St. Patrick’s Day

Posted on March 15, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Saturday, 3/15. There are lots of pics.

Waiting for the parade to get to us

Mom and Dad were gone. What can we do on St. Patrick’s Day? Go a parade, of course. The weather was great. The trip was great. We left the house and drove to the light rail station. The train was so crowded we couldn’t get a seat. Within a couple of stops, it was packed. Many people at stops closer to downtown didn’t take that train to the parade. We got a good spot with a great view of the parade. After half an hour, the kids were ready to move on, so we went to the funnel cake vendor. Then it was a few chicken fingers, and time to go home. When we left, the parade was still going on. Bring on the pics!

Dancing Girls

More Dancing Girls

Elizabeth’s Ring

Pretending to water ski behind a boat (boat was on a trailer)

Unicyclist with puppet dog

Strange Character

Eating Funnel Cake

End of the line – everybody off

Whoever said “Beware the ides of March???”

Jul – Trip Down

Posted on March 15, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Friday, 3/15. There are 2 pics.

The trip down to Jul’s was one of the easiest we have had. It was sunny and cool, but not cold. The drive was without incident. One of our stops was Statesville, about an hour north of Jul’s. After buying gas, we walked downtown. They have an attractive city and some interesting architecture. They have one of the nicest looking community college I’ve seen. Here are a couple of buildings we saw. The house was divided up into rental apartments. I think it would have made a great B & B. I would have paid extra to sleep in the turret.

Statesville Building

We arrived about 4, just as Jul was pulling up with B & E. Our big activity was dinner, which turned out to be quite an adventure. Traffic to the Rusty Onion pizza parlor was heavy and slow. The restaurant was busy. Fortunately, a party of 6 was just finishing up as we arrived. They got us seated quickly. Danita was ready. She and Jul had the pizzas all picked out, and she had the waitress enter the pizza order before taking drink orders. It didn’t take long until we were all settled with food in our bellies. By the time we got home, it was bedtime for some household members.

Pat and Jul finally got through settlement on their old house. They’ve put looking for a new place into high gear. They have appointments to see 4 places today. I guess we’ll just have to come up with a way to entertain the kids while Mom and Dad are out.

A Second Super Sunday

Posted on March 9, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Sunday, 3/9. There are 2 pics.

I offered a seminar on computer security Friday. It went well. I had a dozen attendees. I’m offering a second session tomorrow evening at 6, for the folks who work during the day.

Heart Shaped Bamboo

We had a second super Sunday this week. The switch to Daylight Savings Time puts us an hour ahead of many other people. That’s good because we like to go to Miss Shirley’s once in a while. We think it’s the premier breakfast restaurant in the Baltimore area. A lot of people agree with us, which makes it a pretty crowded place. But this is one week of the year where we’re an hour ahead of many other folks, and we can enjoy a nice, uncrowded, leisurely breakfast. This evening, we went to circle. The Sochureks hosted dinner for circle. When we arrived, we were surprised to find out it was in honor of our 40th anniversary. The dinner was quite good. The Baumans gave us a heart-shaped bamboo plant and a totally amazing chocolate cake. The Bertches gave us some beautiful roses and a card that Mike made by hand.

Roses from Mike and Rose

Things have been breaking with great regularity lately. The front fender broke on my bike. A replacement is on order. Two of my bike lights stopped working — one on the back, and one on the front. I spent quite a bit of time looking for good replacements. I ordered what I think will be very good lights, but they need to charge from a USB power source. I decided to mount a new shelf near the bike and string a power cord across the garage so I can plug the bike into the charger when I get home from a ride. It was a fun little project. I had enough spare stuff that the cost was nearly nothing. While I was out getting the few little things I needed, I also got 6 9-volt batteries and 6 AA batteries so I could change the batteries in all or smoke detectors and CO detectors.

One of the toilets stopped working. That leaves us with 3 working toilets — one on each floor. My idea was to just close off that bathroom and use the other toilets in the house. Danita was not amused. So I spent much more time examining toilet innards. I found a cool kit that lets standard toilets have two flushes (half flush for most of the time and a full flush for solids.) That’s on order and should arrive soon.

When I was parking in front of the Sochureks, I hit the curb and blew out a tire. Who would have guessed — I’m the only person in circle who can change a tire. I’ll be getting that tire fixed right away, because next weekend we are going to NC to visit the kids and grand-kids. It should be a lot of fun, and we just might have some pictures for the next post.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

A Scintillating, Satisfying Sunday

Posted on March 2, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I’m writing this on Sunday, March 2. There are two pics.

