There are no pics this week.

Danita and I planned to go to Greece in September. We wanted some extra time in Athens, so we arranged air tickets to arrive in Athens 2 days before the tour started. Last Sunday, I finally got aground to reserving the hotel room for those 2 days. About 6 hours after I locked that reservation in, the travel folks called to tell us they were cancelling the trip. I was *not* pleased. We’re working out what to do. One possibility is to use the airfare and the 2 day hotel stay as the beginning of our more-or-less self guided trip. We will pre-arrange local tours in combination with getting around on our own. It looks promising, thanks to our good friend Mr. Google.

Our Leaf was having a hard time getting out of the dealer’s repair shop. I requested a service loaner for us to pick up Monday and keep until our car was repaired. The dealership agreed. We got a brand new Sentra (with 1100 miles on it). It was kind of noisy and definitely less comfortable than our Accord, but it had some interesting features. One feature was adaptive cruise control, which I didn’t notice until I was driving to the dealer to return the loaner. I had the cruise control set. The traffic in front of me slowed down, but I never had to hit the brakes because my car slowed to keep pace. It felt very strange. Its performance was flawless, but in that short drive I never felt I could trust it. The other feature was a lane-change warning. If I turned on the signal to switch lanes and there was another car too close in that lane, it would flash and beep to warn me of a possible collision. This sounds like a way cool and very useful feature, but it quickly got irritating. When changing lanes around here, it’s often necessary to kind of push your way into the other lane. The bleeping beeper went off too often.

You might have noticed I just wrote about driving the loaner back to the dealer. Yes, that means our Leaf was declared leak-free. It’s sitting in our garage right now. I took it out in a rain yesterday. It came back as dry as a fine Cabernet.

With the Leaf leak plugged and some interesting options on the trip to Greece, things are beginning to turn around. We hope to have the other issues resolved before long, but I won’t tempt fate by pre-announcing success.

We only have one party this week — a neighborhood Italian potluck dinner this evening. Danita made lasagna. My goal is to get towards the front of the line so I can get a slice. There’s no charge for the potluck dinners, so they are BYOB. We have a nice bottle of Cabernet waiting and ready.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week So much has happened that it’s hard to believe it’s only been one week since I last posted. Many of our adventures and misadventures seem to involve water in one way or another.

Leaf Leak: Our new Nissan Leaf has a leak somewhere near the rear bumper. We found this last Sunday, when we drove it to Church in a light rain. The car went back to the dealer early this week. They found the leak but didn’t know how to fix it, so called in a specialist. The specialist had them order an obscure part from some faraway place. The car is still at the dealer. We’ve requested a service loaner, which we will pick up tomorrow.

Related delay: The Level 2 charger for the Leaf came in. It’s mounted to the wall. I have delayed calling the electrician until we can actually plug it into the car and see the battery charge.

Toilet Leak: Our house uses plastic plumbing. Each appliance has a cut-off valve, which is crimped onto the plastic water pipe. Apparently, after 10 years or so, the plastic pipe cracks and starts to leak. Our first leak was the master toilet. It resulted in water dripping through the ceiling of our basement play room. We spent that night and most of the next day without water in the house. Fortunately, Danita detected the leak very early. The only damage was to the ceiling. A moisture specialist confirmed there is no water damage or mold inside the walls. A contractor has come in to quote the price of repairs. The plumber that fixed the toilet has promised a quote to replace all 15 of these crimped cut-off valves. The only thing we use the play room for is my morning stretches, so the impact on our daily life is minimal.

Shower stall fall: Danita took a hot shower the other morning (as she often does). Apparently, this triggered a rapid lowering of her blood pressure. She fainted and fell, then felt nauseous. She bumped her knee and hurt a toe. She deservedly spent the rest of the morning relaxing in her jamies.

We also had some good things happen. Danita got her first two shifts in at the food bank. They went well. Friday we went to a chili cook off at our church, which was great fun. Tina Baumann (from Circle) turned 70. Her family threw a birthday party for her yesterday, which was also fun (after we found the venue).

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We got our new Nissan Leaf today. I’ll install a “Level 2” charger next week. For now, we’re using the 110 V charger that comes with the car. The cost of electricity to drive the car is about 1/3 the cost of gas to drive our Honda Accord. If you go the web, you can see some pics. We used to differentiate our cars by the color (ex: I’ll take the blue car tomorrow). Unfortunately, all the blue 2016 Honda Leafs had a bunch of extra options installed. Our choices were either red or boring (black, white, and various shades of grey). We took the red one. The Nissan red almost exactly matches the Honda red.

