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.)

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.

I am writing this on Tuesday, Feb 4. If you go to the web site, you will find a couple of pics of Mom and Glen.

The trip to West Palm Beach was such an epic journey that it grabs the headlines two weeks in a row. Our trip down was completely uneventful. Both flights were on time. The rental car was as advertised. Everything happened as planned, arriving at Mom’s place late on Friday.

We had a nice rhythm to our days. We had an activity in the morning and a second activity in the evening. We had perfect weather, highs in the 80s and rain only at night after we got home. In the afternoon, Danita and I went to the clubhouse to use the internet while Mom and Glen took their naps. Saturday Mom, Danita, and I visited the Green Market. This is a series of vendor tents in downtown W Palm Beach. We toured the vendors, walked up the main street, and viewed the yachts in the harbor. As a bonus, we got free parking, thanks to Mom & Glen’s insider knowledge.

Ann Norton Sculpture Garden

Sunday all four of us visited the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden. This is quite an unusual attraction. The Nortons bought three adjacent lots in a high-end development right off the river. Ann built her sculptures in the back yard. The surrounding houses are still residences. When entering the sculpture garden, it feels exactly like entering a private residence. The only thing marking the house as a public attraction is a small cardboard sign they put in the lawn when they open in the morning, and take up when they close. They have a rotating art exhibit in the house, the sculptures in the back yard, and the studio building. Besides the sculptures, the yard is filled with many different varieties of palm trees. The area is well shaded. We had a nice breeze. Parts of the yard had a great view of the river. Sunday evening, we watched the TV commercials while the Seahawks trounced the Broncos in the Super Bowl.

Grassy Waters Preserve

Monday, the four of us went to iHop for breakfast, then up to the Grassy Waters Preserve. It’s quite an interesting area, with miles of pristine wetlands. The area is filled with Cyprus trees. My first impression was that the trees had all died, because they look scrawny and their leaves had dropped for the winter. It turns out the Cyprus trees are small because the area’s water comes only from rain. This makes for few nutrients, but excellent water quality. We were also surprised to see almost no wildlife. But as the naturalist explained, the wildlife has plenty of room to spread out in the area. We see more wildlife in the community ponds because they are forced to concentrate themselves in the small area where they can live. Monday evening, we saw the movie “2 Guns”. We enjoyed the movie immensely, and were quite surprised to see a few people leaving early.

Tuesday we stopped at McDonald’s for a carry-out breakfast. We took our breakfast to Mounts Botanical Gardens, where we enjoyed eating in the gazebo, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Afterwards, we strolled through the rest of the gardens.

Of course, there was tons of food. Mom made so much food, half of it stayed in the freezer. We simply couldn’t eat everything she prepared. We had lasagna, chicken and dumpling soup, sausage and onion hoagies, pork tenderloin, and  snacks too numerous to mention.

Our flight home had lots of empty seats. Danita and I enjoyed an entire row to ourselves. There was plenty of bad weather up north, but we were fortunate to return on the day between the two winter storms. We had no trouble, but folks connecting to flights further north were out of luck.

We had a wonderful time. Thanks to Mom and Glen for being such wonderful hosts.

I am writing this on Friday, Jan 31. There are no pics.

Is there a time when you should not tip a waitress? I have read that it is poor form not to tip. They say bad food is the kitchen’s fault. Slow service is the management’s fault (for not having enough wait staff). Last night was the first time in memory I didn’t tip. We went to Ruby Tuesday at 9071 Snowden River Pkwy, Columbia, MD 21046. (Just to keep the record straight.) The restaurant was cold. When our waitress came to take our order, I told her I was cold. She said the heat was already all the way up, she had been cold all night. I didn’t find that very helpful. While waiting for the food, I got colder. I put my jacket on. Then I put my hat on. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t warm up. On my third complaint, our waitress said they had decided to close this section because it was too cold. “Thanks”, I said. Just before we got the check, the manager came over. He offered to re-seat us. (After we were done eating). He said the section was now closed. (Still not very helpful.) He said next time, let them know when we sit down and they will re-seat us. By now, Danita and I were both pretty unhappy. The last comment from the manager convinced me not to leave a tip. We had complained when we first sat down, and several other times. The manager told me the waitress had done nothing until the meal was over. I wonder if the waitress and the manager think we were unreasonable. I doubt we’ll find out, because we won’t be going back any time real soon.