We’re having variable weather. The low Friday night was 11 degrees, which matched the record for the coldest day of the year. Yesterday and today, the high was in the 40s. It started raining late this afternoon. They say we’ll be having a significant snow tonight and Monday. It will be the last one of the season, because we are down to our last snow emergency kit.

This screen was painted by Dee Herget, who painted the front door screen for our first house.

After extensive investigation, I installed an alarm system. It monitors the water level in the sump and gives an alarm if it rises too high. It also alarms if the house temperature falls below 45 degrees, or if there’s a power failure, or if the batteries need replacing. When it detects an alarm, it calls up to 3 phone numbers. It needs to plug into the phone line to make the calls. For some strange reason, the builder didn’t put a phone jack in the sump room. (Imagine that, if you can!) However, there’s a phone jack across the hall. I spent three days doing the installation. One day to snake the wire from the sump room, over the ceiling, and into the furnace room. One day to go through the furnace room wall and along the baseboard to the jack in the “media room” (AKA grandchildren’s play room). The third day was installing the alarm in the sump room. I attached the water sensor to a piece of 2 x 2 and screwed that to the bottom of the sump cover. And, of course, I spent several hours playing with the alarm.It’s not a toy if you don’t play with it!

A less traditional screen painted by Dee

It’s been a nice week, but today was a prize-winning day. We started out with Church and a Bob Evan’s breakfast. Then a nice bike ride in the balmy late-morning hours. We went to MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) for an exhibit of painted screens. From there, we walked about a block to attend a BSO concert. We heard an all-Mozart performance, ending with his “Jupiter” symphony. We finished our day with a BOGO at Baldwin Station, one of our favorite restaurants. The dinner was very good, and we got home before the rain turned into messy, slushy stuff.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Very nice weekend

Posted on February 23, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Sunday, Feb 22. There is one pic. (But it’s not all that compelling.)

What a great weekend. Good weather rolled in Thursday, with warm temperatures and sunny skies. We had a day of rain Friday, but the sun came back and it’s been warm all the way through Sunday. I’ve been enjoying making myself dead tired looking for my “bike legs”. We have two SOCA parties. We had a Happy Hour on Friday. The good weather means lots of folks turned out. The food was pretty good. This evening, we have an international Pot Luck dinner. We also had a very special breakfast with Mark this morning. We went to a new restaurant near Mark’s apartment — Carma’s Café. Mark seems to be doing fine.

We’re having homeowner fun. With all the snow melt, the sump pump has been running a lot. I unplugged the main pump to test the backup. The backup doesn’t work. I haven’t decided what to do about that. We installed a new, high quality main pump when we moved in. I might decide to gamble for a while. I guess the moral of this story is, “If you don’t want to know your backup doesn’t work, don’t test it.”

Our other issue is with the deck. Because our house is on the “outer loop”, the ground drops away from our house in the back. We have a walk-out garden level (also known as a basement) and a nice deck on the main level. The way the condo rules are written, the deck belongs to Danita and me. Just because the association doesn’t own the deck doesn’t mean they don’t feel they have the right to restrict changes to the deck. So we have to maintain the deck, but we can’t change the deck without approval. I wouldn’t care too much about this if the deck were OK. (Did you notice the clever use of subjunctive case to create an aura of foreshadowing?) Our deck has two problems.

Decks are not supposed to be level. They are supposed to slant away from the house at 1/4″ per foot. This helps prevent water pooling. Unfortunately, carpenters like things to be square and didn’t think about water pooling. Our deck is perfectly level. Plenty of pooling is causing the floor boards to curl up.

These deck supports were properly prepped and painted less than 2 years ago.

The outside edge of the deck is supported by a massive horizontal beam and large vertical uprights. These are made of pressure treated lumber which easily survives the weather. But pressure treated lumber doesn’t look pretty, so the builder enclosed these with painted trim boards. Unfortunately, the massive horizontal beam is trimmed out on both sides and the bottom, which makes a pretty good water trough. Water collects in the trough, slowly drizzling down the vertical support uprights. Because of our building’s orientation, there is never any direct sunlight to help dry things out. The trim boards absorb this water, which is why paint won’t stick for more than a year. Poorly painted trim board looks ugly. The constant exposure to water can lead to problems that go beyond the cosmetic.

