Note: No pictures this week.

When I started at CASA, Phyllis had a computer that didn’t work. She was using her personal laptop. Nobody seemed to anxious about it. By Thursday (I work there 4 hours Thursday morning and 4 hours Friday morning), I was still finding my way around the IT stuff. They have two networked printers, and I hadn’t figured out how to install drivers for either one. They use a custom application I didn’t know how to install. And they use Quick Books, which I don’t know much about, but only two people use Quick Books. I figured I would get Phyllis her computer Thursday. But Thursday morning, Sarah’s computer suddenly stopped. She had a court hearing Monday and needed to have some documents prepared. I discussed this with the office manager. We decided to give Sarah the computer. This made Phyllis feel pushed aside, and led to lots of office conversation. Friday, Sarah decided her keyboard needed to be replaced, and somehow managed to get her computer to announce that it needed an administrator password to install the keyboard. It was impossible to type a password, because the keyboard didn’t work. This might be the most bizarre computer failure I had ever seen. I told Sarah she would have to wait until Phyllis got her computer. Unfortunately, Phyllis wanted the custom application, and I still haven’t figured that out yet. when I left Friday there were 5 unhappy people at CASA. Phyllis because she was pushed aside and ended up not having her application. Sarah because her computer doesn’t work. The office manager, because she has to deal with Phyllis and Sarah. The director, because people are unhappy. And me, because I don’t like computers in the first place and why did I take this stupid job? I’m sure it will all work itself out eventually. But 8 hours a week isn’t very much time to work on stuff,  no matter how efficiently the time is used.

The clubhouse office is in good shape. I should finish their document with a few hours of work. That will be the end of that little project.

I suggested changes to the network for Habitat that I think will help them quite a bit. It requires spending a little money. They said they are scheduling a meeting for later on this week, but so far nobody has told me when.

I found the squirrel on the bird feeder again. I started to go after him. He jumped off the bird house onto the ground. I guess it’s a 30 foot drop. I don’t know whether he got hurt in the fall, but I haven’t seen him since then. I read that squirrels can fall 100 feet, using their tails as a parachute.

I had a story from Valentine’s day that I didn’t tell. Danita likes ice cream. A lot. I came across an easy recipe for ice cream that was supposed to be delicious. I didn’t like it because it used exotic (expensive) flavoring ingredients. I quickly found another recipe that was basically the same, but with common ingredients. For both recipes, people had replied stating how good the ice cream tasted. So I made some for Valentine’s day. It was horrid. It was so bad that Danita made a face and said I should do whatever I want with it. But she said I shouldn’t be discouraged, because even a great chef has a disaster once in a while. I replied that was true, but not everybody who has a disaster is a great chef.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

You may recall Gamera, the human powered helicopter project Joe Schmaus works on. They did some test flights in Carroll County this week. I went up for the last day of flight on Thursday. They were flying in the Ag building. It’s very large, but has a low ceiling, so they wouldn’t be able to win the Sikorsky Prize. Their purpose was to test a flight control system. The copter met the sustained 60-seconds of flight requirement and came close to the height requirement of 3 meters. But the craft kept on drifting to one side or the other, so adding a control system was their next step. You can see a video of a flight at the Gamera Web Site.

A control system needs power. Batteries are not allowed (it has to be completely human powered). The system starts with a generator designed for use with bicycles. This unit would normally have a rubber wheel riding against the front tire to power a headlight. It generates 6 or 7 watts.

Of course there has to be a computer. They selected an Arduino computer. They modified it so that it would “boot up” in 3 seconds. The control system becomes active while the pilot is warming up. You can also see the two motors, each controlling a pulley. The Gamera is a quad-copter. It has 4 propellers, each on the outside corner of a box. The pilot pedals, which pulls a string, which rotates the propellers. The pulley changes the length of the string path. A longer path means the blade rotates faster and generates a little more lift. A shorter path means the blade rotates slower and generates a little less lift. One pulley changes the amount of lift in the left / right direction. The other changes the front to back lift ratio. To save power, they don’t run both motors at the same time.

