It’s been a quiet week. I usually take a day off riding on the weekend. I decided to take off Saturday on the theory that forecasters could forecast the weather a day ahead. Bad move. I’ll still get a shorter ride in today.

We had the Greek food truck yesterday (very good Gryros). We have a Korean food truck coming Wednesday. We haven’t had this food truck before, but guess what? They feature grilled meat. Suprise! Anyway it’s an excuse to have dinner with other adults. There’s a neighborhood party Friday (bad hamburgers and good conversation). We won’t be going. They’re still doing these outdoors, due to the number of new COVID cases. We have an outdoor area with heaters, but it’s not large enough, so they’ll be using an outdoor area without heaters. The forecast is for 50s and showers. We have to pay in advance. It doesn’t sound like a ton of fun.

The construction crew is coming. Our porch and deck are cleared for action. Anticipation is building about the forthcoming demolition. I might get an unanticipated benefit. I painted the downstairs deck with oil based paint. That was a mistake that can’t be corrected. One can’t paint latex over oil. It turns out the crew will have to completely remove the deck boards. I get two benefits. First, I never figured out what keeps the deck from sliding down the hill. Now I’ll be able to see what the previous owner did. That could be good, that could be bad. We’ll see. Either way, I’ll finally know. The other thing is that the construction foreman said that when they reassemble the deck, they can put the floor boards upside down. I will be able to paint raw wood with latex paint. Yea!

Apparently our electric Leaf has been suffering from lack of attention. After we had the driver door handle fixed, the (rather expensive) 12-volt battery died. I suppose the electric heat pump, bun warmers, and other devices (all of which are electric, obviously) take their toll. The car is almost 5 years old. Then my bike decided it was also being neglected. I was going down a really cool hill when one of the brakes stopped working. I only need one brake, so everything was fine. After we got the Leaf back, I loaded the bike into the car, only to find the shop was closed for a big bicycling event. I’ll try again tomorrow. In the mean time, I’m walking to get my exercise.

The company we use to host our neighborhood web site had a webinar about website security. They convinced me I have some catching up to do. It will be a lot of work, but I’m going to spread it out, doing a little bit at a time. First, I need to draw up a list.

Other than that, everything is more or less normal. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The last couple of days have been dreary weather-wise, but is was a nice week nevertheless. Mom got her hearing aids. They made an immediate and large improvement in her hearing. We went to an audiologist off the Charlestown campus to get the discounts offered by Mom’s insurance. The audiologist we saw used to work at the Charlestown campus, so she had lots of experience working with older people. She did an excellent job in understanding Mom’s needs and offering very practical solutions. This was definitely a case where the high cost was worth it. It takes a person a long time to adjust to the hearing aid and get the full benefit. We’ll be making frequent trips to the audiologist, including one this coming Thursday.

I saw my cardiologist last week. He gave me a two-year warranty on my heart and kicked me out. ;-)

We had a neighborhood Chill ‘n Grill with bad hamburgers and good conversation. Unfortunately, they decided to put us on the covered porch downstairs near the pool. There was enough room for 50 of us to be under cover, but the noise level was much higher than it was when we were upstairs. All the concrete walls and glass windows reflected noise. Everybody was having problems hearing other people at their table. They were slow setting out the desert, so I did a little reconnoitering. I saw Pumpkin pie and either Apple or French Apple pie. They hadn’t even started cutting the pie slices, so it was obvious desert wouldn’t be served for quite a while. I’m not a lover of pumpkin pie, and neither of us are lovers of most commercial apple pie, and we just happened to have some very good ice cream in the freezer. So we left a little early and enjoyed desert by ourselves.

We got big news last week. The construction project will start working on our building this week. They basically work on two units at a time. There are 6 units in our building. We will be in the last group of two. I’m guessing they will get to us early in November and be done before Thanksgiving. They will remove stone from the back of the house and keep on going as long as they find water damage. So far, other units have had to have all the stone removed. Then they build scaffolding to support the deck, separate the deck from the house, and repair all the wood rot, including the ledger board that holds the deck to the house. Then they put everything back together using new stone. (It’s not real stone. It’s spun cement. For reasons I don’t understand, they can’t use the old stone.) Some of the rot was caused by improperly installed flashing. Other was caused by the doors to the deck leaking. Like most of our neighbors, we have taken the option to get new doors. They actually put up a plastic sheet wall 5 feet inside the house so they can do their work. We are promised a lot of noise and vibration. We are advised to clear out the work area and take pictures off the wall so they don’t dislodge themselves and fall. (Banging and falling pictures. Sounds kind of like a haunted house.) Of course most of our neighbors have already been through this process. I’m grateful the construction on our unit is likely to be done before the weather turns bad. Things should move quickly. They’ve finished most of the other buildings, so we benefit from the problems they solved repairing earlier buildings. They have one more building to do after ours. We are very lucky to have a great condo board. They have found solutions to many issues and have taken care of every detail.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We are doing our northern loop this week. Tuesday we drove to Ryn’s farm and had dinner at the farm house. Wednesday we got the two-bit farm tour and went on a short hike. Thursday we went to Bull Run for a longer hike and visited a historical museum. Friday we drove down to Mark’s, stopping at Steam Town with train and trolley museums. Saturday we took a walk along the river at Sunberry. Of course there were plenty of dinners, lunches, and ice cream treats. Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast out and head on home.