I’ve been talking to contractors to see what we can do. I’m doing my best to find changes that have a small impact on how the deck looks. It’s not going to be cheap. And I’m going to have to ask for approval from the Kendal 1 association. Then the SOCA association. then the Long Wood neighborhood association. It’s like rubbing salt in a wound. Three times.

Well the temperature is near 60 and there’s no chance of rain. It’s time for a ride, to work up my appetite for the Pot Luck dinner. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

England!

Posted on February 16, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I’m writing this on Sunday, 2/16. There is 1 pic, from our Circle dinner last weekend.

Going clockwise from lower left: Bill Bauman, Mike Bertch, Danita, me, Rose Bertch, Tina Bauman, Teggan Bauman, Donna and Tony Sochurek

We’re going to England! I’m not sure whether we will be visiting the United Kingdom, or England and Scotland. (Scotland is voting on an independence proposal.) But we’re going. We’ve been talking about visiting London for years. We finally realized there’s no reason not to go now. When we decided to go to Alaska, it took us months to figure out what we wanted to do. This trip happened quite easily. Danita and I both looked at some possibilities. Danita outlined the trip; I made the reservations. Here’s our itinerary. (“BA” is British Air.)

Day	Flight	City	Time or Hotel
Sa, 6/7	BA 0228	Baltimore to London	9:40 PM – 10:00 AM
6/8-12		London	Sanctuary House Hotel
Th, 6/12	Train	London to Stratford-Upon-Avon
6/12-13		Stratford-Upon-Avon	Penryn Guest House
Sa, 6/14	Train	Stratford-Upon-Avon to Windermere
6/14-16		Windermere	St. John’s Lodge
Tu, 6/17	Train	Windermere to Edinburgh
6/17-20		Edinburgh	Edinburgh Central Guest House
Sa, 6/21	BA 1443	Edinburgh to London	11:55 AM – 1:25 PM
Sa, 6/21	BA 0229	London to Baltimore	5:35 PM – 7:55 PM

It’s too early to buy train tickets. (Schedules for June aren’t posted yet.) But it’s not too early to reserve rooms. I selected 3 possible rooms for each city. Then Danita reviewed them and gave her input. When I went back to make the actual reservations, some of our choices were no longer available. For one of the rooms, the web site warned there were only two rooms left. While I was entering our reservation, the screen flashed and said there was only one room left. I was amazed. But we have great rooms, all “near the action”. Other than London, we are staying in Guest Houses (that’s English for Bed & Breakfasts). I would say they are all reasonably priced, but we’re still suffering from the sticker shock of how expensive things are in the UK. A fancy tea in London can cost £40. Each. We won’t be going to that tea.

We are very excited about this trip. Our list of things to do and see is longer than we can possibly accomplish in the time we allotted. We plan to have a blast.

The next thing I will work on is communications. I want to see if I can get a British phone plan for June. This will let us make local calls at reasonable prices. We also have to get Onion cards (for mass transit in London), and tickets to performances, and in general spend a bunch more money. But we’ll wait until we pay for the plane tickets and hotel rooms before adding more to the charge card.

It was much more fun writing about England than it would have been writing about doing taxes. (The only thing left is to receive the refund deposit.) We’ve also had some wintery weather. We had 18″ of snow Wednesday night. We had another 2″ of ice Thursday night. We were supposed to get several more inches again Friday night, but that got delayed, then petered out into not much of anything. UMBC was closed Thursday and Friday. It wasn’t hard to spend a few days at home together. None of our utilities were interrupted. We had continuous access to hours of movies, music, TV, and books. I found a reference to a book I decided I wanted to read, and had a copy of it on my Kindle in less than 2 minutes. Most of that time was spent walking upstairs to my computer. I spent much of my time reading an old-fashioned paper book, “The name of war : King Philip’s War and the origins of American identity” by Jill Lapore. (Our library’s E-book collection is still limited. Many interesting books are available only in paper.) The reading is dry, but the author gets a lot out of very little documentation. She’s careful to lay out the boundaries of her knowledge. She’s very good at explaining our attitudes towards the Indians, how those attitudes shifted over two centuries, and how those attitudes interacted with how Indians were treated during our history up to the 1800s.

Our SOCA party Friday evening was cancelled. Snow continues to flit and drift through the forecast. We have a BSO concert this afternoon. Danita found a great deal at Bare Bones, so a dinner of ribs could be in our immediate future.

