Poor Danita. She finally got the ruling from GPO about Bud’s death benefit. She was so excited. Then she found out that she has weeks of more bureaucracy to deal with from the register of wills. Or is it the probate court? Whatever. She visited the lawyer last week and will visit again tomorrow. But she still doesn’t now when the estate will finally be settled. We’ll be happy if it happens this year.

We visited Tony and Donna Sochurek (friends from Marriage Encounter) at Oak Crest last week. Tony is in assisted living. He has been in and out of the hospital, but he’s out for now. His attitude is marvelous considering all he’s gone through medically. He’s one of the very few people who leaves assisted living to eat at the regular restaurants. His doctors recommend it, to let hem talk and interact with other people to keep is mind sharp. Donna is adjusting to living in independent living. Their good news was that their house is sold. They got an excellent price. The buyer offered a cash purchase and wanted access to the house quickly. The sale couldn’t have gone better.

We’re going to have a very small Thanksgiving this year. Danita and I will have dinner with Mom at Charlestown.

We’ve been talking about it. Now it looks like we will actually do it. We’re taking a 3-month cruise. The Holland America ship leaves from and returns to San Diego and cruises through the South Pacific. Highlights are a circumnavigation of Australia, several ports in New Zeeland, and of course many tropical islands. We’ll fly to San Diego on New Year’s day. At the end of the cruise, we’ll take a detour to Fort Worth to watch the total eclipse of the sun before coming home April 8. We have the visas. We have the shots. We have a packing list and a to-do list. Here’s hoping everything happens to plan. Whatever happens, it’s all part of the adventure.

As always, I hope this finds everybody doing well. Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ve been having an unusually rich and long fall foliage season. It will soon come to an and. But for now, Danita and I are enjoying the season’s last hurrah.

In the last week or two, we’ve had vaccines for Hep A, Hep B, flue, and Covid. Plus we will have one more Hep shot in the spring. Is that enough shots? Of course not. We both got the new RSV vaccine this week. We went to the CVS and jumped to the head of the line. That’s the advantage of making an appointment and following the check-in instructions. Yea.

Tuesday, Ed & Lynne and Rick & Suzy joined us for a sour beef dinner. Danita did her normal wonderful job of cooking. We enjoyed an evening of relaxed conversation. Plus Danita & I get an additional two sour beef dinners from the leftovers. One of the nice side effects of sour beef is having leftover ginger snaps. We always get some port wine cheese to have some very tasty snacks. Snacking is on hold because the ginger snaps were gone before the port wine cheese. We’ll solve that little problem by getting more ginger snaps.

Wednesday, we had a food truck dinner with the Jonses. Saturday Danita went to a neighborhood Veteran’s Day lunch while I was riding my bike. Somewhere between all of the above and the bike rides, I was able to clean the garage in wonderful 70 degree weather.

Every 4th Sunday, I go to our church as the 9:00 service is ending to help count the donations. I usually get home between Noon and 1. This time the bishop was talking during the 9:00, so the service got out late. Plus the Thanksgiving food boxes were due. That’s important because every box includes a $25.00 check, and we have to look up the parish registry number for each one of those checks. It’s a tedious job. I said I would be happy to do it. 30 seconds later I said, “Did you notice how effectively I lied?” That was good for a chuckle. At the end of the count, we were off by one $25 check. We look for but couldn’t find the error. At the end of the count, we were leaving after 2. We were all a little stressed.

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

It was a week of many appointments, from doctors to car maintenance. We have two more doctor’s appointments next week. After that, things should slow down a bit.

The big activity was a concert with snacks, deserts, and wine. A pianist played favorites from Broadway. It’s not my favorite music, but many people were having a really great time. It’s contagious.

Danita is still getting nothing from OPM. It’s frustrating that she can’t close Bud’s estate. She finally contacted Senator Sarbanes’s office to see if they could shake the tree. Unfortunately, she contacted the office just about the same time he announced he will not run for reelection. Even Danita is getting impatient.

We’ve had some wonderful weather. I’m taking advantage of the easy riding. Early this week I took a mostly-trail ride. There were so many leaves down that there were places where I had to guess where the trail goes. In one spot the leaves were so high that pieces got caught up in my chain. I reached an open area where the trail was clear, only to have the wind pick up while I was there. I was “treated” to a shower of leaves and pine needles. It’s all part of the adventure.

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

Last weekend I went to Lewisburg to bring Danita home. I left very early Saturday to get north of where they had weekend interstate closures. That turned out to be a great idea because I decided to have breakfast just two exits north of the closure at the “Round the Clock” diner. If you want to eat a a diner, this is a very good one. There are lots of customers. Most of them are regulars. Many of the waitresses and customers know each other. Food is good and portions are plentiful. Highly recommended.

Grandparents helping with babies didn’t work as well as we would have liked. If Baba or Mama were in the house, Mira was not content to have her grandparents take her out, or play a game, or read a book, or even go to the kids museum. (The kids museum is a sure-fire Mira pleaser.) That’s what your parents are for. In other words, she was acting like a two-year old. Mainly, Danita was able to do some cooking. We had a nice dinner out. We drove back on Monday with no serious slowdowns. I put some pics on the web site.

