This is getting tiresome. It has to be the quietest Independence Day since 1775. But we’re still staying the course. If we had any thoughts of loosening up, they were dispersed by Jul’s COVID scare.

The good news is we had another red letter day this week. Riderwood is allowing visits to residents in independent living. Danita and I went down to see Bud. Bud was in good spirits. Danita set up aids to visit Bud 2 hours a day 3 days a week. It was easy to see they have helped quite a bit. There was no spoiled food. The apartment was disorganized but clean. Pill compliance looked pretty good. We took Bud out for some blood work. Everything went smoothly. Friday Bud will have his first video doctor’s visit. Danita is bringing her computer. The Riderwood guest WiFi works very well. It should be interesting to see Bud’s reaction.

Our TV antenna has always been OK but marginal. This week, it went under the margin. I think it was a combination of very hot temperatures (mid-90s), very high humidity, and lots of rain this spring that brought lots of growth. The foliage and humidity are sucking up the signal. At lest that’s my story. I ordered a larger TV antenna. Let’s hope size matters.

We went to look at Anderson sliding doors this week. The doors were very nice, but the screen was not very good. The most important aspect of the deck doors to us is the screen, because that’s the only way to let fresh air in the house. So Anderson is scratched. Pella doesn’t have sliders in their showroom. (The receptionist actually tried to claim this was a COVID related issue.) This shouldn’t be that hard. If I could get away with it, I would put a wooden screen with a spring. You know the kind. You push the door open and walk through. The spring creaks as it stretches around the edge of the door. You release the door, and it bangs behind you. The best ones bounce a little and bang twice. The most important feature — a hook and eye to latch the door shut. Good times from the past.

That’s the news for this week. I hope everybody is doing well.

Someday, we might look back on these days as one of the greatest “Darwin filters” of modern times. The problem is, nobody knows for sure which behaviors are too risky. Danita and I are staying fairly conservative. But there are folks in our neighborhood that are more conservative than us. They never walk inside a store or restaurant. They wear masks when they exercise outdoors. Then there are those (mostly younger folk) who wear masks in stores (as required by Maryland), but don’t bother with any other precautions. And a surprising number don’t cover their noses. Are Danita and I being silly or risky? Nobody knows for sure. We’re just guessing as we go along.

Meanwhile, our neighborhood had a red letter day yesterday. We opened the pool. It’s for residents only. No visitors. No grand kids. All the community pool furniture has been stacked in a corner. Residents have to bring their own chair. They have to wear a mask until they are safely situated at least 6 feet apart. (No masks while in the pool, of course.) Residents have to sign a legal waiver, which they exchange for an ugly orange wrist band. All in all, the COVID rules are a page and a half long. (That doesn’t count the legal waiver or the regular rules, which are also in effect.) The maximum permitted in our pool at any time is 47. The board was worried that the pool would be too crowded because there’s nothing else to do. I never thought the pool would be crowded. Carrying your own chair down a long, steep ramp to the pool is something a lot of folks our age don’t find attractive. And truth be told, there always were a lot more people laying on a lounge chair than in the pool. 200 residents got orange wrist bands. Yesterday, a little over 30 people came. Danita is a big pool person and went over for some exercise yesterday and today. Both days, she has a lot of time where she was the only person in the water. I think it’s amazing how much gossip community news Danita picks up even when she sees only a couple of people she knows.

I spent a lot of time on our community computers. They wanted a new report with more information to use as a check-in list at the pool. That shouldn’t have been very hard, but somehow I ended up spending a day on it. We have a pool book with the pass numbers and photos of everybody who requested a pool pass. Our office manager had problems printing that out. This was hard because the cause of the error was obscure. That was another day of work.

We have one more piece of “big” news. Ever since we got back from our last trip, there have been items we wanted to buy but couldn’t find. The list kept on shifting. At different times, it was toilet paper, hamburger, hand soap, and so on. Thursday, I closed the list when I scored a 3-pack of active dry yeast. Woo-Hoo!

That’s a lot of excitement for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a quiet week. No big excitement. No drama. Just nice.