To control the craft, the pilot has switches mounted to his hand cranks. You can see the wires from the left hand switch and the aircraft wires. To connect the two sets of wires, the pilot wears a wiring harness under his shirt. Wires follow the pilot’s arms, go up his shoulders, and come out his back.

Unfortunately, the team only got one short flight on Thursday. One of the propellers broke off and landed upside down. Here’s a picture of the test crew sitting under the broken propeller, exactly as it landed. The failure happened early in the day, but there wasn’t time to repair the craft and try another flight. They have to have time for the epoxy glue to cure, and the cure time was very long because the building was a chilly 45 degrees. Fortunately, Joe warned me. I wore 3 layers of clothes.

They had difficulty getting the crew between College Park and Carroll County. It’s a 1-hour ride and most students don’t have cars. They had a skeleton crew for these tests. I was able to lend a hand by taking some of the team members back so they could attend class. I picked up a souvenir — a piece of truss and a carbon fiber strut that broke off the craft. I think of these as my own personal “Moon  Rock”. A piece of aviation history.

The rest of the week was busy. I went to the audiologist Monday. She said I had moderate loss in my right ear. My left ear is good enough that only one hearing aid would be recommended. The problem in my right ear is the three bones on the inside of the ear drum. I don’t plan to pursue the ear surgery. I decided that since only one ear had hearing loss and that was moderate, I will postpone hearing aids.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday I worked on the clubhouse network. I got everything hooked up except for the copy machine. Copy machines are amazing beasts these days. They can be used as printers, scanners, and fax machines. We had to order a long Ethernet cable before connecting the copy machine to the network. The association needs to mail out new credentials for the front gate. I used the residents data base to generate a list of who will receive the new credentials, then did a mail merge so they can print mailing labels for the 400 units.

I got the urgent clubhouse work done just in time. Habitat for Humanity contacted me because they need to replace a router. I advised them to hold on until next week. I’m going to propose a range of possible improvements. Based on their decisions, they might want to move up to a more advanced router.

Wednesday and Friday I was at CASA. I turned out to be a profit center for them. When I came, I told them their Windows XP computers were at the end of their life and need to be replaced. It’s one of those things that they knew was true, but had been ignoring. They’ve been in a panic looking for computer money. They have $3,000 in a joint account with the University of Maryland School of Social Work. CASA’s Executive Director went over there to see what the restrictions were on the money. She thought they would have to spend it on some kind of joint activity, such as a training session. You may remember I got this placement through an organization called ReServe. ReServe is sponsored by the School of Social Work. They’ve had a tough time getting up and running. When they heard that I was placed at CASA through ReServe, they were delighted. That went a long way towards their decision that the funds can be spent on CASA’s computer needs. I was surprised that CASA decided to buy 6 Dell laptops that run Windows 8 (Microsoft’s brand new and somewhat controversial new operating system). With four computers they had donated from T. Rowe Price that can run Windows 7, we’ll get them out of the hole.

I even found time for a couple of short bike rides. We had some decent weather, with temperature up around 50 and even sunshine one day. Don (who I met at dinner last week) came on one of the rides with me. We were daydreaming out loud about riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. It runs about 450 miles from Front Royal, VA to Ashland, NC. Some of the mountains are absolute killers, and there aren’t a lot of hotels or 7-11s.

Such is the exciting life of retirement these days. I hope everybody is doing well.

Note: There are no pictures this week.

This has been quite a week. For a long time, I felt I would like to have something to do on a part time or voluntary basis. All of a sudden, the dam broke. Monday I visited my doctor for a physical. I did OK, but left with recommendations for physical therapy (for my left shoulder), audiology, and neurology (for a memory check). It’s hard to keep healthy when all the ancillary systems are falling apart.

Tuesday I finished Michner’s book Alaska. I was disappointed. I learned a lot about the Aleutian Islands but only a little about the rest of Alaska.