The farm Ryn lives at is doing well. Ryn is developing imaginative and effective land management techniques, based on part with goats eating brush and geese eating grass. Myra is crawling everywhere and getting into plenty of trouble.

There are some pictures on the web site. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We did something today we haven’t done in years. We attended a Baltimore Symphony concert. We got tickets for the season. Hopefully we’ll be able to attend all the concerts. But for today, the BSO sounded grand. It wasn’t easy getting in. We needed our tickets, our masks, our photo IDs, and proof of vaccination. Entry was surprisingly well organized.

Now we’re looking forward to another thing we haven’t done in years — travel. We’re taking a week to visit Kathryn on her farm in New York and Mark on the drive home. We’ve had so many travel plans cancelled I felt like I should get a rubber stamp that says “Cancelled by Covid”. But this trip looks like it’s a go all the way. We leave Tuesday morning and return the following Sunday. I spent many hours this week getting all the house monitoring systems wired up and running. I had been making modifications and left them unfinished in disgust. But now everything is working and we’re good to go. We’re looking forward to seeing our two children “Up North”.

Other news comes on the Bud front. His TV remote stopped working. I making two trips to Riderwood with Danita. One was to get a temporary remote working. The other is to set up a new “Big Button” remote. We tried calling Xfinity, but it is impossible to talk to a human unless you know the account number or the phone number to which the account is assigned. It seems that at the CCRC, they have a special bulk account, so we were unable to talk to anybody on the phone. Fortunately, Danita found an Xfinity store in Laurel that was happy to give her a new big button remote.

Danita was working on her parent’s jewelry. She had the jeweler sort it into costume, real, and valuable. She had some of it appraised. While she was at it she had our jewelry appraisals updated. I didn’t realize this, but even though our homeowner’s insurance is replacement value, the jewelry rider is only for the most recently appraised value. She also had her engagement ring repointed. It looks fabulous.

The other thing that happened this weekend was the annual SOCA crab feast. As we did last year, Danita went with Carmel Jones. Jeff and I went out for hamburgers. I was looking at the menu and saw the milkshakes. I obviously didn’t buy one because I absolutely don’t need it. But after dinner, I was still thinking about the chocolate one with Oreo cookies. I ended up going back. My hamburger and milkshake cost more than Danita’s ticket to the crab feast!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This week has been a little more active than usual. I visited Mom twice — once to get her MD ID and once for an off-campus doctor appointment. Tomorrow I go back to meet a Riderwood IT person about the very slow internet in Mom’s apartment. Bud was exposed to COVID. He’s half way through a one week quarantine. So far, so good. We had the “Greek on the Street” food truck yesterday. That food is too good for our health. ;-) The monthly condo meeting lasted an extra hour. For some reason, there were several protracted complaints about things that were decided months ago. I was amazed at the personal details people will talk about in a public meeting. Next month the board will present the 2022 budget. I can’t imagine how that will go. The biggest excitement is just ahead. I’m leaving soon to help count the collection at our church. We have a brand new procedure. Nobody knows exactly what the new procedure is, but it promises to be complicated and confusing. I told Danita I expect to be home in time for dinner. ;-)

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had lots of eating out this week. Panera offered me a free bagel and also offered me $2.00 off. The last day of our free coffee was today. So Tuesday, Danita and I went to Panera for breakfast — free coffee for both of us and a free bagel for me. Then we went to Panera again this morning — free coffee for both of us and $2 off for me. Then we came home to cancel our coffee club. We were both offered another 3 months of free coffee, which we both accepted. We noticed that less than half the tables were occupied, but the “to go” bags were overflowing their designated area.

We also went out to dinner Tuesday. We went to Bowman’s with the Tony and Donna Sochurek and had dinner on the porch. The road traffic on Harford Road was noisy, but we had good food and great conversation.

Friday was a neighborhood Chill ‘n Grill. They had a two-piece light jazz orchestra which thankfully kept the volume down. We were able to eat and converse while the band played on. Everything — food, drinks, tables, and entertainment — was outdoors on the deck. The weather was delightful. Nobody knows what we will do when temperatures fall, or if it happens to be raining during an event. But we had a good time Friday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a quiet week. Ida came through and dumped a bunch of rain. The only significant damage in Maryland was a tornado that hit a section of Annapolis. Before Ida, we were getting a heat index over 100 regularly. After Ida, temperatures dropped significantly. We’re dropping into the 50s at night and getting up near 80 in the day. In addition, the humidity is lower. It’s quite comfortable. The big difference for me is riding in the afternoon instead of the early morning.

