Danita is still not doing very well. She is looking forward to her doctor appointment June 10. It seems like a long way to go.

We gave a “Lunch & Learn” presentation Thursday. Typically a resident will talk about their career. Danita and I decided to offer a joint presentation based on our experience as National Park Service volunteer rangers. It was a lot of fun. That evening we went to a BSO concert. We were surprised the musicians weren’t sitting on the stage playing around with their instruments. When the musicians filed in, many in the audience gave a standing ovation. We didn’t know this, but the BSO management had announced earlier in the day that the summer concert season is cancelled, the concert season is changed from 52 weeks to 40 weeks, and the musicians will not be paid for those 12 weeks. There was a lot of emotion in the audience. When we got out in the lobby, we checked for news articles on our phones. The BSO is over $16 million in debt. Maybe the management is taking a prudent step. Anyway, it was a good concert.

We’re not through talking about Thursday yet! After we got home, Howard County had their second tornado, exactly one week after their first tornado. Tornadoes are rare in this part of the country. Having one in the summer is unusual. This one was a little further to the west — about 15 miles from our house. Only a few buildings were damaged, with plenty of trees down and power outages.

I’m moving on to Friday, but it turns out I’m not quite through with the tornado. The weather Friday was gorgeous, so I decided to do an out-and back (same roads both ways) to that area. It’s a route I ride about once a week. The objective is to ride 20 miles to the Glenwood Library so I can eat a Royal Farms sub and a bag of chips, then return home. Riding out was fine. Coming back, the road was blocked because a tree fell on a car. Considering the traffic at that spot is typically one car every couple of minutes, that is a quite unusual event. I ended up taking a 30-minute detour to get around the road closure.

Moving on to today, I thought the aftereffects of the tornado would certainly be over, but I was wrong. It is another beautiful day. I did a ride to Ellicott City. This is another ride I do once or twice a week. The objective is to ride a circle route of about 20 miles total, taking many hills as possible, and see whether The Breadery has any chocolate-raspberry muffins. (They didn’t, I had to settle for a 3-cheese scone.) I had to take a walk in the woods to get to my scone. A tree had fallen earlier in the morning, taking a power line down and closing the street.

That’s plenty of excitement for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.