Wednesday I went to work. I had been talking to Habitat for Humanity to volunteer. Chesapeake Habitat is an affiliate of the international Habitat for Humanity organization. It covers Baltimore County,  Baltimore City, Anne Arundel County, and Howard County; and is one of the largest affiliates in the world. Chesapeake Habitat has two parts. The “Affiliate” is the office that coordinates building or rehabbing houses to create decent affordable housing for the poor. The “ReStores”, act as a kind of a Good Will for building supplies (kitchen cabinets, doors, windows, etc.), furniture, and tools. Chesapeake Habitat has three ReStores — in Halethorpe (southern Baltimore, adjacent to the affiliate offices), Pasadena (Anne Arundel County), and Dundalk. They will open a ReStore in Columbia soon, and have plans for two more after that.

I had a quick tour of the networks Wednesday.From an IT perspective, Habitat has a fairly standard server and computer setup for the Affiliate. They have VOIP phones (phones that run on the computer network). Each ReStore has a small network with a couple of computers and VOIP phones. Somehow, all of the phones work together, but the computer networks do not. They have no IT staff. They have done all this with a hodgepodge of vendors and consultants. Every employee and volunteer has their own idea of what’s best. They have pretty much built a digital tower of babble.I need to go back for a closer look. So far, I haven’t found the router in two locations, so I know for sure I’m missing some big pieces of the puzzle.

About the same time I got into Habitat, I got an opportunity with CASA of Baltimore. This is a short-term opportunity ending on June 30. CASA is an organization that recruits and trains advocates. When social services wants to remove a child from their home, an advocate may be used to help represent a child’s interest. Advocates are also mentors for the children. I don’t know a lot about the CASA organization, but I know there is a state office and that several counties in Maryland have local offices. Each office seems to run as an independent business unit. CASA Baltimore has a dozen very old computers and a network of sorts. They are set up more like somebody’s home than a business network. They have allocated too little money to IT for too long. They have a basic idea of the important IT concepts (like backing up data), but in many ways each person in the office is their own IT manager.

I work at CASA two 4-hour days a week. This week it was Thursday and Friday. CASA is downtown and they have a small budget, so parking is an issue. Street parking is limited to 2 hours. I thought the garages charged $14 a day. I was wrong. They charge a lot more. But they have much lower rates for those who arrive before 9 (Early Bird Special). CASA has $5 discount vouchers if I park in the right garage. Thursday I arrived at 10:00 and parked on one of the wrong garages. Friday I arrived before 9:00 and parked in the correct garage. My parking Friday was $20 less than it was Thursday.

Normally, I could handle CASA and Habitat at the same time, but our club house has gone nuts. I wrote earlier about how we got a new floor in the office, and how as a result none of their computers worked. Nobody could figure out how to put Humpty together again. In fixing things, I found we have two internet providers. One is a personal DSL service from Verizon. The other is a Xfinity (Comcast) cable service set up by WPM (the property management company). In discussing how we want to organize IT for our office, WPM decided they wanted to pull their network out, which they did. I met their IT guy just as he got started working. He asked me to leave him alone until he was done, so he could focus on his task and get it done right. When he left, one office worker had lost her Internet access and also many of her files. A printer/scanner printed but no longer scanned. The video security cameras worked, but weren’t available from the network. When I tried to start hooking things up, I found out that Xfinity uses brain-dead routers that  don’t let us configure a stable office network. I recommended a small business router. It arrived Friday. I spent a good amount of time Saturday learning how to configure services I never had to worry about before. We’ll see how much I learned tomorrow, when I go over to hook it up.

At the same time, my community decided the electronic gate reader doesn’t work and needs to be replaced with a new one. The new one must be twice as good, because it offers two credentials for access, neither of which is anything at all like the credentials used by the old one. There are new databases, old databases, modified databases, and of course a whole pile of data entry. There is the issuance of new credentials which involves envelopes, letters, and maybe signatures. It’s not hard work, but it takes time and it’s the other thing I spent most of my Saturday figuring out.

If all this had to happen at once, this was a good week for it. It’s been too cold for bike riding. I rode indoors one day, but it’s not fun and my heart’s not in it.

