Late Snow
It was a lot of rain. Not surprising that the Patapsco flooded near Elkridge. But Snow at the end of March? Shortly after this pic, I did the only possible reasonable thing. I closed the blinds, turned on the lights, switched on some music, started the fireplace, and sulked until it was time for the chilli cook-off. The chilli was good. We even got a bonus movie afterwards — “Rush”. The snow quit. But it’s still raining.
I am writing this on Sunday, 3/23. There are no pics.
Danita had two days off at the beginning of the week for the university’s spring break. Instead of going back to work Wednesday, she had a colonoscopy. Everything was fine. We had a neighborhood party Friday. The temperature Saturday went up to almost 70. I got several nice rides in. We were planning to go to the Spotlighters theater today for our anniversary, but we didn’t buy tickets soon enough. So we’ll content ourselves with a dinner at Portalli’s. Danita went there for one of the interviews. She liked it a lot. The gnucci is homemade and shows great promise.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.
I am writing this on Tuesday, 3/18. There are no pics.
Here’s a hard-learned lesson from our years of parenting. When going on an adventure, one does not discuss what the adventure is until safely inside the door. Our last day at Jul’s was Sunday. As forecasted, it was rainy. We planned to see the Lego movie. I broke my parenting rule in spades. I told the kids what we were going to do. I give the kids glow-in-the-dark Lego T-shirts to wear on our adventure. We did well on the drive to the movies. But when we got there, they were sold out. There’s nothing like two kids standing in the rain crying to make one feel like a grand parent. We didn’t have a backup plan (another good idea for the good parent.) Working on the fly, we took the kids for ice cream. Jul and Pat were house hunting. Danita called Jul and got the location of a Red Box. We stopped at the Red Box and got “Monster University”. Then we watched the movie at home. Monster University is a good movie. The kids were totally absorbed. But of course, nothing could match the promise broken.
We had a non-refundable hotel reservation a couple of hours up the road. The forecast was for the precip to continue, changing to ice and snow in the evening. So we had dinner a little on the early side and blew out to the hotel. It was a tense ride, with one eye on the car’s thermometer and one on the time left to reach our destination. As it turned out, the precip had just started to turn when we arrived.
When we woke up in the morning, the world was covered with ice. The hotel was OK; the free breakfast was edible; the internet service was abysmal. By mid-morning, crews had cleared the ice and accidents from the major roads. The forecast called for more wintery stuff on-and-off until 2. After 15 minutes of chipping ice of the car windows,we took off to see how much closer to home we could get. The first part of the ride was miserable driving. The roads were OK, but the windshield wipers and washers were frozen. Stuff was kicked up off the road. We stopped for lunch near Staunton. I found clean snow to wash the windshield. Cabin and engine heat was able to melt a lot of the ice on the car while we ate lunch. When we came out, a few minutes with a window scraper had everything freed up. The rest of the drive was without incident. We got home about 5:30. Our area had a good 6″ of snow. Fortunately, streets and sidewalks in our neighborhood were completely cleared by the time we got home.
So much for my “rule” that it doesn’t snow after the Ides of March.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.
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
Elizabeth’s Ring
Pretending to water ski behind a boat (boat was on a trailer)
x
Unicyclist with puppet dog
Strange Character
Eating Funnel Cake
End of the line – everybody off
Whoever said “Beware the ides of March???”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.