We finished our busiest week. Our primary job is to run the presentations for schools that schedule visits to the park. Last week, we had up to 8 presentations in one day. We needed all hands on deck. Now the very busy part of our job is over. We have half days of work for the rest of the month. We’ll be helping out with other aspects at the park, but there isn’t all that much that’s important until the big crowds come, starting on Memorial Day weekend.

We’ve had to make adjustments. Our internet plan provides 10 GBytes of data a month. I was shocked to learn that the web pages we visit and our Email use nearly 3 times that much data. Adapting is not very hard. We also get a bonus of 50 GBytes of data a month, provided it is used between 2 and 8 AM. We are early risers. We start our work day at 8:30. So we’re doing our internet in the morning. We turn our connection off for the rest of the day. We have two new housemates starting today. Ben is living upstairs. He is doing a bat survey and will be here for a couple of weeks. Karen is living in one of the bedrooms downstairs. She is a “free spirit” and quite a talker. She took a seasonal job here because the ocean is her “healing place”. She’s a very nice person, but definitely works at a different wavelength than Danita and I. After dinner, we sequestered ourselves in our room. We knew that more people would eventually live in the house with us, but we thought that they would tell us a day or so ahead before people came. We learned of Ben and Karen when they showed up.

We had a very uncharacteristic weekend. It started out normally. Saturday was sunny and warm. We did chores and took bike rides. The strangeness started Sunday. We went out to breakfast on Mother’s Day. Normally, we consider that the worst day of the year to eat out, but we went to 7 AM Mass, and got to the restaurant before the crowds. Then went up to Rehoboth Beach to visit the outlet stores. We’re looking forward to our trip to France. In our previous travels, we’ve found that there are times when the best plan is to wash clothes in the hotel sink. That doesn’t work for heavy pants and shirts, because the clothes don’t dry fast enough. I still remember working in Paris, unable to find a wash and fold, and spending a small fortune to get my clothes laundered. (I was on an expense account at the time.) We got some light weight clothes that dry quickly. This was a desperation trip. We tried shopping in Columbia. The stores don’t carry a broad selection of these kinds of clothes (even REI). I looked online, but felt uncomfortable buying clothes I couldn’t see or try on. It was a productive trip. I found all the pants and shirts I will need. Danita found a couple of things. The discounts are astounding, but shopping at the outlet stores was stressful. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Danita’s support.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a bust. After the beautiful weather Saturday, Sunday was 60 degrees with occasional rain. We cancelled our other plans and spent the day at our temporary home, relaxing until we found ourselves talking with Karen.  ;-)

We had some very good news this week. Mark is scheduling his thesis defense. We’re looking forward to attending.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We drove a day to get down, a day to get back, and spent a day a the Reeds. It was worth every minute of driving.

Elizabeth, Bryon, Pat – Waiting for time to leave

Four Generatons (The dress was warn by Danita, Jul, Elizbeth. The pearls were from Leona.)

Pat getting into trouble (Elizabeth might fall in!)

During the service – Elizabeth reading, Bryon alter serving

The Women – Danita, Jul, Godmother Barbara, Melody, Elizabeth

We coasted through this work week. We were asked to come down early. Truth be told, we could have come a week later and done our duties without failing. Programs for each grade (pre-K through 4) are already designed. Most of the programs are pretty good, but we had to overhaul one activity. The program is about how animals adapt to their environment. It included the “5 bucket” game. Each bucket has 4 clues. Kids are supposed to use the clues to guess the animal. It’s not a bad idea, but most of the clues weren’t about animal adaptations. One of the clues was totally ridiculous. Our new game has better clues, each of which addresses one part of the animal’s adaptation to its environment.