This was also a busy week socially. We usually eat dinner out Thursdays. This Thursday one of the women Danita works with invited us to her house. It turns out her husband Don has become interested in riding a bike to Maine. He knows somebody who lives close to Bangor. He wants to get together for a follow-up, but I put him off for a while. Our neighborhood had a Bingo Friday evening. Danita went to that by herself. Saturday we met the Chaprnkas for dinner at an Italian restaurant near Reisterstown. The restaurant has upscale ambitions, offering excellent food and mediocre service. Today we’re going to a World Wide Marriage Day Mass at the cathedral downtown, followed by dinner with our Circle friends.

That was a lot of words for one week. I hope nobody got eye strain and that this finds everybody doing well.

We had some very cold weather last weekend. But by Monday, the weather started to permit cycling. Temperatures were above freezing. It was wet, but there was no rain. I rode around doing chores. Tuesday it was beautiful, sunny with temperatures up in the 60s. I did my first 40-mile ride this year. It felt great. Wednesday temperatures approached 70. It was wet, but there was no rain in the morning. I was able to ride some of my favorite hills around Ellicott City. I’m glad I went out in the morning, because the rain started in the afternoon. By evening, the winds were ferocious and the rain got quite heavy. Several streets in Ellicott City flooded. I never realized before moving here how often that happens. I never heard about it living in Baltimore County, because it happens so frequently it’s not news.

Unfortunately, winter returned by Thursday. It was sunny but 30 degrees colder. In addition, winds down a little to around 20 MPH, with gusts of 40 MPH. I was sitting in the house, reading in “Alaska” about a man who rode from Dawson, Canada to Nome, Alaska on a bicycle in the middle of the winter in 1900. (That’s about the same distance as Baltimore to Bangor.) He rode on the frozen Yukon River, carried his bike over a mountain, and then rode down the frozen bay. He enjoyed “mild” winter temperatures of 20 degrees below. Certainly if he could do that, I could ride 10 miles to Harris Teeter to pick up some groceries. I decided to start with a test trip to Target (1 mile away) to pick up some milk. By the time I got to Target, I knew I could do the 50 minute ride to Harris Teeter, and also the 50 minute ride back. But I chose buy everything I really needed at Target and go home. That was the end of outdoor cycling for the week. It was nice to have those few days.

Gazebo Bird Feeder

I finally got my gazebo! But first I have to back track a little bit. Brian and Elizabeth made pine cone bird feeders and brought them for Christmas. Danita got some string and hung them from our deck railing. By last weekend, birds were getting desperate and found the pine cones. It was terrible. Birds would fly up to a pine cone and take a quick peck. This would make the pine cone rock back and forth. The bird would have to land on the deck and wait for it to stop swinging, and then fly up for another quick peck. This is not a way to be kind to animals. Danita cut the pine cones down and laid them on the deck. Then she added some bread crumbs. That worked well and got the birds through some very cold days. No good turn goes unpunished, as they say. The birds left behind their very special “poopy presents” on our deck floor. I took care of those with a bucket and a brush early Tuesday afternoon. The rain came in handy for washing the residue off.

Cool pic captured a bird in flight. (Click the pic to see a blow-up)

That problem solved, we decided to order a proper bird feeder from Amazon, along with some proper bird food. When I saw the gazebo bird feeder, I couldn’t resist. I know it’s only 6-sided, but it *is* a gazebo! It even has plastic sides to make it a 4-season structure! I found a hanger that I could clamp to the deck railing to hold the bird feeder over the grass behind the deck. Now we can sit in the living room and watch the birds. All is well for the birds. Alas, all is not well for me. Most of the day, birds form themselves into 3 groups. the smallest group is on the bird feeder eating. The second group is in a near by tree waiting to get the the bird feeder. The third group is on the deck porch or railing, pooping away. The feeder is definitely coming down when winter’s over.

The big excitement this weekend is the Super Bowl. You may remember that after the AFC Championship game two weeks ago, I went outside to celebrate and found a completely dead neighborhood. Other neighborhoods had people outside honking their horns and having a good time. Not ours. Today we’re having a neighborhood Super Bowl party. They’re renting a big-screen TV. We will have chicken, chili, pizza, chips, salad, and open bar. Win or lose, I’m pretty sure that after the game everybody will go home and go to bed. Baltimore City has made plans to close streets and have the police out in force after the game. Nobody’s planning to station police in our neighborhood. But it’s hard to turn down a free party. This will be our cheapest Super Bowl ever.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Note: There are no pictures this week.

