s manual did not describe what the coax port was for. I took a deep breath and prepared to call tech support. There was no phone number. There was no chat box. The only thing I could find was a box labeled “Ask a question”. So I typed out my query. I quickly received an thorough explanation. It was obvious the question box understood the intent of my question and covered all the bases. I was amazed. I tried a couple of other questions. I got equally good answers. It sure beat waiting for my “important call”, then being switched to a support specialist who might not know the answer their selves. This is AI at it’s best. Of course, it was limited to Verizon services. Still, I was quite impressed.

I hope this finds everyone doing well.

Back in the day, smoke detectors worked as long as you wanted them to work. After 10 years, their effectiveness dropped, but the detectors would quietly stay mounted as long as you wanted, without kicking up a fuss. That’s no longer true. I replaced all but one of the smoke detectors a little over 10 years ago. I received notices and emails from the detectors. Instead of a calm green light “goodnight promise” the detectors emitted a dire red warning. It was time to replace them. Now. I installed one detector about 9 years ago. Back in the day, nobody would put a smoke detector in the garage. Car emissions would trigger an alarm daily. Today, car exhaust is cleaner than “fresh air” on a bad air pollution day. And there is a new garage threat – electric cars. Battery packs are susceptible to overheating. Chevy had to replace a huge number of Bolt battery packs, advising owners to park their cars at least 50 feet away from everything while waiting for replacements. I installed that last detector after buying our old Nissan Leaf electric vehicle. I decided to replace all of the the detectors now. Our indoor ceilings are high. The garage ceiling is higher. Fortunately, the HOA owns a tall ladder and doesn’t mind if residents borrow it. So I’m good for 10 years. I think this is the last time I will replace detectors. If we are still living here10 years hence, I will no doubt find somebody else to do the ladder work for me.

Danita and I really like our new Nissan Leaf. It’s a huge improvement over to the 10-year old car in every way. Except one. That’s Sirius XM radio. Every few days, the car sets the radio source to the Sirius XM preview station. If the radio isn’t on, it will helpfully turn it on for me. A couple of days ago the car turned on XM as I was backing out of the garage. I turned the radio off. The car turned it on again. I don’t understand why a car manufacturer would subject proud owners of their new cars to such a nuisance. Internet searches turn up no solutions. At least I am now adept at changing the radio back to my normal channel.

April 16 was a big day for us. We received permission from the HOA to replace our tree with a smaller one. The down payment has been paid. We are looking forward to replacing the old tree with an Eastern Red Bud. They will also remove that ugly creeping juniper with grass. The old tree is way too big for our tiny front lawn, as shown in this picture. Now all we need is for the tree company to do the work,

We had a nice neighborhood concert last night. This afternoon we will go to another concert at UMBC.

I hope this finds everyone doing well.

We had quite the time for Easter this year. Mark & family joined us, as did Ed & Lynne, and Mom. Mark came down a day early and stayed a day after. That gave us time to do some extra fun things. For example, we went to College Park Airport and Aeronautics Museum. The great stuff included flying a helicopter climbing to the very top of the “control tower”.

Easter has lots of traditions, from ham and potato salad for dinner to egg hunts for the kids. The girls had a great time. Mira found the best hiding place ever in the pocket of the child’s chair. It was such a great spot that when it was time for her to hide eggs, she put as many as possible into the pocket.

Everybody had a great time, and all of us hope you had a terrific Easter.

This weekend there were so many activities we had to pick and choose what to do. Going to one of the Baltimore Museum of Art brunch/art talks was a sure winner. The talk was about how Fratino ,a living artist, is influenced by Matisse, with side-by-side paintings. Tomorrow we will attend a concert in UMBC’s amazing auditorium.

It’s also time for spring cleaning. My last major project is the back porch. I’m looking forward to getting these projects finished.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I don’t get to write about the “Other Eichenlaubs” very often. Rick, Sara, and children took two days to drive from Iowa. They arrived late on Sunday. During the day they explore the Baltimore-DC area. At the end of the day, we all join up for dinner. Grammy is included. Here’s a pic of David teaching Grammy how to play his game while Dad follows along.

Tuesday we had a blow-out breakfast at our place with quiche, bacon, sausage, fruit, scones, and more. Here’s the whole gang after breakfast, getting ready to go their various ways.

That isn’t all that’s happened over the last week or so. We traded our 2016 Nissan Leaf for a brand new 2026 model. The batteries in the old car were getting weak, which limited the car’s range. It’s been running well, but everything in the car is getting kind of old. It was time for a refresh. The new car has plenty of new tech, but a car is a car. All we need is to have something to drive around town. With a range of over 200 miles, this car easily meets our needs.

Our time in Tucson is over. We had an amazing, wonder-filled, and fun two months. But now it’s time to return home.

We bookended our week with the rodeo. (This rodeo is 6 day affair over two weekends). We saw the first day of the rodeo at the beginning of the week, and the rodeo parade at the end. We had very little idea of what the cowboys and cowgirls were doing, but there was a lot of excitement, a ton of people, and an easy family atmosphere. It was great good fun, but as good as it was, the week’s highlight was the Eastern Saguaro National Park.

We visited the Western park earlier. We saw the stark, dramatic landscapes that we associate with the Sonoran desert. The Eastern park is different because it gets more rain, making it a riparian area. (This is just one of many words Arizonans use to describe water.) Here we saw the famous Saguaro cactus, but we saw much more diversity, both of animals and plants. And I saw more shades of green than I could count. If you ever come to Tucson, make sure to visit both parks and Sabino Canyon.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Liz and her BFF Kylie visited this week. Of all the things we did (and we did plenty), my fav is the Sabino Canyon.