We have a beautiful fox living in the woods behind us. Over the winter, the fox decided that our porch was part of his territory. He was probably attracted by some small critters living under the porch. I wouldn’t mind, except he was marking his territory by pooping on the porch. While I was cleaning, the fox came out of the woods. I yelled at him to chase him away from the house. He turned his back to me, took a few steps towards the woods, and pooped in the grass. Then he nonchalantly wandered off. The good news is, he hasn’t pooped on the porch since then.

It was a busy week. Monday plumbers came to replace the kitchen faucet and some leaking water valves. Tuesday we took Mom to see “Murder in the Heir”. It was our first time visiting the Charlestown auditorium. I think a resident wrote the play. It was quite well done and very enjoyable. I picked up my bike Thursday. They advised me to come after 2 PM. The bike wasn’t ready until 6:30.

We went to a volunteer dinner last night. We went to the restaurant at the Columbia golf club. The food was not very good. It was tasteless and over cooked. Desserts included mini-cheese cakes and cookies. I had two cheese cakes — one coffee and one chocolate. I couldn’t tell the difference from the taste. But the company was good. We had a good time.

I got my bike set up for riding. I’ve had two rides so far. I like the bike. It offers a quiet ride and excellent brakes. Unfortunately, it still has the same old engine (my legs). I’m as slow as ever, but I get there eventually.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Now that we are well past the freezing season, I went to turn on the outside water spigots. That’s when I remembered the valve to the back spigot is leaking. When the plumber comes, I want to get as many issues solved as possible. I made a list of all the minor plumbing issues. The plumber will be here tomorrow.

Tuesday Danita and I are looking forward to attending the play “Murder is in the Heir” at Charlestown with Mom. It’s a production put on by resident volunteers. It should be fun.

There’s bad news on the bike front. An essential bracket broke. (Inside the yellow circle.) Fortunately, I was near the end of my trip and pretty close to home. This was tremendously discouraging. I took it back to the dealer. They can get another bracket. There have been so many problems with this bike. After I upgraded the brakes a month ago I thought that all the issues have been resolved and are behind me. All of a sudden, I’m back to walking home. And this from metal fatigue on a solid metal bracket. It’s the last straw for this bike. From beginning to end, this bike has been a terrible disappointment. I decided it’s the end of the road for this Hase.

The old bike was a tadpole configuration — two wheels in the back. I decided to switch to a delta configuration — two wheels in the front. Two and a half years ago, delta bikes had the rider basically laying on his back inches above the road. Today you can get a delta with a more upright position. Behold my next bike — a Trident Stowaway II. Like many deltas these days, the bike can be folded in half for transport. My bike should be in sometime this week. Mine will be blue. Here’s hoping this bike will be reliable. While waiting, I cleaned the deck and porch.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The inspector found nothing wrong with our attic insulation. That was good news.

One of our board members asked me to post some new rules to our website. Normally, my role on the website is to “keep the lights on”. Each of the condos has somebody who has volunteered to post content. This time the board member asked me to do the posting because the volunteer wasn’t being responsive. I shouldn’t have done it, but the board member asked so nicely. I got caught in the middle of an old lady cat fight. What a mess. I finally got myself out of it. It seems that for me, old age comes easily, wisdom not so much.

When we took our Texas Trip, we moved doctors appointments. Mine got all bunched up. This week, I saw my dermatologist. That was the penultimate appointment. I have one more in a couple of weeks, then no more doctors until September. Woo-hoo! I think I have way too many doctors.

Easter is a bad day to go to a nice breakfast restaurant, but it’s a pretty good time to go to Panera. Especially if I can get a totally free breakfast. I had a bonus free soufflé, and I’m still in my free coffee club. Danita will qualify for a free breakfast the next time we go.

We went to Ed and Lynne’s for the afternoon and had a great time. There was a ton of very good food, and plenty of good conversation. Here’s a couple of pics.

I don’t know why, but Panera continues to offer us freebees. They gave us two months of free coffee. That comes in handy for Men’s club, as our clubhouse is still closed and we are meeting at Panera. This week, Panera added a dollar off any order. This reduced the price of a bagel and coffee to less than a buck. Danita and I spent the mornings of our anniversary week at Panera. Thanks, guys!

That wasn’t fancy enough for our anniversary day. We noticed the new breakfast restaurant JAM has tasty-looking muffins, so we got carry out “super muffins” for breakfast. They were tasty and large — and at $5.50 a muffin, the price was in the stratisphere. But it was fun and different. After dinner, we went to our favorite bakery and got super deserts. They were about the same price as the muffins, but the deserts are worth it. Danita’s Napolean was so large we needed a dinner plate to hold it. I got a personal chocolate fudge cake. Both were delicious. Neither of us could eat the whole desert in one night.

Speaking of the closed clubhouse, the clubhouse flood was caused by the fire suppression pipes freezing. The builder that built our clubhouse also built our house. I hired an inspector to see whether the fire supression pipes are correctly insulated. The inspection is scheuled for Monday. Fingers crossed. If it’s not done correctly, the fix is labor intensive.