Monday we will have our official orientation. This is where we are corralled into a room. We are supposed to keep our eyes open until lunch, when we are released. Tuesday we attend a program offered by a full time ranger. Wednesday and Thursday we will sink or swim. Each day we will receive about 90 kids. The kids are divided into 3 groups. The groups will rotate through 3 programs. One is a session is led by the teacher. The second is a forest walk, led by a ranger. Danita and I will lead a beach walk. So we will do 3 beach walks Wednesday, 3 more Thursday. The beach walk is pretty easy. We talk about mole crabs, ghost crabs, and sand dunes. We let the kids run around barefoot in the sand. We dig in the sand, sift it in sand sifters, and look at the sand with magnifying glasses. I’m pretty sure the kids would be happy just to run around for an hour. There is one part of the program we won’t do. Some of the smallest sand particles are black. These are magnetite. We were told the magnetite could be picked up with a magnet. That didn’t work. Then we were told the sand had to be totally dry for this to work. We dried some sand. Totally dry. It still didn’t work. I tried using a horseshoe magnet and a metal bar, with a small gap on one side to focus the magnetic field. It still didn’t work. We had some plastic covered “wand” magnets that a few particles would stick to, but that could have been from static electricity. It didn’t impress us. It certainly wouldn’t impress 30 4th graders. It has nothing to do with the theme (what a plant or animal needs to live on the sea shore.) It’s off the program.

Yesterday was quite nice — Sunny, 65, and a slight breeze. We have a very large screened porch on the back of our house. We opened the back door and aired  the house. We spent the morning cleaning the house and porch. I took a bike ride in the afternoon. Danita did a little riding and some yoga. Then we kicked back and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Today after Church (in Ocean City) we visited the Life Rescue museum, about how people were rescued from ships that foundered off the shore. We saw life saving equipment and techniques used 150 years ago. Then we walked out onto the boardwalk and watched the kite convention. We saw plenty of kites, including some synchronized kite flying. We were inspired to buy a tacky whirley twirley. The bicycle theme suites me; the pink flamingo is a Baltimore thing. (You can also see part of our porch and our Internet satellite dish.) For lunch, we stopped by the Island Creamery in Berlin on the way home. They have the best ice cream we have ever had. Their “one scoop” cup has as much ice cream as anybody else’s 3-scoop jumbo. I can’t begin to imagine what their 2-scoop cup must have.

We’re looking forward to traveling to Jul’s next weekend for Elizabeth’s First Communion. We will leave Thursday and take a day of “vacation” Friday. Stand by for grand-kid pics next week.

After our second week of training, we feel comfortable in assuming our forthcoming duties. We have another full week before we will do our first solo presentations, so we’re pretty comfortable. I want to go over and formalize my notes, but I will have plenty of time to do that.

Yesterday was our goof-off day. We went to Pocomoke. Our original objective was to attend an ATV fest, but when we drove by that looked like a bust. So we visited the Pocomoke Discovery Center which is a museum of Eastern Shore life, and features two river otters. We also walked their nature trail through a small Cyprus forest, followed by a more traditional forest. When land is closes to sea level, a small change in elevation (just a foot or two) can drastically change the types of plants and wildlife. Here are a few pics of the otters.

It was an interesting first week. But we also had an “adventure” that affected the entire park. Our house has industrial toilet. There’s no tank or flapper valve. It’s just a water pipe that comes out of the wall. Push a handle, the valve opens, and lots of water noisily rushes out until the valve turns itself off a few seconds later. Except our valve ran for about 2 minutes one evening last week. I reported it promptly, then nothing happened. Monday night, it ran indefinitely. There are no water cutoff valves for the toilet. The water valve for the house is buried underground and requires a special tool. Danita and I had asked several times what to do in an emergency. We received a phone number for the housing coordinator. We called her, but neither she nor we could raise the head of maintenance. She suggested we sleep upstairs (which we ended up doing). I had heard that when this happens, one should flush another toilet. This will temporarily lower the water pressure, allowing the first valve to close. I don’t know if this ever works, but in our case we ended up with two toilets pushing water down the drain as fast as water would roll through the pipes. The head of maintenance finally got the texts and voice mails, and turned the water to our house off somewhere around 11 PM. We were sound asleep by them. The park has its own water treatment plant. The water that rolled through our house for 2 to 3 hours overwhelmed all the water plant systems. Everything was fixed by 9 or 9:30 the next day. But every last person in the park knows us as the folks who had a plumbing problem that affected the water.

