They installed a new roof for our house this week. Due to variations in the weather, the contractor can’t follow a set schedule. Their system is to hang a tag on your doorknob the day before they will work on the house. I called this the “tomorrow tag”. I spent days saying things like “Will we get the tomorrow tag tomorrow?” I’m sure Danita will tell you it felt to her that I did this for months. We finally got out tomorrow tag on Wednesday, which was really too bad, because I wanted to write that “We got the tomorrow tag on Tuesday.” Really, who can deny that “alittle alliteration” can be fun? Just for the record, I ended up spending most of Tuesday afternoon at the clubhouse. Danita spent it in the basement. As noisy as they were, the crew did a marvelous job of cleaning up.

Tuesday is discount day at our local movie theater. That made Tuesday a great day to see Wicked. You should see it too. The buzz is right. It’s a very good movie.

Saturday was train garden day. We visited the Glen Avenue trains, a great fav of ours. We also found a new fav at the Ellicott City Fire Station. It doesn’t have night and day lighting like Glen Ave has. It doesn’t even have a building on fire like Glen Ave does. But it does have a fire house that opens the overhead door, then the fire truck comes out and goes back in, then has the door close. As well as countless other very cool things.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The whole week was about Thanksgiving. We had 10 for dinner. Ed & Lynne – Pat, Jul, Bryon, and Liz – Ryn and dog – Mom. Danita and I enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving immensely.

Jul & family arrived with a beautiful poinsettia.

Mom joined us. She was proud of having completed a wickedly difficult jig saw puzzle. The sides and top did not have any straight pieces.

Ryn got a last minute cancellation from her dog sitter, so the dog joined us. Ryn named it “Tin tin”, so she has “Ryn tin tin’. Tin is very protective of family and loves scratching her back on the rug. But she can’t understand why she isn’t allowed to go off leash to chase deer when visiting us.

Danita did her amazing food preparation. Of course we had way more food than we needed. And of course it was really good. If you visit the web site, you will see just how amazing it was, as well as a few other pics.

Friday we visited the Ellicott City train garden in the morning, then drove to the National Cryptographic Museum in the afternoon.

Everybody disbursed to their homesteads by early Saturday morning. We have the house almost back to normal .Danita and I had a wonderful time. I hope all had a great Thanksgiving.

We’ve had quite a few minor repairs lately. I already talked about my bike disaster.

The most unusual (for us) issue was our credit cards. If hackers get to your bank account, they love to buy gift cards. We had several gift cards as gifts this year. We bought a few gift cards, then the credit card stopped working. After another gift card, the second credit card stopped working. We completed our purchases on our third (and last) credit card. All was explained when I opened my Email and saw fraud alerts. Fortunately, this was easily fixed with a couple of phone calls.

We had our furnace checked out. It needed a new capacitor. I could save $200 if I did it myself. I ordered the parts. Installation required a little soldering. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my soldering iron didn’t work. I was able to do a temporary installation. Thank goodness Amazon has soldering irons available with one-day delivery. The furnace guy also recommended a water leak detector. That went a lot more smoothly.

Our primary toilet broke. The innards of toiles are plastic these days. It’s inexpensive but not very long lasting. I got a repair kit. Installation went smoothly, but it required 49 steps, not counting several “If .,.. Then” to get the correct part installed.

The window washer on our Leaf stopped working. This is important because the Leaf sits under our tree when I’m on the bike. This time of year, it collects a lot of little sappy things on the windshield. A working washer is a highly desirable thing to have. Adding new washer fluid didn’t help. I diddled with it, undoubtedly creating a small lake of window washer fluid somewhere under the hood. I took it to a repair shop. The hose had rotted. The shop made it good as new in just a few hours. The car is only 8 years old. I don’t understand why Nissan can’t use a hose that’s a little more robust.

I was also called on to help with some minor problems on our web site. A very knowledgeable man took over the web site several months ago, but a few issues were popping up. We spent an hour together getting everything squared away. Before the meeting, I spent several hours reviewing the issues so our work together would go smoothly. I used to know this stuff, but these days I have to look up a lot of stuff to refresh my memory. Thinking on my feet is a definite no-go, unless I have lots of quiet time to get my mind right.

There’s much more to life than niggling problems (such as having the furnace work in the winter time). We had a nice food truck dinner with the Jonse’s. My blood work returned a very respectable “all green”. We’re looking forward to going to a play at Howard Community College in a couple of hours. Danita’s knee is still recovering, albeit very slowly.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a mostly nice week. We had a food truck dinner with the Jonse’s, a neighborhood trivia night (our team didn’t do very well this time), and a concert at UMBC. The concert was a string quartet. They played Mozart and Bartok. The hook was the Mozart’s piece is known ad “Dissonance”. Who knew Mozart wrote anything like this? Not me for sure. The Bartok was — well, we expect dissonance from him. One thing about this kind of music, you’ll never know if they got some of the notes wrong. As usual, the descriptions were nearly as entertaining as the music, with “intervallic relationships” and “palindromically arranged movements”. Someday I’ll have to look up what this stuff means.

