Rick’s Memorial

There are pics this week. They aren’t very good pictures. I forgot my camera. These were taken with my tablet.

Nicole

Nicole

The focus for the week was Rick’s memorial. We held it in West Palm Beach for Mom and Glen’s convenience. Danita and I arrived about 3, flying into Ft. Lauderdale. (It was much cheaper than Palm Beach.) Just as we arrived at Mom’s, Mom and Glen were leaving to pick up Dani from the Palm Beach airport. Rick, Sara, Nicole, Julianne, and Kim all drove in from Panama City, FL. They stopped in Orlando on the way down to pick up Eric, who flew in from Iowa. It was quite a piece of logistics, and it all worked flawlessly. Dani and I were both delayed briefly. We both landed at dry airports, but T-storms kicked up before they got the baggage off, and we both had to wait until doppler radar showed the lightening was at least 3 miles away. Some people might consider it remarkable that both Dani and I had the same weather delay at two different airports at two different times. But these pop-up storms aren’t unusual in south Florida.

Julianne

Julianne

We were all gathered together in time to enjoy Mom’s famous potato salad and ham & cheese sandwiches. Kim collected pictures of Rick from everybody and brought a huge picture frame. She put it all together and made a very nice collage of Rick. Remarkably, she had exactly the right number of pictures to completely fill the frame, with no picture overlap. We were all exhausted. Around 8, we had dispersed to our various overnight accommodations. All of us oldsters were sound asleep by 9.

 

 

Collage (Sara, Glen, Kim, Mom, Dani)

Collage (Sara, Glen, Kim, Mom, Dani) Yes, there was plenty of wine.

Rick found a chuch in North Palm Beach for the memorial ceremony. We converged at the church at 10 Saturday for the service. Afterwards, we all drove to Carrabba’s for lunch. Everybody was tired and frazzled. We had quiet time in the afternoon, which included naps for all the young and old participants. We enjoyed a final evening together at Mom’s. Of course, this being an Eichenlaub event, there had to be a crisis. This time, our crisis involved burnt pizza. But the solution was easy enough. A quick trip to Domino’s made everything good.

Rick, Sara, Eric

Rick, Sara, Eric

Everybody had an early departure this morning. Danita and I switched to a hotel near the Ft. Lauderdale airport for Saturday night. Our flight home was a breeze. Danita and I had the whole row to ourselves.Tomorrow promises to be filled with rain. We’ll miss the fireworks, but enjoy a quiet day at home.

 

That’s all for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

 

RIP Rick

There are no pics this week.

The big news this week, as most of you already know, is Rick’s passing. It wasn’t really a surprise. Rick has been in very poor health for quite a while. His passing is a blessing in some ways.

It has taken a lot of phone calls and Emails, but everything seems to be settled. The funeral will be in West Palm Beach on July 2. Mom, Dani, and I are very glad that we were able to visit Rick so recently.

I won’t write more because this has consumed our attention for the last couple of days, and I don’t have a lot more to say about it.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Another Family Week

There are pics this week.

The last etirement balloon's last hurrah

The last retirement balloon’s last hurrah

Before I get into our news, I have to announce the demise of Danita’s last balloon. Danita got a bouquet of balloons at her UMBC retirement party. The last balloon was dragging on the floor. Danita cut the ribbon last Saturday to let it have one last day or so on the ceiling. The balloon managed to drift over to our ceiling fan, where it got pushed into a continuous circle. I thought that was cool. We decided to leave the ceiling fan on continuously and see how long the balloon would travel in circles. It fell to the floor last night, which is an impressively long last hurrah. RIP, celebratory balloon!

Sctatch Kitchen Dinner

Sctatch Kitchen Dinner

It  was another week of family activities.Tuesday afternoon Danita took Bud to the doctor to have some minor surgery done on his hand. He was unable to straighten one of his fingers. The doctors removed some material from one of his knuckle joints. The surgery must have gone pretty well, because Bud joined us for Ed’s birthday party that evening. It was a Schmaus family dinner at Gertrudes Restaurant, located at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Gertrudes has a fixed price dinner on Tuesdays. Unlike most fixed price dinners, they have a dozen choices. Their food is always excellent. I’m sure that if we lived closer to the BMA, we would be eating there regularly.