That’s it for this week. I hope everybody is doing well.

We had National Pi day Tuesday (Pi is 3.14). Danita was up to the challenge of celebrating one of the geekiest days of the year. We had bacon and chedar quiche and a blueberry-lemon desert — complete with a blueberry 𝜋.

Mark, Jiajia, and Mira visited. Of course with Danita cooking, we ate like kings. We took Mira to the Howard County nature center. Mira had a blast, looking at books, seeing small animals, and in general the atmosphere. We also took her to the nicest playground we know of. It’s a short ride from our house, and practically brand new. Mira spent an hour just getting comfortable with the place. She finally got into banging notes on a xylaphone that looks like leaves on a tree. Just then it started raining. The playground emptied out in nothing flat. We even found a new restaurant that offers excellent food at reasonable prices. It’s called JAM. They took over the old Expectations restaurant which we didn’t like, in spite of it’s popularity.

Unfortunately, I only got one good pic.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Afer a fabulous trip, our lives are returning to normal. We’ve attended two concerts. The first was the symphony orchastra. We invited Mom to the second, as it was offered at UMBC, just down the road from Charlestown, where Mom lives. The music was — unconventional. Besides that the chores are in normal swing. The taxes are filed. Many of our doctor visits are done.

My dentist recommended an expensive treatment as a preventative measure. It didn’t sound right to me. I looked up the procedure on the web. I couldn’t find any suggestion that the treatment is approprate as a preventative measure. I got a second opinion from a second dentist. They agreed with me. This wasn’t the first time my dentist has recommended treatments that weren’t required. I now have a new dentist. As a bonus, the new dentist is closer to home.

Just before we left on our trip, our neighborhood clubhouse suffered fromwater damage caused by a frozen fire suppresion pipe. They are just now beginning repairs. It’s put a real crimp on neighborhood activities. However, we were able to enjoy a food truck dinner with our neighbors. Men’s club is meeting at Panera. One resident called a home inspector to see if the insulation was adequate for the fire suppression pipes in his house. Not surprisingly, he found that the insulation was not properly done.Several other residents decided to have inspections done. I plan to have our houe checked out in the comming weeks. Fortunately, the season is slowly turning to warmer weather. No matter how severe winter might be next year, we have plenty of time to get this addressed.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had a fine visit with Jul and family. We had an adventure with the kids, taking them to the Charlotte science center. They had a lot of fun. Vacation is over. It’s time to head for home.

We had a fine time catching up with Dick and Darlene. We’re off to North Carolina.

When we laid out our trip, my top request was to get to Jul’s on Saturday so we could have time with the grandkids. Number two was to get a full day in Vicksburg. We just had our full day. It was fine, butt still a bit of a disapointment. We hired a tour guide for the battlefield. In my mind, the tour would go something like this:

“On such-and-such a day, Grant sent a zillion troups up this hill. They got so close that they had hand-to-hand fighting before the confederits pushed them back. Half a zillion federals lost their lives that day.”

What we got was a commentary about which state put up this or that monument plus the names of several generals. The guide realized this, but he just didn’t know what I was most interested in. It didn’t help that we also “learned” that the whites treated their slaves well, the slave issue could have been settled by a vote in congress, yada yada. We thanked him for the tour and he gave us a substantial discount. At least I got to see where many of the battles were fought. Our expectations for the other museums were pretty low, which matched reality.

We decided we wanted to have a little wine-and-snack party this evening. This turned out to be our one unqualified success. Our favorite snack is Snyder’s Honey Mustartd and Onion pretzel pieces. On our fourth store, we found exactly what we wanted. Woo-hoo.

Tomorrow we drive to Bessemer. Bessemer is important because it is half way between Viclsburg and Atlanta, where Danita’s cousin Darlene lives. The hotel is supposed to have an indoor pool. If the pool is open, we will achieve all our hopes and asperations for the day.

Vicksburg has some levy walls with painted scenes. Here’s a picture of the painting of the twin bridges over the Mississippi river. The foreground bridge is for the railroad. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had one more day in Fort Worth. We went to the kitschy touristy “Cattle Drive”. After a couple of hours, we exhausted everything we wanted to do. We decided to go to the Zoo, mostly because it is open on Mondays. The zoo has a nice hook. The zoo is long and narrow. After we walked almost the full length of the zoo, I was in the mood for some coffee. So I got coffee and Danita finished the zoo. When she re-joined me, I was still tuckerd out. It’s a long walk to the car, but just by fortuitous coincidence, they have a train that will give you a ride back to the entrance. They charged $4 per person. I would have paid more.

Tomorrow is our longest drive. We’re going to Vicksburg. It’s 400 miles — about 6 hours for most people. It will be most of the day for us. We’ll take a break at a Louisiana Museum about half way there. I hope this finds everybody doing well.