Danita watched a cooking show sponsored by Howard County. Howard County uses WebX, so of course they started with 5 or 10 minutes of technical difficulties. The cooking show was less than 5 minutes long. I was surprised when she came back upstairs.

The Men’s club Zoom meeting worked well. About a dozen men showed up. One resident is still in Florida but zoomed in to join us. That was nice.

The Columbia Association decided to open their indoor pools. Danita has a CA membership so she can swim in the winter. She had one day to decide whether to pay for her membership or suspend it for 3 months. She decided to suspend. The next day, she got the restrictions on pool use. She made a wise decision. The pool might be good for some folks, but it is unusable for her. It looks like our neighborhood will open our private pool. It will be residents only — no guests at any time.

I hope everybody is doing well.

It’s been a quiet week in Columbia. We didn’t join any protests, or eat in at any restaurants, but we have been zooming more. Circle, grandkids, doors. Our neighborhood men’s club is going to try a zoom tomorrow morning. It’s bring your own bagel and make your own coffee, which works for me. But sometimes I also steal a piece of doughnut. How am I going to get 1/4 of a doughnut?

Our neighborhood had a meeting largely dedicated to whether and how we will open the pool. Columbia runs several outdoor pools, all of which will be closed this year. Their issue is funding. Our issue is avoiding liability. Do residents have to sign a waiver to get in the pool? Does somebody have to be at the gate admitting people? On and on the discussion goes. I attended to make sure they didn’t try to have an electronic signup that guarantees the resident has signed a waiver. Our database isn’t that good. People move out, others move in, the swim passes are on the counter. End result, we have residents swimming who aren’t in the book. The board decided to buy colored wrist bands. I think that’s a sensible decision.

The really big excitement was my new cell phone. I cracked the glass on my old phone. The phone still works, but probably not for long. I picked out a “7.1” phone that costs about $200. A few months ago, it was $150 more. Now the “7.2” phone is out and the “7.1” phone is obsolete. That makes it a good deal for me. I happened to check the delivery. Amazon said I would be the next stop. Then there were 8 stops in front of me instead of 1. Then the phone disappeared. I had to wait two days to make sure the phone didn’t re-appear. Then request a refund. Then order the phone again. Again I happened to check after the truck was in our neighborhood. I delayed my bike ride to make sure it appeared. That also let me charge the battery while I was riding. The phone is in and it works fine. In spite of all the new features and software, it’s pretty much the same as my old phone. But without the cracked screen.

Everything else is quiet this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Things are starting to open up in Maryland. And also in Howard County. For a while, the Howard County executive, Calvin Ball, was refusing to open the county even when the state was opening — in spite of the fact that our county has far fewer cases of Covid than some other counties (whether counting total numbers or per capita). It didn’t take him long to figure out he got a lot less criticism if he just followed the governor. Now he’s making small adjustments to the governor’s plans. I think it’s a head game with him. Anyway, many businesses, including restaurants and barbers, are open with restrictions. A few are still closed, including malls, movie theaters and mini-golf. Our church is having outdoor services this weekend with a limit of 250, who must socially distance and wear masks. They sent parishioners a survey asking when we would feel safe coming back to services. Both Danita and I said “after there’s a vaccine”. We’re both over 65 and both have underlying medical conditions. So we’re pretty much hunkered down for the duration. We go to the grocery store, and wash our hands, and order two carry-out meals a week, and wash our hands, and social distance, and wear masks, and try not to touch our faces, and wash our hands.

In spite of that, we participated in several high-risk behaviors this week. We let a contractor in to talk about possible new doors to the deck. We let a plumber in to replace our busted garbage disposal. We let an exterminator in to get rid of some carpenter bees. (I asked him to walk around when he came, but before he was done it was raining. I couldn’t ask him to walk in muddy ground in the rain.) And we had a party! Our neighbors the Jones are as careful as we are. They have an extra good reason to be careful because her 90 year old mother lives with them. We invited them to our back porch Wednesday evening. We sat in chairs placed 6 feet apart. They ate their cookies and drank their wine while we ate our pretzels and drank our wine. Not sharing wine is easy. They drink only sweet white. Is that even wine? But we both felt a little funny not sharing food.

