Mandatory Picture of a Fabrage Egg

We started out visiting the Hermatage art museum, which is a converted palace. It’s hard to understand the large number of palaces in St. Petersburg. Peter the Great built Petrohof to be bigger and better than Versais. Catherine the great built a palace in St. Pete, but she also re-did several rooms in Petrohoff. The royal family lived in the palace that is now known as the Hermatage. And there are at least a half dozen other palaces scattered around the area. The thing is, Peter didn’t spend much time in any of these palaces. He was always out fighting wars or visiting Europe. In any event, the Hermatage is the place to go when visiting St. Pete. It has the longest lines.

Hermatage Second Building

We were standing in the rain waiting to get tickets, when I noticed a small number of people were leaving line, returning with tickets, and going inside. Danita went off in search of tickets, and found kiosks where one could buy tickets electronically. But she couldn’t get the credit card to work. The main screen had an English option, but when it came time to use the credit card, it was English only. She came back and I went off to try my luck. I hit the jackpot because we have two credit cards. One has the chip. That didn’t work because Europe has PINs on their chip cards and the US doesn’t. Knowing that, I was able to make our other credit card work, because it has only the mag stripe. Proud possessor of tickets, we went to the line to get into the museum. This line was at least indoors. It was a very long line, but we were in luck again. A museum official came by and explained we could take another way into the museum. There is no way to see all of the Hermatage at once. We had decided to see the French Impressionists, especially Monet, which Danita knew was on the 3rd floor. We went to the 3rd floor and found an exhibit of ancient money. Then we went down and took a different staircase to a different section of the 3rd floor and found rooms left as they were when the imperial family lived there. All this was very nice, but it wasn’t what we wanted to see. We found a museum official that spoke a little English and found out about the 2nd building (there are more than two). We went to the 2nd building and after two more false starts, found the 19th century French area. We went the wrong way and saw a dozen rooms of French Impressionistic art that weren’t by Monet. We went back the other way and finally found Monet. It took us only 3 hours. By then we were tired, but we were stubborn enough to see what we went in looking for.

Hermatage Second Building Interior

We left the Hermatage and found a delightful lunch, then went to the Collenade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral to get a bird’s eye view of St. Petersburg. It was time to find our river cruise ship. We got our suitcases and a cab, and were whisked off to the river boat harbor. As we were collecting our luggage, a port official came over and told our cab driver we were in the wrong place (as I surmised from the tone of voice, body language, and end result). There was a long and serious discussion, the end of result of which was that we had to go the second pier 300 meters down the road. I’m not sure why there had to be such a long and serious discussion, but that seems to be the way things are done in Russia.
When we came aboard, we found ourselves in a bright and roomy cabin with a wonderfully large deck. We’re looking forward to our adventures on the Volga river.

If you have an old palace you aren’t using, you can always turn it into an art museum

Today was our day to visit the Russian Art Museum, which was about a mile from our hotel. Thanks to Google Android tablets and Google Map Offline mode, we had no problems navigating or way there and back.

What’s more boring than a picture of a painting of Catherine the Great. I don’t know, but this isn’t a painting — it’s a mosaic, made from small pieces of colored glass

After a couple of hours rest, we went to a delightful little restaurant we had our eye on. We weren’t disapointed. We have eaten very well in St. Pete.

After dinner, we saw the ballet “Don Quixote”. The dancers were excellent. Coming back to the hotel at 11 PM was a treat. It was late for us, but we had a nice rest before dinner. This is Friday. The rain had cleared. The temperature was comfortable. And it’s the trailing edge of white nights. The streets were crowded with people having a good time.

All the pics are from the museum.  I’ll let the captions speak for themselves.

Carved Bone – very intricate. I would have made one of my own, but Danita wouldn’t let me bring my knife.

This picture is supposed to launch us into space (I’m not joking – that’s what the commentator said.) I guess it’s like Star Trek

“A Point in Space” – reminds me of quantum physics. Maybe Mark can explain this one.

My personal favorite, a comment on modern Russian life

There are pics today.

Hydrofoil

We did only one thing today. We visited Petrohoff, Peter the Great’s palace. We started the day by walking 2 blocks to the hydrofoil. The guide book says the hydrofoil runs every 30 minutes from 10 to 6:30, and it’s a 30-minute ride to Petrohoff. What the guide book *didn’t* say is that the first two rides are reserved for “business class”. I have no idea what that means, but I suspect that the tour companies buy out the first runs. We also had to decide right then and there which run we were going to take coming back (something else that wasn’t in the tour book.) Having no idea what we would see, I arbitrarily picked 5:00, which turned out to be a pretty good guess.