We’re approaching the time of year when I start counting down the days until spring. Baseball is starting up. Temperatures are starting to climb. It’s easy to get ahead of Mother Nature. But we often get one last snow as late as mid-March, which is why I say “Beware the Ides of March”.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Dad’s Flag

Posted on February 8, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Sat, 2/8. There is one pic.

Dad’s Flag

There’s been plenty of excitement here in MD, even not counting the trip to WPB. First item: Bud sold his house last Friday. Settlement went fine.

We put Dad’s flag up the SOCA flag pole. When it reaches the end of its life, it will be disposed of appropriately. The man in charge of flags is a retired Army General. I trust he knows about such things.

Danita and her colleagues interviewed the last candidate for the Science Director position. These interviews have been hard on her because the whiners and complainers feel free to come out to whine and complain in public about everything that is wrong in her research group.

I’ve agreed to give a session on computer security for SOCA residents. I will offer one session during the day, and one in the evening. Sessions will be March 7 and 10.

I read an interesting book.– “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” by Griffin. It discusses the history of modern Ping-Pong. One man, Ivor Montagu, defined the game and helped Communist China use it to gain world-wide respect and formal relations at the UN and with the US.

Personal Note: the US recognition of China was a major factor that helped Nixon end the Vietnam War just weeks after I took my pre-induction physical. After that, I took a 6-week vacation to drive around the US. When I came back, I met Danita.

The most interesting part of Griffin’s story was how China wanted to use the “Great Leap Forward” to become an overnight economic world power. Their effort resulted in a major famine that killed more Chinese than the Japanese did during WW II. Later, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, in part to get rid of Chinese leaders who criticized his Great Leap Forward. As many as 45 million Chinese died in that.

Griffin is very skilled at tying world events together. However, it’s best to take him with a grain of salt. For example, there was a Russian “botanist” Lysenko who came up with some very bad ideas for improving farm productivity. For example, he said seeds are like Communist comrades. Planting them close together will let them support each other and increase yields. Lysenko was a peasant with no scientific training. His ideas were pure bunk. But Lenin liked his politics, and he became Russia’s chief botanist. When China wanted to double farm production for their Great Leap Forward, they implemented Lysenko’s methods across the country. Griffin says these methods reduced yields and were the major factor in the famine. It’s just one example of Griffin’s very interesting stories. But other references I consulted indicate that while Lysenko certainly didn’t help the situation, it was a minor factor that made things a little worse than they already were. Whatever the imperfections of the book, I learned a lot about historical events that spanned the globe and occurred just before and during my life time.

We’re having a bleak weekend. The temperature is a little below freezing. It’s cloudy and we have possible snow. The clubhouse is closed for the weekend while they do a major cleaning of the floor. There are no SOCA parties. I found there’s a bike swap in Carroll County Sunday, but I can’t go to that because it conflicts with a Circle concert and dinner. The concert and dinner are fine, but it kind of snuck up on me. On the bright side, since Danita couldn’t get her clubhouse coffee, we decided the only reasonable alternative was to go out for breakfast this morning. We went to Eggspectations. It’s $5 – $10 more than our normal breakfast places. But the food is good.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

West Palm Beach II

Posted on February 4, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Tuesday, Feb 4. If you go to the web site, you will find a couple of pics of Mom and Glen.

The trip to West Palm Beach was such an epic journey that it grabs the headlines two weeks in a row. Our trip down was completely uneventful. Both flights were on time. The rental car was as advertised. Everything happened as planned, arriving at Mom’s place late on Friday.

We had a nice rhythm to our days. We had an activity in the morning and a second activity in the evening. We had perfect weather, highs in the 80s and rain only at night after we got home. In the afternoon, Danita and I went to the clubhouse to use the internet while Mom and Glen took their naps. Saturday Mom, Danita, and I visited the Green Market. This is a series of vendor tents in downtown W Palm Beach. We toured the vendors, walked up the main street, and viewed the yachts in the harbor. As a bonus, we got free parking, thanks to Mom & Glen’s insider knowledge.

Ann Norton Sculpture Garden

Sunday all four of us visited the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden. This is quite an unusual attraction. The Nortons bought three adjacent lots in a high-end development right off the river. Ann built her sculptures in the back yard. The surrounding houses are still residences. When entering the sculpture garden, it feels exactly like entering a private residence. The only thing marking the house as a public attraction is a small cardboard sign they put in the lawn when they open in the morning, and take up when they close. They have a rotating art exhibit in the house, the sculptures in the back yard, and the studio building. Besides the sculptures, the yard is filled with many different varieties of palm trees. The area is well shaded. We had a nice breeze. Parts of the yard had a great view of the river. Sunday evening, we watched the TV commercials while the Seahawks trounced the Broncos in the Super Bowl.