This last week we’ve taken care of lots of little things, including Covid boosters. We’ve enjoyed several days of warmth, dryness, and fine fall foliage. It’s added a nice dimension to my bike rides. A large cold front arrived this morning. We expect several days of rainy cool weather. It’s probably the end of fall foliage. There’s a couple of pics on the website.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a busy week. I offered a training class for a new person posting to our community website. Our Nissan went in for service. We had a new car charger installed. I visited the dentist. I visited the cardiologist. (He kept on saying “You’re looking good”. I guess he doesn’t get to say that very often.) But there was more than that.

Danita and I went up to Mark’s. Danita is staying to offer a week and a half of help. The ride up was slow, the ride home was a lot slower. There was traffic, there was rain, and I-83 was closed at York! It took 20 minutes to get around the closure. Maia is as cute as a button.

Rick is on his way back from South Carolina to Germany. He flew into Baltimore this morning and has most of the day waiting for his connecting flight to Germany. We visited Ft. McHenry and had dinner with Mom.

We made it home, but it took much longer than we expected. There were several construction projects between Dulles airport and home. We spent some time driving 10 MPH. All in, we were up for 24 hours straight. It took several days until we felt acclimated.

I was behind schedule on my fall chores, plus the car charger needed to be replaced. We should have most of the major stuff done by the end of next week. That’s a good thing, because next Friday Danita and I are going up to Mark’s. I’ll come home Saturday, Danita will stay at Mark’s to give a hand.

We tried a new place for Sunday breakfast. It’s called the Broken Egg Café. They have restaurants in 16 states, but this is the first one near us. The food was very good. The prices were high, but in line with the food. The location was very strange. They are in a brand new mixed retail / residential development. You can’t see the café from the street. Parking is about a block away. We had to walk by a construction trash dump to get there. But it’s a nice place if the weather is good.

I spent the day today cleaning the deck. This normally takes a couple of hours. I managed to bang my finger against something. It made a very small hole, but it refused to stop bleeding. Blood was on the deck. It was mucking up the pressure washer handle. Danita helped me with a band aid three times. I took a 2-hour break so it would have time to scab over. Finally we taped an absorbent pad over the leak. Through it all, it kept on bleeding. After I finished the deck, and put everything away, and checked the tire pressure for the car, and all that guy stuff, it finally slowed enough that a band aid was sufficient. I haven’t had this much fun since Plavix.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our official tour start time was 1 PM, due to a bicycle race that closed a lot of streets. Danita and I went out during the morning to visit the Hagia Sophia one more time. We were there early, and had plenty of time to walk around and look. There’s a few pics on the web site. In the first picture, you will see that the Muslim equivalent to the alter is off center. When they converted the building to a mosque, they found that a centered “alter” didn’t point to Mecca. So they moved in 8 degrees clockwise.

We took a ferry to the Eastern side of Constantinople and had a good lunch (but no where as good as yesterday). Then we walked around some food stalls. It was a cool, rainy day. Danita and I got a little burst of rain in the morning. It more or less rained the entire time of our tour. Our guide offered us some time to walk around and take pictures, but nobody’s heart was in it, so we came back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we fly home. We leave the hotel at 4 AM, expect to get home somewhere around 2 PM. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our first stop was the Dolmabahce Palace, finished in 1856. It was built at a time when the Ottoman economy was in shambles. Common people were unemployed and starving. It has 285 rooms and 68 toilets. It uses the very best (most expensive) materials. No wonder the Ottoman empire was on the edge of collapse. They wouldn’t let us take any pictures inside. You can search the internet.

We visited the Galata Tower. I didn’t want to take the chance that I would have to be stuffed into a small and very crowded European elevator. After the elevator ride, there were an additional 65 very steep steps to the top. That was enough to stop everybody else.

Our last stop was the modern art museum. I found they have an excellent coffee shop.

The food on our tour was always somewhere between good and fabulous, but our lunch today was the best food yet. We had kabob. The meat was perfectly cooked and extremely rich in favor. Our desert was Kunefe – shredded wheat, cheese, pistachios, honey with a dollop of clotted milk. It doesn’t sound all that great, but the taste was fabulous.

Tomorrow is our last day. There is a bicycle race in the city in the morning, so we will do a half day tour in the afternoon. Danita and I are off to find some ice cream for dinner. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Today was a day for visiting museums. Some people consider museums to be boring. Others can’t resist a joke. The sign in the middle-bottom is a warning not to damage the warning signs.

Several sections of the museum were closed. One of the closed sections held the most interesting ancient artifacts, including the original of a peace treaty between the Hittites and Egypt, made in 1259 BC. It is the earliest known surviving peace treaty. peace_ treaty Not even the tour guide knew this part of the museum was closed. Never mind. It’s OK. We already paid the full cost of admission. ;-(

Never the less, they did have several good exhibits. Here’s Alexander the Great’s sarcophagus (or so they say).

The detail in this hand-decorated book is incredible. I understand that top calligraphers and artists routinely went blind from the strain of doing their work.

The afternoon is free time, but we have quite a bit of rain today. We’re staying in and enjoying a little wine. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had an easy day today. We visited another mosque. We took a delightful boat ride, and we visited bazaars. I actually went into the spice bazaar. For whatever reason, it wasn’t crowded. We even found and purchased a ceramic wine holder that we liked, kind of like this one.

Here’s a pic of the Istanbul skyline.

This is the last day for about a third of our group. Nine of us are joining the three-day extension. I hope this finds everybody doing well.