Peter’s Palace

We also learned a lot about how Russia works. When we got to Petrohoff, we waited in line to buy admission tickets to the grounds. We went to the palace and were told we needed to buy tickets at 2:30. Fortunately, a friendly Russian told us to go to another line and buy tickets for Russian speakers. They were cheaper and we could get audio guides. She was right about being cheaper. We later fould out that the 2:30 tickets were “VIP” and cost about 5 times more. So we waited in line for 2 hours to buy admission tickets to the palace. When we bought admission tickets and asked for English audio guides. The ticket agent said audio guides were in the palace. When we got to the palace, they had a letter printed up saying that audio guides were in the ticket office. Fortunately, we could see the palace without audio guides. They had enough English signs that we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking at. We also learned a little of how things work over here.

In the Palace Grounds

–> Russians are really good at waiting in line. They even joke that if you see a line, you should get in it.

–> When they don’t want to sell something that is supposed to be available, they just lie about where you have to go to get it.

–> Russians go out of their way to help each other, because that’s the only way to get the real story. When something goes wrong even with extra help, they take it in good humor.

Peter wanted Petrohoff to be better than Verailles. From what we saw, it was pretty obvious he succeeded. The palace is in immaculate condition. Everything we saw was actually used in the palace. While many rooms were re-done by later Russian leaders, one of the rooms was exactly as it was used by Peter himself.

Kids Playing in a “surprose” fountain

They don’t allow photos inside the palace, so everything you will see here is from the grounds. Even though it was a work day today, there were lots of people on the grounds and in the palace. The majority of them were Russian. The grounds are huge and very well maintained. There were impromptu activities, food stands (all with long lines, naturally), “Surprise” fountains for the kids to pay in, and more. The Surprise fountains even had a surprise for the adults. In the picture, you can see a white bench in the bnackground. It looked like it was outside the spray zone. A gentleman sat on the bhench to take a rest. A surprise sprinkler behind the bench turned on and the gentleman got wet.

An excellent rendition of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”

By the end of the day, we were quite tired. I was very happy we weren’t staying any later than 5. When we got back to the hotel area, we ate at a Georgian restaurant we had noted on our walk yesterday. Danita went for a swim in the hotel’s indoor pool. We’re resting the rest of the night. We might go out later and enjoy the “white nights” (it doesn’t get dark in St. Pete this time of year). Or we might just go to bed. Either way, our first full day in St. Pete was a great one.

Iconic St. Petersburg Statue

We left Dulles airport at 6 PM Tuesday, connected in Paris, and arrived in St. Petersburg about 8 AM yesterday (3 PM local time). The flights were wonderfully boring. We were suprised at how easy it was to clear customs. We waited in a short line at passport control. My big challenge was to answer “You fru fro”, which was supposed to mean “Where did you fly from?”. Finally, the bored agent supplied my answer (“Paris”). From there, we picked up our bags and went to the “Nothing to declare” door, which lead to an empty room. Voila, we were in one of the most buerocratic nations on Earth.

St. Isaac’s Cathedral

We were in our hotel by 4. Petro Palace isn’t much to look at from the outside, but our room is quite nice. It includes ammenities we don’t find at the Holiday Inn – robes, slippers, and of course floor heaters for the bathroom. The breakfast this morning was an extensive buffet.

After unpacking, we walked around the block and found several restaurants. We select a restaurant with painted scenes on the walls and ceiling, bad popular music (in English), and delightful crepes.

St. Isaac’s Alter

The next order of business was to stay awake until bedtime. There is a choral group that offers concerts once a month, and tonight was concert night. They sing classical Russian religious music such as Rachmaninoff “O Mother of God vigilantly praying”. Or so they say, I never understood a word.

The cathedral was less than a block away. It was easy to get there an hour before concert time, which got us excellent seats. A group of Austrian language teachers came up and in their best Russian, asked me of the seat next to me was taken. I said something wonderfully cultured, like “Huh?” That’s how they knew to switch to English.