I wrote earlier about how hard it is to find cleaning products. I ended up scoring bathroom cleaner for free! I saw my favorite brand available at Walmart online and ordered 4 bottles. They were to arrive Wednesday. I got an Email from FedEx saying they couldn’t deliver the package because it is damaged. I couldn’t ask for a refund online because I had nothing to return, so I called Walmart. 20 minutes later they called back and told me they were out of stock, but they could refund my money. The next day FedEx delivered 3 of the 4 bottles. That was another call to Walmart to let them know to charge me for 3 bottles. 20 minutes later, they said I should just keep it. Pretty good score, if you ask me.

Danita and I have participated in several video presentations — talks, cooking shows, concerts. We’ve pretty much decided WebX is the most unreliable platform available today.

This should be an exciting week. Monday we have a virtual meeting with a contractor about deck doors. Tuesday I have a 1:00 neighborhood meeting to discuss speed bumps with an expert from the county. I’m not sure why I’m in that meeting, but I was invited. I like speed bumps. If there’s a few inches between the bump and the curb, they’re easy to skate around. Even if I go over them, they’re just about the only thing I can do faster than a car. That’s followed by a 2:00 neighborhood meeting to discuss opening our pool. I’m in that meeting because they might want an online reservation system. Then Tuesday evening it’s a condo meeting, which will mostly be about repairing water damage to houses. This might total up to more excitement than I can handle all at once. I might need a little wine Wednesday evening to calm things down. And maybe some Doritos. Or pretzels. Not that I’m anticipating.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I set up a pool signup with Sign Up Genius for the board to review. I spent three days beating my head against the computer because Sign Up Genius doesn’t work the way I wanted it to work. Plus their documentation is terrible. It gives you examples of what to do, but doesn’t talk about what options actually do, how they work, or why. They have setup options that are not explained anywhere in their documentation. They don’t appear to do anything. Yet making a selection from the provided options is mandatory. Once I got over those hurdles, the rest was fairly straightforward.

We tried a WebX presentation of a “Conversation with General U. S. Grant”. That was pretty bad. The presenter kept on losing his connection. The moderator was simultaneously holding a staff meeting and had a baby somewhere nearby and sometimes forgot to mute her mic. We’re going to try a web concert this evening. I usually attend our condo board meeting via Zoom, but they had a conflict and moved it to our weekly party night. Sorry condo, you’re not ever going to supersede party night.

There’s not a lot else for this week. I hope you-all are doing well.

Times are so exciting … where do I start? Our washable face masks came in! Woo-hoo! The state opened up routine dental visits this week. Our normal 6 month appointments were this week. My 8:30 appointment was unchanged. Danita’s appointment was moved from 9:00 to 9:15, to reduce the number of people waiting in the lobby. Fortunately, she was able to re-arrange her schedule.

The forecast for this week was 7 straight days of rain. I told Danita that if the forecast held, we would have to go to the Silver Diner to get milkshakes. The forecast was entirely wrong. The weather was OK for outdoor activities every day except Friday. We were glad to be able to get outdoors. I missed the milkshakes. We decided to get Wegman’s muffins for Sunday breakfast. Their muffins are tasty and very large. It was an experience. We arrived at 7 just as the store was opening. There was a huge line of people waiting to get in, not quite 6 feet apart. We made it in the store before they reached their capacity limit. The muffins were good.

We talked with Pella about replacing the sliding doors going out to the deck. We’ll talk to Anderson this week. It appears our doors aren’t water damaged enough to be replaced by the condo association, and that they will not have to repair the ledger board holding our deck against the house. The final determination is months away. But getting permission to replace the doors through the architectural committee and three condos can take a while. We’re positioning ourselves to move forward when the time comes. We’re also considering other interior decoration changes. Danita is looking at having the ugly bush in our front yard removed and putting in some Tiger Lillies. (I’m told I’m using the wrong name, but that’s what I call them). That will require permission of the landscaping committee.

