Judy and Dan - We got shot!

We got shot...

I mentioned at the end of my last update that we were waiting to get our Covid shots and thanks to a very impressive rollout here in the USA we were all sorted out by the middle of May with the Moderna two-shot vaccine for us both.

As you can imagine, until recently, nothing very exciting happened outside the house. Judy celebrated another birthday in February and on February 28th we had our 6000 day anniversary of being married, so that was a lovely milestone.

Frustratingly this first part of 2021 has also been a curse water-wise in quick succession our Well Pump, Steam Unit (for the shower) and Hot Water Tank all died and had to be replaced costing much $$$$. Let's hope the new ones give us at least another decade. Even though they weren't quite dead we also replaced our washer and dryer, the new ones send you a text message when they are done and will even order their own detergent, if you let them!

The seasons are getting earlier every year, on March 11th this year we hit 70F for the first time and by June 5th we touched 90F. Perfect pool weather, in fact this year we had opened the pool on May 7th, and were swimming by May 19th. Even in early June when we moved here it was hard to find a good pool day. We did manage a few nice spring evenings with our fire pit, but with the higher winds and longer daylight hours, it's not quite as good as the fall. That said, the warm weather and rain enhanced the garden and made the roses particularly happy. We also brightened up the yard in the evening with some new lights.

Having achieved immunity, we got our first dinner out since the fall on May 28th at our "go to" place, the South East Grille House. It was so nice to be out of the house again. During June things finally returned to normal, we spent time with our friends and neighbors, and Judy once again started showing her artwork, this time at the Ridgefield "Bedlam" show, where everyone grabs a hammer and hangs their own pieces.

Progress on the trains continued. Dan vastly expanded his ambition to fill the room with railways, the new one has two towns, a large castle, three stations, a terminus, room for maybe six trains to be running at once and double that in the sidings.

Saving the best bit of news till last, on Independence Day weekend, after 25 years as a fully qualified Engineer and nearly 40 years since starting training in 1982, Dan put down his keyboards and retired from the computer business, at least working for anyone else. We celebrated with a lovely dinner at the Arch. It's been an incredible journey from paper tape, punched cards and coding sheets to virtual reality, computers that speak and understand human language, everything, it seems, moving to "the cloud", self driving vehicles and soon to come, Deep General AI, where silicon intelligence may actually surpass carbon!

Winter Snow