I’m sad to announce that Mike Bertch has passed. His funeral won’t be until the 17th.

Cunningham Manor

We attended an extravagant event this week. Somehow we got on the “high roller” list for Baltimore’s Ruth’s House. We were invited to an evening at Cunningham Manor. This house looks like a restored English manor house. Actually, it’s 15 years old. The owner it is David Smith. He also owns Sinclair Media, which is a large collection of TV stations and media outlets. Most of the TV stations are in the FOX network. One of David’s children is into gardens. They flew a garden designer in from England. Today, they have two full-time gardeners to maintain the grounds. They built the house on a farm (~ 200 acres) off of Falls Road. The other houses in the area are a mix of ages and styles, but they are almost all middle-class.

We arrived to valet parking. After walking around and giving the public part of the house a good gawk, we stopped at the buffet. It was straight out of Gourmet Magazine. The roast beef was thick-cut and perfectly cooked. There were also huge prawns, crab cakes, crab dip, and lamb chops. There were about 10 different fancy desserts. The chocolate covered strawberries used dark and white chocolate to make it look like the strawberries were wearing a tux. In addition, waiters walked around with almost a dozen different hors d’oeuvres (including lobster, of course). They had the only open bar I’ve ever seen that didn’t have a tip jar. And the wine was really good. After the speech, the Smiths gave House of Ruth $75,000. The executive director is really good at looking overwhelmed. There was no way we belonged in this event. But we had a fabulous time. And we’re not going to ask to be taken off the “high rollers” list.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the condo wants us to improve the drainage of the sump pump and rain gutters behind our house. Everybody was asking who owns the land behind our house. I called CA (Columbia Association), and said the words “Open Space Land” (which was a pure guess on my part). It was a bulls-eye hit. Early in the process, we were told that open space land had to be kept in a wild condition and couldn’t be mowed. But things got better after that. The condo has a landscaping easement on the land. Nobody has found the actual copy of the easement, so we’re still not sure what rights we have. But it’s pretty certain we can mow. The people at CA are open, friendly, and professional. I think I have our property manager convinced that the condo should make a deal with CA, instead of each unit owner trying to do something slightly different. I figure this issue will take years to straighten out, which is fine with me.

Here’s my panic of the week. We bought an E-car, which entitles us to a $7500 federal tax credit. We arranged for our income to be enough to generate a $7500 tax bill, which nets out to $0 owed. Under these conditions, we didn’t have to file quarterly taxes. Now Trump’s proposed tax bill will eliminate the credit. For our travels next year, we will volunteer at a national park and visit France. Or maybe we’ll get free room and board, courtesy of the federal government penal system. What a bother first world problems are!

Danita and I are looking forward to our trip to Cricket Creek, MA next week. We’ll be visiting with Ryn and seeing how cheese is made. It should be a lot of fun.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.