Crazy Frustrated

We had an inch of snow this week. It was quite pretty. The camera doesn’t show what the eye sees, but even in this picture you can see snowflakes frozen in time. It’s even prettier for us because we don’t have to go out if we don’t want to. So why am I crazy frustrated?

It all started with Christmas. Danita and I heard Bryon would like a drone. I thought drones were multi-thousand dollar devices, but Danita found a palm-sized drone with a very reasonable price and excellent reviews. Brian had fun flying it inside and was having pretty good success — until it got tangled with Elizabeth’s hair. Still, it looked like a lot of fun. I got the itch and bought myself one. When I tried to fly it, it skittered across the room like a demented crab until it encountered a wall. Then it buzzed against the wall like a manic woodpecker while I tried to find the “off” button. After several “flights”, I got highly miffed and sent it back.

But I was still hooked. Surely a better drone would be easier to fly. I found another drone, larger and only mildly outrageous in cost. It is stabilized by a 6-axis gyro, and also stabilized with GPS. It comes with a one-button launch and another button guaranteed to land it where it took off. Great. But I bought it at the wrong time of year for sure. It’s a lot bigger and could be a hazard indoors. Plus, GPS stabilization only works outdoors. So now I need a day that’s dry, not super cold, with low winds and no snow on the ground. We don’t get a lot of those this time of year. And we have our 5-week trip starting in mid-February. Plus, this being Columbia, there aren’t a lot of wide-open spaces for a beginner pilot to safely experiment. There are some soccer fields that aren’t used during school hours. Hopefully, I’ll get to try it before school’s out.

I’m not really all that frustrated. Plenty of things are great. For example, if Danita has lots of leftover ham from the holidays, she might be inspired to make a ham and swiss loaf for dinner. Tres bon!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Ordinary Time

We really enjoyed the holidays. It was fun having so much company and having time with each other. Now everybody has gone home. Today is Epiphany, which is traditionally the last day of Christmas. We’re getting back into our normal schedule. It feels relaxing and comfortable.

Our parish had a family dinner Friday. It was the steak tips menu, which is quite popular. Danita and I volunteered to be servers, as usual. Attendance was good and the flow of people was steady. It was a great dinner. At the end of the evening, there was plenty of food left for the volunteers.

We got back into our habit of a nice breakfast before Church. This being the first Sunday, we went to Bob Evans. It may not really be farm fresh, but it does taste good. And we took biscuits home. It will be ham sandwiches on Bob Evans biscuits for lunch. Woo-hoo!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Mark and JiaJia

This week one piece of news overshadows everything else that happens in the week. Mark and JiaJia came for a visit and stayed overnight. I could have gotten a picture at the cake tasting. Or our marvelous lunch at Catonsville Gourmet. Or our informal snack of Greek Spinach pies. Or Mark’s attempt to “cheat” at Scrabble. Or Mark’s victory dance when he thought he had the game-winning move. Or his disappointment when he found his ultimate move didn’t fit on the board. Or even the nice breakfast we had at Panera. But all I got this lousy snap in our kitchen. Thanks, Mark and JiaJia, for a delightful day.

Danita, JiaJia, and Mark

 

Good Times Still Rolling

Last Sunday we saw the movie “Knives Out”. It’s a great movie — lots of surprises and full of fun. We also went to dinner Thursday to use a free entree at Houlihans. I sure do like their meatloaf. Then Friday we had a neighborhood party. To be honest, the food was not all that great. But the company was good and we had a good time. Yesterday we went to the Sabiston’s for a Christmas open house. We saw a lot of people we know through Marriage Encounter that we haven’t seen in a long time. Tonight we’re having home-made calzones — cheese, sausage, onion, and red pepper. Woo-hoo!

Having gone out Friday and Saturday, we decided to stay home today. After a week of rain ad yuck, the weather today was quite good — sunny and 50. I got a nice ride in. We’re back to rain and yuck tomorrow.

The work on our neighborhood computers has a light at the end of the tunnel. I went to a board workshop last week and got everything I requested approved. I have one more meeting with requests in January. One can only do so much in one night. I cover 3 or 4 points in a meeting. I set up a meeting with our office manager Tuesday to go over some things. Danita was “suspicious” when she saw a meeting with another woman at 11 PM. Stupid computers. I said 11. It should have known I meant AM.

Mark and JiaJia are in Lewisburg. We’re looking forward to seeing them Friday. They’re coming down to talk to wedding vendors.

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

Most Excellent Food Week

We had some amazing food this week. We started on Sunday with the Moosewood gnocchi. It is absolutely fabulous. Then Danita made a wonderful dinner with no good name, but it had pasta, peas, mushrooms, prosciutto, and a some red pepper to give it a little bite. That was pretty darn good. Each dish made 2 dinners. But wait … there’s more. Saturday we went to the Army Preservation Jazz Band concert with our neighbors. This is a “big band” and they did a bang-up job on seasonal music. Afterwards, we came back to our house to have some of Danita’s most excellent chili. And we enjoyed a very nice conversation with our neighbors. My goodness we ate well this week.

We didn’t have an official neighborhood party this week, but there was a clubhouse tree trimming event. This is a mostly ladies activity. Danita went and had pizza and cookies. I went out for a burger.

I spent plenty of time at the clubhouse working on computers, including 4 hours today working with another resident, Joe, on our WiFi network. We weren’t able to implement all of Joe’s plans, but we did a very nice job. We now have a strong WiFi signal throughout the clubhouse, out on the deck, and all around the pool. Plus we got rid of 3 pieces of equipment. We both think it came out very well.

