There are no pics this week.

The world’s gone mad

I don’t like hand cream. But as I got older and my fingers started cracking in the dryness of winter, it became the lesser evil. I finally found one that was less obnoxious than most and got two large jars, one for work and one for home. It came to pass that I used the last of this cream lately. Fortunately, I knew what to buy — Gold Bond. When I got to the store,  found 8 types of Gold Bond, with no idea which was the one that might be similar to what I had been using.

Books

I had terrible luck queuing books from the library. If I wanted to finish the book I had without incurring a fine, I had to read 400 pages in 2 days. That’s hardly an impossible task, but it’s not how I prefer to enjoy books. I finally worked through all the backlog and turned to one I got as a gift — James Gleik’s “The Information”. The book is about as strange as the title. The the author climaxes the preface with the idea that the “bit” (the smallest unit of information) is the fundamental unit of the universe. I decided to try the first chapter before giving up. I found an amazing discussion of African talking drums, among other things. Gleik jumps all over the place. He creates causality from the weakest evidence. And he presents some totally amazing ideas. when I agree and when I disagree, this is an incredible read.

Movies

There isn’t much on TV this time of year. There is the Rose Bowl Parade, but that’s only 2 hours. It’s a good time to look for movies using our Amazon Prime account. One evening we watched “Coherence”. It reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode, without Rod Sterling. I loved it. Danita hated it.

Holiday activities

Having a financial plan for retirement is one thing. Actually executing it is another. That first action was emotionally difficult. It marks a transition. No matter how much we look forward, we know that having started on the next leg of our journey, there’s no turning back. Our timing was not prompted by the holiday. It is total coincidence that the time to start executing our plan was the week before the new year. But it is a symbolic coincidence.

New Year: It’s silliest of ideas, that one day out of the year is more important than all the others. But it can be a fun way to acknowledge the passing of time. How would you like to celebrate the end of an old year and the start of a new? Would you like to stay up until midnight and then make some noise? What’s the point? Are we trying to scare off evil demons that might sneak in on the start of the year? How silly. Perhaps it would it be better to have a killer breakfast at Miss Shirley’s in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor! How about if the breakfast included validated parking and a dawn walk across the 7th floor sky bridge?

Our new parish has family dinners more or less monthly. Everybody is invited. There is no fee. There’s a donation box, but nobody seems to be overly worried about it. The only purpose of the dinner is to promote interaction among the parishioners. Those who wish to, bring their own libations. Some might call it a party. Danita and I volunteered as servers. In truth, there wasn’t much work. One of the groups at one of my tables brought the libations but forgot a bottle opener. Fortunately, I have a cool pocket multi-tool. I love to play with it, and it can open bottles. I wasn’t willing to lend them my tool, but we had some fun opening bottles as their dinner progressed. It was a lot of fun watching all those people talk and eat and have a good time. This dinner was last night. It is possible to have a dinner this time of the year with nobody mentioning the New Year.

Danita is enjoying 2 weeks at home, largely by cooking. She cooked dinners ahead until the freezer was full. Then she started cooking for church. She made brownies for the dinner. Today she plans to make a casserole for St. Vincent’s Place. Unfortunately the casserole is supposed to be frozen. After over a week of very cold 20 degree evenings, temperatures have climbed 20 degrees. It won’t be possible to freeze the casserole by setting it outside overnight. And the freezer is packed. Fortunately, Danita is a clever and resourceful person. I have no doubt we will deliver a frozen casserole Sunday morning.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

I’ve been on the receiving side of holiday grumpiness this year. We live near several large shopping centers. Normally, its an convenience. But the last week, it’s been a bit of a hassle. It can take 3 cycles to get through a traffic light. When traffic gets this congested, I get impatient. But some drivers do worse. The result of a driver pushing him/her-self into an intersection is gridlock, which makes things worse for all of us. From a cyclist perspective, our neighborhood is “land locked” by major streets. Threading my way around and through this mess can be challenging. But a week before Christmas, I felt that motorists started carrying their attitudes out beyond the congested areas and exhibiting their frustration in aggressive driving. In a mix of two major religious seasons (Advent and Lent) I gave up biking for a week in Advent. Yesterday we were blessed with wonderful weather and empty roads. It was good to get out. I only wish I had remembered my Lactaid pill so I could have enjoyed an ice cream at my lunch stop.