Alter Detail

The choral group is about 30 people. They sing a capallo, and they are very good. If the singers aren’t professional, they are as good as professionals. The conductor has a wonderful sense of voice and balance. Best of all, the concert was in St. Isaac’s Cathedral. With it’s 70- or 80- foot ceilings, domes and arches, and marble walls; it offers perfect accoustics for this kind of music. No recording could possibly reproduce the amazing music we heard. Plus we were surrounded by gold icons and artifacts, incredible statuary, and amazing painted scenes. What a wonderful introduction to St. Petersburg.

There are no pics this week.

We have plenty of news, but the headliner this week is healthcare. We’ve had hot and muggy weather. Thursday morning, I was working with a Comcast tech on the clubhouse internet. Danita went for a bike ride. I got home and decided to go on my own bike ride. About half an hour into my ride, I got a call from Christy (our office manager). Near the end of her ride, Danita stopped to talk with a neighbor. While talking, she suddenly collapsed. There was nothing for me to do but turn around and ride half an hour back. I found Danita at our local hospital. She was suffering from heat exhaustion. We spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in the hospital’s air conditioned room. I was quite impressed with the quality of Danita’s care while she was in the emergency room.

Though it all, neither Danita or I were overly concerned — until the stupid alarm incident. For whatever reason, the monitor kept on alarming. I got permission to silence the alarm as long as Danita was alert. So I was standing near Danita’s bed with my finger on the silence button. During one alarm, Danita decided she didn’t want to try to talk over the beeping and closed her eyes for a short rest. This caused a moment’s panic when she didn’t immediatly answer my query. Later, while the nurse was in, the stupid machine decided Danita had “flatlined”. Since Danita was actively working with the nurse, that was an obvious false alarm. There’s no doubt that the technology we have doesn’t yet match the tecehnology we should have.

Yesterday Danita felt the effects of the fall, but otherwise felt fine. She certainly felt well enough to attend the neighborhood cookout last night.

The other healthcare news is a little surprise we got about the cost of Medicare. Danita officially retired July 1. She will continue her health insurance through UMBC, and I will continue to participate in her medical plan. However, I am required to use Medicare as my primary insurance. We’ve known all this since before I retired. The surprise is, the cost of medicare is based on your income *2* years ago. Near the end of the year two years ago, we converted some investments into cash. The plan is to live on the investments for a while, because every year we delay social security, our monthly payments go up by 8% (up to an age of 70-whatever). Since we we obviously plan to live a very long time, we want  as many of those 8%-a-year increases as we can get. All of which is working out exactly as planned, except for the capital gains. We knew we would take a hit on income taxes for the capital gains. We didn’t know the cost of my medicare would be obscenely high for the next 6 months. Oops. Hopefully, this will all be over in January.

My beloved tablet, which is only 6 months old, died suddenly. When we were leaving the hospital, I used it to look up a phone number. When we got home, the screen was cracked. None of the touch functions worked. That made the tablet totally useless and left me totally disgusted. Fortunately, inexpensive and good selections are readily available on Amazon. I had a new tablet sitting on my doorstep when we came home from the cookout. Hopefully this will last much longer than 6 months. These handy little devices aren’t so cheap if they don’t last a few years.

I have been quite busy for the last month working on our clubhouse computers. I installed a new WiFi, set up a new computer for Christy, and did a general cleanup. Comcast is coming in to install a new modem Monday. I will oversee that, make a couple of configuration changes, and document what I did. That will complete the project — just in time for us to leave for Russia Tuesday.

Which leads me into our last news item for the week. We will be traveling July 12 – 26. We will be in St. Petersburg for a few days, then on a river cruise 7/16 – 22, then spending the rest of our time in Moscow. Our phones don’t work in Russia. The only way to reach is us by Email, or to call the emergency numbers highlighted in yellow on the attached itinery. We will have access to internet at our hotels in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but there is no internet service on the cruise. I will write a daily blog, but if we don’t find free WiFi when we are docked, I woun’t be able to send them out daily.

We aren’t taking our computers with us to Russia. The only device we will have is my brand-new tablet. I’m practicing my blogging skills on the tablet. (I did this entire blog on the tablet). I find the tablet to be extremely portable, and sooner or later it can get everything done — typing, editing pictures, Email, etc. It’s just that everything takes longer. I generaly wake up early and have lots of time for computer-ing in the morning. We’ll just have to see how it goes. I’ll get each day’s blog published sooner or later. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from us very much for the next 2 1/2 weeks.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are pics this week. They aren’t very good pictures. I forgot my camera. These were taken with my tablet.