Whatever adventures we end up having, they won’t compare to what some visitors experience. I was thinking about writing about the couple that lost a fender and wanted to find out if anybody had retrieved it from the beach. But a better example occurred just minutes before closing on Friday. A couple called because they were somewhere in the back country, driving in the surf, and their transmission stopped working. (Unlike in the movies, driving in the surf is a really bad idea in the real world.) Nobody was on hand to help. (One needs a truck with 7″ of clearance and 4-wheel drive just to travel safely on the sand.) The only thing we could do was to text them phone numbers for the 4 towing companies that have trucks capable of towing on the sand and wish them luck. Was the tide coming in? Did their car end up under water? I guess we’ll hear the rest of the story next week.

Our week was packed with positive experiences. We visited the back country in a truck that could safely travel on sand, driven by an expert who stayed well away from the surf. We visited the Virginia side of the island, learned a lot about the ecology of the area, and saw lots of horses. We spent all of Thursday and Friday outside. It was the first two warm days of the year, so we enjoyed excellent weather with no bugs. That’s very rare combination on Assateague Island.

Saturday we drove home to swap cars. We used our known-good charging station, which worked fine. We had no problems on the drive. We’ll be taking our gas car down tomorrow. I’ll end this with pictures of the area. It’s just about what one would expect.

The folks with Danita are Brooks and Travis. They are great guys with amazing knowledge of the wildlife, history, and ecology of the area. The tombstone is the only remaining evidence of an early cemetery. (It was the only stone tombstone.) The woods area is a typical back-country campsite. There’s nothing but a vault toilet and a picnic table. The water was very clear because it was still cold enough that there was a minimum of all those very small and widely assorted living critters in the water. The last pics are general landscape.

It was an adventure, but we made it to Assateague. Our Honda is in the shop getting fixed. It was supposed to be ready Friday. We had two options. We could rent a car and driving from Assateague to home today to pick up the Honda. Or we could drive our E-car to Assateague and back. We decided to take the E-car and not return home this weekend because the forecast called for 3 to 8 inches of snow today. As it turns out, the snow petered out into nothing. But –surprise– our car won’t be ready until Monday. If we had rented a car, we would have to pay for an extra week. We made the right decision for the wrong reason.

Driving the E-car was quite an adventure. Our car’s range “guess-o-meter” said we had 105 miles of range. We decided to stop at a charging station at a Royal Farms 82 miles away, driving without heat. We made it to the charging station with 17 miles to spare. (When the car gets down to 16 miles of range, it starts issuing warnings and displaying the closest charging station. Don’t ask me how I know this!) The charging station clearly stated they took major credit cards. But there was no slot to insert the credit card. The Royal Farms folks were very nice, but they knew nothing about the charge station and couldn’t help us. After dithering for a while, we noticed a phone number on the display. We called and were quickly connected to a phone operator. We were supposed to have signed up for service at this chain of charging stations and received  a wireless card. Not to worry, the call operator was quite helpful. We could enter our credit card on an automated system. Only the cell signal wasn’t very good, and it was quite windy out, and we just couldn’t get the credit card number, expiration date, and CCV all entered. After two tries, they gave us a complimentary charging session. This was a high power station. We were fully charged in half an hour, while we went into the Royal Farms and had a cup of coffee.

Our next stop was to the local library, where we used the internet to create an account with this charging chain. We had plenty of charge to make it to the next station at a Royal Farms in Ocean City. The second charging station was in the same chain. It should have been a piece of cake, except that the station wasn’t working. That call operator sent us to a slower charger which also didn’t work. But the second call operator sent us to a third station which does work. And it’s totally free — just plug into your car and accept the joy. It wasn’t a high power charger, but it was good enough to give us plenty juice for a round trip to Assateague, while we ate lunch sandwiches we had purchased at the second Royal Farm store.