I got rides in last Saturday and Sunday. Then temperatures plummeted. Highs have been in the 20s. Monday I took advantage of the cold weather and took my bike in for a checkup. I managed to get a couple of days of exercise. Our neighborhood clears the streets if we get 2″ of snow or more. We had two snows of 1″ each. So I got exercise two days by pushing snow around. Baltimore snows tend to be wet and heavy. But the temperatures were so cold, the snows were dry and light, making a push broom the preferred tool. I saw my neighbor across the street out with a snow shovel. I walked across with my broom and did 80% of his drive while he was huffing and puffing with his shovel to do the other 20%.

My retirement is about to change quite a bit. I have been volunteering at the club house. There’s an occasional emergency (we have no Internet!), but mostly I make sure the backups are working. The hardest part of the work is walking over to the club house and back. This week I interviewed at CASA and at Habitat for Humanity. Both said they are interested.

CASA is through Re-Serve. That means they pay Re-Serve $15 an hour. I get $10 of that (less taxes and whatever other withholdings). If Maryland social services feels a juvenile should be removed from their home, they go to court. The judge can ask that an independent advocate for the youth be assigned. CASA is a non-profit that finds and trains volunteers to be youth advocates. Their office is old and very crowded. Because they are downtown, parking is an issue. Their budget is minimal. And they devote approximately $0 a year to IT. They have over a dozen computers, all quite old. They are all running Windows XP because none of them are capable of running a more modern operating system. Many volunteers bring their own laptops in because CASA’s computers are so abysmal. CASA scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with enough money to pay for 8 hours a week from now until June. Needless to say, they have quite a long list of issues.

Habitat for Humanity is at the opposite end of the non-profit spectrum.They renovate old houses to develop affordable, decent, low-cost housing. You have probably heard of them because President Jimmy Carter is a high-profile supporter. In our area, they have become quite large. They are well-organized, but like everybody else they have plenty of IT issues.

I haven’t actually started at either place. I accepted at CASA Friday afternoon, apparently after the executive director went home to beat the snow. Habitat is supposed to send a consultant’s report for me to review before I start doing anything. We’ll see how these opportunities work out in the real world.

We usually go out to dinner Thursdays. This week, we went upscale to Baldwin Station (a renovated train station in Carol County). It’s one of our favorites. It’s too expensive for us to go to frequently, but the food is great and Danita had a “buy one get one free” coupon. Friday afternoon and evening we had the second snow “storm” this week. I declared a household snow emergency. We broke out a nice red wine and ate junk food while watching TV Friday evening.

We got bamboozled for Sunday breakfast. Last Sunday, we went to Bob Evans for breakfast. Applebee’s is right next door, and we saw a  bunch of people over there for Sunday Breakfast. Without checking, we decided that Applebee’s must have an early Sunday brunch, and decided to go there this morning. When we got there, we found a large crowd in front of us, but there was no food. It turns out that the local Applebee’s allows various groups to do fundraisers by selling breakfast. This group was planning to do a pancake breakfast. But they wouldn’t be starting for half an hour. We were ready to eat right away and ended up at La Madeline’s. This evening we’ll be going over to the clubhouse for a pot-luck dinner.

It’s time to set the itinerary for our Alaska trip. The 2013 ferry schedule has been published.  Danita took a cut at an itinerary, then found a copy of Mitchner’s book “Alaska” at her Dad’s house. I decided it would be a good idea to read the book before working on the itinerary. This story is a real fast mover for Mitchner. He blasted through the first 50,000 years in 50 pages flat. I’m about 1/4 of the way through. So far, I’ve learned quite a bit about the history of the Aleutian Islands. Then one of my library E-books came in. I only get those for 2 weeks (non-renewable), so I put “Alaska” aside while reading my library book. So many things to do … so little time.