The big news is that the community is looking at what they will have to do to open the pool and gym when the time comes. Admission will be limited. There will likely be 1-hour or 2-hour timed slots. Given our population, using paper signups in the clubhouse is quite popular. But that involves touching pens and paper, and people gathering around the signup sheet. The board is looking at electronic signup. But that would require residents to give the community their Email address. I’m surprised at how many people don’t want to do this. I looked at some options and decided that if we use E-signup, SignupGenius is probably as good as any. I might set up a test system next week so the board can see what it’s like.

The drama at Riderwood continues unabated. Danita’s back hurts from the constant stress.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I’ve never before been the first to find a bug in Microsoft software. But I did it this week. Actually, it was the office manager that found the bug. She couldn’t open our Residents Database. I figured out what was not working. There was nothing on the boards. I reported it to the Microsoft community. They reported it to Microsoft. Microsoft reported a work-around. Woo-hoo! My name in lights. The bug involves a depreciated feature in Microsoft’s Access database called “Switchboard”. This was a way to show the user all the data entry and report options available. A user can click on the option they want and watch Access announce a “202” error. Before Microsoft could publish a work-around, I came up with my own solution. I got rid of the Switchboard and wrote a home page. But I very much appreciate the response from Microsoft. Access isn’t a popular product. It’s nice to know they’re still supporting it.

Our community uses a door security system to control the clubhouse doors. It’s like hotel doors that guests open with by touching a plastic card to the doorknob. It’s an old system. Parts are no longer available. I presented options. The board asked me to come back next month. This is rather frustrating, because it has been going on since January. I must admit, it’s harder to discuss these things with Zoom than it was when we were all in the same room.

Our condo had a significant Zoom meeting this week. As I have mentioned, there were several builder errors in our condo. The most significant was that some buildings had the flashing installed incorrectly and have significant water damage. There’s also less urgent issues, such as decks that can fall down and exterior stone veneer that’s falling off the walls. (I exaggerate, but not by a lot.) We won a lawsuit. The repair project was divided into seven phases. The board announced phase 2, where the seven units with the worst water damage will be rebuilt. There was a lot of interest in the meeting. The meeting itself had so many attendees that there wasn’t room on the screen to show everybody. Some residents had trouble starting Zoom on their computers, but Zoom itself never glitched.

The day before the meeting, our board president had her computer fail. I don’t know how old the computer is, but I know it was running Windows 7, so 10 years is a reasonable guess. She needed the computer for the Zoom meeting. I lent her my travel computer and downloaded the files she needed from her backup. She had to adapt to a small computer running Windows 10. She was up to the wee hours. The board meeting was a great success. The board seems to be taking a very logical and measured approach.

After the meeting, I was talking to our president and learned several things about my unit. A person the next building over replaced the doors onto his deck. The contractor examined his flashing while installing the new doors and determined it was installed correctly. As part of phase 2, our engineering company is developing a testing methodology that will let us know whether there is internal water damage without taking the walls down. Every unit will be tested. The expectation is that there is no significant damage to my unit. That is consistent with what I observe.

Our neighbors the Jones had two separate “emergencies”. A light was flashing on and off. I replaced the light switch for them. Their laptop camera stopped working. (That means there’s no Zoom video.) It took me half an hour to convince her the camera doesn’t work, even though it worked last week.

Bud is not doing well. Danita finds this to be very upsetting, especially since she can’t go on campus and visit him.

So, all in all, it was an action packed week for me, not an easy week for Danita. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a quiet week for me. Not so much for Danita. Her dad lost his pill container and created a pretty big stink. Riderwood has doctors that hold office hours on site, but Bud’s insurance doesn’t cover the service because they are “out of network”. Bud decided he would visit the Riderwood doctors to get his pills. Fortunately, when he got to the medical suite there were no doctors there. That’s a good thing. A cardiologist visit and a couple of prescriptions runs into some serious money when they are not insured. Then he went down the hall to his buddy and asked his buddy to give him a ride to a cardiologist. The buddy was pretty upset because residents are supposed to stay in their rooms to avoid spreading COVID.