When we got to Assateague, we found that the park had purchased a Chevy Bolt and had a charging station. But we can’t use it. That’s misappropriation of government resources for private gain. Our car comes with a very slow charger that works from a standard 110V plug. Fortunately, I had packed a heavy duty extension cord. I plugged our car into that for 20 hours and got the battery up to 85%. We’ll be charging the car with our slow charger at nights and should have no problems getting a full charge for the trip home.

We spent Thursday moving into our new living quarters. Assateague uses lots of seasonal and temporary help. They have 6 houses for all their temporary workers. We have a master bedroom in one of the houses, which means we have a private bath. This is quite rare and we are very lucky to get it. Plus, for the first month or so, we will be the only people in the house. The place is quite comfortable, but is an old beach house. We are the first people to move into this house for the season. We did the check-in and walk through. After we noted all the preexisting defects and the park official left, the water stopped working. They got a maintenance man out right away. It turns out there was so much sand in the water line that the faucets got totally plugged up. They got the lines flushed and the faucets cleaned out quickly.

Yesterday was a very good day. We had our first day of training. Our supervisor is a talker, and she is exhausting. Combine that with being in a new environment, and trying to learn all the local stuff, and all the excitement we had on the trip down — we were totally exhausted by the end of the day. But the HughesNet satellite internet man arrived on schedule and installed our internet access. That works very well. We have unlimited access for 20 days, then we get 10 GB/month. That’s a good thing, because with my computer downloading Windows updates and us watching a couple of TV shows, we used 10 GB on the first day. Obviously, we won’t be watching TV over the internet after our initial 20 days.

Today we made it into town to buy stuff. We stopped at the local library and got library cards. That will be a good source of movies. I have unlimited internet data between 2 and 6 AM. If I can find legal ways to download movies, I can download at night and watch in the evening.

For the first 2 months, we’ll be working Monday – Friday. (That’s when the school groups come in for presentations.) We’re looking forward to Church tomorrow morning, and we found a good breakfast restaurant within walking distance of the free car charger in Ocean City.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

A Colombian Breakfast

The trip down yesterday was long, and the seats had no lumbar support, making them quite uncomfortable for me. But fortunately the trip was boring. Mark got sick at the last minute and didn’t make it. Danita and I started our day with an authentic Colombian breakfast from our Airbnb hosts. It was attractive and quite tasty. Ryn stayed at Jul’s guest room. Her breakfast included quail’s eggs. The consensus of the Reed household was that quail eggs taste just like chicken eggs.

But they sure look nice.

Bike Time

Our next activity was a trip to REI for new bikes. Bryan has outgrown his 20″ bike and was ready for a larger 24″ bike. Elizabeth is big enough for a 24″ bike, but she isn’t ready to balance the bike. She got a very last pink 24″ bike, but for now she is using Bryon’s old 20″. The weather was perfect for a little riding. There was plenty of riding going on. What wasn’t perfect was what I did to Pat’s car. I use Pat’s SUV to bring the bikes home. When I closed the rear hatch, one of the struts broke. The bikes were in the car and the hatch was closed, but it wouldn’t open. Fortunately, Pat and I were able to get the strut out and open the hatch when I got home.

Who is sadder?

The new member of the Reed household is Eddie. He is quite friendly. When we walked into the house, the dog didn’t bark even once. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of this story.

Eddie and Ryn

3rd generation First Communion dress (Danita, Julia, Julia, Elizabeth)

Painting by Bryan (very impressive work!)

Easter Eggs

Ryn’s way cool Travel Bag

I started the week by wrinkling the car. I was in my doctor’s parking lot. I didn’t see her. She didn’t see me. The car’s going to be in the shop for a while.

Asparagus Quiche

The weather Tuesday was threatening — rain and sleet, with temperatures hovering near freezing. That drove our Circle luncheon from 9 to 0. The forecast was for the rain to start later in the afternoon. Danita had some food prepared and ingredients for the rest. We ate pretty well.

We had snow Wednesday. It wasn’t all that much snow, but the state went nuts. Howard county closed schools 3 days.

The second half of the week went a lot better. We had a nice dinner at Church Thursday with the last Discovering Christ. There were those perfect grilled cheese at Church Friday with Stations. We served at a Church Italian sausage dinner Saturday. Tonight we’ll be going to a neighborhood potluck dinner.

