I am writing this on Sunday, 9/7. There are no pics.

My bike book is done! It is available on all major E-book outlets, and is also available in paperback from Amazon and a few other outlets. Don’t worry about trying to find it. You will all be receiving a paperback copy when my order comes in. It’s my way of celebrating the completion of the project.

I had a nice experience with the book cover. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s exactly what everybody does. I have no artistic talent. But it turns out there are a large number of people who make book covers available through the web. Most self-published books are E-books, and most E-books are junk fiction. By far the largest category is romance novels for the ladies, followed by fantasy for the teens, and then junk guy stories (Samurai / Private Detective / Soldier of Fortune stuff). All the artists have sample work on their sites, but it’s hard to judge how they would do on a bike book from the samples. I picked a lady who had reasonable prices and seemed to have a good attitude. It worked out very well. I ended up getting it for a 3-year old laptop with a broken cooling fan plus 47 cents, thanks to E-bay. I simply sold the computer, left the proceeds in my Pay Pal account, then used the Pay Pal account to pay the artist. Very slick.

Last week we finally got our typical summer weather — 90 degrees and 90% RH. Not only was it hot during the day, it didn’t cool down much at night. We ran the AC all week. But we had a nice cool front come through late yesterday. We enjoyed a dramatic thunderstorm from the shelter of our under-deck porch. It was the first really good thunderstorm we had since the deck was re-done, and we enjoyed watching the storm very much. (We had a heavy rain day, which I wrote about earlier, but there was no thunder or lightening.) Today the AC is off and the windows are open. The weather is so nice today, we went out to play a round of mini-golf at the Columbia Sports Center.

I was out on my bike Wednesday for a short ride when all of a sudden, I couldn’t change gears. I had noticed a part was a little loose. I couldn’t tighten it, but I figured it would hold out until winter. I was wrong. I’ve ordered a replacement part, but I’m not sure when it will be in. I have my old backup bike, but I haven’t taken very good care of it. The cables are corroded, and I don’t want to ride it too far from home, in case a critical cable breaks and I have to walk it home.

In addition to the bike, my method of making the rabbits go someplace else didn’t work. I’ve put 4 bags of gravel in the ground, sprayed copious quantities of rabbit repellent, and dumped over a can of “Critter Ridder” peppers on the ground. They just keep on digging more holes to get to their warren. We’re coming up on another breading season (they have 3 or 4 a year), so I want to do something pretty quickly. Ferrets can be quite effective, but I rejected that option because I have no use for the ferrets once the rabbits are gone. Also, the ferrets only get the rabbits out of the ground. You still have to get rid of them. Cats like to hunt rabbits, but our neighborhood would not appreciate the type of feral barn cats that like to hunt. It’s supposed to be easy and cheap to trap them, but we have plenty of rabbits all over Columbia. There’s no place to relocate them. So I decided to call professionals in and ask them for the “final solution”. We’ll see what they say.

My most recent project is a Raspberry Pi computer. This is a little (2.5″ x 3.5″) circuit board computer that costs about $35. (You can find pictures very easily of you search for “Raspberry Pi” on the web.) The computer is amazingly capable, and there’s a very large DIY (Do It Yourself) community doing all kinds of things with it. They have a way to play videos on it. You connect it to the Internet, then plug it into your TV. Voila, you can play videos from the World Wide Web. I worked on this for a surprisingly long time, but I finally got it working. I was surprised that it does an excellent job of playing web site videos such as You-Tube. Unfortunately, I also found that video content doesn’t include Amazon streaming movies or CBS.com streaming TV shows. At least, not legally. I wasn’t surprised at the limitation.

The other thing I want to try with my tiny computer board is wireless remote control. There are a wide range of home automation and home security products. I am interested in devices using the Z-Wave protocol. They have a plug-in board that lets the Raspberry Pi talk to Z-Wave devices. Because the devices are mostly available for people buying very expensive systems, it’s hard to find the simple (and inexpensive) kinds of devices I am interested in. But after spending an entire day, I found a reasonably priced device that lets me detect a push-button switch. The add-on board and the switch device should be in Tuesday. Then I’ll start playing around with Z-Wave stacks, javascript, python, and endless other strangely named geek stuff that I don’t already know how to do. It should keep me busy for a good long time.

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

I am writing this on Sunday, August 31. There are several pics.