I hope everybody is doing well.

There wasn’t a lot of news this week.

The week started out nicely with a Ravens win. We don’t usually watch football, but we watched the game last week. We’re glad we did, because it was a heck of a game; and made nicer with the Ravens moving on to the AFC championship later on today.

Wednesday, I went to the dentist and had the right half of my mouth cleaned. This was the second half of my periodontal cleaning. This one was a little harder for me. The dental appointment was Wednesday morning. Shortly after I got home, I started feeling under the weather. I was OK, but just under the weather. Things were better by late Thursday.

We had Circle last Sunday and a party at the club house Friday.

Mostly, the weather was mild for January. The week stared with several days that were cloudy and in the 40s. Then it got down right nice – sunny and 50. I got a good amount of riding in. I didn’t get much riding in over the holidays. By last week, I was definitely down in my speed and ability to do hills. Early this week I went out looking for bonus hills to build my climbing ability. A couple of streets I usually ride on are closed for construction, so I had to take detours. This caused me to find Oella Rd, which goes to the town of Oella. This is a 19^th century mill town right next to Ellicott City. The mill was re-built into apartments and looks modern. But the houses and streets have the patina of history. Oella Rd is a pretty good hill in its own right. But once in Oella, the narrow back streets are hilly enough to earn respect from any West Virginian. I’ve had some great rides and have my bike legs pretty well tuned up. That’s good because the weather is taking a turn for the colder. I could ride when the high is 28, but I don’t see how it would be considered fun.

Here’s a picture of the entrance to Oella. It’s hard to realize how steep the hills are from a 2-D picture.

Bomb shelter or basement?

This shows a different kind of walk-out basement. You can’t tell too well, but there’s a generously wide sidewalk over the basement doors. It looks like the basement could double as a bomb shelter. It’s hard to get a good persective on this shot, in part because I was standing on the edge of the steep part of the hill, which was behind me and to my right.

Oella Row Houses

Here’s a shot of some Oella row houses. A couple of them had stained glass on the doors, but I couldn’t get a good shot of them because of the angle of the sun.

Us at Green Market

The big news this week was certainly our visit at West Palm Beach. After an uneventful trip down, we started our first day, Saturday, with a bang. We visited the Green Market, which is right next to the boating dock. Theirs is not an every-day boating dock, as you can see from some of the yachts in the picture below.

Mom & Danita at Green Market

WPB Yachts

Mom Downloading Pics

Sunday we had originally planned to go on a water taxi tour. Unfortunately, they were forecasting showers. While the showers never developed, I personally chickened out on getting into the harbor in a small boat when there was the possibility of a squall. It turned out to be a quiet day. I spent some time installing printer drivers for Mom’s laptop computer, then giving Mom pointers on downloading pictures from the Internet and printing them out. For most of us, using the computer is not associated with exercise. But in WPB, Internet access that requires something more than dial-up starts with a trip to the clubhouse, ensuring at least some physical activity is associated with computer use.

Mom and Kincachoo

Monday was our busiest day. We went to McCarthy’s Wildlife Sanctuary. This is a place that accepts exotic animals that need a home. McCarthy’s is out in the sticks. All the roads in the area are unpaved gravel, but they are in good shape for gravel roads. People do all kinds of crazy things such as try to hand-raise a tiger, or have a monkey for a pet (besides all the other disadvantages you might have heard of, they like to mark their territory), or bring home a baby turtle that will grow to be 300 pounds. The only way to see the Wildlife Sanctuary is to take a tour with a guide. Guests are permitted to handle some of the animals. We didn’t handle any of the 500-pound tigers, but we did stand withing a foot of them, with only a chain link fence between us. The guide got some of the tigers to jump up on the fence and gave them belly rubs through the fence. For an additional fee, guests can participate in a tiger petting session. After almost 2 hours at the sanctuary, we went to a tea house for lunch. In the evening, we had a rip-roaring game of Parcheesi.