We went to Ed and Lynne’s for dinner yesterday. It was a small gathering. Bud and Mark joined us to put 6 at the table. It was a good time. I must have been very good this last year. We are now stocked with 6 snow emergency kits. It’s double our normal maximum inventory, but I’m confident that they’ll be used up. The great secret is that we don’t necessarily require snow to have a snow emergency. We had an example just this last Monday. A couple of months ago, we spent over an hour with the the TIAA-CREF financial advisor. He kept on saying “What other questions do you have?” He promised a package that would answer all our questions in two weeks. After two months, we had our meeting. What we found was he had done a slipshod job of entering our information into their computer program. As a result, the report had numerous errors. In spite of his promises, the report answered only a fraction of our questions. In spite of our initial disappointment, the report turned out to be quite valuable. After our Financial Emergency Evening, we were able to quickly build a solid retirement plan. Now we’re focused on implementing the plan. With Danita on holiday 12/24 – 1/4, we have the luxury of time to do what we want to do without feeling rushed and pressured.

I’m an official money counter. Our parish put out the word for volunteers. It was amazingly easy to get involved and trained. The existing volunteers were very open about showing me everything in the process. I expected an easy camaraderie which they certainly have, but was was amazed at the professionalism. Volunteers are assigned to teams — one team for each of the 4 sundays of the month, plus one team for 5th sundays and vacation fill-ins. I don’t have my assignment yet. If you expect me to find a humorous side, you won’t be disappointed. When we count, we lock ourselves in the office. We start the count during the last Sunday morning mass. I was sent out to pick up the last collection. They presented me with a plastic-enclosed sign to verify I was an official pickup person. I don’t think I needed it to be readmitted to the office, but I held it up for the peephole just in case. I think locking ourselves in a room is to guard against Jesus’ second coming — so He won’t be tempted to “kick us out of the temple”. I suppose there’s other reasons also, but they aren’t as interesting to my slightly warped mind.

We decided not to fill our time off with lots of activities. We’ll be spending most of next week at home, enjoying a feeling of space and relief from some of life’s normal demands. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are several pics this week.

The Reeds came. They saw. They conquered. Now they’ve gone. But we had a good time while they were here.

Listening to the aquarium bubble tubes

We had an adventure every day. Monday, we went to the aquarium. Everybody went, so we needed two cars. It was a great time to visit. There were a few school groups, but not too many. They were on a schedule, so if we happened to be in an area the same time they were, they moved through pretty quickly and we had the place to ourselves again. We were able to have good access to every exhibit. And … because they accidently left a “closed” sign up and because Danita asked, we were the first people of the day in the Australia exhibit. We had to push through the shark tank exhibit because the wee folks were getting hungry and cranky. We had lunch in the cafeteria, which had good food and reasonable prices. Then we went to the other building to see the dolphins and jelly fish. Our dinner was a most excellent beef burgundy, served with Mom’s famous buttons.

Aquarium Cafeteria Magic Wall (it changes colors!)

Elizabeth, Pat, and Bryon at the shark teeth

Guess Not

Mark was going back Tuesday, so he and the Reeds exchanged gifts after dinner. Mark got balloons, stuffed with cash. Can Mark make the present even more fun by inhaling the helium and talking funny? Guess not. Mark gave the kids rubix cubes, and he taught Brian how to solve them. He tried to teach Elizabeth, but she was far too overwhelmed to focus.