In addition to all that, this week includes the first Friday in December. We went to Bob Evans for our traditional Christmas shopping. Danita was well prepared with suggestions. We sailed through the list and went home to actually order the stuff. Our shopping was completely done by Noon.

And just to have one more kicker, I got a free entree and desert at the Silver Diner for my birthday. So we went to the Silver Diner for breakfast this morning. For desert, I chose a Smith Island cake with chocolate icing, which we enjoyed after finishing up the gnocchi.

Who could ask for more than this in one week? I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Upgraded!

Ed and Lynne hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year. It was a small dinner — Bud, Danita and I, Pete and the girls, and the hosts. We had delicious meal and a good time. I didn’t take any pictures because everybody looks just abut the same as they did a few weeks ago at the sour beef dinner.

Eichenlaub Hotel Columbia, located at 8800 Endless Ocean Way, is proud to announce upgraded rooms. We changed the standard beds to queen size. Now visitors can relax in the commodious style of queens around the world! We accidentally went to the mattress store on the second to last day of the month, and found our mattresses delivered the very next day. It had something to do with a monthly sales quota, or so they said. I knew one bed frame was capable of adjusting to queen size. I checked the other bed frame and saw it was also adjustable. It turns out the second frame could adjust down to twin, but couldn’t adjust up to queen. Fortunately, the store is right down the street and had plenty of frames in stock. I had to drill new holes in the headboards. The wood where I drilled the holes is thicker, so I also had to go to Lowe’s to get longer bolts. So in other words, it was a typical project.

I’ve also been doing upgrades to our neighborhood computers. I installed disk cloning software to create a full disk backup. If a computer crashes or is hit with malware, we can quickly restore all the software in one go. We also added an air gap backup to protect against ransomware. There’s lots more to do, but I’ll work on in in bits and pieces here and there. The most urgent things are done.

Tony and Donna are friends from Circle. Donna’s dad moved to hospice care last week and died a few days later. He was 98, a true WW II veteran. I recon’ he did good enough. We’ll be at his funeral Tuesday.

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

Plenty of Computer Time

I’ve had plenty of computer time this last few days. I became concerned because if our office is hit with a ransomware attack, we would be in pretty bad shape. The board approved a security review with an outside consultant. Of course, they brought up plenty of issues for us to address. I’ll be asking for the office personnel to do a few extra things, plus changes that will take a lot of my time, plus $1500 for software and hardware. The board will have to approve this. Sad but true, my time is the least important element to the board.

The report that the outside consultant wrote looks well organized, but it’s not. There is a summary page followed by discussion and recommendations. They aren’t in the same order. Some issues are in the summary, some in the recommendations, and some are in both. Things are plopped on paper without any numbering scheme (not even page numbers). I wrote my own document reorganizing the blob into recommended actions in order of importance. I didn’t want the board to think I am making up stuff, which means I wanted to provided cross-references. I ended up modifying the consultant’s report by adding page numbers and numbered annotations. The consultant actually did an excellent job in the review. It’s just that he isn’t a very good technical writer.

As usual, every step of the process was slightly delayed. I started the process late in August. Now we’re in the holiday season, with several board members preparing to go south for the season. The consultant presented his report early Friday. I wanted to make a first-cut presentation to the board tomorrow evening. Technically, I didn’t get things done in time, and it’s not on Monday’s agenda. But I have excellent support o the board. The Vice President suggested a way to start deliberations Monday even though this isn’t on the agenda. We’ll see how things go.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but I also launched a volunteer computer support service. Residents can make an appointment to meet me at the clubhouse. I’ve gotten some nibbles, but the restrictions have limited usefulness. Sessions have to be in the clubhouse because the board has insurance that covers volunteers, but only if the activity is on board property — i.e. in the clubhouse. This is a serious limitation to those residents who use desktop computers, or want something configured to the WiFi in their house. Of four requests, I have been able to help one resident.

Danita’s preparing for a colonoscopy today. It’s not exactly the most comfortable thing, but we’re grateful for good medical services.

The rain of the last few days is clearing up. It’s time for a ride. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

A Week of Amazing Food

We started our week with a Circle lunch/dinner. Everybody brought even more food than normal. We had at least twice as much as we could eat. And it was all very good.

Then Danita made meatloaf for dinner. Not only is it one of my favorites, but I also got 3 days of meatloaf sandwiches at lunch. How can life get much better?

Wednesday Houlihan’s announced they were having their $9 meatloaf special. We like to go out to eat in the middle of the week. So I had another meatloaf dinner, and another meatloaf sandwich for lunch.

This morning, we went to the Walter’s Art Gallery for a breakfast. They invited everybody who was a member for 20 years or move. It wasn’t awesome like the other food this week, but it was nice. They had bagels, pastries, drinks, etc. They had a new exhibit open this morning. We were the 5th and 6th people to see the exhibit.

This afternoon, we had a dinner that is even better than meatloaf. We had a sour beef dinner with potato dumplings, wine, beer, and more. There was more of everything than we could eat. The Schmaus family was here, including Rick and Suzy from Texas. It was a wonderful time, and a perfect end to a fabulous week.

Short Week

Since we got home Monday afternoon, we felt like we had a short week. It’s incredible how many little things we had to get done after being away for an extended weekend. I spent a long morning trying to get the clubhouse WiFi working poolside. I ended up doing a chat with technical support. They bumped it up to “level 2 support”. I’ll wait until Tuesday before sending our access point back from whense it came. There are other ways to make this work. We had a neighborhood party Friday — pizza, meatballs, sandwiches, and libations. This afternoon, we went to the Walter’s Art Gallery to attend a lecture about Roman bread.