Danita’s knee isn’t getting better quickly. She is doing less walking than a week ago. The good news is that she has good range of motion, and she can use the stairs.

I wanted to make a minor change to my bike. I ran into trouble and tried to solve it myself. That was a bad move for sure. Suddenly I had a bunch of parts all over the garage. It shouldn’t be that hard to put back together. It’s bearings and races. Somehow I don’t seem to be able to figure out how to put it back together. I’ll be taking a trip to the bike shop today, and also losing the best biking weather we will have this week.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The excitement this week started Thursday. The roofing company started. They weren’t scheduled to work on our roof until December. But they changed their minds, deciding to remove all the fake chimneys first. And they also decided ours would be the last chimney removed Thursday. Both of our cars had to be parked on the street. I was using one car to visit Mom, Danita was using the other for her PT. Danita moved her car, but I didn’t know because I was at Charlestown escorting Mom to her doctor. Danita tried calling me several times, but somehow my phone connected to Mom’s hearing aids. We kept on stopping to answer the phone only to have an unsuccessful conversation. Mom’s anxiety started taking off. Talking to Danita through Mom’s hearing aids, I was able to say I would call her back after Mom was at the doctor’s.

By 4:00, they hadn’t started on our chimney. I figured they would wrap things up and go home. I was wrong. The goal was to get my chimney down. That day. They started a little after 4, working like crazy. Time moved on. By 5 the sun was down. It was getting dark. The crews kept on working. By 6 it was dark out. The crew strapped headlamps to their heads and kept on working. 7:00 came and went. They tied headlamps to trees and posts and kept on working. They finally got done about 7:30. I have to had it to them. When they were done, our roof was totally waterproof and everything was picked up, except for one headlamp tied to our tree, bravely shining light throughout the night. Any stranger that decided to take a nighttime stroll would never guess roofers had worked on my house at all. Crews came back Friday to finish chimney removals. They knew exactly the best way to remove the remaining chimneys. They were more relaxed. All chimneys were down by 4:00. What an amazing crew. It was strange to see them walk on the roofs with no safety lines and concern, just as if they did it every day. ;-)

Although that was be far the most unique event of the week, it was far from all the excitement. We had a neighborhood party Friday (soup & sandwiches). We went with the Jonse’s and had a good time.

Saturday morning we had a free members only brunch at Gertrude’s at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The food was excellent as always. The talk was given by the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier. Her exhibit is about Baltimore community health workers, especially during COVID. Besides being a good artist, she is an excellent speaker. She gave a vivid description of what life was like for the under-privileged during COVID. Here’s one of her photos. What a powerful statement.

Saturday evening we attended the neighborhood volunteer dinner. Quite honestly, the food wasn’t very good. That’s not the main point, of course, but it would be nice if the food was hot and not dried out.

That would be enough for most retired folks, but we had more. This morning we had breakfast at Panera where we both had discounts. It was counting day at church. This afternoon, we attended a concert at UMBC. The Inscape Chamber Orchestra offered pieces by Shostakovich and others. The music was quite good, but the writeups these groups give themselves stretch the imagination. We heard the group “reach across genres and generations, and transcend the confines of the traditional classical concert experience”, which is something I might have missed if I hadn’t read the program.

It’s time for dinner here in Snowden Overlook. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There’s no doubt of the season. Some trees are still strutting their stuff, but most are dropping their leaves. This can make for excitement when riding on the bike trails — in places it is difficult to see where the pavement ends and the dirt begins.

Danita is getting better, but much more slowly than she wants.

We enjoyed a delightful sour beef dinner at Ed & Lynne’s Sunday. The food was great, the conversation was quite satisfying, and the drive was uneventful.

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

Fall colors are everywhere. We have sunny skies and pleasant temperatures. In short, it’s a fine week.

Danita’s recovery is slow. She uses the steps, but limits her trips. She has discomfort in her knee. The PT folks suggested a compression knee brace/sleeve. It should be delivered later on today.

We had a neighborhood concert yesterday with light snacks and deserts. The music was Motown, with emphasis on the Temptations.

I got my COVID and flu shots at Wegman’s. They had cool kids Band-Aids with Pokemon characters. I have no idea what their names are. It was fun, even if I couldn’t show them off under my long sleeve shirts.