Deer

After the contractor finished working on our deck, the new deck looked great. And the porch below the deck looked rather ragged by comparison. At least I was able to predict the outcome this time. I went to buy the same paint I used last time I painted the porch, only to find they don’t sell that paint any more. So I went to Sherwin-Williams and got a paint that would work well. It took the better part of Monday to get it done. At the end of the day, I had unwittingly worn a pretty good sore spot in my right knee, which is still covered by an ugly looking scab. And the porch still feels tacky when we walk on it. I have no idea how long it will be before the paint is truly dry. But it must look pretty good. It attracted another deer.

Rabbit Den

That isn’t the only wildlife we’ve been attracting. I noticed a hole in the ground near our driveway. A little investigation revealed a sizable rabbit den. The pests have been literally undermining our driveway. I decided to fill the holes with pea gravel and finish it off with a generous layer of rabbit repellent. So far, I’ve put down 3 bags of pea gravel. The holes aren’t filled yet. I feel like Elmer Fudd. Wascally wabbits! (Click the triangle below for a short trip down memory lane.)

Patuxent Refuge

Last week was more delightful weather, with highs in the 80s and low humidity. Our normal hot, humid summer weather rolled in today. We took advantage of the good weather to finish our Howard County walks. We were rewarded with another Wegman’s coupon and 2 more water bottles. Yesterday we visited the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge. They have over 10,000 acres of undeveloped land, much of it wetlands and small lakes; mostly along the Patuxent River. It’s a beautiful area, and we enjoyed walking around one of the trails. We saw a small frog on the trail. You can see it below in the lower right corner, but you have to look closely. We had an easier time, because we could see it move.

Here’s a small frog we saw at Pax Refuge (lower right corner).

This morning, we visited a church in Baltimore then took Mark out to breakfast. We drove from JHU Homewood campus, in the center of Baltimore, down to the Blue Moon Cafe near the harbor. There was a huge crowd waiting to get into the cafe, so we drove back up to the Homewood area and got breakfast at one of the local cafes. Mark worked pretty hard teaching the CTY class that finished recently. He’s trying to figure out whether he wants to stay at Hopkins or transfer to College Park. Things should get settled for him pretty soon.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Saturday, 8/23. There is one pic.

After a week of really nice weather, we had a week of continuous high humidity and rain. Temperatures weren’t that hot, with highs below 90. But it was either raining or threatening rain all week. To air out the house, we open the doors to the deck. We can’t do that when it rains, because it’s so easy for rain to soak the floor. After several days of this, I got tired of the humidity and turned on the A/C. The rain should end tonight. Then we’ll be able to turn the A/C off and open the house.

Life sure is easy these days. Our toaster died this morning. I went upstairs and turned on the computer. Danita chose “2 slice” over “4 slice”, and “silver” over “red” or “black”. I clicked the button, and the toaster will arrive on our doorstep no later than Tuesday. No sales tax, no shipping, huge selection, and a price that’s competitive with any store in town. How did we ever get by back in the day?

School’s starting. Danita had 4 days of meetings this week. UMBC has a 2-day retreat at the beginning of each school year. Danita has worked herself into a position of status and respect, and has been invited for the last several years. It’s nice to be invited, but it took up much of Tuesday and all of Wednesday. Thursday was the UMBC opening meeting. Friday was interviews for a new position on campus. When UMBC wants to hire a new professional, they form a search committee. As a highly respected member of the UMBC community, Danita is often invited to be on the committee. Interviews for this position took most of her day Friday. She’s going to work Monday, her desk piled high with work, and she didn’t even get a vacation! Just to show how much influence Danita has at UMBC, she helped hire all but one of the people on this search committee.

Off To School

“Back to School” even impacted me this year. I took a ride Friday and met three high school BFFs who were leaving to attend college in two days. They were out for a little last-minute fun together, and asked me to take their picture. I was surprised to find they had a Polaroid camera. I thought the technology was dead. But here I was, taking this picture while they thought they had to explain this rad new technology for me. Polaroids are both the same and different than they were back in the day. The camera is much smaller and support lots of LED lights. But it’s still dead-simple to take a pic. Look through the little square hole and push a button. The film ejects and starts developing. Polaroid pictures are a lot smaller than they used to be. They’re a little larger than the wallet size snapshots we got from our school photos as kids.

