There are no pics this week.

The week started out with the weather so good, it was hard to believe we weren’t still in San Diego. I took the opportunity to get a couple of very nice rides in. The nice weather didn’t last very long. I remember several years where we made it almost (but never quite all the way) to Thanksgiving before turning the heat on. Danita and I were talking about turning the heat on Saturday night. We decided to wait, because Danita is doing a lot of cooking Sunday, and that always warms up the house. Come Sunday morning, the house was 62 when I got out of bed. That’s too cold. This just might be the earliest in the year we’ve had the heat on. I’m sitting at my desk looking out into the trees out back. As the newspaper weather forecaster wrote, it’s a really nice day if you’re inside looking out. Sunny with an abundance of multi-colored leaves falling from the trees.

On the heath front, Danita had dentist and doctor’s appointments last week. She’s doing fine, but her skin is bothering her so much she finally made an appointment with a dermatologist. My hearing isn’t what it once was. For the last several years, I have problems hearing people talk in crowded rooms. Danita thinks I turn the TV volume too high. (Plus, I turn the captions on.) I went to an audiologist a little over a year ago. She said my hearing was marginal and indicated I could experience some improvement with a hearing aid for my right ear. I found it hard to justify the incredible expense of a modern hearing aid for a marginal improvement. Last week, I ran across information on The Bean. It’s much cheaper than a hearing aid. If they don’t help, I can send them back within 30 days. I did some on-line reading. In addition to the usual “unbiased” personal testimonials, I found some reviews by qualified professionals. It appears to be a useful device that costs much less than a modern digital hearing aid. (It uses a K-amp amplifier circuit.) My pair should arrive today. You’ll be hearing my personal testimonial before long.

We had two events this weekend. Friday evening, we went to a BSO concert. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Our big news this week is the annual sour beef dinner Sun evening. Our guests this year were Bud, Ed & Lynne, Mark, and Joe & Toni. Danita made the sour beef, green beans, cole slaw, and a spice cake with caramelized apple topping. Ed and Lynne made the soft dumplings that Bud likes. Our featured drink was Weihenstephaner beer, from the oldest brewery in the world (founded in 1040 by Benedictine monks, of course). They make several varieties. I got “original”. Does that mean we’ll be drinking beer exactly like it was in the 9th century? I held off posting this so I could add some party pics. But last night I was having such a good time, I forgot to take the pics. Oh, well.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The posts are being sent shortly after I write them, so I’m not going to put the date I wrote them at the top of the post anymore. There are pics this time.

Torrey Pines

Torrey Pines

Torrey Pines

We spent the second part of our stay in Sandiego together, which made it even more fun. We focused on our natural surroundings. Danita’s conference ended at 12:30 Wednesday. That gave us time to visit Torrey Pines and take a short hike. It’s a beautiful area. After that we just had time to drive over to Sunset Cliffs park and watch the sunset. The sunset was nice, but we enjoyed Torrey Pines more.

Sunset Cliffs

Thursday we decided to start at Loma Lighthouse and see where things went from there. We surprised ourselves and spent the whole day at the lighthouse. It overlooks San Diego, giving the best views of the city. And it is a beautiful area in its own. We hiked around in the morning, then went off to get lunch. After lunch it just happened to be low tide, so we went back to visit the tidal pools. As a bonus, we got to see a partial solar eclipse. The photo doesn’t show the eclipse, but one of the rangers had special glasses, and we were able to see it quite clearly.

Loma Lighthouse

Tidal Pools

Solar Eclipse

While we were at the Torrey Pines, Danita asked a docent what we should visit while we were in town. He suggested the Mission Trails Reserve, where we went Friday. This was a great suggestion, and we would have missed it if Danita hadn’t asked. The hike we chose was more than we expected. It was a tough hike for Danita. But we made it and enjoyed the water when we got back all the more. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at the San Diego Misssion, which is a beautiful and peaceful place. The effects of the drought in this area were quite obvious. We stood at an information board discussing the sounds of running water while looking at the completely dry San Diego River.