Protecting Meat Eater Eggs

Tuesday, Pat took Mark home and the rest of us went to the Science Center. We spent most of the morning in the dinosaur exhibit. We all learned something. For example, did you know that vegetarian dino eggs are round, while carnivore eggs are oblong? The science center cafeteria was not nearly as nice as the aquarium’s, but it was a lot nicer than running out in the rain. At least it was quiet and not crowded. After lunch, we had time for a planetarium show. It provided me with my requisite nap, but other than that it was pretty bad. We certainly hope the other shows are better.  Our dinner was a holiday tradition – seafood newburg in pastry shells.

More Presents

Wednesday we split up. The Reeds went to DC had had a great time. They visited the Air and Space Museum in the morning, then went to the Natural History Museum. They enjoyed both, but the Natural History Museum was the favorite. UMBC was having graduation, and two of Danita’s grad students were being hooded, so she went to work. I spent most of the day adding features to our neighborhood’s database. After a most excellent spaghetti dinner, we exchanged presents with the Reeds.

Chocolate Souffe

Thursday was the last day of the visit. We had been having some excellent breakfasts, but this day we had Danita’s famous chocolate souffle. We went to an early showing of the movie “Heroes 6”. For our main meal, Danita offered a comfort food favorite. Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Mom’s Chili. The Reeds left mid-afternoon with the goal of spending the evening chillin’ in Richmond; then completing their return drive on Friday. All in all, it was a most satisfying visit. Below are a few more pics from the visit.

Surprise Balloons

Dinosaur Footprints

At the Science Center

Marbulous

Today, it’s all about the pics.

Scrabble Game (Danita, Jul, Mark)

Jul & family arrived about 3:30 yesterday. Mark was with us. The main activity was letting the kids decompress from the trip. That evening, there was time for a scrabble game. Jul won by one point. Today (Sunday) we had a family holiday brunch. Danita went all out and prepared an amazing meal, complemented by Ed & Lynne’s home made cookies. This afternoon, Jul & family went to visit Meribeth Chaprnka. She’s working on a holiday children’s play at the Kennedy center. They went down to see the play and visit with Maribeth afterwards.

At the Brunch: 3 Youngins

Over 50 Table (Rick, Bud, Lynne, Ed, Danita)

Kid’s Table (Elizabeth, Bryon, Addi, Suzanne)

At the Buffet (Suzanne, Addi, Rebecca)

Under 50 Table (Jul, Pat, Mark, Pete, Tonie, Pete, Rebecca)

Bud & Pat

Holiday craft – making snowmen for the tree
(Rebecca, Danita, Tonie, Ed)

Christmas tree with snowmen

No pics today, but there just might be some next week.

Lots of people are up early this morning. Jul & family are driving up to see us. They’ll return Thursday (12/18). Jul said the kids got up at 3:30 this morning. One of the kids said the trip should have been kept a secret. They’re too excited. ‘Wouldn’t want to be in that car. ‘Been there, done that. Danita wanted to start her day by going to the grocery store. She got up a 5; had to wait an hour for the store to open.

We spent the last week getting the Christmas decorations up. Mostly, Danita does the decorating. This year I contributed by buying a new star tree-topper. Danita’s been cooking ahead. I hear there will be some more cooking going on today. The house has been smelling delightful. All I have to do is keep up with the dishes.

Last week was nice. The Army Field Band gave a good concert . They mixed it up so there was something for every musical taste. We had  great dinner at Ikaros Restaurant. Our Marriage Encounter circle doesn’t meet very often these days.

We went to an interesting presentation at Church Wednesday night. It was titled “The Bible in an Hour”. The speaker presented the history of God’s covenant with us, from Genesis to the Gospels. The topic was interesting. The presenter knows his Bible. And he is an excellent presenter. He had several simple stick figures that illustrated his points and had us draw along as he made his presentation.

I went to my second SOCA board meeting last week. We have a database containing information on our residents including name, Email, phone, emergency contact, etc. It’s a good idea and it’s more-or-less working. One of our residents died not long ago. The family has been clearing out the house. One Saturday morning, a neighbor noticed water coming out of the garage door. Emergency contact information was locked up in the office, unavailable to the condo officers. This lead to a discussion of how the information can be made available to elected officers without compromising the privacy of residents. At the same time, some officers want to add license plate numbers (to help address traffic violators), and confirmation that at least one resident is over 55. Another issue is how we keep the information up to date. It’s an interesting topic. I’ve modified a couple of reports and made some suggestions. We’ll see how this all shakes out.