I was quite impressed by these young ladies. They were going to 3 different colleges to study 3 different areas of technology — mechanical engineering, computer science, and computer engineering. The young lady on the right is attending UMBC. Into hands such as these we place our future. I must have appeared quite old to these young people. They kept calling me “sir”, and were surprised to find that I had my phone with me, and knew how to use it to take a picture.

It’s a quiet week. Bud’s coming over for dinner and we’re going to watch a DVD somebody lent him. We have a neighborhood party tomorrow.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, Aug 17. There is one picture.

This week’s theme is travel. We spent the week working on two trips. The first is a conference Danita will attend in Coronado, an island right outside San Diego. I’m tagging along. The trip will be Oct 19 – 25. The conference reserved rooms in several hotels, all upper-class resorts. The kind where it’s such a bargain to get a room for $300/night that nobody should mind paying the extra $50/night fee that adds such amenities as parking and WiFi. (But not breakfast. The brunch is about $30/person plus tip and tax.) UMBC is paying for the conference days, but we’re paying for the extra days. And even if UMBC were picking up the entire tab, I would have trouble sleeping comfortably in a bed that costs that much. The issue was resolved when Danita found all the conference rooms were already taken. We got a room in a Best Western hotel about a mile away. It’s close enough that if I get hung up in San Diego one day, Danita can easily walk to the hotel from the conference. As a bonus, UMBC will pay for the rental car on conference days. Both we and UMBC will save significantly, compared to what we would have paid for an official conference room. And the breakfast, parking, and WiFi are free.

The other travel we’ve been working on is next year’s vacation. I’ve long wanted to visit Greece. Danita is willing, but she only wants to go once. She advised me to make a list of all the things I want to see while we are there. I did. Key items on the list are at the end of this post. We found a cruise that covers all but one the important locations on my list. Then we found that they are running that cruise this year, but not next year. No other cruise or tour we can find comes close. We are not willing to do a “roll your own” trip to Greece because we think English is not very well known in Greece, and there’s not much chance we can figure things out by recognizing a few key words of Greek. So we decided to put Greece on hold for a year and go to China instead. For China, we looked at the tours and picked the one we like best. It turns out there’s not really all that much choice. The core of all China tours is pretty much the same. Once outside the major cities, there’s not a lot of choice of accommodations and restaurants. The tour we’ve pretty much settled on includes a visit to Tibet. I like that because not many people can start a sentence with “When I was in Tibet …”. Helpfully, the hotel in Tibet sells oxygen for those who need it. The tour we picked out has several possible dates. The next step is for Danita to talk with her boss about when we will be gone. Next year is an important year for Danita because UMBC will apply for an extension of their research contract with NASA. Danita has a pretty good idea of what’s required to write the proposal, but this is a big enough issue that she should get approval from her boss first.

Deer – taken from our back porch yesterday

That’s plenty of excitement, but wait — there’s more! My body was advising me to make major adjustments to my bike riding. Last week I felt better and started building back up. I am pleased with my progress. We had a neighborhood crab feast yesterday. I’m not big on crabs, and the party was kind of expensive. Danita went to the crab feast and I got a hamburger. We enjoyed very unusual weather for August. We had a huge amount of rain Tuesday — over 6″ in one day. This was a record for that day of the year. The most amazing thing was that as late as Monday afternoon, the forecast was for 1 to 2 inches. The drainage system in our neighborhood held up pretty well. So far as I know, nobody got flooded out, although most everybody’s sump pump got a good workout that day. I spent most of Tuesday sitting on the porch under our recently renovated deck, totally dry and enjoying the view. Other than Tuesday, it was cool, sunny, and dry all week. It was so cool that I had to wear a sweatshirt in the mornings and didn’t go barefoot until after lunch. We also completed several of our walks. We’re just one walk away from finishing the set.

That’s certainly a lot of excitement for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well. My “Greek list” is below.

Things to see while visiting Greece

Athens, the Parthenon, and the Parthenon Museum. This is pretty obvious, be there are tours that do not include Athens, or do not give it enough time.

Constantinople (also called Istanbul). Capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire (also called Byzantium), which lasted for 1100 years. Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian 1400 years ago, has a dome that was the largest in the world for 1000 years. Also has the Topkapi Palace and Hippodrome.  Believe it or not, there are tours that skip Constantinople entirely. One needs at least three days to see this city.