I was supposed to help count

With Covid taking off, our neighborhood put restrictions on the clubhouse. Everybody in the clubhouse must be masked at all times. That means no eating or drinking. We have an outdoor porch where we can have activities. It has an awning and even has sides that roll down. But we can only seat 20 or 25 under the awning. There’s more seating under the stars, but bad weather can put a real damper on that. That was quite a curve ball for the social committee to handle, but they’re working on possibilities. In the mean time, the Jones will join is for a “do your own food truck” this evening. We’ll get food from a local kabob place and eat it at the Jones’.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Mom’s condo is sold. This was a minor miracle. It’s common practice in Florida for condo bylaws to give the board the right to approve buyers. The bylaws allow any reason for accepting or rejecting a buyer, but in practice this is about whether the buyer has enough money to pay the monthly fees. Our buyer has a bank account with $400K in it and owns an apartment building in NYC, This should have been a shoe-in. But they have very little Social Security and no pension. The buyer ended up submitting three years of income tax returns and putting two years of monthly payments in escrow. Through it all, the board made themselves unavailable, accepted only paper documentation, refused to set up meetings for delivery of documentation, and in general made the process unbelievably difficult. Fortunately, the buyer really wanted the condo. After three contract extensions, the board finally accepted the buyer. This was one of the most stressful periods I have had.

After closing, it was time to transfer the utilities, cancel Mom’s insurance, etc. The easiest way to do this is for me to be in the room with Mom. I make the call, Mom identifies herself and says I have her permission to speak for her, and I do the business. It wasn’t that easy. I spent from 9:30 to 3:30 with an hour out for Mom’s doctor appointment. In addition, the bank chose that day to flag Mom as a potential fraudulent account holder. It seems her phone number and address didn’t match information at the credit bureaus. They were threatening to close the account that would soon hold the proceeds from the condo sale. In many cases, I would say this was a wise security measure. But Mom and I opened her new account in person at a branch. We presented all manor of identification and security. In person.

The worst agency was the Palm Beach Water Authority. I called them up. They said they would call back within 30 minutes. They did call back, but it was quite a bit longer than 30 minutes. When they called back, they insisted Mom couldn’t close her account until we downloaded a picture of her driver’s license. After I did that and called back, they promised to return the call in “one hour, two minutes, and 53 seconds”. I found this an astonishingly precise estimate. Which of course they missed by a mile. Two hours and 35 minutes later, I had given up and was starting to pack my things. They finally called and told me I had to read the drivers license number as a security measure. That wasn’t very hard. What a ridiculous “security” procedure. Even the title lawyer added excitement. The condo settled at 4:30 Thursday. They didn’t wire the money to Mom until the early afternoon the next day. That added four phone calls, two Emails, and a copy of the wire transfer authorization to the day’s activities.

But it’s all done now. We’ll get the final power and water bill in a month. The homeowners insurance will send us a check for the unused insurance within a month. The appliance repair contract is cancelled. The bank decided Mom isn’t some kind of a hacker / thief. And the sale proceeds are in Mom’s bank account. I don’t want any more days like yesterday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This was quite an eventful week. Somebody told me that Stanford Grill has a really great meatloaf. I checked the online menu. It included meatloaf. Danita and I decided to go try it out. We needed reservations. A couple of weeks later, we decided to try it again, with reservations this time. We received oversize laminated menus. One side was drinks. There was another quarter page of drinks on the other side. There were appetizers, salads, entries, and deserts. But there was no meatloaf. That’s not the end of the world, but the prices were also higher than other places in town. We decided to leave and went to Red Robbin. No reservations needed there. But it turns out that while the prices at Stanford Grill were higher, they weren’t all that much higher. It’s hard to keep up, I guess. Never mind. There’s no better way to make up for a slightly disappointing evening than really great desserts from the bakery down the street. We had Chocolate Oreo Cheese Cake and Chocolate Tuxedo Cake. Yummy.

Our other misadventure was our electric car. The Nissan Leaf has been an incredibly great car. But even E-cars need maintenance sometimes. The dash board was telling us to rotate the tires, and the driver’s door handle was falling apart. So I set up an appointment, asking them to do their thing and also fixe the door handle. When I brought it in, I told the write-up person I wanted them to do their thing and also fix the door handle. Imagine my surprise when I got a text from the dealer, stating they found the door handle needs to be repaired, do I want them to repair it?

When I picked it up, I found the safety check was free, the tire rotation was $20, and the door handle was $360. That’s $140 for the door handle and $220 for labor. It seams they had to do some pretty major surgery to get to the door handle. It’s a very nice door handle. It looks good. It has a black button. But I would have never believed it is so very special. The other thing I noticed is that they didn’t have to order any parts. I’m guessing I’m not the first person to have their door handle fall apart. Hopefully they gave the the improved door handle.

We’re going to 4:30 mass today so we can enjoy the weekend in style. We have a neighborhood concert and dinner tonight, and a free birthday breakfast tomorrow at First Watch. After that, this is my Sunday of the month to go to Church and help count money. I’m sure glad I spent all that time watching Sesame Street.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.