Morning walk ended at Walmart, with a few things to cheer Rick up

Morning walk ended at the Dothan Walmart, with a few things to cheer Rick up …

Back at home, we moved our dinner out night to Wednesday. Danita wanted to do something a little special and suggested we go to Bare Bones. Bare Bones is a favorite of ours because of their great ribs and many other good dishes. But their unique feature is their onion loaf, which is a big pile of onion rings formed into a loaf. We usually order the half loaf, which is far more onion rings than we need, but it’s very good and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, they stopped serving their half loaf. A full loaf was way too much to contemplate ordering. So our special night turned into a bit of a disappointment. But the rest of the dinner was still good.

a new sun hat

… and a new sun hat

Danita wanted to have a nice dinner Wednesday because of the other big family activity. Dani and Gayle flew down to visit Mom Wednesday. Thursday, Dani Mom and I all converged in Atlanta. We drove to Dothan Alabama Thursday afternoon. That let us drive down to visit Rick in Graceville, Florida Friday morning. Then it was drive back to Atlanta Friday afternoon. Dani and Mom went back to West Palm Beach while I went back to Maryland.

Dani, Rick, Mom

Dani, Rick, Mom

Amazingly, all the transportation worked out perfectly. I arrived in Atlanta first, picked up a rental car, and went to the cell phone lot. 45 minutes after Dani and Mom’s plane landed, I hadn’t heard from them. I decided they might be having some undefined cell phone problem and decided to take a swing by the terminal to see if they were on the sidewalk waiting for me. Just as I got to door 6, they called me and announced they were at door 5. I was able to pull over and pick them up immediately. It turns out Mom decided to walk through the Atlanta airport instead of taking their passenger train. Way to go, Mom!

Rick's dog

Rick’s dog won’t be able to travel to the nursing home

Our hotel in Dothan was a winner, with nice rooms, friendly staff, and a good breakfast. But the dinner was unexpectedly good. We found a restaurant just up the road called Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen. The food was amazing. We weren’t able to eat it all.

We had more or less 4 hours of driving each way. But we had no serious misadventures and encountered no heavy traffic. We went through an incredible cold front coming back to Atlanta. The outdoor temperature went from 102 to 73. Unsurprisingly, it was accompanied by a very heavy rainfall. But there was no lightening. The rain was brief enough that we didn’t have an opportunity to take an exit off the interstate to wait out the rest of the storm. Our only misadventure was that somebody keyed the rental car. Car inspection was not on the agenda for the somewhat harried agent that checked me in, so I decided to focus on getting through airport security. We’ll see if I get a phone call from Dollar Rent-a-Car.

Another pic near Walmart

Another pic near Walmart

Rick is not doing well. A couple of days before we went down, he was taken to the hospital. We weren’t sure where we would meet him. As it turns out, they took him back to his apartment. His stay there will be brief. He is moving to a nursing home Sunday. He elected to move to a nursing home near Rick, Jr.

Today I’m back in Maryland. I assume Dani and Mom are back in West Palm beach. (There were some flight delays due to weather.)

Tonight is Circle. Our Marriage Encounter Circle has morphed into a monthly dinner club. The Bertches are having serious health issues. Mike is not doing well, Rose has her own health issues, and taking care of Mike is becoming quite an issue for her. They weren’t up to traveling to circle last month or this month. So we’re taking everything needed for dinner, down to the paper plates, and meeting at the Bertches.

Dani and Mom

Dani and Mom having dinner at the Atlanta airport

That’s a lot of news for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Greeks

There are no pics this week.

We had the usual array of neighborhood parties and activities. And we did some unusual stuff.

Danita and I got so good at going to DC to get a Russian Visa, we decided to use our new-found skills to visit an exhibition at the National Geographic Museum. This museum is one metro stop before the one we used to get to the Russian Visa place. The exhibit is called “The Greeks”. It covered Greece from pre-history to Alexander the Great. They had an entire floor filled with artifacts, plus story-telling sign boards and videos. It was quite interesting. We had to buy timed admission tickets. We decided to get breakfast in DC and be at the museum at 10. We allowed for the slowest trip we had into DC, plus a little extra because we would be driving in the morning DC rush. We ended up with a little less traffic than we anticipated, plus the fastest trip into DC, so we had plenty of time for breakfast.We spent over 2 hours in the exhibit. When we got out, I was hungry so we also had lunch in DC. Adding up the costs of the trip — parking, Metro fare, breakfast, lunch, and tickets — the cost of the tickets was a minor part of the cost of the trip. I remembered my camera, but they didn’t allow any photography, so there’s no pics of what we saw.