Mission Trails

A persistant tree at Mission Trails

San Diego Mission

Mission Bell Tower

We never had a bad meal. But Friday evening we had a very nice meal “on the water” just a short walk from our hotel. It was the perfect end to a great vacation. The weather foreacast in this area is calling for cooler temperatures and even perhaps a little rain tomorrow. It’s time to go home.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Wednesday, October 22. There are a few pics.

San Diego

Seal on a Bouy

Danita is wrapping up her conference. I’ve wrapped my solo sightseeing. I have some down time waiting for her. This is a good time to share what I did on my summer vacation. :-) Our first day was getting acquainted with the Coronado Island and keeping awake until 9:00 local time.

USS Midway

Monday I took the ferry over to the USS Midway. This is an aircraft carrier that was put into service 1 week after WW II ended, and served as the flagship during the first Iraq war. The visit was quite interesting because the docents were men who had served on the Midway. Nobody can have more authority about what it’s like, for example, to take off and land a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier than a pilot who did it. It’s pretty easy to spend an entire day aboard.

1929 Cord

Tuesday I went to Balboa Park. I saw the Air and Space Museum and the car museum. Both were good museums. I was quite impressed by the mechanical talent and interest in this area. If a mueseum needs a certain type if airplane but none are available, the museum can get local volunteers to build an airworthy exact replica from scratch. Trivia time: did you know why the Cord built a front-wheel drive car? It’s because no cars of the day had a hump in the middle of the car. As a consequence, having a drive shaft from the engine to the rear wheels added 10″ of height to the car. If you wanted to make your car low to the ground, this was an issue.

A ship deploying (with sailiors in dress whites on the rails) meets a ship returning. Taken from he USS Midway.

Tuesday evening, the conference was showing “Some Like it Hot” on the beach behind the hotel. This movie, with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemon, and Marilyn Monroe, was shot at the conference hotel. It was fun. But the big story was our restaurant find. When we were walking around, I saw a Mexican Restaurant that wasn’t on the street — one had to walk down an alley to get to it. I figured any successful restaurant that could survive a location like that had to be pretty good. We ate dinner there last night. The place was obviously popular. All dining was in an outdoor courtyard with a trellise roof that made it seem almost indoors. They had Chicken Mole on the menu. But I knew it would be a great dinner when they asked if I wanted flour or corn tortillias. Most Mexican restaurants offer only flour tortillas because they are so popular. Authentic Mexican food doesn’t use flour because the indigenous people didn’t have it. Their agriculture relied on maize.

I’ll write more when we get back. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Saturday, Oct 18. There are no pics. This might be a little long. I’ll put the most important stuff first.

Danita’s Aunt Delores died. She has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years. She died in Atlanta, where her daughter Darlene lives; but she spent most of her life in Scotsboro, Alabama. Her funeral will be Saturday in Scotsboro. (Long story, but it’s not helpful to make arrangements ahead of time if the funeral home goes out of business.) Our original plan was to change our plans for next week and attend the funeral. But Danita found that it takes all day, 3 planes, and a one-hour car ride to get from San Diego to Scottsboro. Getting from there to home isn’t a lot easier. Danita decided to send a note of remembrances instead of attending the funeral.

We are leave for San Diego in the morning. This should be a quiet, relaxing trip. Here’s the itinerary:

Sun, Oct 19: Southwest Airlines flight 503 – BWI to San Diego, 9:40 AM to 12:20 PM

Sat, Oct 25: Southwest Airlines flight 908 – San Diego to BWI, 12:15 PM to 8:10 PM

Hotel:
Best Western Plus Suites Hotel Coronado Island
275 Orange Ave, Coronado, CA 29118
(619) 437-1666

We were quite lucky with the stomach flu. We drove home from Jul’s house Monday. Danita felt bad and spent most of the car ride sleeping, but I felt fine. Tuesday, I felt bad and spent most of the day sleeping, but Danita felt fine. This meant we were able to get home on time, and Danita was able to go to work Tuesday, which was a very busy day for her.

