I am writing this on Sunday, 10/13. There are no pics.

We had a lot of rain this week. The remnants of the tropical storm came through as predicted on Monday. The weather cleared up the next day. But it was back with a vengeance Thursday. It gave the sump pump quite a workout. It’s been raining ever since. There was a weather forecast that the rain would clear up and that next week would be nice, but the forecast keeps on changing … and always in the direction of a little more rain.

I tried going on a group ride on Columbia trails Sunday. I decided that trail riding just is not for me. Margret started this ride group, and she is the only driving force. I give her credit for having the moxy to start the group, and she is a kind person. But she has absolutely no street smarts. She stops without clearly calling out what she’s doing. Generally the stop is either just before going up a hill (that leaves no chance to use momentum to help yourself up the hill) or at a choke point on the trail (if folks behind don’t see what’s going on, they have nowhere to go to avoid hitting somebody ahead who has stopped). But mostly I just don’t enjoy riding the trails.  I find the trails to be narrow. I’m concerned about rolling off the edge of the pavement. Pedestrians and leaves make the ride more challenging. I guess I’ll just stick to playing in the street. I had another group ride scheduled for yesterday. It is a fund raiser for the local bicycle advocacy group. It looked like a nice ride, but it was postponed due to the rain. They re-scheduled it for next Sunday. The ride starts early in the morning. Being retired, I have a lot of flexibility — up to 6 1/2 days a week for riding. But Sunday mornings are committed. Maybe next year …

Bike riding was sparse this week. We had nice weather Tuesday, but I wanted to do some chores in the morning and only got a short ride in the afternoon. I went up to Baltimore County to do a long ride Wednesday. It was fun to easily ride up hills that used to be extremely challenging. But for some reason I felt tired, it was cloudy and cool all day, and I found Palmisano’s picnic pavilion to be distressingly dirty. I managed to get a short ride in Saturday between the morning and evening showers.

We ate out a lot this week. Danita is spending 2 days a week at Bud’s house, trying to help him downsize for his upcoming move. Ed and Lynne are also going down to Bud’s. They did a wonderful job cleaning out and painting the garage. Bud is living in a large house, overflowing with everything needed to support a family of 6. He is moving to a spacious apartment in a senior community. He realizes his apartment will be smaller than his house. He understands he has to downsize. But when it comes to deciding which of the pots he won’t need, it’s hard to make a decision. Extend that out to everything from bed sheets to wine glasses –it’s a lot. In addition, the family is looking at options for selling the house. A neighbor might be interested. A real estate person came to offer advice (and ask for the listing). All this becomes quite overwhelming for Bud and somewhat stressful for Danita. Danita was at Bud’s Monday and again on Saturday. She’ll go back again tomorrow. We generally go out to eat when she comes home from a day at her Dad’s. In addition, we had an evening of shopping and ended up eating out Thursday. Then we had a neighborhood party Friday.

The shopping trip was to get a watch for Danita. After 10 years, Danita’s old watch stopped working. This is not a hard problem to solve, but it turned out not to be trivial.

Q: We have lots of gadgets we have that tell time, does Danita need a watch?

A: She is frequently in meetings where having a watch is very useful. Plus, she likes wearing the watch.

Q: Danita takes good care of her stuff and the old watch looks great. Should we fix the old watch or buy a new one?

A: A repair is $50, and it isn’t guaranteed to fix the watch. How many more years will the repaired watch last? The jeweler needs time to get the watch fixed, during which Danita won’t have the watch. We can buy a new watch in a single evening.

Q: Where should we go to buy a watch?

A: Danita wanted to see and touch the watch before buying it. That means we need a brick & mortar retail outlet. We almost never go to the mall. It’s too big and too noisy. But in Columbia, that’s the only place to go to buy (or fix) watches. (I checked.) I went to the mall during the day to pre-shop (figure out our options and select the best store to visit). I found the mall entrance that is closest to the store I selected. We went to the mall right after work. But there is rush-hour traffic to contend with. It takes time to look at different watches and make a decision. The band has to be adjusted. The sales people were great, but it took over an hour to buy a watch. After all that, maybe we could just grab a pizza for dinner.

We decided to see the movie “Gravity” today. We went to the matinee. There are plenty of critics on the web. I agree with most of them. But at the end of the day, this is a tremendous movie. It’s well worth going to watch. The only thing is, I didn’t realize it would be in 3-D. I really prefer the “old fashioned” movies where the picture stays on the screen. This movie added lots of spinning and turning to the usual 3-D affects. Danita was a little woozy when we came out.

I just received some really good news. For those of you who aren’t in the loop … Glen got home yesterday. He is having some difficulties. There will be ongoing at-home OT and PT. There will be lots of doctor’s appointments. But both Mom and Glen are delighted that he is home.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.