Delos is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece. 1000 years before Greek mythology, Delos was the birthplace of Apollo.

Rethimnon, Crete contains an amazing restoration of an important palace. While modern archaeologists heartily condemn the restoration, it is the only site where one can walk around and get a true feel of what the palace was like and how it functioned.

Volos contains the famous Byzantine monasteries built atop the rock towers of Meteora. These monasteries were an essential part of the Eastern Christian Church, and would be well worth visiting even without the amazing surviving frescoes and icons.

Çanakkale, Turkey contains an archaeology site that holds 9 civilizations, including Troy.

Delphi, site of the prehistoric Oracle, a major temple to Apollo, and site of the Pythian Games. Apollo talked to mortals through the Delphic Oracle, which exerted considerable influence throughout the Greek world. Sadly, we cannot find a tour that includes this site that was so important to the early Greeks. This is the one site I will not see.

I am writing this on Sunday, 8/10. There are 2 pics.

Friday was Danita’s birthday. She’s not been one to be upset about birthdays, but having her 60th birthday, combined with the retirement planing we’ve started, made this one a little traumatic for her. We had a 3-part celebration. Thursday, we went to the Highland Inn, an upscale restaurant. It was a bit of a drive, but the food was fabulous and the price was quite reasonable for what we got. Friday we had a neighborhood “Chill and Grill”. I picked up a birthday cake as our contribution to the desert table. Lots of people stopped by to wish Danita a happy birthday. There were lots of jokes about how hard I worked on Danita’s birthday cake. It took me all week! (I ordered it Monday, picked it up Friday.) It was like inviting 150 people to a birthday party, but a whole lot cheaper. Today after Church, we drove up to Baltimore and had breakfast at First Watch Cafe. This is a breakfast-and-lunch only place with the specialty of using only fresh ingredients. It’s a bit of a drive, but the breakfast is fabulous and we had a great time.

Rouse Rock

We continued our Columbia walks. We visited a wetlands area. It was one of the shortest walks, but it was a nice one. Much of it was boardwalk, which let us get up-close-and-personal to the wetlands. It was very nice except for one short section. There was a gazebo in the middle of a small pond connected to the trail by a section of boardwalk. It was very pretty, but impossible to reach. A couple of geese had taken up residence on the connecting boardwalk. This was their territory and they weren’t budging for anybody. One would have to be quite determined in any event, given the quantity of bird poop on that section of the boardwalk. Our other walk was in the most popular recreational park of the area. It’s called Centennial Lake. The trail is a little over 2 1/2 miles. The park is always jammed with walkers, runners, cyclists, kids, boaters, and fishermen. The highlight of this walk was two more “Rouse Rocks”. These were much smaller, and “in memory of” instead of a “gift to”. I continue to be amazed.

I consider the “Rouse Rocks” to be one of my Columbia stories. These are stories about things that are a little off beat, humorous, and illustrate how life in Columbia is different than life anywhere else in the known universe. From our unique street names, to the amazing obsession about the street sign format, to the commercial underbelly, to the complete lack of straight roads, to see-saws; they make quite a collection of stories. But I have lost my favorite Columbia story. You might remember that the bus routes in Columbia are denoted by colors, the buses are painted green, and the bus route is displayed by a yellow electronic sign. This gave me my my story about the green bus with the yellow sign that says red. But I can’t use that story any more. Columbia, Howard County, and parts of Arundel County regionalized their buses. They changed the bus route names from memorable colors like “red” to bland numbers like “407”. And the buses aren’t necessarily green. And they don’t all use yellow electronic signs anyway. The world just keeps on changing. Uniqueness keeps on disappearing. We keep moving from the interesting to the bland bourgeois. What is an old grouch to do but observe and complain?