Nicole

The focus for the week was Rick’s memorial. We held it in West Palm Beach for Mom and Glen’s convenience. Danita and I arrived about 3, flying into Ft. Lauderdale. (It was much cheaper than Palm Beach.) Just as we arrived at Mom’s, Mom and Glen were leaving to pick up Dani from the Palm Beach airport. Rick, Sara, Nicole, Julianne, and Kim all drove in from Panama City, FL. They stopped in Orlando on the way down to pick up Eric, who flew in from Iowa. It was quite a piece of logistics, and it all worked flawlessly. Dani and I were both delayed briefly. We both landed at dry airports, but T-storms kicked up before they got the baggage off, and we both had to wait until doppler radar showed the lightening was at least 3 miles away. Some people might consider it remarkable that both Dani and I had the same weather delay at two different airports at two different times. But these pop-up storms aren’t unusual in south Florida.

Julianne

We were all gathered together in time to enjoy Mom’s famous potato salad and ham & cheese sandwiches. Kim collected pictures of Rick from everybody and brought a huge picture frame. She put it all together and made a very nice collage of Rick. Remarkably, she had exactly the right number of pictures to completely fill the frame, with no picture overlap. We were all exhausted. Around 8, we had dispersed to our various overnight accommodations. All of us oldsters were sound asleep by 9.

Collage (Sara, Glen, Kim, Mom, Dani) Yes, there was plenty of wine.

Rick found a chuch in North Palm Beach for the memorial ceremony. We converged at the church at 10 Saturday for the service. Afterwards, we all drove to Carrabba’s for lunch. Everybody was tired and frazzled. We had quiet time in the afternoon, which included naps for all the young and old participants. We enjoyed a final evening together at Mom’s. Of course, this being an Eichenlaub event, there had to be a crisis. This time, our crisis involved burnt pizza. But the solution was easy enough. A quick trip to Domino’s made everything good.

Rick, Sara, Eric

Everybody had an early departure this morning. Danita and I switched to a hotel near the Ft. Lauderdale airport for Saturday night. Our flight home was a breeze. Danita and I had the whole row to ourselves.Tomorrow promises to be filled with rain. We’ll miss the fireworks, but enjoy a quiet day at home.

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

There are no pics this week.

The big news this week, as most of you already know, is Rick’s passing. It wasn’t really a surprise. Rick has been in very poor health for quite a while. His passing is a blessing in some ways.

It has taken a lot of phone calls and Emails, but everything seems to be settled. The funeral will be in West Palm Beach on July 2. Mom, Dani, and I are very glad that we were able to visit Rick so recently.

I won’t write more because this has consumed our attention for the last couple of days, and I don’t have a lot more to say about it.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are pics this week.

The last retirement balloon’s last hurrah

Before I get into our news, I have to announce the demise of Danita’s last balloon. Danita got a bouquet of balloons at her UMBC retirement party. The last balloon was dragging on the floor. Danita cut the ribbon last Saturday to let it have one last day or so on the ceiling. The balloon managed to drift over to our ceiling fan, where it got pushed into a continuous circle. I thought that was cool. We decided to leave the ceiling fan on continuously and see how long the balloon would travel in circles. It fell to the floor last night, which is an impressively long last hurrah. RIP, celebratory balloon!

Sctatch Kitchen Dinner

It  was another week of family activities.Tuesday afternoon Danita took Bud to the doctor to have some minor surgery done on his hand. He was unable to straighten one of his fingers. The doctors removed some material from one of his knuckle joints. The surgery must have gone pretty well, because Bud joined us for Ed’s birthday party that evening. It was a Schmaus family dinner at Gertrudes Restaurant, located at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Gertrudes has a fixed price dinner on Tuesdays. Unlike most fixed price dinners, they have a dozen choices. Their food is always excellent. I’m sure that if we lived closer to the BMA, we would be eating there regularly.

Morning walk ended at the Dothan Walmart, with a few things to cheer Rick up …

Back at home, we moved our dinner out night to Wednesday. Danita wanted to do something a little special and suggested we go to Bare Bones. Bare Bones is a favorite of ours because of their great ribs and many other good dishes. But their unique feature is their onion loaf, which is a big pile of onion rings formed into a loaf. We usually order the half loaf, which is far more onion rings than we need, but it’s very good and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, they stopped serving their half loaf. A full loaf was way too much to contemplate ordering. So our special night turned into a bit of a disappointment. But the rest of the dinner was still good.