Well, I’m home alone, but not for long.  Danita should be back soon with lots of food, including some Wegman muffins for breakfast. Maybe I’ll spend a little time jumping up and down … “The Grandkids are coming!”

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics.

I’m going back to school. Danita noticed the class “Cultures of China” at HCC (Howard Community College) and brought it to my attention. She thought I might be interested as part of preparing for our trip to China. This is a 3-credit class where the lectures are offered electronically. I decided it might be fun. It took over a week to sign up, partly because I had to first apply to be admitted as a student to HCC. I had several problems with their web site. Then I encountered the academic bureaucracy. The class has an English prerequisite. I went through a full circle in the phone system without ever finding a way to reach the correct people. Finally I found I could register as “Custom Class”. This allows me to sign up for any class at HCC irrespective of prerequisites, but I won’t receive academic credit. If I do the homework and take the tests, the instructor will grade them. But I won’t receive a class grade. It’s perfect for what I want, especially as our trip to China will occur during the semester. The class and the trip should complement each other nicely. As a senior citizen, I don’t pay tuition. This makes the class incredibly cheap. The class costs $70 in fees and $10 for the textbook. (I got the Kindle version.) I don’t know whether there will be any on-campus activities or meetings, but HCC is a less than an hour away by bike.

Most of our hotels in China offer an early morning (before breakfast) Tai Chi session. We decided that knowing a little bit about Tai Chi might save us some embarrassment. Danita found a Tai Chi class offered through Howard County Recreation and Parks. This will be one day a week in the evening. Both classes start next year.

I’ve been reading the 3rd book in Ken Follet’s Century series. It covers the post WW II era, mostly from a US perspective. It’s interesting to see what he didn’t cover, including just about everything that happened in the US before 1962. This includes President Eisenhower, above-ground nuclear testing, and Senator Joseph McCarthy. I’m up through Martin Luther King’s assassination. I wasn’t aware of the early civil rights movement and learned a lot about that. One of the more interesting things I read is that in 1962, if you wanted aspirin or Kotex, you had to go to a drug store and ask the pharmacist. Neither product was out on the store shelves. I wasn’t too surprised by the feminine products, but I was surprised about the aspirin.

After so much time at home last week, Danita managed to get another day at home this week. She was called up for jury duty last week. They had her report at 11:30 Thursday. When she signed in, they gave her $15 and told her the accused had pleaded guilty at the last minute. She was free to go home.

Yesterday was the clubhouse decorating and pizza party. Danita does this every year, but I’m not that interested in milling around the artificial trees. I was happy to go to BGR and get a burger. Afterwards, I joined Danita at the clubhouse to see the movie “Expendables 3”. It is an action guy-flick with an all-star cast. It had every cliche in the book. I’m not sure what other people thought about it, but I nearly fell out of the chair laughing (as quietly as possible).

Tomorrow afternoon the Army field band is offering a free Christmas concert at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore (the BSO’s main concert hall). We’ll meet the Bertches and Suchoreks. Afterwards, we’ll go to Ikaros for dinner.

Some of you may not know that my brother Rick is back in the hospital. I’m not sure what all the issues are. I talked with him on the phone. He said his potassium levels are high and it will take them several days to bring them down.

I hope this finds everybody else doing well.

There is one pic this week.

The weather continues to be a wild rollercoaster. The most exciting day was Wednesday. They were forecasting snow, and we actually got some. It ended up not sticking to the roads. But we knew that if there was more snow than predicted on the most heavily traveled day on the calendar, Danita could end up having a very rough time coming home from work. So she decided to work at home. We decided to go to Bob Evans for breakfast, using a week-day only BOGO. While we had breakfast, we did most of our Christmas shopping. (Thank you, Amazon). Everything except one item has already arrived. After breakfast, we went home and Danita started her work. That evening, I declared a snow emergency. It can be a hard life, watching TV, skipping the commercials, drinking that red wine, and eating those snacks.