Power Up 3

I invested in a Kickstarter project! These are companies that use the internet to find the funds to develop interesting things. This project is a remote-control paper airplane, controlled by your smart phone. It sounds like a great idea that would be a lot of fun. It’s called Power Up 3. For my $30, I got an electronic module that looks like a high-tech cockpit, a piece of carbon-fiber rod, and a propeller / rudder assembly. (the propeller goes behind the rudder at the back of the plane.) Just fold a piece of paper into an airplane (the template is on the web), clip on the Power Up 3, download the app, and have fun. It turned out to be more funny than fun, and the joke was on me. On my very first flight, the plane nosed down towards the ground, then flew towards my neighbor’s deck, climbing sharply to an altitude of about 25 feet. After almost literally hitting the deck, it staled, rolled, and headed back towards the ground. It recovered briefly then nose-planted into the grass. The  propeller quickly began chewing its way into the grass. What made the flight so funny was the pilot, because about the time the propeller started buzzing along the ground, I finally realized that the plane was climbing too steeply and would soon stall if I didn’t do *something* to my smart phone to correct the flight. The abrupt landing must have misaligned the plane in a way I couldn’t detect, because that was by far the best and most interesting flight I ever had. Although the time it rolled and flew upside-down for 30 feet before crashing was kind of interesting also. And to think my main concern is that it would fly out of range of my smart phone and I would lose control. Ha! I never once was able to provide any correction, either good or bad, while the plane was still in the air. Having exhausted my patience, I went back to the you-tube video of the plane in flight. This time I noticed how unstable the plane is, and how it needs frequent and timely corrections just to keep in the air. Oh, well. Live and learn.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 8/3. There are no pics.

We had a quiet week. Danita worked. I took some short bike rides.

Wednesday evening we went to another retirement financial management seminar. This one was at one of the local restaurants. It included a free dinner — appetizer, entree, and desert. The dinner was quite nice, but the presentation wasn’t. The guy wouldn’t accept questions. Most of what he said was designed to scare us into setting up an appointment with him. Many of the things he discussed we heard at the seminar last week. The difference is, last week we heard actual information. This week, there was so little information that if we hadn’t attended the first seminar, we wouldn’t have known what this guy was talking about.

Saturday evening, we went to the community college in Essex to see the musical “Legally Blond”. They did a nice job. The female lead was perfectly cast. The UPS man was hilarious.

We also got a couple of walks in. We completed all the walks from the Columbia Association. I picked up our prizes – $2 off any fresh produce at Wegmans, and a water bottle. We have five more walks for Howard County Parks Then we can enter a drawing for $100 worth of free groceries for Wegmans. We’re enjoying the walks, seeing parts of Howard County we haven’t seen, and the prizes are kind of fun.

It’s coming up on dinner time. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, July 27.

What a busy week:

• Monday – Columbia Trail hike.
• Tuesday – Yoga.
• Wednesday – The threat of rain made us blow off the outdoor concert. We went out for pizza and had an Amazon Prime Streaming evening. I definitely do not recommend the series “Deadwood”.
• Thursday – Financial Planning Seminar.
• Amazon Prime Streaming Evening. The series “Rome” is not as bad as Deadwood, but how do they manage to make it all seem so boring? I’m glad we haven’t been paying for HBO all these years.
• Saturday – Outdoor concert.
• Sunday – Columbia Trail hike.

Besides all that, the contractor came back and put the trim on the deck. He worked Thursday and Friday. I cleaned the deck Saturday. Now it’s all done. We like the new deck quite a bit, but I find it has one disadvantage. I didn’t used to care very much what the birds dropped on the deck.

The trash men didn’t put the recycle bins back where they found them. A neighbor decided he had been given our recycle bin, which is much nicer than the standard neighborhood bin. I looked at where the leftover bin was, took a guess, knocked on the door, and got our bin back. Today I got some paint and some stencils and painted our street address on our bins.

Most of you probably know this, but in case you don’t, “Aunti Dani” has given herself the challenge of hiking the 100 mile wilderness (part of the Appalachian Trail in Maine) in 10 days. She’s hiking with a friend, and using a GPS tracking device. If I have it figured out correctly, she made 5 miles yesterday, and left camp early this morning. Way cool, Dani!

See Saw

Sometimes the grumpy old men are just right. You see here a Columbia playground. These are sprinkled around the city on the walking paths. This is a nice one, but boy did they ever butcher the See-Saw. The See-Saw is one of our civilization’s great inventions. Plant two posts in the ground. Run an iron pipe between them. Notch a beam and sit it on the pole. Because we are adults and need a sense of order, there is generally a platform on each end with notches for the legs that kids can use as a seat. A T-handle for the hands provides the finishing touch. It’s very simple. Very Cheap.