Grassy Waters Preserve

Monday, the four of us went to iHop for breakfast, then up to the Grassy Waters Preserve. It’s quite an interesting area, with miles of pristine wetlands. The area is filled with Cyprus trees. My first impression was that the trees had all died, because they look scrawny and their leaves had dropped for the winter. It turns out the Cyprus trees are small because the area’s water comes only from rain. This makes for few nutrients, but excellent water quality. We were also surprised to see almost no wildlife. But as the naturalist explained, the wildlife has plenty of room to spread out in the area. We see more wildlife in the community ponds because they are forced to concentrate themselves in the small area where they can live. Monday evening, we saw the movie “2 Guns”. We enjoyed the movie immensely, and were quite surprised to see a few people leaving early.

Tuesday we stopped at McDonald’s for a carry-out breakfast. We took our breakfast to Mounts Botanical Gardens, where we enjoyed eating in the gazebo, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Afterwards, we strolled through the rest of the gardens.

Of course, there was tons of food. Mom made so much food, half of it stayed in the freezer. We simply couldn’t eat everything she prepared. We had lasagna, chicken and dumpling soup, sausage and onion hoagies, pork tenderloin, and snacks too numerous to mention.

Our flight home had lots of empty seats. Danita and I enjoyed an entire row to ourselves. There was plenty of bad weather up north, but we were fortunate to return on the day between the two winter storms. We had no trouble, but folks connecting to flights further north were out of luck.

We had a wonderful time. Thanks to Mom and Glen for being such wonderful hosts.

Florida

Posted on January 31, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Friday, Jan 31. There are no pics.

Is there a time when you should not tip a waitress? I have read that it is poor form not to tip. They say bad food is the kitchen’s fault. Slow service is the management’s fault (for not having enough wait staff). Last night was the first time in memory I didn’t tip. We went to Ruby Tuesday at 9071 Snowden River Pkwy, Columbia, MD 21046. (Just to keep the record straight.) The restaurant was cold. When our waitress came to take our order, I told her I was cold. She said the heat was already all the way up, she had been cold all night. I didn’t find that very helpful. While waiting for the food, I got colder. I put my jacket on. Then I put my hat on. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t warm up. On my third complaint, our waitress said they had decided to close this section because it was too cold. “Thanks”, I said. Just before we got the check, the manager came over. He offered to re-seat us. (After we were done eating). He said the section was now closed. (Still not very helpful.) He said next time, let them know when we sit down and they will re-seat us. By now, Danita and I were both pretty unhappy. The last comment from the manager convinced me not to leave a tip. We had complained when we first sat down, and several other times. The manager told me the waitress had done nothing until the meal was over. I wonder if the waitress and the manager think we were unreasonable. I doubt we’ll find out, because we won’t be going back any time real soon.

On a much brighter note, we’re going to Florida. (There might be pictures next week.) Danita has a meeting at work this morning, so we booked an afternoon flight down. We’re returning Tuesday.

Day	Flight	City	Time
Fri, 1/31	Southwest 704	Baltimore – Atlanta	4:00 – 6:00
	Southwest 727	Atlanta – West Palm Beach	6:40 – 8:40
Tue, 2/4	Southwest 1545	West Palm Beach – Baltimore	3:15 – 5:45

We’re going down to visit Mom and Glen of course. We’re looking forward to seeing them. Just to show how hip Mom is, she has already set up a Super Bowl party. Normally I would say it’s also quite nice to escape some cold and lousy weather. Lord knows it’s been cold enough this year. There are news articles about ships getting stuck in the ice in the bay. But as it happens, we are heading into a warm spell. Baltimore temperatures will be near 50 while we are in Florida. Not to worry. It will be cold again by Tuesday, along with a little freezing rain.

Wednesday I have a doctor’s appointment. Also on Wednesday evening I *don’t* have my second class. They cancelled my class due to low enrollment. They were very good about cancelling the class promptly and letting me know in a timely manner. But I haven’t heard about the refund yet. I guess that can wait until next week.