On a much brighter note, we’re going to Florida. (There might be pictures next week.) Danita has a meeting at work this morning, so we booked an afternoon flight down. We’re returning Tuesday.

We’re going down to visit Mom and Glen of course. We’re looking forward to seeing them. Just to show how hip Mom is, she has already set up a Super Bowl party. Normally I would say it’s also quite nice to escape some cold and lousy weather. Lord knows it’s been cold enough this year. There are news articles about ships getting stuck in the ice in the bay. But as it happens, we are heading into a warm spell. Baltimore temperatures will be near 50 while we are in Florida. Not to worry. It will be cold again by Tuesday, along with a little freezing rain.

Wednesday I have a doctor’s appointment. Also on Wednesday evening I *don’t* have my second class. They cancelled my class due to low enrollment. They were very good about cancelling the class promptly and letting me know in a timely manner. But I haven’t heard about the refund yet. I guess that can wait until next week.

I’ve also been busy with issues at the clubhouse. Issue 1: Our assistant is pretty good at entering residents in our database by now. The only thing I’m doing is keeping an eye on recent entries. Issue 2: I found several people who have passes but aren’t in the database. We think these are folks who move in, receive passes at settlement, and don’t register with the clubhouse. I wrote a new report in the database to help the staff quickly find and manage this issue. I generated the list of affected residents and helped the assistant get started on getting these folks registered. Issue 3: The program I used to back up one of the computers hasn’t been working since our new assistant started. I’ve been trying to fix the program and doing backups manually. Last week, I gave up on the old program. I found another program, got comments from everybody concerned about such things, installed the new program, and updated our IT documentation. I thought everything was all squared away. I stopped into the clubhouse yesterday to say hi, only to learned about Issue 4: they needed to move one of the computers. This involved crawling on the floor, routing wires around furniture, and such. This while they were fretting about decorations for the Super Bowl party. Now everything at the clubhouse is squared away. I’m certain of it, because I’m not stopping in again until next week.

Well, I’ve been getting pretty good at cold weather riding (as long as the streets are clear of snow & ice, of course). I can get a short ride in before flight time. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 1/26. There are no pics.

What a great week. It started with a 3-day weekend that stretched into 4 1/2 days. Snow started about 9 Tuesday morning. That left just enough time for me to gas up the car and pick up a prescription. The snow matched the forecast — about 8″, ending around midnight. UMBC was closed. Danita was forced to stay home. Lunch was homemade, of course. Tomato leak soup and onion triangles. Dinner was pasta with a tomato/onion/spinach/bacon topping. Sometime during this frantically busy day, Danita found time to make orange cream scones for breakfast Wednesday. During circle Monday evening, we discussed New Year resolutions. Mine was to lose 10 pounds. I haven’t make much progress on that one so far.

I had a dental appointment early Tuesday morning. There wasn’t much chance that was going to happen. Barbara from the dental office called to reschedule. Danita answered the phone. The first thing I said was to complement Barbara on her quick thinking — her having called and got my wife, quickly pretending she was from my dentist office.  It took a few beats before she figured out I was insinuating she was my girl friend. She thought that was so funny she had a hard time getting the appointment rescheduled. The women who run that office continuously amaze me. I am one of many patients. But while Barbara and I were joking around, the woman who does billing figured out who I was, knew what I was coming for, and asked Barbara to ask me to make sure and bring my “EOB”. I didn’t know what my “EOB” was. (It really doesn’t matter what it was, and it would take too long to explain.) This triggered several soto voice exchanges while we shared our confidential information about my “EOB”. It turns out I didn’t have my “EOB”. But I was forgiven in exchange for providing several minutes of entertainment.