And it’s a load of fun. Kids start by dutifully sitting properly in the seat and going up and down. Then they start leaning back to hold the partner in the air. After holding a partner in the air for 3 hours (in 6-year old time), one can suddenly lean in, give a push, and give that other kid a good “bump”. After a couple of those, the other kid will let the beam bounce on the ground and give the kid in the air a bigger “bump”. Or even a good double-jiggle. Can the kid in the air stay in his seat? When this gets old, kids can play with leverage, sitting on the beam and moving in and out. Or a third kid can stand on the beam in the middle and throw the game against the odd-man-out, who generally changes unpredictably every so often. Or a bunch of kids can sit / stand at various places along the beam. Or one kid can walk on the See-Saw, using it as a movable balance beam.

The See-Saw in the picture is 100 times better looking than the old fashioned kind. It’s 1,000 times more expensive. No T-handle on this one — each child has ergonomically correct hand holds. And it’s no fun at all, because the springs and design don’t even permit a mild bump. It even has foot rests! Every person my age knows that you can’t even think of using foot rests on a See-Saw. You never know when the other kid will jump off. You’ll have to think fast to catch yourself, and your feet better darn well be at the ready.

When Robert Fulghum wrote “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, did he talk about See-Saws? If not, he should have, because See-Saws offer lessons in fairness (the world is not), how to negotiate when you are at a disadvantage (i.e. when the other kid is heavier), how to turn a disadvantage into an advantage (by thinking outside the box), and many other lessons every child should learn before they are 8 years old. None of which is provided by the beautiful abomination on this Columbia playground.

Is the world going to Hell? Are modern kids not developing character? Do today’s kids prefer to play computer games instead of going outside? To understand the root causes behind these important issues, look no further than the modern playground. Grandparents of the world, unite!

We’re off to look at one of the neighborhood open houses, then it will be time for my power nap. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 7/20. There is one pic.

After all the excitement lately, we were shooting for a quiet week. The weather has been much cooler than normal lately, often coupled with low humidity. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy the weather on the road all that much. My sore back refused to cooperate. However, I did get a few shorter rides in.

They started a program to encourage walking in Howard County. They published a small, free booklet with 16 walks in it. Each walk is on paved trails, usually about 2 miles long. Walk enough trails and you can collect a small prize. To prove you’ve walked the trail, they mounted a post on each trail. The post has a metal plate with raised letters. The book has the address of the walk’s starting point, a map of the trail, and a space to do a crayon rubbing of the post. It’s a fun thing to do. So far, Danita and I have done 5 trails. Three more and we get a prize. (Probably a cheap foam sleeve for a Coke can, but hey! a prize is a prize.) We’ve seen parts of Columbia we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Rouse Rock

The strangest thing we’ve seen so far is “Rouse Rock”. The late James Rouse was the CEO of the company that developed Columbia. He had the opportunity to design a city from scratch. He implemented a lot of novel ideas, like a mixture of light industry, retail, and housing in each neighborhood. A mix of different income levels in each neighborhood. Lots of green space (including the walking trails). Etc. This rock was given to Rouse for his forward-looking ideas and vision. I swear, I am not making this up.

The trail with Rouse Rock goes around Wilde Lake, which includes one of the oldest and richest areas of Columbia. Many of the houses are easily worth more than a million dollars. A few of the houses are right on the lake, complete with private docks. In this area, the trail has to follow a residential street on the other side of the houses. I found this amazing for several reasons. “Wild Lake” is small for a lake. Some might call it a very large pond. The trail that circumnavigates the lake is less than 2 miles. The largest boat you would want to take out would be a canoe. That hardly requires a dock. The next amazing thing was that many of these very expensive houses with a private dock had car ports, not garages. They were very nice, but they were still just car ports. The last amazing thing is that the lake stank. There was lots of decaying plant growth. The water was so bad that even the ducks and geese won’t stay there. That *has* to be a downer — build a million dollar house on the lake, then it turns out the lake stinks. I’m glad I’m not that rich.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. We had a neighborhood party last night. The room was packed. We had a pot luck dinner and a guy who sang Beetles songs. In a little while, we’ll leave to go to a free concert in Catonsville. We’re taking a picnic dinner.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Monday, 7/14.