My other big adventure this week was our walk-in shower. It turns out that when a walk-in showers start dripping, it makes a lot of noise. In addition, this drip was quickly getting worse. In the old days, one would turn the water off, replace a rubber washer, and that was it. Total cost: less than a buck. Now days we have fancy plumbing. Instead of a rubber washer, one installs a new cartridge, which costs about $85. I found a half-price cartridge at Lowe’s, but in place of “Delta”, there was a curiously Chinese-sounding name. I decided to spend the extra in the hopes this would be a life-time repair. The next step is to figure out which cartridge I needed. That turned out to be impossible without taking the faucet apart. Taking the faucet apart requires shutting the water off for the house. We’ve become accustomed to having running water. So I would have to turn the water off, disassemble the faucet and extract the cartridge, procure a new cartridge, and reassemble everything — hopefully all in one morning. I was becoming very interested in understanding exactly what I would have to do.

I found that Delta had posted a You-Tube video. The guy spent a lot of time talking about “before 1993” and “F-Series” and “T-Series” and offered a bewildering list of Delta part numbers. After I recovered from that shock, I watched a few more times. The disassembly and reassembly looked very easy. I watched a few more times. That “plumber” is wearing brand new boots. I never saw a real plumber wearing brand new boots before.

Monday I screwed up my courage. Disassembly had only a few surprises. Then it was off to the plumbing supply store. This was my second trip to the plumbing supply store. I like these guys a lot. They have everything a plumbing supply store should have. A cool name (Schumacher & Seiler). A counter with stools. Plumbers talking with employees. A big room filled with more plumbing stuff than I ever knew existed. A back room where employees go to find what you’re looking for. And a very friendly attitude towards homeowners that have no idea what they’re doing. Sure enough, they had exactly what I wanted. And sure enough, when I got home, it all fit in the hole. I put it together, turned the water on, and twisted the knob. There was no water in the shower. Everything else worked, but not a drop came out of the shower head.

That certainly fixed the shower drip. but I figured Danita wouldn’t be happy with this solution. Fortunately, on my second attempt, I figured out what I had done wrong. And it turns out I didn’t break anything and didn’t need to call a plumber. I didn’t even have to buy a second $85 cartridge.

So it’s all good news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Family Week

There are no pics this week.

This week was book ended by family events. Monday was Memorial Day, which means the Parkton Cup. It’s a day of family, food, and croquet. Ed sets up 3 croquet courses. We had all three courses full for the first set and two more for the second. Winners of the first round play for the championship. For the first time ever, I was actually in the lead in my game. It didn’t last long. Maybe I’ll get into the finals next year.

Mark didn’t make it to the Parkton Cup this year because he is coaching students for the Physics Olympics. I’m not certain I have the details down. My impression is that he was coaching the mid-atlantic qualifiers.

Danita’s Uncle Bill died this week. He was 83. The funeral was yesterday. The service was at the old Polish parish in Highlandtown. Bud was with us. I dropped Danita and Bud off and went to park the car. When I came back to the church, I spent a few minutes out front with the Hartka men. It was a humid day. It felt good to stand outside for a few minutes. I knew it was time to go inside and find my wife when the men started talking about shoulder injuries, and which side of the casket they had to be on.

The drive to the graveyard started by driving through town. Running red lights is not something one gets to do ever day. Eventually we ended up on I-95. I knew where the graveyard is, and knew which exit the GPS recommended to get there. But the hearse wasn’t switching lanes to exit. What route were they taking? They did finally exit, but by then there was a very large and very noisy truck to my right, followed by a very aggressive pickup with a lawn mower in the bed. The result was that for quite a while, I couldn’t see the front of the funeral procession. Plus the GPS seemed to be going nuts. It literally turned the route into a sideways figure 8. Or was it an infinity symbol? Everything ended well, but for a while there the only thing I knew for sure was that a lot of cars were following me.

The lunch was at Bowman’s on Harford Rd. We’ve had so many funeral lunches at Bowman’s that I refer to their dining room as the “Hartka Room”. The food was good. The conversation was better.

