Mark, Jiajia, and Mira visited us this week. We spent some time at home. We had breakfast with Mom. One reason for the visit was that Mark and Jiajia wanted to see a show in DC. While Mom & Dad were taking their break, we took Mira to the Robinson Nature Center. Mira had experienced a lot of excitement by then. She fell asleep on the short ride over. We decided to turn it into a long ride and drove around the area to give Mira a nice rest. It took Mira a while to warm up to the Robinson center, but in the end she had a good time. Then we went home for dinner and ice cream. After that was the big test. Because Mark and Jiajia wouldn’t be back until late, we decided to sleep in the guest room with Mira and let Mark and Jiajia sleep in our room. Like any 2-year old, Mira sometimes fusses about taking a bath and going to bed. But she didn’t fuss for us at all. She had fun in the bathtub. We had one goodnight book, then 5 minutes until lights out. She fell asleep in 3 minutes flat. She woke up one time and complained she was hungry. She ate half of a cashew and promptly went back to sleep. Mira had such a good time she didn’t want to go home. Here’s a couple of pics.

The excitement is over. We’re back to being retired old folks. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Dani and Gayle came down to visit Mom. I provided transportation to the airport and for shopping. The five us had a wonderful dinner at Catonsville Gourmet. I didn’t get a pic of all five of us, but here’s a pick of Gayle and Dani. We have more excitement coming up, starting later on this week.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We took Bryan to Fayetteville and didn’t do much … just Go Carts, Bumper Boats, Mini Golf, Mission Impossible movie, Escape Room, and tour of the Edgar Allen Poe house (the business man, not the author). The drive home had some heavy traffic, but no bumper cars. We got home in plenty of time to pick up Dani and Gayle from he airport. They will be visiting Mom. I volunteered to provide local transportation.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We spent Sunday with the Reeds. Our highlight was a visit to the UNC botanical garden. It was a hot and sticky day. They had a Titan Arum (AKA rotting corps flower) in bloom. This plant blooms once every few years. The bloom lasts for about a day. The flower was in a small part of the greenhouse. Several small groups of people were in line to take their picture and smell the stink. I felt closed in. I stayed for the picture, then moved outdoors. I spent the rest of the time admiring the gardens and “sticking” to the shade. There’s more pictures in the blog.

Earlier, Liz spent a week with us at “cooking camp”, Bryon was busy with scouts. So we will spend a couple of days with Bryon in Fayetteville.

We had an uneventful drive to Jul’s house. We took the kids to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles followed by some ice cream. Both kids enjoyed the movie. Elizabeth couldn’t understand why Danita and I didn’t care for it. We’re staying in Monroe tomorrow. I’ll try to get some pictures then.

We had a marvelous morning. We visited the Frontier Culture Center, just outside Staunton. The Virginia Board of Education contributed a ton of money. They got a first class facility. For example, they disassembled historic houses in Europe and meticulously put them back together so we can see exactly how certain people lived. I knew that the Irish burned peat. They didn’t have wood, and peat was plentiful. I didn’t know the disadvantage is that it peat makes a lot of very disagreeable smoke. Below is a picture of a early settler’s house with a push-away chimney. It’s push-away because if when it catches on fire, they could push it away and save the house. It only takes a day to build a new push-away. If you decide to go, you should call first. The board of education is going to get their money’s worth. They have students from around the state visit. Sometimes they have 600 kids running around. We were lucky. There were only a few visitors. We had a blast, including a picnic lunch in perfect weather.

We had such a good time at the culture museum that we didn’t have time to play mini-golf. Don’t worry, we didn’t totally lose our priorities. We still had time to get some Hershey’s ice cream at the Pink Cadillac diner.

After that the day kind of fell apart. Our next stop was Blacksburg. There was an accident on I-81. One of the two lanes was closed. Traffic was extremely slow. After we got past the accident, traffic was still heavy and slow. Our plan was to eat at a downtown restaurant followed by the movie Oppenheimer. When we got here, downtown was closed off for an annual fair. There were heavy crowds and more very slow traffic. After we got out of the downtown area, we found a deli for dinner and went to CVS for candy bars. We went back to our hotel watched “Ticket to Paradise”. Today we will (eventually) make it to see the Reeds.