New Boooks

We spent the weekend at Julia’s. We went down Thursday because we needed an extra day. Of course, there were new books. Brian got his first Encyclopedia Brown books. Danita found a set of 4 books in a box, each with 10 mysteries. Brian got a little overwhelmed, thinking he had 4 books with 10 chapters each. Jul got everything cleared up, but it took a couple of days. Elizabeth got a book without words. It was quite clever, how it managed to tell a clear story without using any words.

New Bike

The Reeds are in their new house and house warming presents were in order. The old house had a driveway with a killer hill. Wheeled toys for the kids were not permitted for safety reasons. The new house is on level ground, making it an obvious opportunity for the kids. Elizabeth wanted a scooter. Brian wanted a bike. It’s easy enough to order a scooter on Amazon. But a bike has to fit the child. We took them out Friday to get really cool helmets, then a bike that fit Brian. Brian took to it right away. Elizabeth decided she wasn’t ready to ride the scooter, so we set it aside until she’s ready.

Peace and Meditation Bench

The new house has a way-cool screened porch. A porch needs an outdoor table and chair set. We all went out Saturday morning to pick one out. It wasn’t as simple as we thought it would be. In the afternoon, Jul and Pat went to some more places while we took the kids to the Reed Gold Mine. I’m not very interested in going into mines, so E escorted me around the mine while Danita and B went through it. Then we went on the trail which included a working stamping mill and other neat stuff, like peace and meditation benches.

New Patio Chairs

When we got back, Jul and Pat had decided on their patio set, so Pat and I went out to pick it up. Pat and I assembled the 6 chairs, 2 ottomans, and side table Saturday evening. It was getting a little late, so we waited until after church Sunday to assemble the table. I spent some time relaxing on the porch. I can say from personal experience that the chairs are quite comfortable.

Belk’s Department Store at the Museum

Sunday afternoon we took the kids and the Levine Museum of the New South. Julia hadn’t been there yet and came along. I lucked out big time. The museum was free for the day, plus they validated my parking ticket so we got free parking. The museum presented the history of the Charlotte area from the Civil War to the present day. The topics were presented in such a bland, non-controversial way that it sometimes took me several minutes to figure out what they were trying to say. The funniest moment was at an exhibit that was a sample of a typical house for a textile factory worker in 1918. It had a wood stove, an ice box, etc. They had a video display near the front porch to play some personal stories from the time. E said “This is where they could watch their TV.”

At Reed Mine Stamping Plant

The only down-side to the trip was my body, which was pretty sore by Sunday. Everything was sore, but especially my back. Was it the time in the car? A change in diet? Or just one of those things? I seem to be doing a little better. Whatever’s left tomorrow should be chased away by our Yoga class.

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Fun in a Flat Back Yard

At Reed Stamping Plant

I am writing this on Saturday, July 5.

Mark & Danita

Somebody hit Danita’s car, and they didn’t leave a note. The damage was to the rear quarter-panel on the passenger side. She didn’t notice the damage until she got home. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but it’s big enough that the person who hit her had to know what they did. We feel a little disgusted at whoever did the damage. We called the insurance company last week, took the car into the body shop last Monday. While it was there, we got a few other bumps an bruises fixed. We got it back Thursday afternoon. The car looks good. It turns out that it’s pretty easy for us to live with one car these days.

I wrote a book. It’s titled “Riding in Traffic Safely”. I’ve been playing around with it for well over a year. I thought E-Publishing the book would be easy. It’s not. There’s a web site called “Smashwords” that distributes E-Books to just about every outlet except Amazon. They use a program they call “Meat Grinder” to generate all the various formats required (E-Pub, Apple iBook, etc.) It’s pretty easy for fiction. Just submit a Word document, making sure all the formatting is defined by styles. Unfortunately, it gets more tedious for non-fiction. All references (table of contents, footnotes, etc.) have to be entered and linked by hand. Figures, pictures, text boxes, etc all require extra work. It’s not very exciting.

Waiting for Fireworks

Here’s something that’s more exciting. Mark made it back from Saudi Arabia. He came over for the 4th. Danita made pulled-pork, then we went to the Columbia fire works. We got there a little earlier this year and found a great spot. It was an amazing show — the best they’ve had so far. We used one of the Bob Evans BOGOs to take Mark out to breakfast before returning him to Hopkins earlier today.

I’m still riding. Sometime last week I rolled through 20,000 miles.That’s a lot of hours on the bike.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.