We went to another retirement financial planning seminar last Thursday. The idea was that attending these would let us see what kind of people are available to help us with our financial planning. What we saw was pretty bleak. We don’t plan to attend any more of these, with or without a free dinner. A popular service is to submit all our finances into some kind of computer program that prints out a detailed financial plan. We are getting that free from Danita’s retirement plan. We will also get, for free, recommendations of how we should rearrange things to achieve a wise diversification of investments. We’ll see where we go after we have our next meeting with her retirement advisor. The good thing for us is that we have lived under our means and been lucky financially. We have no debt, some pension, and a good collection of IRA / 401(k), etc funds. We never bought anything that went out of business like Enron, or Bethlehem Steel, or the old General Motors. So with a little knowledge and some basic advice, we should do fine.

I went to the Howard County 50+ Expo Friday. I go to get a free flu shot and to hear the Capitol Steps perform. I also usually listen to the keynote presentation and walk around scarfing up swag. I rode my bike as usual. This lets me park right at the high school, wrapping my bike lock cable around a “No Parking” sign. Everybody else has to park at the mall and take a shuttle bus. It was a beautiful day for riding. I got the flu shot without waiting in line. The Capitol Steps were fabulously funny. The keynote was an AARP person talking about moving into the next phase of life (retirement). It was a nice presentation, and I found it to be quite funny. She included a short exercise where we were supposed to write down a goal and how we would achieve it. Then we were supposed to share it with somebody near us in the audience. I noticed 3 groups of people in the audience. Married couples conferred quietly together. Women who came without a husband immediately moved closer to each other and started animated conversations. Men who came without a wife totally ignored the activity, spending this time reading a brochure they picked up at the exhibit or playing with their phone.

Picking up swag or getting tickets can be quite challenging because of all the old people. If you haven’t ever done something like this, you won’t be surprised to hear that many old people are mobility challenged. They move slowly, want one of everything they see, and take a long time organizing their junk. When they are finally done, they tend to stay where they are while they look around and decide where they want to go next. And, of course, they are always directly in front of me. I would stand back to give them a little space and wait for them to move out. What’s not so obvious is that there were other old people behind me. Those folks wanted to get to the swag, and they saw nothing wrong with pushing me out of the way, or jamming in front of me. More than once, I received such a push that a booth worker asked me if I was OK.

Tonight is our last dinner in Maryland. And we will have it at the clubhouse. This the annual “Volunteer Appreciation” dinner. Of course, it is put together by volunteers. Danita and I get to attend because I volunteer to help with our computers and such. Mostly what I do is pretty easy. For example, they want to change the times when people can use their pass cards to get into one of the doors. So I spent a couple of hours reading the user document. When we get back, I’ll spend another 15 minutes helping the staff effect the change. But even though I don’t do much, Danita and I will enjoy the dinner as much as if I spent hours and hours doing such things as cooking hamburgers or setting up for dinners.

I finished Ken Follet’s middle book of his Century trilogy, about the WW II era. Much of the story is familiar, but I enjoyed the read and learned quite a bit. He is so good at getting his facts right that I finally stopped checking them. He knows how to bring home a point. For example, many have written how important the US manufacturing capacity was to winning the war. Ken brought the point home. He wrote that the battle of Midway made it obvious how important air craft carriers were to control of the oceans. After Midway, Japan built 7 more of the complex and expensive air craft carriers. The US built 99. Unfortunately, he ran out of pages at the end. His coverage of the post WW II recovery in Europe was so abbreviated that it resulted in serious distortions of what happened and how. For example, he said that Truman got the voter support he needed to pass the Marshal Plan after Russia forcibly and obviously took over the Czechoslovakia government. I’m not an expert on this subject, but I know enough to know that this is a gross over simplification. He didn’t cover the Japanese recovery at all. I think there are a lot of interesting things to know about this era. Maybe someday I’ll find a good source on the subject.

Here’s an interesting tidbit I learned while reading up on the Marshal plan. Russia was desperate to prevent the plan from happening. They were offered the aid themselves, but refused it because it would result in the US controlling too much of their government. But the offer was a bluff. There was no support among voters for sending aid to Russia. If Russia had accepted the aid, the package probably wouldn’t have passed congress.

Well, this is quite long, and it’s time to stop! I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Monday, 10/13. There are lots of pics at the end. As always, you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

It was a strange trip to NC. We arrived Thursday afternoon. Thursday and Friday, Elizabeth was still recovering from a bug. By Saturday, Elizabeth was better but Bryon was sick. Jul got sick late Saturday. Danita was sick for the drive home Monday. We did simple adventures, and we didn’t always take both children. Fortunately, Danita brought some simple craft projects and several children’s movies on DVD that saved the day.