We’re on our way to visit the Reeds, but in the mean time we’re working on our goofing off. Our first stop was Harper’s Ferry. I was there 9 years ago when I rode the trail from Cumberland to Georgetown. Danita hadn’t ever been there. It’s certainly worth a stop. Harper’s Ferry has a rich history. The confluence of two major rivers. An easy path through the Appalachian Mountains. Lewis and Clark. The industrialization of the 19th century. (Making one rifled barrel went from taking a month to just a few hours.) Floods. The C & O canal. The B & O railroad. The civil war. John Brown’s raid. The Appalachian Trail. There’s so many stories here, how can anybody focus on just one? Here’s a pic of the most iconic landmark of the area, Jefferson’s rock.

We spent the night in Staunton. There’s plenty of good food in Staunton. We had a very nice dinner and are looking forward to good breakfast. The Shakespeare Theater was performing “Measure by Measure”. It was a delightful production.

We’ll get to Monroe later on today, but first, a little more goofing off is called for.

It was another quiet week. I’m on a team that counts donations for our church. We count once every four weeks. This week our count and cross-count checked matched perfectly. It was our first perfect count. Every other count we have done, we had to find and resolve one or two errors. It took a while for us to realize what we had done. It was a great feeling.

We had a food truck dinner with the Jonses plus two new neighbors. I took bike rides. Danita worked at the county food bank. It’s a very good thing we had a couple of quiet weeks, because August is going to be very, very busy. I don’t want to offer any spoilers, but I’m trying to read Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. I had forgotten how hard it is to read Shakespeare. Or maybe I’m just getting a little older. I found the best synopsis I ever here (play the video).

https://www.rsc.org.uk/measure-for-measure/the-plot

Not only is the synopsis presentation excellent, the synopsis itself mirrors the play — with an unresolved cliff hanger.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The big news this week is that Rick (Danita’s brother) is moving from Texas. He’ll be a few miles away from Ed. Rick was up for closing on his new house. Ed organized a dinner for all four of the siblings and their spouses. The food at the dinner was excellent — especially the ice cream. Here’s a pic.

In much less important news, I got new tires for my bike. I’ve been having problems with the fenders scraping the side of the tires. It looks like that is resolved.

We’re looking forward to a neighborhood lunch / concert Sunday afternoon.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Last week I offered raspberries to the weather service, which couldn’t tell me whether there would be a heavy rain within the next few hours. This week I am re-aiming my target to OPM. That stands for Office of Personnel Management. It’s the agency that manages retirement payments for federal employees like Bud. Danita has everything squared away to settle Bud’s estate except for the final payment from OPM. She’s called OPM several times. Calling them is a major investment because it always requires waiting on hold for hours. Finally, OPM told Danita the payment would be processed in a few days. Danita was as excited as I have seen her for quite a while. No payment was forthcoming. Concerned that there was an error in the bank account number, she called OPM again. This time the agent said that Bud’s payment has indeed been assigned to a processing person, but they have up to 60 days to do the processing. Our lawyer suggested Danita call back, which she did. this time the agent said that processing can take up to 16 months. The lawyer decided we can close everything except the OPM payment.

Dear OPM …

We went out to dinner to get gyros at Tino’s Wednesday. Thursday, I decided we should eat out again. We wanted something good and cheap, so we went to Jason’s Deli. They include free soft-serve ice cream. That allowed us to skip the gelato food truck, which charges $5 for a “just OK” gelato. (The only place I have had great gelato is Italy.) I proclaimed we saved $10 and had our dinner for just $11. Yesterday we had a neighborhood cookout with hot dogs, hamburgers, and drinks. Residents brought a side or desert to share. Hopefully this will hold us for eating out until tomorrow morning, when we have Sunday breakfast at IHOP.

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