I’ve also been busy with issues at the clubhouse. Issue 1: Our assistant is pretty good at entering residents in our database by now. The only thing I’m doing is keeping an eye on recent entries. Issue 2: I found several people who have passes but aren’t in the database. We think these are folks who move in, receive passes at settlement, and don’t register with the clubhouse. I wrote a new report in the database to help the staff quickly find and manage this issue. I generated the list of affected residents and helped the assistant get started on getting these folks registered. Issue 3: The program I used to back up one of the computers hasn’t been working since our new assistant started. I’ve been trying to fix the program and doing backups manually. Last week, I gave up on the old program. I found another program, got comments from everybody concerned about such things, installed the new program, and updated our IT documentation. I thought everything was all squared away. I stopped into the clubhouse yesterday to say hi, only to learned about Issue 4: they needed to move one of the computers. This involved crawling on the floor, routing wires around furniture, and such. This while they were fretting about decorations for the Super Bowl party. Now everything at the clubhouse is squared away. I’m certain of it, because I’m not stopping in again until next week.

Well, I’ve been getting pretty good at cold weather riding (as long as the streets are clear of snow & ice, of course). I can get a short ride in before flight time. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This Is Not a Drill

Posted on January 26, 2014 by dpeichenlaub

I am writing this on Sunday, 1/26. There are no pics.

What a great week. It started with a 3-day weekend that stretched into 4 1/2 days. Snow started about 9 Tuesday morning. That left just enough time for me to gas up the car and pick up a prescription. The snow matched the forecast — about 8″, ending around midnight. UMBC was closed. Danita was forced to stay home. Lunch was homemade, of course. Tomato leak soup and onion triangles. Dinner was pasta with a tomato/onion/spinach/bacon topping. Sometime during this frantically busy day, Danita found time to make orange cream scones for breakfast Wednesday. During circle Monday evening, we discussed New Year resolutions. Mine was to lose 10 pounds. I haven’t make much progress on that one so far.

I had a dental appointment early Tuesday morning. There wasn’t much chance that was going to happen. Barbara from the dental office called to reschedule. Danita answered the phone. The first thing I said was to complement Barbara on her quick thinking — her having called and got my wife, quickly pretending she was from my dentist office. It took a few beats before she figured out I was insinuating she was my girl friend. She thought that was so funny she had a hard time getting the appointment rescheduled. The women who run that office continuously amaze me. I am one of many patients. But while Barbara and I were joking around, the woman who does billing figured out who I was, knew what I was coming for, and asked Barbara to ask me to make sure and bring my “EOB”. I didn’t know what my “EOB” was. (It really doesn’t matter what it was, and it would take too long to explain.) This triggered several soto voice exchanges while we shared our confidential information about my “EOB”. It turns out I didn’t have my “EOB”. But I was forgiven in exchange for providing several minutes of entertainment.

We spent most of Tuesday reading and relaxing. When we lived in Kingsville on days like this, we used to have an “all day fire”. This was very nice, but it involved trudging out to the wood pile in the snow, using a wheelbarrow to haul the wood into the garden shed (after inflating the wheelbarrow tire), hauling arm loads of wood into the living room, and dropping wood chips all over the garage / laundry room / kitchen / hall / living room floors. That was followed by cleaning up the next day. Plus all the effort of acquiring and preparing the woodpile during the previous summer. It may not be quite as impressive to have a gas fire. But it sure is a lot easier to walk across the living room and flip a switch.

Yoga was cancelled Tuesday evening. That left us free for a full-fledged snow emergency. (THIS IS NOT A DRILL). Danita went back to work at Noon Wednesday, and the fun was over. We had such a good time, it took me days before I started feeling cabin fever. It’s been quite cold since the snow. Most days, it’s 10 or 20 degrees warmer in Talkeetna, Alaska than it is here.

The snow that’s still on the streets is enough to keep my bike indoors. It’s a good opportunity to do some repairs. I’ve worn out my gears. When I press the pedals hard, the chain skips. I received the last of the parts I need Saturday. My bike’s in the basement warming up. I’ll be trying to effect repairs tomorrow. In the mean time, we have a neighborhood dinner party in a little while. I have to go — it is definitely not a good idea to arrive late!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

My Blog

Just another WordPress site

St. Patrick’s Day

Jul – Trip Down

A Second Super Sunday

A Scintillating, Satisfying Sunday

Very nice weekend

England!

Dad’s Flag

West Palm Beach II

Florida

This Is Not a Drill