Friday school was closed. Jul and Pat were at work, and we were minding the store. I spent some time with B in the back yard while Jul took E to the grocery store. After lunch, we went to a park and took a short walk.

Saturday we took E to a playground.

Sunday it was cool and rainy. We took both kids to a super mall. We started at Bass Outdoor Store, looking at all the stuffed animals, animal tracks in the floor, aquarium, and more. Then we walked the mall, rode the carossell, had ice cream, and spent some time at the Lego store play area.

The drive down and the drive home were uneventful.

Bryon on the back yard swing

More swinging

The back yard high wire act

Back yard nature study

Climbing the back yard tree

Still climbing, still with no help

Got there (and he got down, too)

At the Park – can you see the crane?

Doing paper work at home

E on the swing at the playground

E Climbing

E Climbing

What goes up must go down

Quiet Time

B took this at the Bass aquarium. You can see his thumb and my reflection — and even a fish

B, me, and E on the Carossell

At Lego Land

I am writing this on Saturday, October 4. There are a couple of pics.

A is for Australian Alligator

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a very nice week. Sunday, the garage door spring broke. These things always happen on Sunday, when there is no hope of getting help. I was able to get Danita’s car out of the garage, but when I went to close the door it got away from me. Now we have a slightly dented door. Fortunately, the car was *not* under the door at the time. The garage door man came on Tuesday at the appointed time. We have two doors. I figured the spring on the other door would fail pretty soon, so I had him replace both springs.

Anemone

We had a practically perfect evening Wednesday. To start the evening off, I met Danita at work and we went to a local bar for reuben sandwiches. They were quite good, and they certainly hit the spot. But there’s a Friendly’s Ice Cream place right down the street, so after we finished our sandwiches, we got a couple of Sundaes. Then we went to the National Aquarium. There was a nice crowd there. Everybody was having a good time. It was a friendly, exciting, good-time vibe. At the same time, the exhibits weren’t crowded. We had plenty of opportunity to see everything we wanted and even snap a couple of quick pics.

Fish

Friday I went with a couple of our neighbors to the Western MD Rail Road Trail. There’s a tourist train that runs between Cumberland and Frostburg. Next to the train is a very nice biking trail. (Actually, the trail comes all the way from Pittsburgh, and joins up in Cumberland with the C & O Tow Path to go all the way to Georgetown.) We rode our bicycles 15 miles from Frostburg to Cumberland, which is a down-hill ride. The fall foliage was much in evidence. The path is in excellent condition. The weather was cloudy but nice. It was a beautiful ride, with several “wow” moments where we would come around the bend and be presented with a spectacular view. The ride was a little disorganized, and we were racing storms moving in from the West, so we ended up riding pretty much straight through, then having lunch about 2. It didn’t start raining until we started driving home. I had a great time, but I probably won’t to do this trip again. When I analyzed the day, I found I spent:

5 hours SOMB (Sitting On My Butt) driving.
2 hours SOMB eating (including all three meals)
1.5 hours SOMB coasting downhill (there’s not much exercise in that)
$50 for gas and lunch (but I did get free parking, thanks to a busted parking lot gate)
After spending all day SOMB, Danita and I went downstairs and watched TV

Western MD RR Trail

That’s a lot of stuff for a short bike ride. And not a very healthful day to boot. It turned out I was quite lucky. The bike shop didn’t get my gear hub locked in correctly. It worked fine for a few rides I did earlier this week, plus 13 of the 15 miles of the trail ride. Fortunately, I realized what was wrong right away, and was able to coast downhill to the car without stopping. Imagine how embarrassing for me, the neighborhood bicycle king, to be the only person who had to stop and effect a bicycle repair on such a short and easy trip. Once I got home, I was able to fix the bike in a few minutes.

It looks like we will attend fewer neighborhood parties. We used to have 2 or 3 parties a month: one free “happy hour”, one $10 dinner, and often one $10 entertainment with deserts. But they’re running out of money in the entertainment fund, and they’ve doubled the price of the dinners. The dinners are a good time and the food is decent. But we don’t think they’re worth $40 for the two of us. I’m thinking we’ll find other things to do.