We spent most of Tuesday reading and relaxing. When we lived in Kingsville on days like this, we used to have an “all day fire”. This was very nice, but it involved trudging out to the wood pile in the snow, using a wheelbarrow to haul the wood into the garden shed (after inflating the wheelbarrow tire),  hauling arm loads of wood into the living room, and dropping wood chips all over the garage / laundry room / kitchen / hall / living room floors. That was followed by cleaning up the next day. Plus all the effort of acquiring and preparing the woodpile during the previous summer. It may not be quite as impressive to have a gas fire. But it sure is a lot easier to walk across the living room and flip a switch.

Yoga was cancelled Tuesday evening. That left us free for a full-fledged snow emergency. (THIS IS NOT A DRILL). Danita went back to work at Noon Wednesday, and the fun was over. We had such a good time, it took me days before I started feeling cabin fever. It’s been quite cold since the snow. Most days, it’s 10 or 20 degrees warmer in Talkeetna, Alaska than it is here.

The snow that’s still on the streets is enough to keep my bike indoors. It’s a good opportunity to do some repairs. I’ve worn out my gears. When I press the pedals hard, the chain skips. I received the last of the parts I need Saturday. My bike’s in the basement warming up. I’ll be trying to effect repairs tomorrow. In the mean time, we have a neighborhood dinner party in a little while. I have to go — it is definitely not a good idea to arrive late!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, Jan 19. There are no pics.

It’s a three day weekend, which is always nice. The weather has been mixed, but I was able to get a couple of rides in. One thing for sure this time of the year, there’s no danger of having to drink warm water on a ride.

We didn’t have anything planned for Friday. But there was 30% of snow showers in the evening, plus another 30% of snow showers late at night, plus a 30% chance the forecast was wrong. That adds up to a 90% chance of snow. We had our traditional snow emergency party. Fortunately, there were several clumps of snow on the deck when we got up Saturday. Saturday Danita went to a neighborhood Bingo. People brought their own “white elephant” prizes. Danita won a package of 18 glue sticks. Fortunately, Lynne teaches kindergarten. We’re pretty sure she can use them.

Tonight, our condo has a pot luck dinner. We are planning to have Circle Monday, but there is some flu running around, so we’ll have to wait and see about that.

Some of the condos have a party every month. This is the first party our condo has had since we moved in. We have an awful lot of government. Below Howard County, there is the Columbia Association. That is divided into five communities — ours is Long Reach. Then there’s or neighborhood organization, Snowden Overlook. Finally, Snowden Overlook is divided into 5 condo associations. Ours is Kendall 1, with a little less than 80 houses. Apparently, before we moved here, the president of Kendall 1 was conflict habituated. There were royal battles. At one point, all the Kendall 1 officers except the president resigned. Their idea was that this would force the president out. But the president appointed interim replacement officers. Some residents sought an opinion from a lawyer, who said the president was within her rights. I’m not sure how, but somehow after that there was a wholesale replacement of Kendall 1 officers. Well, I obviously heard only one side of this story, but it’s interesting none the less. Whatever happened, it seems to have had an impact on our condo association. Since we moved in, we’ve had a laid-back condo association, and one that is  not very active socially. Also, our condo is relatively lax in enforcing restrictions on lawn ornaments, wind chimes, and minor exterior modifications.