Thursday was our smallest Thanksgiving ever. Bud ended up going to Danita’s sister’s house, so it was just Danita, Mark, and me. Friday was a holiday for Danita. She went down to visit her dad while Mark and I went to see a movie. We saw the Hunger Games, “Mockingjay Part 1.” We both enjoyed the movie.

Advent Hike

We officially transferred our Church parish from St. Louis in Clarksville to Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) in Ellicott City. OLPH is much closer to us than St. Louis, and their parish seems to be more active. OLPH has a hiking club. Today was their annual Advent hike. They walk through Patapsco park, then visit an order of nuns for prayers and singing. It was a lot of fun, and the weather was perfect. We went on this hike with about 40 other people. Here’s a picture of Danita and some of the hikers at the nuns’ graveyard.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are a few pics this week.

We had rain on Monday, then it got frigid. Highs Tuesday and Wednesday were below freezing. Thursday was a little better, with highs in the low 40s. Then it was back to being cold Friday. At least we didn’t have any snow. Riding has been limited.

But there’s lots of other stuff going on. Danita and I went to see the movie “Interstellar” last Sunday afternoon. I thought it was a great movie. I don’t think Danita enjoyed it as much as I did. Part of that might have been because of her allergic reaction. The roof of her mouth was irritating her and she started having some other symptoms. I would have left the movie early, but she didn’t say anything until after we were home. She must have reacted to some cleaning chemical they use.

Fine Arts Building – “Thumbprint of God” or wrinkled plans?

Friday we went to a concert at UMBC. They built a fine new arts building. I think the outside is ugly. One wall has a huge dent, which the architect calls “The Thumbprint of God”. I think the plans got wrinkled and nobody noticed. The inside of the building is beautiful. It includes what must be the ultimate concert hall. It’s large for a campus their size, seating 300 people. To keep sounds from other parts of the building from disturbing the concert, the hall is totally self-contained — a building in a building. The heating and air conditioning is done without using fans, so that fan noise won’t interfere either. They have the capability of “tuning” the hall for the number in the audience and the type of music. The musicians giving the concert had been on campus giving masters lessons. The concert was as good as the hall.

Saturday was the neighborhood Thanksgiving party. SOCA provided the turkey and sodas. Neighbors brought the sides. So many people came, they had to set up tables in the vestibule. Our family Thanksgiving dinner will be the smallest one in many years. We will have 4 — Bud and Mark are coming. Ed & Lynne are going to Florida to visit Lynne’s parents. Her mother is suffering from dementia and is in a care facility. Their boys will both be visiting their in-law families.

This afternoon we will go to Duane Sabiston’s art reception. http://blog.duanesabiston.net/. Dot has been through some very tough times with her health. But things seem to have turned the corner. She is optimistic of getting a kidney transplant this year. You can read her posts here, if you create an account. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/dotsabiston.

Cool Book of the Week: “The Martian : a novel” by Andy Weir. Interstellar was a cool movie, but like most science fiction, they made stuff up. This book is totally within the realm of known science and probably technology. And the author gets his facts right. His story respects the time it takes and the possible routes for a ship to move itself from Earth to Mars, and how many calories per square foot one can get by growing potatoes, and every other detail that would be involved in living on Mars.

Cool Tool of the Week: I’ve been playing with our trip to China. Half the fun is in the anticipation. I noticed that most of our hotel rooms will have internet access, but not WiFi. Every device we own requires WiFi. Even my laptop does not include an internet jack. Obviously, we HAVE to have a device that turns Internet into WiFi. ;-) I found the Edimax N150 Wireless Personal Hotspot and Travel Router (BR-6258nL). It’s a terrific device. At just $20, it’s an unbelievable device. It has more features with access to more settings than anybody would ever need from such a thing. Yet, it is set up to be drop-dead easy to use. Of course, the proof is in the pudding. Having a device that works in my home is nice. Having a device that works for 3 weeks in China is not yet proven. I predict amazing things for my $20. We’ll see.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are a few pics this week.