… and a new sun hat

Danita wanted to have a nice dinner Wednesday because of the other big family activity. Dani and Gayle flew down to visit Mom Wednesday. Thursday, Dani Mom and I all converged in Atlanta. We drove to Dothan Alabama Thursday afternoon. That let us drive down to visit Rick in Graceville, Florida Friday morning. Then it was drive back to Atlanta Friday afternoon. Dani and Mom went back to West Palm Beach while I went back to Maryland.

Dani, Rick, Mom

Amazingly, all the transportation worked out perfectly. I arrived in Atlanta first, picked up a rental car, and went to the cell phone lot. 45 minutes after Dani and Mom’s plane landed, I hadn’t heard from them. I decided they might be having some undefined cell phone problem and decided to take a swing by the terminal to see if they were on the sidewalk waiting for me. Just as I got to door 6, they called me and announced they were at door 5. I was able to pull over and pick them up immediately. It turns out Mom decided to walk through the Atlanta airport instead of taking their passenger train. Way to go, Mom!

Rick’s dog won’t be able to travel to the nursing home

Our hotel in Dothan was a winner, with nice rooms, friendly staff, and a good breakfast. But the dinner was unexpectedly good. We found a restaurant just up the road called Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen. The food was amazing. We weren’t able to eat it all.

We had more or less 4 hours of driving each way. But we had no serious misadventures and encountered no heavy traffic. We went through an incredible cold front coming back to Atlanta. The outdoor temperature went from 102 to 73. Unsurprisingly, it was accompanied by a very heavy rainfall. But there was no lightening. The rain was brief enough that we didn’t have an opportunity to take an exit off the interstate to wait out the rest of the storm. Our only misadventure was that somebody keyed the rental car. Car inspection was not on the agenda for the somewhat harried agent that checked me in, so I decided to focus on getting through airport security. We’ll see if I get a phone call from Dollar Rent-a-Car.

Another pic near Walmart

Rick is not doing well. A couple of days before we went down, he was taken to the hospital. We weren’t sure where we would meet him. As it turns out, they took him back to his apartment. His stay there will be brief. He is moving to a nursing home Sunday. He elected to move to a nursing home near Rick, Jr.

Today I’m back in Maryland. I assume Dani and Mom are back in West Palm beach. (There were some flight delays due to weather.)

Tonight is Circle. Our Marriage Encounter Circle has morphed into a monthly dinner club. The Bertches are having serious health issues. Mike is not doing well, Rose has her own health issues, and taking care of Mike is becoming quite an issue for her. They weren’t up to traveling to circle last month or this month. So we’re taking everything needed for dinner, down to the paper plates, and meeting at the Bertches.

Dani and Mom having dinner at the Atlanta airport

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

There are no pics this week.

We had the usual array of neighborhood parties and activities. And we did some unusual stuff.

Danita and I got so good at going to DC to get a Russian Visa, we decided to use our new-found skills to visit an exhibition at the National Geographic Museum. This museum is one metro stop before the one we used to get to the Russian Visa place. The exhibit is called “The Greeks”. It covered Greece from pre-history to Alexander the Great. They had an entire floor filled with artifacts, plus story-telling sign boards and videos. It was quite interesting. We had to buy timed admission tickets. We decided to get breakfast in DC and be at the museum at 10. We allowed for the slowest trip we had into DC, plus a little extra because we would be driving in the morning DC rush. We ended up with a little less traffic than we anticipated, plus the fastest trip into DC, so we had plenty of time for breakfast.We spent over 2 hours in the exhibit. When we got out, I was hungry so we also had lunch in DC. Adding up the costs of the trip — parking, Metro fare, breakfast, lunch, and tickets — the cost of the tickets was a minor part of the cost of the trip. I remembered my camera, but they didn’t allow any photography, so there’s no pics of what we saw.

My other big adventure this week was our walk-in shower. It turns out that when a walk-in showers start dripping, it makes a lot of noise. In addition, this drip was quickly getting worse. In the old days, one would turn the water off, replace a rubber washer, and that was it. Total cost: less than a buck. Now days we have fancy plumbing. Instead of a rubber washer, one installs a new cartridge, which costs about $85. I found a half-price cartridge at Lowe’s, but in place of “Delta”, there was a curiously Chinese-sounding name. I decided to spend the extra in the hopes this would be a life-time repair. The next step is to figure out which cartridge I needed. That turned out to be impossible without taking the faucet apart. Taking the faucet apart requires shutting the water off for the house. We’ve become accustomed to having running water. So I would have to turn the water off, disassemble the faucet and extract the cartridge, procure a new cartridge, and reassemble everything — hopefully all in one morning. I was becoming very interested in understanding exactly what I would have to do.