Danita and I like to watch TV for a hour or two before going to bed. There’s not a lot of new programs on TV this time of year. This summer I selected movies from Amazon to stream. My criteria were they had to be free (with Prime membership) and have a rating of 7 or better on Rotten Tomatoes. I din’t pay any attention to whether I thought we would enjoy the movie. We’ve had some real duds. Twice we stopped the movie after watching 10 or 15 minutes. We’ve had a couple of movies that one of us liked and the other didn’t. We’ve had some good movies, And we’ve had one sleeper. If you haven’t seen “Temple Grandin”, you should get it. A lot of things have to come together to make a great movie — the story, the way the story is told, acting, photography, music, script … This movie does everything well. The story is presented in a well-balanced manner with excellent pacing. Some of the story telling elements are highly innovative. The acting us superb. This is a movie worth watching.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

PS: Yes, we did get our Russian visas. We were even lucky enough that it rained only when we were on the metro or in the car, and not while we were traipsing around DC or the Metro parking lot!

Of Cookie Cutters and Balloons

Sorting Cookie Cutters

Sorting Cookie Cutters

Ryn teases us that we live in a house with extraordinarily low entropy. She means our house is clean and orderly, in the extreme. It seems that it’s often true for us retired folks. For one thing, there’s no kids to move things around, so things tend to stay where they were put. For another, retired folks have some extra time on their hands. Here’s a picture of Danita bringing our entropy to new lows, sorting cookie cutters.

DSC00667We are having unusually cool and rainy weather. Last Saturday, after 18 days in a row of cool, rainy weather, the afternoon turned warm and sunny. I got a nice ride in. I found lots of people mowing their lawn. There was so much stuff kicked up into the air that in spots, my eyes hurt and I had trouble breathing. It was almost as if neighborhoods were preparing for synchronized mowing events. But it was a good ride.

DSC00650This is Preakness week, which means it’s time for balloon ascensions. We have been attending Preakness balloon ascensions for years. We went when they were held in Druid Hill Park. We went to some more when they were held at Oregon Ridge. And we went to still more when they moved to Turf Valley Country Club (which, fortunately, is conveniently close to where we live now.) Every time we went, the balloons inflated but didn’t go up because the wind was blowing too hard, or it was in the wrong direction, or whatever.

DSC00654The ascensions are early in the morning. In spite of the early hour, they are always popular. And their fun, even when the balloons stay firmly tethered to the earth. The weather got warm and sunny today. We decided to give it another go. We were rewarded with actually getting to see the balloons ascend. Don’t worry. We won’t get spoiled by two days of great weather. Tomorrow, for the actual running of the Preakness race, the forecast is — temperatures in the 50s with rain all day.

 

DSC00682We have lots of activities scheduled for the next week. Tonight is neighborhood Casino night. I usually eat the food and give my chips to Danita. Saturday we have Burgers and Beer at the church. Sunday we’re meeting Mark for breakfast and eating a neighborhood pot-luck dinner in the evening. Monday is picking up our Russian Visas (with a stop at the patisserie!). Yoga is Tuesday. That puts us up to Wednesday, when we have absolutely nothing scheduled. That’s too bad, because the cookie cutters are already in great order. Danita’s book club meets Thursday. I’m supposed to count people on a spot of Columbia trails Saturday. And that brings us up to Ed and Lynne’s Parkton Open a week from Sunday.

I get tired just thinking about all this activity. I hope this finds everybody doing well. Here’s a few more balloon pics. Click on them if you want to see them bigger.

DSC00676

 

DSC00691
DSC00694

 

Balloon Glow

Indications are that the evening Balloon Glow is much more popular than the early morning Balloon Ascension

Preparing for Russia

There are no pics this week.

Our focus this week has been on getting a Russian Visa. We have to have a Russian visa before we can visit Russia. One can get a visa from a company that specializes in getting visas for people. All those companies charge a lot of money and all visa applications go through  “ILS-Visa”, a company Russia set up specifically to manage all Russian visas. ILS-Visa has an office in DC. We decided we could save a bunch of our hard earned green by doing the visa ourselves. It sounds so easy. Fill out an on-line form, take it to ILS-Visa, and wait a week. Voila. It turned out to be a little harder than that.

We needed an invitation before applying for a visa. Our flights and boat cruise were through Gate1. They said they would send an invitation, so we waited for that. When it arrived, it did not include our entire time in Russia — only the cruise. I contacted our hotel in St. Petersburg and in Moscow and got invitations from them also.