Besides getting a car, we have a neighborhood party tonight, a Circle luncheon at the Bertch’s tomorrow, and a neighborhood concert / desert party Sunday. Danita will start volunteering at the Howard County Food Bank. She has to start with few a training slots. She’s having trouble finding training slots that meet her schedule, but I’m sure she’ll work that out eventually.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

Buying a car is still frustrating. It’s been a long time since we bought a car. The internet has overhauled the buying process. All the old games dealers used to play are no longer played. Of course, they’ve come up with new games. We quickly zeroed in on a Nissan Leaf. But we would have to finance it to get the best price (which is $4,000 lower than the next best price). But the interest rate is 0% for the entire term of the loan. It just doesn’t make sense. Then the salesperson started talking about how high the depreciation is on electric cars. His theory is that the battery technology is rapidly changing, so nobody wants to buy used electrics. So we thought we might buy a Leaf off of a 3-year lease. The risk is minimal, thanks to Carfax, which reports the entire history of the car, including all owners, maintenance, etc. Of course, one has to buy a car off a lot. We found a blue one we thought we liked. The salesperson gave us some advice, which resulted in the car being sold out from under us. I found that out Sunday, and I was completely bummed. And when all the costs were added it, it wasn’t nearly as cheap as we were led to believe. So now we’re back to looking at a new one. A pox on car sales people.

Danita is zeroing in on her volunteer activities. She visited the shelter. (I was wrong — it’s just a shelter, nothing to do with violence against women). Tomorrow she’ll go to training at the food bank. She should be able to decide what she wants to do pretty soon.

I made a blunder. I got bored with the Superbowl game and went to bed at 9:30. Danita stayed up and got to watch the interesting part of the game. Oh, well. There’s always the replays on YouTube.

Other than that, things are moving along normally. The weather was so nice out today, I decided it can’t be February — 50 and sunny. What a great ride!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

We did something different today. We went to the Walter’s Art Gallery in Baltimore, where we watched a lunar New Year celebration. The streets were a mess of construction. We had trouble finding a parking space and almost gave up. But at the last minute, we found a street parking spot. Amazingly, it was free on Sundays, so we got FREE PARKING!

We saw dancing women, and drum players, and dancing dragons. I didn’t bring my camera, so there’s no pics. We also stopped by the Tibetan Deity exhibit before heading home.

Before we went to Arizona, we got rid of our old car. The mileage and age meant it was close to time to give the car up. Letting it sit in the garage unused for 3 months wasn’t going to make it run better or increase its value, so we sold it. We decided to wait and see what our driving patterns will be — maybe we would need only 1 car.

We’re back, and it’s obvious that living with 1 car could work, but life will be a lot easier with 2 cars. Danita plans to drive up to UMBC to take exercise classes. Our neighborhood has classes, but one has to sign up for 2 months at a time. Some of the classes are full and unavailable to new attendees. Classes at UMBC are “drop in”. Thanks to Danita’s emeritus status, she can take them for free. She’s also driving to visit her Dad and to visit the Bertches. (Mike is no longer mobile. Somebody has to be in the house with him 24 x 7.) She’s also looking at volunteering at a women’s domestic violence facility nearby, or perhaps at the Howard County food bank, or perhaps both. While I use my bike for most of my commuting needs, there’s always the possibility of lousy weather when I have a doctor’s appointment, or some other minor emergency. All in all, it’s better for us to have 2 cars.

We are thinking of getting an EV (electric vehicle – powered by batteries). It would be ideal for tooling around the Columbia area. We live near DC, which is one of the areas  EV manufacturers target for early sales. Not counting the very expensive cars (Tesla, BMW, etc.) we have 5 EVs to choose between. We’ll start by looking at the Nissan Leaf Tuesday. We might buy a car sometime in March.

Other than that, we’re living a normal, boring life. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

Today it’s precipitating lightly with temperatures hovering right at 32. That makes it a nice day for staying inside and doing computer stuff. I had plenty of it to do. Our neighborhood has 5 condos with 5 boards, all independent of each other. Each board sends a representative to the SOCA board, which takes care of issues that affect all condos. Our website is for SOCA. But a lot of the things we do are organized by one of the condo boards or by extra-active residents. Many people can post to the website, but each is assigned to their specific area. We fence the website off to make sure all these people posting on the website obey the rules.

I have used two plugins (programs) to build fences and enforce rules. One is called AAM, the other UAM. I can use either of these, but not both. I started out with UAM. Then I found AAM, which works better. Then AAM developed some bugs and I switched back to UAM. Then UAM developed some bugs. So I spent quite a bit of time this week changing back to AAM. It doesn’t take all that long to do the work, but the settings are quite detailed. It takes me a long time to figure out what settings work best. I’ll bet I’ve spent 30 hours on this within the last week. I finished it this morning, and this time I wrote a document to help me remember what I did, and why. Here’s hoping this issue is settled for a while.

Monday was another lousy weather day. Danita and I went to see Hidden Figures. I recommend it highly. The movie used some dramatic techniques to create a good story. But they worked very hard to get the facts right, down to the smallest possible detail. In many cases, they used the exact dialog used by the people working on the space program. They even asked for historical pictures of the parking lot at Langley. Here’s an example of details they got right. There is a scene where somebody is driving a 1956 (more or less) Chevy. American cars back then had very loose steering. The steering wheel was big, and the driver had to constantly turn it back and forth, making small corrections to keep the car in the lane. This was the first movie I saw where I actually believed the actor was driving the car. Of course, not everybody is a fact freak. It’s good history you probably don’t know but definitely should. It’s a great story, and it’s well told. (And the facts are right.)