I found that Delta had posted a You-Tube video. The guy spent a lot of time talking about “before 1993” and “F-Series” and “T-Series” and offered a bewildering list of Delta part numbers. After I recovered from that shock, I watched a few more times. The disassembly and reassembly looked very easy. I watched a few more times. That “plumber” is wearing brand new boots. I never saw a real plumber wearing brand new boots before.

Monday I screwed up my courage. Disassembly had only a few surprises. Then it was off to the plumbing supply store. This was my second trip to the plumbing supply store. I like these guys a lot. They have everything a plumbing supply store should have. A cool name (Schumacher & Seiler). A counter with stools. Plumbers talking with employees. A big room filled with more plumbing stuff than I ever knew existed. A back room where employees go to find what you’re looking for. And a very friendly attitude towards homeowners that have no idea what they’re doing. Sure enough, they had exactly what I wanted. And sure enough, when I got home, it all fit in the hole. I put it together, turned the water on, and twisted the knob. There was no water in the shower. Everything else worked, but not a drop came out of the shower head.

That certainly fixed the shower drip. but I figured Danita wouldn’t be happy with this solution. Fortunately, on my second attempt, I figured out what I had done wrong. And it turns out I didn’t break anything and didn’t need to call a plumber. I didn’t even have to buy a second $85 cartridge.

So it’s all good news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

This week was book ended by family events. Monday was Memorial Day, which means the Parkton Cup. It’s a day of family, food, and croquet. Ed sets up 3 croquet courses. We had all three courses full for the first set and two more for the second. Winners of the first round play for the championship. For the first time ever, I was actually in the lead in my game. It didn’t last long. Maybe I’ll get into the finals next year.

Mark didn’t make it to the Parkton Cup this year because he is coaching students for the Physics Olympics. I’m not certain I have the details down. My impression is that he was coaching the mid-atlantic qualifiers.

Danita’s Uncle Bill died this week. He was 83. The funeral was yesterday. The service was at the old Polish parish in Highlandtown. Bud was with us. I dropped Danita and Bud off and went to park the car. When I came back to the church, I spent a few minutes out front with the Hartka men. It was a humid day. It felt good to stand outside for a few minutes. I knew it was time to go inside and find my wife when the men started talking about shoulder injuries, and which side of the casket they had to be on.

The drive to the graveyard started by driving through town. Running red lights is not something one gets to do ever day. Eventually we ended up on I-95. I knew where the graveyard is, and knew which exit the GPS recommended to get there. But the hearse wasn’t switching lanes to exit. What route were they taking? They did finally exit, but by then there was a very large and very noisy truck to my right, followed by a very aggressive pickup with a lawn mower in the bed. The result was that for quite a while, I couldn’t see the front of the funeral procession. Plus the GPS seemed to be going nuts. It literally turned the route into a sideways figure 8. Or was it an infinity symbol? Everything ended well, but for a while there the only thing I knew for sure was that a lot of cars were following me.

The lunch was at Bowman’s on Harford Rd. We’ve had so many funeral lunches at Bowman’s that I refer to their dining room as the “Hartka Room”. The food was good. The conversation was better.

Danita and I like to watch TV for a hour or two before going to bed. There’s not a lot of new programs on TV this time of year. This summer I selected movies from Amazon to stream. My criteria were they had to be free (with Prime membership) and have a rating of 7 or better on Rotten Tomatoes. I din’t pay any attention to whether I thought we would enjoy the movie. We’ve had some real duds. Twice we stopped the movie after watching 10 or 15 minutes. We’ve had a couple of movies that one of us liked and the other didn’t. We’ve had some good movies, And we’ve had one sleeper. If you haven’t seen “Temple Grandin”, you should get it. A lot of things have to come together to make a great movie — the story, the way the story is told, acting, photography, music, script … This movie does everything well. The story is presented in a well-balanced manner with excellent pacing. Some of the story telling elements are highly innovative. The acting us superb. This is a movie worth watching.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

PS: Yes, we did get our Russian visas. We were even lucky enough that it rained only when we were on the metro or in the car, and not while we were traipsing around DC or the Metro parking lot!