Thurmont Ride

The week started off with two of the nicest days anybody could want. Monday was sunny and warm, with low winds and highs in the low 60s. This was a perfect day to drive up to Jerusalem Mill and do my 50 mile ride around Baltimore County. It was fun to visit the old stomping grounds. It’s a tough ride because of the length and the number of hills. It’s also a lot of fun because I vividly remember when some of these hills seemed to be very difficult, such as the hill going up to the Loch Raven Dam. Now they’re just hills. Kingsville is not an area that changes much. I had lunch at Jamie’s. The sandwich is exactly as it was when we lived there. Unfortunately, so are the tables out on the patio. They are getting pretty grungy.

My kids might remember this lake at the base of Catoctin Mountain (but not these fishermen)

Tuesday was about 5 degrees warmer, which meant that the highs in Thurmont were near 60. So I drove up there and did a ride I heard about online. The ride is a triangle. It starts in Thurmont and goes up Catoctin Mountain, past the turn-off for Cunningham Falls, past the turn-off for the Houck Camping area, up to the top of the ridge — which is also the Washington County boarder, and is also 7 miles of continuous up-hill riding. It would have been nice to stop at Cunningham Falls, but I didn’t start until 11 (to let the temperature warm up), so I didn’t have time for the detour. It’s beautiful country and a great ride. After the first 7 miles, I enjoyed a bracing downhill run into the valley.

We did some hiking / rock scrambling along this stream

From there, the ride turns North to go up the valley to Cascade, MD. (And it includes 3 more miles of climbing.) This little town is a stone’s throw from the PA border, and is also the home of Ft. Ritchie. The base was closed in 1998. Today, it is hopefully listed as “Office Space Available”. It’s pretty clear there have been no takers so far. This was the most isolated part of the ride. I rode for miles with no houses and no cars on the road. The only sign I was in a civilized area was the pavement under my wheels.

Was Ft. Ritchie, now “Office Space Available”

The last leg is a downhill run back to Thurmont. It’s fast and fun. The country is just as pretty as the rest of the ride. But I have to admit I was enjoying the downhill run quite a bit. There’s no doubt this is country. I didn’t pass a single Starbucks. I felt fine when I got home and even made it through Tuesday night Yoga in good shape.

Wednesday was a day of rest for me. I returned my “Personal Amplifers”, those things that aren’t quite hearing aids. They worked as advertised, but they didn’t let me turn the volume down when watching TV, and they didn’t help me hear people in noisy rooms. On the other hand, the video recorder has been a great success. Danita got a new crown Wednesday. Our dentist has all the latest dental toys, which is how Danita got her crown in one 2-hour visit. The dentist used an imaging laser to build a model of the tooth. The image was sent to a milling machine to make a ceramic crown. After a quick fit check, the crown was baked, then cemented to her tooth. The entire procedure, including a little cleanup work with the drill, was done without pain killers. Her mouth was sore for a couple of days, but it was much quicker and less disruptive than the traditional procedure. While Danita was recovering from her crown, I went to another retirement planning seminar. I know, I said no more of these. But this one had an interesting variation on the theme. This *is* the last one. Probably.

Wednesday was also a transitional day weather-wise. By Wednesday evening colder temperatures had come in with some rain showers. We even had a few snow flakes in the mix. Highs for the rest of the week were in the mid-40s. The sudden drop in temperature made the bike rides quite bracing.

Friday we had a neighborhood party. We had pizza, meatballs, salad, and sandwiches. And cookies for desert. The ladies in charge decided to mix up some sangria, which was quite popular. Danita’s off to visit her dad. After that, we’re looking forward to a quiet weekend. Maybe we’ll go see that new movie “Interstellar”.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

I’m Famous. I was on TV. I went to vote midday Tuesday. A cameraman from one of the local TV stations had just set up, and asked if he could record me. Mine was one of the clips that made it onto the news. I never saw the clip, but several people told me I was on.