The online form turned out to be quite involved. They required our previous two employers, with start / end dates, job titles, name of supervisor, and more. They require two numbers from the invitations, helpfully listing the Russian word to look for. One invitation didn’t have one of the words. I suppose they used a synonym? They required the the schools where we got degrees, with major and start/end dates. The details were astounding. We went through 3 iterations, with me entering information and Danita proofing. Having all the paperwork, one can request an appointment with ILS-Visa. Requesting an appointment can be done on-line. Except that no appointment times are available in 2016 or 2017. Why have a website to request appointments if they obviously don’t intend to offer appointment times?

So we bundled up our forms, invitations, photos (the photo that’s in our passport isn’t good enough, I guess) and took a trip to DC. When we arrived at ILS-Visa, we learned that our application had 3 errors. For example, one error was the name of the St. Petersburg hotel. The name I copied and pasted from the website wasn’t acceptable because it wasn’t the Russian name. We could correct the forms and come back another time, or they could correct the forms for us. It “only” cost an extra $30. Each. The invitation we had from the St. Petersburg hotel was not acceptable. It turns out the hotel sent us two documents (both in Russian). I picked out the wrong one.

The good thing was the person at ILS-Visa who we worked with. She was polite and professional. She called me at home, helped me find the correct invitation form, and allowed me to Email it to her. If all goes well, we will be able to pick up our Visas Monday, May 23 at 2:00. When we left ILS-Visa, I spotted a patisserie across the street. Our plan is to arrive a little early and visit the patisserie when we go to pick up the visas.

My other recent frustration is over. I’ve been “spring cleaning” the office computers. I finished my last update this morning. There are a few issues I’m not sure how to address. I documented them and sent them off to the IT committee.

Besides that, we had a neighborhood concert Tuesday. It was a “big band” playing swing. The band wasn’t the best, but it was good fun. I met with our new IT support company and reviewed our office computers with him. We had a neighborhood party yesterday. And we have a BSO concert tomorrow. The concert is unusual for us, because this performance is at Strathmore, which is close to DC.

That’s quite enough complaining for one week. ;-) I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Bryon’s First Communion

Impossible pies - spinach & bacon.jpg

Impossible pies – spinach & bacon

Our story of B ryon’s first communion begins Wednesday. It was quite a busy day for both of us. One of the residents discuvered the update of our websie had a major flaw. I didn’t figure out the cause until early Thursday morning. I spent most of the rest of the morning fixing the website. I had enough time to pack and grab a quick shower. Just as I was starting my shower, Bud showed up at our house looking to go through some stuff we were holding for him and a lunch. He and Danita had gotten their signals crossed. Danita was able to give him his stuff, but unfortunately we didn’t have any food in the house and he left withut lunch.

Cupcakes

Cupcakes

We headed off to Staunton, checked into our hotel, and immediately went to the Mill House Restaurant.We had eaten there before, and knew the food would be somewhat expensive, have very large portions, and be deliciously prepared. What we didn’t know is that by arriving before 6, we were eligible for the early bird special, which was amazing. Portion sizes were just right for us. The food was just as good, and the price was an umbelievable bargin. I had a Cajuin steak dinner with ‘taters, fruit, and a small desert for about the same price as Outback. My only comment was the steak was CAJUN. But it was still quite good. We just had time for a gellato at our favorite Staunton ice cream place, The Split Bannana. I had spicy chocolayte, which was marvously good and certainly much better than it sounded. Then we were off to Henry V. This is not my favorite Shakespeare, but it was done quite well, and it was Shakespeare after all.

Danita's famous potato salad

Danita’s famous potato salad

Thursday we drove to Jul’s and did grocery shopping. Jul and Pat were both running late. All we had time for was dinner and preparing for bedtime. Friday Danita cooked As you can tell from these pics, Danita had a fantastic day and the food came out looking GREAT. I did a loop around the area, staying on back roads. I was surprised at how rural this area is. I spent mostly of my time riding past farms.

 

 

Jul, Bryon, Baner

Jul, Bryon, Baner

Saturday was the first communion. The parish had 72 children this year. They split them into three services. Bryon’s group was at 10:00 Saturday. They did a beautiful job. Children came up, one at a time, with their entire family. The child had their first communion. Then each member of the family had either communion or a blessing. You can see Bryon and Julia before the service started, along with Bryon’s first communion banner. Below you can see a picture of all 24 of the children after the service. After the service, we came back to the house for a family party. Danita prepared much more food than was needed, plus one contingent cancelled at the last minute. So there was plenty of leftover food.

 

 

Zip Line

Zip Line

We decided that  going to church once in the weekend is enough. But it had been a big weekend for everybody. So we visited a local park with a very nice playground, including a zip line. We also went to see “Jungle Book”. It is a good story, well told. And the computer animation is mind-blowingly good.