Next week promises to be quite exciting. We start out Sunday with a Church turkey dinner at the parish we are visiting. Monday is a retirement planning seminar and “free” dinner. Thursday we are driving to NC to visit the Reeds. We will drive back Monday, so my weekly blog will be a little late. But there just might be some cool grand-kid pics!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This is a test post of my blog, to see whether the Email is fixed. You do not have to respond.

I am writing this on Saturday, 9/27. There are no pics.

We met with the financial planner Wednesday. My goodness it was an experience. We reviewed our investments, etc. Discussed our goals. The financial planner will put everything into his computer program and we will review his suggestions in a few weeks. I’m not sure why, but we got quite — I’m not sure what. It wasn’t excited. It wasn’t worked up. It was something between those two, I guess. We ended up having an unplanned dinner out. Then we got TV snacks and a bottle of red wine. We still had our planned dinner out Thursday. And we were close to going out again Friday. I think we’re getting back close to normal.

We had some nice but cool weather, followed by a day of cold rain. Today it was extremely nice — 80 and sunny. We went to another section of the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge and had a wonderful hike in a wooded area. This time, we had to sign a form in triplicate. One copy stayed in the office, one went on the dash board of our car, and one stayed with us. We were required to return our two copies when we got back. They were talking about unexploded ordinance from when the area was part of a military base. We decided to take their advice and stay on the trail. ;-) After our walk, we had lunch at a local restaurant. We’ll do our normal Church and Sunday breakfast out tomorrow.

We’ve been attending different churches. We haven’t really fitted into St. Louis. We visited a parish that uses one of the shared religious centers here in Columbia for a few weeks. Now we’re trying another parish near by.

While we were having that cool but nice weather, then the rainy cool and not so nice weather, I was being reminded of how cold I felt most of last winter. We heat our house to 68 in the winter. It’s from a combination of wanting to be green and being cheap. Every time I settled down to read, or play with the computer, or do some other sedentary activity, I got quite cold. I understand the importance of being active, but I don’t plan to be active all the time. I decided what I need is a heavy, warm sweater. The only thing I can find in the stores is fashionable light-weight sweaters, so I ordered one. It came in today. It looks like it’s going to be a big help. What I know for sure is that it is *very* warm if worn when it’s 80 degrees.

I continue to be surprised by the things I should know but don’t. I was reading Ken Follett’s middle book in his “Century” series. This book starts just as Hitler is taking power in Germany. I read about the Battle of Cable Street. This took place in London on October 4, 1936. Fascist “Black Shirts” wanted to have a march through London’s East Side. The East Side is where the poorer people lived, including most of the Jews. Many people in the Black Shirts were from the upper-class. People from the East Side plus several leftist organizations opposed the march by barricading Cable Street. The London Police tried to clear the street — including horse mounted police beating British citizens with sticks. I had never heard of this before. After I read Follett’s fictionalized account, I started searching the internet. It’s easy to find news videos of the riot and endless summaries and analysis. What surprised me most was the disagreement of precisely who participated, and what the after affects were. I would read an analysis that said “clearly, this was the result”. Then I would read “clearly, that was the result.” I was almost left wondering if people were talking about the same event.

I hope next week will be a little less exciting. And I hope this finds everybody doing well. And it would be nice if my server actually sends the Emails this week. I guess we’ll see soon enough.

I am writing this on Sunday, 9/21. There are no pics this week.

It feels like lots of things happen, but by the end of the week, I have a hard time remembering them all. And the happenings I remember don’t necessarily turn themselves into a good story.

I got my bike back late Tuesday. It was a good week weather-wise, so having the bike lent itself to many fine hours on the road. It’s nice to have convenient access to a bike shop that lets me skip most of the uncertainty of how to effect repairs, and the grime of all that oil and dirt, and the frustration of not knowing how to put things together mechanically.