We went to an awful event this week. The UMBC humanities department had their keynote presentation Wednesday afternoon. The subject was “Pottery and Ancient Dance”, about the ancient Greeks. It should be an interesting topic, and the speaker was quite informative when she answered questions from the audience at the end. But the actual talk was terrible. Her presentation was rapid and dry. She would mention somebody’s name and assume that the audience had read their work and know what their view of Greek pottery was. I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. I ended up sleeping through much of it.

Other than that, it was a pretty standard week. We went out for dinner Thursday and Friday, and breakfast this morning. We’re going to a neighborhood potluck dinner tonight.

My big news is that we got a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) for our TV. We time shift shows by watching them online. Lately, it hasn’t worked very well. The shows would freeze, often in the middle of a commercial. Shows on CBS would be OK. We could shut down our web browser and restart it. The show would remember where it was and start where it left off. But one show we watch, “The Flash”, isn’t on CBS and wouldn’t remember where it was. We could skip segments of the show, but we had to re-watch each of the commercials. We don’t use a cable box. We have just the local channels. The FIOS cable plugs directly into our TV. So I ordered this DVR. When it arrived, I learned its tuner isn’t “cable ready”. It really needs a TV antenna signal. So I ordered a “leaf” antenna. This looks like a piece of plastic, a little larger than a sheet of paper, white on one side and black on the other, with a wire sprouting out of the bottom. Our TV is in the basement, so I used painter’s blue tape to tape the antenna to the top of the basement window. Amazingly, it worked pretty well. Of course, I wanted to make it work better.

We have a Radon pipe in the basement that seems to run to the roof. The Radon pipe doesn’t really do anything but provide a 4″ conduit from the basement to the attic. My first thought was to run a coax cable through the Radon pipe and hang the antenna in the attic. I got the stuff I needed, then I tried to climb into the attic. I knew there wasn’t a lot of room in the attic, but I thought there was enough room to let me crawl to where the radon pipe was located. It didn’t take long to convince myself that I will never be working in this attic. Even when I was young, it would have been an amazing adventure. There’s no way this old man is going to do more than gaze longingly in the general direction I thought I needed to go. By this time I had quite an investment in my little project. I needed a “plan B”.

We have a FIOS box on the outside of the house which is connected to a coax cable in the garage. Most of the rooms in the house have a plate with one or two coax connectors and one or two phone connectors. I started climbing around the utility rooms (we have 3) and trying to figure out how all these cables are routed. I found out that we have a video and a phone distribution panel in one of the utility closets. We’ve been living in this house for 4/12 years. One might think I would have figured this out before now. I guess I just never cared before. After studying the distribution panel, I figured out that I could hook the antenna to one of the jacks in the upstairs bedroom, and wire that to an unused coax connector that’s right behind the TV. Lucky me.

All I needed was some simple tools. I needed a stripper to prepare the coax cable, a crimper to mount a connector to the end of one of the unused cables, and some coax connectors. I also noticed my drill battery isn’t holding a charge, so I needed one of those. And the new drill battery is different than the old battery and needs a new battery charger. All that was supposed to arrive Monday, but it actually arrived today. On a Sunday! They must be gearing up for Christmas. Lucky me.  I spent the afternoon today running up and down stairs, figuring out for sure which cable is routed to which outlet, moving the antenna to various positions to see how many channels we can get, etc. It’s all done now. The antenna is cleverly hidden behind a curtain. We get a bunch of channels, and the DVR is merrily recording the shows we want to watch. More accurately, the DVR *says* it is recording our shows. We’ll figure out how well all this is actually working in a week or so when we get around to watching some of these shows. Oh, and about the drill battery — I never actually needed to use the drill. But I have a spiffy new battery for “next time”, all charged up and ready to go.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.