Party pictures are below. Jay and Melody are Pat’s parents. Barbara is his Godmother. The rest of to folks are all assorted family members. You can also see some of Pat’s amazing garden in the background.

We’re driving home tomorrow. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

First Communion

First Communion

Carson, Celeste, Pat, Tara, Slipknot

Carson, Celeste, Pat, Tara, Slipknot

Jay, Marc

Jay, Marc

Jill, Barbara, Danita

Jill, Barbara, Danita

Melody, Barbara

Melody, Barbara

Pat, Forrest, Marc

Pat, Forrest, Marc

Pat, Melody, Jay

Pat, Melody, Jay

Columbia Newsletter

The weather has been mostly lousy — cool and wet. But we had a couple of nice days early in the week. Tuesday was the nicest — sunny and 85. Danita and I drove the bikes down to Patapsco Park and rode a mostly paved trail to the Bode Dam. Because it was election day, schools were closed. There were plenty of other people out there enjoying the park with us. We had a good time. When we got back to the car, we split up. Danita drove her bike home and I rode mine up Ilchester Hill. Yep, I can still do it.

The neighborhood’s office computers are driving me nuts. I had been letting them go for quite a while. Once I started looking at them, I saw one thing after another. I’ll be going over this afternoon to get a couple of concentrated hours on one vexing issue. There is at least one more issue. The rest should be standard clean-up. It will take several weeks, but only because I don’t want to change too many things at once. We’re looking to see if we can find a helpful professional company to make things work better.

Obnoxious Old Keyboard

Obnoxious Old Keyboard with Nexus 7 tablet

I wrote some time ago about a tablet / keyboard that was portable enough to fit in a cargo pocket and powerful enough to do anything that’s done on the Internet. The tablet has proved itself. On the other hand, the keyboard has proved itself to be a damned nuisance. I like this keyboard because it doubles as a case. It becomes part of the tablet and the two fit into one pocket. I can even type standing up without a table. I hold the tablet/keyboard in one hand and type with the other. (I know there’s a screen keyboard, but for whatever reason I have not been able to learn to type on it.) Unfortunately, the keyboard is rapidly dying. In the mean time, it ignores key strokes, gives out 6 letters for one keystroke, and in general exhibits extremely obnoxious behaviors. All the other Nexus 7 solutions seem to source the same cheap keyboard.

New Keyboard

New not-quite-as-portable keyboard

I found a folding portable Bluetooth keyboard that will arrive this weekend. It has many good points. I have high hopes for it’s longevity and reliability. Typing will be better. Keys are larger, and all the keys are there. (I won’t have to use any multi-press functions to get characters like an apostrophe.) I will still be able to use my tablet as a mini-PC. But the world of mini-keyboards isn’t perfect. The new keyboard is not specifically made for my tablet. It doesn’t double as a case.  It’s a 3-piece solution that takes a few seconds to set up. It will require two of my precious pockets. And it’s just not as portable. I guess the world isn’t perfect yet.

We had planned to attend a dance recital at UMBC last night, but at the last minute we decided to blow it off. We are looking forward to neighborhood concert and deserts this evening.

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day. Danita and I will spend Mother’s day with Julia this year. Bryon’s first communion is Saturday, and there will be a big family party afterwards. I know I will have a good time at the party, because the Reed family is very nice and because we will have great food. Danita is catering the affair. We are driving to Staunton, VA Wednesday afternoon. We stay overnight in Staunton and attend Shakespeare’s “Henry the Fifth”. at the Blackfriars Theatere. Thursday we will drive to NC and visit the grocery store. Friday, Danita will cook all day while the Reeds are at work and the kids are at school. We’ll come home on Monday. It’s nice that we have time to spend a couple of extra days with the Reeds.

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

Happy 6th Birthday, Elizabeth Ann Reed

As you can see from the title, today is a very special day for Elizabeth. Have a very special day, Liz.

This was a quiet week. We we went to a concert at UMBC last Saturday. We heard a cello – piano duo. The Shostakovitch was a little out there. The Prokofiev was rather screechy. But the Rachmaninoff was very nice.

The big thing for me this week is that it’s my turn to buy bagels for Men’s club tomorrow morning. The computers in the clubhouse need some attention. Other than that, we’re in the middle of two quiet weeks in a row. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.