Our only other major activity was a neighborhood party last night.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

No pics this week.

We’re still kicking… The weather has not been conducive to bike riding. It’s hard to complain about it this time of year, but in prior years I’ve been able to ride 2 days a week. The forecast is incredibly changeable. Maybe I’ll squeeze in a ride soon.

We helped at a Church dinner Friday. We worked hard, got tired, and had a good time. The dinner was grilled sirloin steak tips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, a salad, and a roll. Many families bring deserts that are put out for all to share. The food was excellent. This is a dinner where several hundred people show up. Usually, families come, often taking the opportunity to talk with other families they are friends with. Danita and I were on the team to taking orders. We put the orders in the queue. When the food was ready, teenagers brought the orders back to the tables. My strangest experience was a man who asked for his tips to be done medium rare. I thought the guy was joking, but he was serious. He finally decided he would go to the kitchen and pick out his own plate. The man just doesn’t understand church dinners. I wasn’t surprised to note that he came by himself, and didn’t talk with anybody.

Today I helped with our neighborhood’s Men’s Club brunch. The food service starts at 11:30. Danita and I don’t attend the brunch because we like to eat an early (and large) breakfast on Sundays. But I went over to help cook and clean up. I was there 3 1/2 hours. The work was easy and there was lots of camaraderie.

I just finished the book “Tent Life in Siberia”. George Kennan wrote of his experiences in 1865 – 8 when he went to Russia as part of a team to build a telegraph from the US to Europe via Alaska, the Bearing Straight, and Siberia. Kennan has a good sense of humor and an easy writing style. I couldn’t believe the things he and his team did. Highly recommended. If you have any kind of e-reader, you can get the book free from Gutenberg, as well as many other E-book services.

We plan to see the movie “Hidden Figures” tomorrow. It has great reviews. We have high hopes.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’re finishing up the holidays in grand style. Today we’ll celebrate second Christmas with Ed, Lynne, and around 20 other folks. Tomorrow we’ll have a Circle dinner.

We’re nearly caught up from being away from home so long. The first week back we went to the grocery store nearly every day as we kept on finding things that we usually keep in stock but weren’t in the cupboard. I spent two days updating our neighborhood website. We’re finally getting into our routine. Life is beginning to feel pretty normal.

Is this the perfect kitchen brush?

One of our highlight meals was centered on some very nicely flavored sausage that Ryn made and sent us for Christmas. It was quite yummy.

When we were at Pipe Spring, there was a kitchen brush I liked. I made such a fuss about it that Danita went out and bought me one. My new brush is even better — it may be the perfect kitchen brush. This picture includes a coaster to give you an idea of the size. It fits in the hand perfectly. The bristles are flexible enough to get into the corners; stiff enough to dislodge all those pesky food particles. As a wonderful bonus, I can make a very interesting “puff” noise with it. This recording loses the nuances of the perfect puff. The real sound is way cooler than this recording indicates:

That’s plenty excitement for now. I hope this finds everybody in good health.

1886 Benz

We left I-40 and turned southeast to head towards Atlanta. This is our last night in a hotel. Tomorrow, we will visit Danita’s cousin Darlene and her husband Dick. Thursday we will be at Jul’s. Sunday we will leave Jul’s and drive home. There’s not much to see in this part of the world. We did find the largest auto museum east of the Mississippi in Tupelo, MS. Besides being very large, it had a great collection. Here’s some of the great cars we saw: 1886 Benz, two steamers (including an ’18 Stanley), ’17 Pierce Arrow, 29 Cord (with front wheel drive), ’29 Duesenberg, ’48 Tucker, among many others.

’18 Stanley Steamer

’29 Cord

’29 Duesenberg

’29 Pierce Arrow

’48 Tucker

Judge Parker’s Court (maybe)

Yesterday we drove to Fort Smith, Arkansas and visited the Fort Smith historic site. It’s not particularly photogenic, but it is very interesting. It served as the peace keeping force for the Indian Territories created by Thomas Jefferson. Later it served as the site where federal justice was dispensed. Judge Parker is famous for being a hanging judge. On the other hand, he presided over a court that heard thousands of murder and rape cases over a period of 21 years. Here’s a picture of Judge Parker’s courthouse. The most amazing thing about this room is that it is totally made up. That’s right. The accuracy-obsessed National Park Service created this room out of thin air. It seems there was no documentation, sketches, or photos of the Judge’s court.

Fort Smith Gallows

Today we drove to Memphis, passing through Little Rock. In Little Rock, we visited Clinton’s Presidential Library. If you ever have the chance, you should visit. It’s an amazing place, no matter what your political leanings. This place is so un-photogenic that I didn’t take a single picture. So instead, here’s a picture of the gallows at Fort Smith.

The library’s architecture is some of the worst I’ve seen. But the content overcomes the building. Even though this is an awesome place, they wouldn’t let us eat here. So we took a detour to a small town’s park for our lunch snack. It got us off the interstate and gave us a ha’f hour’s relaxed ride into Memphis. I imagine this should be a good town for night life. But I’m more interested in a good night’s rest. I doubt I will have any more to say about Memphis in tomorrow’s blog.