Our condo is comprised of all houses on Endless Ocean Way, which is a loop. We are divided into “inies” and “outies”. Those who live on the outside of the loop all have views of trees, which are there because of wetland areas. In other words, all our back lots are rather steep hills down to some kind of stream. We all have walk-out basements and decks high above the ground. We “outies” have issues because paint won’t stick well to the materials used to trim the deck posts. We get no help from the condo because decks, porches, and driveways belong to the unit owner, not the association. Those who live on the inside of the loop all back into each other’s units. The builder did a lot to maximize privacy, but of course those living on the inside loop have less of it. The “inies” also all share an issue with rain water. The all have a patio behind their unit, with access from the main floor or the basement, via a stairwell. Apparently, the builder did not do a very good job of providing rain water egress. They have some areas that are pretty wet, and they all rely on their sump pumps to keep their basements dry. A couple have had their sump pumps fail, which resulted in a flooded basement. There has been discussion about the importance of keeping the stairwell drain clear. Most “outies” have sump pumps that never run. Danita and I, and a couple of units near us, are the exception. I suppose there is an underground stream that runs near our unit. We are “outies” who have the issues of both “outies” and “inies”. Anyway, it will be interesting to see who shows at the pot luck Sunday. Hopefully, we’ll pick up some folks who don’t often attend social events.

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

I am writing this on Sunday, Jan 12. There are no pics.

This has been the week of Argh.

We had Argh weather. First we had snow. Then we had quite warm with rain and heavy snow melt (which caused dense fog). Then we had more rain and very high winds. By Tuesday I was getting cabin fever. The sun was out. But the temperature at 6:30 AM was -1. I rode my bike on the rollers in the morning. It was very unsatisfying. I needed milk. Wegmans is just 10 minutes by bike. And by mid-day the temperature was up to 8, with the wind down to 15 MPH. Normally, that isn’t very inviting. But after a week in the house, it was good enough. The ride was quite cold. 10 minutes of exposure at one time was plenty. But it was a lot more fun than riding rollers in the basement. Here’s some trivia for you. The biggest effect of wind wind on a winter ride is the additional effort required when riding into the wind. With the bike going 10 to 20 MPH, an additional 15 MPH wind doesn’t add to the wind chill all that much. The weather was wet Wednesday, but I got a very pleasant ride in Thursday, with nominal wind and 35 degree temperature. Then it got wet again.

Computers have been Argh. Our new office assistant has been having troubles using the database. I re-did the data entry screens. We’ll see if this is an improvement for her. In poking around, I found we have issued several security passes to residents who aren’t in the database. Fortunately, we know who holds the passes. I could only find a dozen or so missing residents. The community president and I exchanged several E-mails. I suggested a change in office procedures which I don’t think will be very popular with our staff. Lou has been very supportive. It looks like we caught this before it became a big problem, and we should be able to resolve it in a few weeks. To help the staff, I am writing a new program to let them quickly know whether a resident is in the database.

Then the backup program for the assistant’s computer stopped working. I have contacted tech support twice. So far, it’s not working yet. In the mean time, I manually do a backup daily. (Well, almost daily.)

Then I added some new entries to my very long list of passwords. I have a program that keeps my passwords encrypted on my PC and phone. I was synching my phone to the PC when the synch program stopped working. I reset my computer and turned off the phone, only to find the phone wouldn’t turn on again. My favorite solution to that problem is to pull the battery from the phone. (Guaranteed to reset everything.) But this phone has a battery that cannot be removed by the user. A quick web search gave the *almost correct* procedure to force the phone to completely reset and start up. A rather longer search found the error in the procedure I found earlier. After I got my phone running, I had to remove the program and data file from my phone and re-install it before everything was synched up and working.

Danita had an Argh work week. They are interviewing for a director for her group. They had somebody come in this week, which took most of her time Monday and Tuesday. Then she had to go to Godard twice (which is a much longer drive). She was in Godard Friday and left promptly at 4, but had lousy and heavy traffic coming home anyway.

Fortunately, we are having two neighborhood parties this week. We had a Happy Hour Friday, and we are having a concert this evening. Plus, the weather is getting quite nice. Temperatures are climbing quickly and should be close to 50 soon, and the sun is trying to break through the clouds. It’s the best time of all — time for a ride!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.