Tuesday it was time to go home. Danita had an important work meeting and I had a doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, our plane had an electrical problem. This being the busy winter travel season for FL, alternate flights were booked up and spare airplanes were not available. At Noon Tuesday, instead of being at home, we found ourselves in the Fort Lauderdale airport. US Air gave us the $150 taxi ride between airports. After we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, they sprang for another $150 got us a nice hotel (Homstead Suites). We found a bakery a block from the hotel that turned out to be very ethnic (some kind of a middle-eastern place — all the customers spoke some flavor of Arabic, and the women all wore traditional Arabic head coverings). The food was quite good. I can’t remember the last time the two of us were able to have lunch for just $9 (including 2 Cokes). The hotel had a free dinner which was adequate and better than I expected. We finally made it home (via Philadelphia) early Wednesday afternoon.

Our club house got new hardwood floors in the office and craft room. This was needed for the office especially. Seven years of heavy use had made the carpet quite dirty. The new floor is quite an improvement. Unfortunately, when they moved everything back in, they found that they didn’t have Internet access. Carol, the events coordinator, called me for help. That would have been fine, but at the moment I was standing in the WPB airport trying to figure out how we would get home. When I got over to the club house Wednesday I found Steve (another resident) trying to put things back together. Nobody knows how the network in the clubhouse works, but working together Steve and I got it working in about an hour. Now that it’s easier to scoot desks away from the wall, I spent some time documenting how everything is connected for our future reference. I found that we actually have two internet services. We might be able to save the association a couple of bucks by consolidating.

Getting home late turns out to have meant that I missed some pretty good biking weather — 50 and sunny. It turned out to be rainy today, but I got a nice ride in Thursday, and the weather looks good for this weekend.

Last week I said I might have the opportunity through Re-Serve to help ACS with their web site. They decided they were taking the wrong approach and I lost the opportunity. That was a bit of a bummer, but I have to agree they had better options available. However, Re-Serve got another opportunity with an organization named CASA. Just by coincidence, they’re withing a block of ACS. We’ll see how this turns out.

I’ll end this post with some more pictures taken at McCarthy’s Wildlife Sanctuary.

At the entrance before the tour

Outside the stinky reptile house

We had some more Christmas fun with the Reeds. Elizabeth completed a shape puzzle which was purchased for Bryon. As you can see, she was quite pleased with her accomplishment.

We went on an adventure Thursday. We went to the Air Museum at College Park, the oldest airport in continuous use in the world. Both Bryon and Elizabeth had a great time. In spite of my cool new “fast shot” camera program, Elizabeth was faster. My best shot was blurred.

Jul and Pat went on an overnight date, leaving early Friday morning. We took the kids on a big adventure. Everything worked great, except I forgot my phone, so I didn’t get any pics. We started at the Fire Museum in Lutherville (just north of Baltimore). There we saw antique fire engines, got to ring a fire bell, spent time in the play room, and saw a train garden. By the time we were done, it was lunch time, so we went across the street to Friendly’s. The weather was pretty nice, so after a great lunch (with ice cream!) we stopped at a cool play ground on the way home. Of course the sun went behind the clouds as soon as we got to the play ground. But the kids had a great time. Danita and I got a pretty good amount of exercise just trying to keep up with where the kids were. We made it through the whole day without Mom & Dad, without naps, and without any breakdowns. It was pretty remarkable. It just goes to show the power of having ice cream after lunch.

Saturday the weather was back to white stuff, although it never got cold enough for the snow to stick to anything. We had a quieter day. Our adventure was going to the community theater to watch Toy Story 2, another of E’s presents. Jul and Pat got back in time for dinner. Elizabeth has this grandparent thing figured out. Safe in her mother’s arms, she started crying profusely. She turned to me and exclaimed through her tears, “I want to go on an adventure”.

After a very nice chicken curry dinner and some wonderful chocolate-covered chocolate balls Julia had made, the kids went to bed; Jul and Pat went upstairs, and Danita and I went downstairs to watch a Star Trek episode. When we came upstairs, we found that Elizabeth had been quite sick. Pat and Jul were finishing up cleaning. We had a tub filled with a drying port-a-crib mattress. Jul had started an emergency load in the clothes washer. We have a large tub on the main floor — larger than some front yard ponds. Danita filled that and used it as a soaking tub. Elizabeth went back to bed, but ended up spending most of the night being sick. Danita also got sick shortly after midnight. None of this bothered me any. I slept through it all, and didn’t learn about any of it until the next morning.

