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It turns out they won’t install the new stairs for a while. They plan to replace other stairs in the complex and will do them all the same day. No one knows when yet.

But, they did widen our sidewalk so it would be easier to clear it in winter. We expected it would take a couple of days for the concrete to harden, but they started walking on it the next morning. Shows how little we know. 🙂

The most exciting part of that project is it now connects our sidewalk to the sidewalk in front of the laundry room! Notice the new angled section.

Before we had to step off our sidewalk and walk across the beginning of the drainage ditch to the other sidewalk. It was easy enough if a car hadn’t parked right up to the curb. In that case we had to either walk on the parking lot and go around the back of the car or else put our hand on the car for balance as we walked in the drainage ditch in front of it. Not a serious problem, but enough of a nuisance that we are ecstatic the problem has been fixed.

They embedded pipes in the sidewalk so water can still drain from the parking lot.

How cool is that!

September 27, 2025

This was yesterday’s Word of the Day from Spanish Dictionary:

As soon as I saw it my eyes lit up and smile spread across my face. I was surprised that it resonated so deeply.

Have you ever reacted like that to words, phrases, or pictures?

September 26, 2025

For the past 50 years to get from our second story to the sidewalk we walked down 15 steps,

and then up 8 steps.

But the stairs are rusting out so they are going to remove them and replace them with stairs going straight down to the new concrete pad they have installed.

They say the installation will take less than one day, but we don’t know exactly when they’ll do it because they poured the concrete yesterday and it has to dry first. I will let you know!

September 25, 2025

My backups are working again.

When I asked for help they replied,

We can help you to configure the backup, but can you please provide us with the hosting credentials/FTP login details?

Huh? I thought about that for a while, then realized we went through something like this years ago, when I first set up the daily backups. So I looked at what I had saved about Sucuri and found an FTP user name, password, and port number. I gave it to them and it worked.

If you are curious about FTP, here is an explanation. I’m not interested in the details so won’t read it, but I’m glad I saved the information. Otherwise I would have had to contact my hosting service and get it again.

It pays to stay relaxed and patient when these things come up — it gives our minds a chance to dig through old memories. And it helps to write things down!

September 24, 2023

The new and old Garmin trackers:

Andy’s Garmin tracker is the one on the right, and that model has been discontinued. The new model, the Mini 2, is on the left.

His is still working fine, but I want to make sure he has a backup if something happens to it. So I decided to buy the Mini and learn to set it up and use it. I was starting to feel comfortable using it and was feeling good about the whole thing. I was happy to give my brain a break from the initial learning curve and take my time playing with it, gradually learning more features.

Unfortunately, life is seldom that simple. Sucuri, the company that does the firewall and backups for my blog emailed me this:

Hello!

We recently rolled out a major upgrade to the Sucuri Backup platform.

However, we found that the new backup platform is unable to connect to your hosting server using the FTP/SFTP credentials you previously provided.

The most common reason for this is that your hosting server is either blocking these connections, or is configured to only allow them from specific IP addresses.

To help ensure the backup platform can connect properly, can you ensure the IP addresses linked below are allowed/whitelisted for FTP/SFTP connections as appropriate on any firewalls or security applications on your hosting server?

Please also ensure that any existing blocks are removed, as allowing the IP addresses doesn’t do this automatically on most platforms.

Our backup platform IP addresses can be found here:

https://pastebin.sucuri.net/ixzb1l3g9ysjf2o

Please let us know once this has been completed so we can re-test the backups and ensure everything is working as expected.

We will keep the ticket status set to ‘waiting’ so we can review it once we hear back.

Best regards

The Sucuri Support Team

What?? I didn’t even want to know what they were taking about. I didn’t want to deal with it. They don’t have phone support so I submitted a ticket telling them I needed help, and will forget about it until I hear from them.

In the past I used to hate having things like this hanging over my head. I would tackle problems right away and push to get them finished and off my plate. That changed a lot when I read this quote:

Work is precious. Save some for tomorrow.

So now patience it is, for the most part.

As luck would have it, Sunday’s Calvin and Hobbes reinforces that idea. Click on picture for higher resolution.

Calvin and Hobbes

Yes! I enjoy learning new things, but I want to enjoy the process. Calvin and Hobbes are right, having fun is important. We need to keep our priorities straight.

September 23, 2025

getting food where they can. Click on the pictures to see the videos.

This one was in Alaska going after salmon:

This one was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, going after a local food source:

That’s why we have bear-proof dumpsters.

September 22, 2025

I’m still reading a couple of comics most days. For instance, in this one the real estate agent is telling the ducks the roof doesn’t leak and basement is dry, but the seller will fix that:

Justo and Franco

I’m still doing the daily email from Spanish Dictionary, such as

And for my daily practice at Duolingo I’m sometimes doing the speaking exercise instead of the word matching:

None of them take very long, but baby steps add up if you keep at it.

September 21, 2025

Kaitlin sent this line from their local Police Blotter:

9:54 a.m. An officer investigated a report of an incident between a dog and a chicken on Suffolk Lane. 

It doesn’t say what happened to the chicken.

I do love that police blotter. In the issue I read there was one report of a larceny, one of vandalism, and several about traffic citations. But the rest were about the police helping in medical emergencies, reports of lost items, a missing road sign, gravel on one road, etc. My favorite (besides the dog and the chicken) was

6:15 a.m. An officer was unable to locate a dead turkey reported to be in the road on East Street.

What a neat place to live, and how refreshing it is to read about it.

September 20, 2025

Click on the picture to see the video.

September 19, 2025

The large celery:

September 13, 2025

September 16, 2025

It didn’t make it, but the latest one is still growing.

September 13, 2025

September 17, 2025

We’ll have to see what happens. It’s fun to watch them start growing almost as soon as I put them in water, but I don’t really care if they put out roots and can be potted.

I bought some chive seeds and planted them in the container the big celery came out of. I’m curious to see what will happen. I’m not expecting much because they’re supposed to get partial shade and may not get enough sun.

September 18, 2025