Our virtual concert was quite nice. The concert was at 5:30, so we took a pizza downstairs and ate while we listened. The pianist was excellent and we enjoyed his selections. The video was funny. There were three cameras. One of them was a close-up on the keyboard. When the music was slow, I could clearly see the fingers creating the notes. When the music was fast, the fingers were indistinct. Finger motion was behind the music. Sometimes fingers jumped or became somewhat translucent and blurry.

Danita made us a treat for Cynco de Myao. We had chicken mole and Mexican brownies. They were mmmm – mmmm good. Then we watched The Mask of Zorro. I think we should celebrate Cynco de Myao several times a year. We get mole left overs for dinner tonight.

Our neighborhood office manager was having problems with our resident database. I wondered over to the clubhouse this morning to look at it. I found a way to work around the problem, but I haven’t found a solution. I am able to reproduce the problem on my computer. There’s nothing in the boards. I think I found a Windows bug. It’s not entirely unbelievable. This bug involves a little-used feature in Microsoft Access Database. It’s triggered only when opening the database in one specific sequence. I wrote my first ever query to the Microsoft support site. It’s the most interesting bug I’ve seen in at least 5 years. Woo-hoo.

The last piece of news is that Danita got a new computer. Hers is getting on the old side. The warranty on both of our computers is expiring. She relies on her computer a lot, especially during Covid. My computer is a little older than hers, but I have my Surface Go travel computer, so I can safely run my computer until I get a serious case of computer envy, or the computer breaks. The computer came in much earlier than we expected. It wasn’t scheduled to arrive until June 1. I was able to get her computer up and running in less than a day. So far, we haven’t found any missing files or programs.

Dinner’s almost ready. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

What a silly idea I had. That I could ever fly a drone. Even if it’s stabilized with a 3-axis gyro. Even if it’s stabilized with GPS. Flying outside or in the garage. It makes no difference. I can fly it for a while, then it gets away from me. If I do the least little thing wrong, I correct the wrong way and off it goes, into the tree, or the bike rack, or just off into the wilderness. At the moment, it has banged up propellers. Again. I have spare propellers. And I’m pretty good a replacing them. This time I’m leaving them bent-up. Bleh!

For our Sunday order-out breakfast, Danita and I decided we would like a Mexican breakfast. Maybe an omelet with chorizo sausage. There’s a Mexican restaurant in our area that does this. We waited until they were open and gave them a call. No answer for 10 rings. Rats. We ended up with Panera bagels. Very nice bagels. No chorizo.

The day wasn’t all bad. Instead of heavy rain, T-storms, and flooding we got 75 degrees and clouds. I have been hearing a scraping sound when riding my bike. Just sometimes. Bikes aren’t supposed to make scraping sounds. I put the bike on the stand. I found a possible source, hypothesized a solution, and got out the wrenches. A short test rid confirms. The noise is gone.

Have you heard about oximeters? Those are the little gizmos the doctor puts on your finger. It tells you how oxygenated your blood is. It turns out they can actually be helpful. If you get Covid, the disease can start clogging up your lungs. Your oxygenation goes down. Your body adapts. You don’t notice. Until it goes way down. With a oximeter, you can have earlier detection of Covid, start treatment earlier, have a better outcome. Anyway, that’s theory. I’m usually the last to learn about these things. Danita and I were shocked to find that these little gadgets are still available. Ours is on order. We’ll see how it works. At least it’s easier than flying a drone.

I think I mentioned that we found face masks. The disposable masks are in. The reusable masks are on the way. Now the latest Covid shortage is cleaning supplies. I don’t mean just cleaning supplies that contain alcohol. Or supplies that contain bleach. I’m talking about all cleaning supplies. Liquid dishwasher soap? MIA. Spray stuff for the bathroom sink? Not to be found. I’m cutting back on bathroom cleaning to stretch out the supplies we have on hand. It’s a crazy, crazy world we’re in.

We’re looking forward to attending a concert at 5:30 today. And I will attend our community’s security committee meeting tomorrow. The internet is a wonderful place. But all this crazy Covid stuff won’t last forever. We should have a vaccine in 2021. Crazy, crazy world.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.