In spite of all the last minute excitement, Jul and Pat were able to get on the road fairly early Sunday morning, and arrived safely at home in an incredibly short time.

After 10 days out of the saddle, I got a bike ride in Monday. It’s amazing how quickly a 64 year-old body disintegrates.  I lost one or two gears, and at the end of a short ride my legs were sore. I goofed off New Year’s day and didn’t feel so great Wednesday. Today by Noon it was still near freezing. I rode inside on the rollers.

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve, watching one of the worst disaster movies ever made. What do you do with leftover champagne after the holiday parties? Drink Mimosas while watching the Rose Bowl parade and eating junk food, of course. The down side of that is that it pretty much means I’m not riding every day this year, starting on the first day of the year.

Today I had a phone interview with ACY. They are the folks that want somebody to re-do their web site. I can do most of the job they want, It wasn’t a slam-dunk. I should hear back from them next week.

We’re looking forward to an extended weekend with Mom in West Palm Beach.

This drawing was created by Elizabeth Reed and offered to me as a gift. If you want an original from this artist, you will have to contact her directly. She might be able to create something for you, but I can’t offer too much hope. Her creations are highly valued in some circles.

I figured out how to get the pictures out of my burst mode camera. This is great because taking over 20 pics a second is a big help at catching kids, and the pictures come out looking fine. Here’s a pic from Bryon on Christmas day.

Now a picture of Elizabeth. She’s helping Joe to find out he’s another Maryland Lottery Looser!

One of the gifts Bryon got was a full set of Pirate rain wear. How cool is that?

Elizabeth received Ladybug rainwear. But that is no where as cool as having pirate reainwear. Her solution was to inform us that this was also pirate rainwear. So we now call it the pirate ladybug rainwear.

The day after Christmas, it snowed. We ended up with almost an inch of snow on our deck. It was great fun to play in. Shortly after the third picture, the fun promptly stopped when Bryon stuffed a snowball inside Elizabeth’s shirt.

After we took care of that, we braved the elements to walk to the club house to watch another Christmas present – Toy Story – in our neighborhood theater. It was fun walking in the snow for the first half block. The second half block required a lot more coaxing. We finally got there and watched the *very scary* movie. The moral of Toy Story is that children must play with their toys nicely. After the movie, we walked around the clubhouse counting Christmas trees and nutcrackers. When we got home, Bryon and Elizabeth promptly took out their new play tool set and attached Elizabeth’s new baby doll. I guess Toy Story encouraged a backlash against the moral.

What a wonderfully successful Christmas! We had the surest sign of a successful Christmas. By the end of the day, the kids were blindly wondering around the house, totally overloaded, and unable to decide what to do. Unfortunately, I experienced a slight technical glitch. I got a new program for my smart phone. It takes two pictures a second, in the hope that I can actually capture the children in a reasonable pose, and temporarily not moving. I think it worked pretty well. I’ll know for sure when I figure out how to find the pictures this program took. In the mean time, I’ll use this picture to represent the first present.

Louise, Bob, and Bud

We’re getting ready for lunch. There is activity and anticipation of a movie, so I’m going ahead and posting this quickly. Bud came up Chrisstmas Day. The Belyeas were at Ed’s house; as were Pete, Rebecca and their two girls; and Joe. Unfortunately, the two girls were sick. Lynne & Rebbeca stayed with the girls, and the five other folks from Ed’s came down. Here’s the Belyeas and Bud.

Her’s Pete and Joe. It seems even the adults were pretty active — I wasn’t able to catch Pete sitting still.

Jul, Pat, Bryon, and Elizabeth are staying the week. Mark’s here for just today. Everybody else went home last night. I’ll see if I can post more later. I’m not to sure, though. There’s lots of activity around here.

Here’s Pat and Ed, then a pic of Pete, Joe, Mark, and Jul.