We’re looking forward to going to Jul’s for Easter this year. Ryn is coming down Thursday morning. We’ll pick up Mark Thursday afternoon. Friday we’ll drive to NC. Monday we’ll drive back home. There’s too many of us to all fit in Jul’s house. We’re staying at our first Airbnb. It’s close to Jul’s house, and Mark will have a private room to work on his thesis.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This wasn’t a very good week for Danita. She went from fine to really sick in just one day. The doctor said it wasn’t strep and it wasn’t the flu. She was sick most of the week. Danita missed all her normal activities last week. By Saturday, she was feeling better. I got only mildly sick — just some coughing. That was good because Saturday evening was our neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day party. It turned out not to be the best party we’ve ever had. The cabbage looked pretty sad. There were few takers. We had a Keltic band. They spent a lot of time fiddling with their electronics and telling bad stories. And bagpipes simply shouldn’t be played indoors. The strangest thing to me was that they used a small (not as loud) bagpipe for one song and it worked pretty well. But the guy really wanted to play the real deal, so he did. We left at intermission.

I spent a couple of days working on our neighborhood database. We have a photo book for our pool, so we can verify that that people from other neighborhoods don’t start using our pool. It was based on pasting printed pictures on paper, sliding them into plastic sleeves, and putting those into a 3-ring binder. I pulled the photos into our database. As we started using it, some issues surfaced. I’ve been correcting those issues. I wanted to get a camera designed to take the ID photos, similar to the cameras used for driver’s licenses and by just about anybody who uses photo-IDs. The association finally ordered the camera. It should come in this week. I’ll hook it up to our database. That should finish up the project.

We’re going to have a couple of nice days next week, followed by 1 to 3 inches of snow. We are planning a spring luncheon for Circle Tuesday. We never anticipated we might have problems with snow cancellations. We’re in a minor quandary about how much food to buy. If we buy too much, we won’t be able to eat it up before we leave for Assateague. Sigh. First world problems…

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

It was a standard week. We had the perfect snow Monday. When we looked out of the back window, we saw snow clinging to the trees, sparkling in the sunshine. When we looked out the front window, we saw clear streets. Both were beautiful in their own way.

I got several projects done recently. The first was backups on our website. They aren’t working the way they are supposed to, but we are getting daily backups placed in our neighborhood’s Dropbox account. I had to use a Linux Cron job to get the backups to run automatically at midnight every day. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it sure works.

Charge Timer

Another other project was a timer for the car charger. We want to charge our car battery to 80%, then stop. It should help the battery last longer. The car *should* be able to do this for us. The car’s manual says it *can* do this for us. But it *can’t*. We have a simple formula to know how long to charge the car, and we were using the kitchen timer to remind us when to unplug the charger. But sometimes we would forget, go downstairs, and not hear the timer. I wanted to install a timer that would turn the charger off automatically. That requires a relay that will handle 240 volts at 40 amps. They make such things, but I thought I would have to go to a specialty supplier, spend a small fortune, and wait 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. When I actually started looking, I found that these relays are easy to get and cost about $20. They are used in air conditioners. That made this a straightforward project, and I finished it this week.

The business end. That black thing in the middle switches 240 Volts at 40 amps.

The last project was our doorbell. The builder put our doorbell button on the wrong side of the door. When we installed the storm door, the door bell was hidden. Only the most persistent people would open the storm door and reach inside to push it. It’s easy to install a wireless doorbell, but there was another issue. When we are downstairs watching TV, we can’t hear the doorbell chime which is upstairs. I didn’t want to install a doorbell if we couldn’t hear it. I’ve been thinking about this from time to time since we moved in, coming up with Rube Goldberg contraptions that would let us hear the doorbell downstairs. Finally, I did a doorbell search on Amazon. These days, they make kits with one button and two chimes. I plugged one chime into an outlet in the basement, the other chime upstairs, and attached the doorbell button next to the door with two screws. It took about 10 minutes to do the whole project.

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