Danita and I met with a financial planner who is available through UMBC and TIAA-CREF (they run her retirement savings plan). The adviser makes a lot of sense. We’ve scheduled a meeting with another person from their organization to review our investments and get recommendations of how we might change them to better match our retirement needs. I must admit I’m approaching this with some caution and a little skepticism. But the service has no up-front fees, so we would be foolish not to at least listen to what they have to say. Retirement planners talk about the next 30 years. Certainly there are people who live that long. Looking back to what things were like 30 years ago and seeing the differences between then and now, one can certainly find a lot to think about. We’ll see where this goes.

Here’s a computer tip I came across. Like everybody else, I read a lot of documents in Adobe Reader (.pdf) format. I always felt that Adobe Reader was a large program that offers few features. This has been more true with recent releases, which move more and more features out of the free program and into paid cloud services. I was reading a computer security blog and stumbled onto an excellent solution — Foxit Reader. Don’t worry about the strange name. Foxit has an incredibly large set of features in their free reader. Go to  http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/.
Sad but true, one has to be very careful of searching for popular programs and clicking the link at the top of the search results. Many companies make a living by tricking users into downloading junk onto their computers. That’s why I included the link to this program in my blog.

I had a nice experience this week. Our neighborhood got a new security camera DVR. I wanted to set it up so that when community board members we called upon to review the security video, they could do it from their homes. That was easy enough, but the problem was that with our new system, allowing access to video over the internet also allowed access to administration over the internet. (Administration allows a person to delete video, turn recording off, and in general be a genuinely bad person.) The system is *supposed* to allow us to permit access to video from anywhere while limiting administration to only in the office, but I couldn’t make it work. I called the service person and learned that this was a known bug in the system. Then I was astonished to learn that most of his customers weren’t bothered by this. Their solution was to allow easy access to administration from anywhere. I guess if I wanted to lead a life of crime, I could have an easy time of it. I called the manufacturer and found that a firmware upgrade would solve the problem. I installed the firmware upgrade and found that I could block administration over the internet, but I couldn’t make it work in the office. That wasn’t a very acceptable answer. I tried several things, all of them unsuccessful. I gave up. Two days later, I knew why it wasn’t working. The idea just popped into my head, fully formed. I went into the office and my idea worked perfectly. It’s brain magic — I have no idea where my idea came from. When I was working as an engineer, I relied on brain magic to help me with all kinds of problems all the time. Now that I’m retired, I don’t have much need of brain magic. It was gratifying to find that my brain magic hasn’t disappeared (yet).

Ken Follett got a lot of publicity recently for completing his “Century” trilogy. I thought it would be interesting to read the first two books in the series while waiting for my turn to get his new book. I went to the Howard County Library web site and found that I wasn’t the only person in the county who had this idea. But I was astounded to find that if I was willing to read the second book first, I could start immediately. So I put in my request. The book is waiting for me to pick it up. Amazing!

We had some entertainment this week. We went to a neighborhood party Saturday. The music was too loud, so we left early. The BSO season has started. We attended our first concert of the year this afternoon. Because it was the first concert of the series, they started with a very nice symphonic transcription of the national anthem. We heard Beethoven’s violin concerto and Mahler’s 4th symphony. The Beethoven was quite good. I’m still working on my appreciation of Mahler, but the piece had a gong. How bad can it be when they play the gong? After the symphony, we went out to a restaurant that was OK, but we probably won’t bother going back.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Monday, 9/15. There are no pics this week.

It was a quiet week. We had a neighborhood party Friday. I broke my glasses. My backup glasses don’t work as well. I received the part needed to fix my bicycle. I decided to take the part and my bike to the bike shop. I expect to get it back in working order in a day or so.

The week wasn’t entirely without interest. We booked our China vacation. We will be traveling April 23 – May 13, 2015. I tried to sign up on-line. I found I could sign myself up, and I could sign Danita up, but there was not an obvious way to sign us both up. It felt so wrong to be filling out information about roommate preferences to get the “double booking” price. I ended up calling them this morning. Sometimes it pays to use the phone. There is more flexibility in travel than the internet site indicated. Now we have to finalize flights, apply for our visas, etc. Trip details will be worked out over the next several weeks. Now that I’m paying more attention about news from China, I realized that China is blocking access to Google. I suppose that means that only Danita will have the ability to read her Email, should we be so fortunate as to have internet access. This might be quite an adventure.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.