Every once in a while we go to a financial planning seminar. We get bona-fide invitations with no obligation to sign up for services. We get a nice free dinner. We just might learn something we don’t already know. I was sorry we attended one Thursday. The dinner was great. I had crab soup and a crab cake entre. I polished it off with half of a very rich piece of chocolate cake and half a slice of key-lime pie. The presentation was a different matter. It was centered on the idea that we might need to go to a nursing home some day. If we do, we’re likely to spend a small fortune on care. UNLESS … The scheme used some kind of a trust. We would not own our assets, be we could get the benefit of using them. If we need a nursing home, we will be eligible for a Medicaid room, practically free, because we wouldn’t own any assets. It all sounded complicated, entangled, and very shady. Who knows what would happen if their worst case scenario panned out? I’ve run across this idea a couple of times. It’s not for me. Nor would I work with lawyers that made this an important part of their practice. But the dinner really was nice.

This it for me. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The major topic for our HOA (Home Owners Association) has been our roofs. Leaks have been steadily increasing. Areas that should use fireproof plywood didn’t have it. The fake chimneys can’t be properly flashed. The HOA did studies, consulted engineers, and discussed. This culmination came last week. The board decided we needed to remove the chimneys, replace all of the plywood, and install 40-year shingles. Last Thursday, we voted for and approved a special assessment of $6,565 per household. Only three households voted against the proposal. With good weather, all of the roofs should be replaced this year.

Danita and I attended another concert this weekend. This one was a piano concert at the Second Presbyterian Church near Guilford. (That’s the old money area of Baltimore). The music featured CPE Bach, Hyden, and Schumann. Einav Yarden is an amazing pianist. We were planning to cap the evening with a French dinner at Petit Louis Bistro. Petit Louis accepts reservations. We didn’t know how long the concert would be. Earlier in the day, I checked the website and saw that tables were available. But when we got there, they were jammed. We did a pivot to hamburgers and cheesecake at a brewery restaurant.

We’re looking forward to some very nice weather. Temperatures will approach 80. The fall colors are starting. It should be a wonderful week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Last weekend we attended a jazz trio concert at UMBC. The music was not exactly what I expected, but it was interesting. The highlight was the drummer. He single-handedly kept multiple rhythm patterns going simultaneously. It was a tour de force from the best drummer I ever encountered. This weekend we attended another UMBC jazz concert. This was a “big band” performance of music from Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. We’re looking forward to another concert next week.

Danita is doing much better. She walks without a rollator or cane, but she still has pain and limits her activities. She started her PT.

Most of my time this weekend was spent on the new Residents database. I’m not done, but I made quite a bit of progress.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Thursday, Danita decided to walk to Target, use a coupon, and get a Target plastic bag. (They cost $.05, but they’re really good for small trash cans, and buying a box of small trash bags is $0.10 per bag.) She stepped of a curb in a perfectly normal way and experienced extreme pain in one knee, radiating down her leg. She called me. I was on my bike, about half an hour from home. I picked her up and she iced it all afternoon. She was having a very difficult time hobbling around with a cane. The next day, we saw the doctor. He said it was almost certainly soft tissue damage. We got an X-ray just to make sure, got her a knee brace, picked up some prescription strength Motrin, made a Physical Therapy appointment, and borrowed a rollator from our neighbor. (I remember the days when many of our friends had babies, and baby paraphernalia flowed around the neighborhood. It seems there is a parallel for us seniors.) Danita has been very good about staying off her feet. She is already on the mend. But it will be a while before she’s up and around.

Normally, we like to go downstairs to watch TV for a couple of hours in the evening as we unwind and prepare for bed. Stairs are out of the question for Danita, so I moved the TV from the guest bedroom to the living room. It’s one of the first affordable “1024p” big-screen TVs. It’s heavy beast. I got it downstairs undamaged. It will be a good trick getting it back upstairs later on. I had everything wired up and working in less than an hour, which included an uncounted number of trips upstairs and downstairs to grab just one more thing I hadn’t though of. Right now the TV is sitting proudly smack dab in the center of the space between our two sofas.

Of course we had to keep up with our important activities. We had a gelato food truck Thursday. Danita authorized me to get any flavors I thought she would enjoy. I didn’t hear any complaints. Friday was a neighborhood party featuring savory and sweet pies. This was the very first time I drove to the clubhouse to attend a party. The rollator was very helpful getting Danita to a table. I was the only person who went through the buffet holding two plates.

Danita’s feeling good enough that we plan to attend a jazz trio concert tomorrow at UMBC.

I was planning to write this blog on Monday. For the last month, I’ve been working on a really cool update to our Residents database. Installation will take quite a while as I will have to review nearly 300 pages of pool passes to make sure everything is perfect. This was a great weekend to do the installation because our staff is in mandatory training Monday. I have three days to do the work. Unfortunately, they changed their password and didn’t tell me. But now I have more time to do cool things like writing blogs.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.