The rains last night were pretty intense. I climbed into bed with Jen sporting a turban-like scarf and looking like "Rhoda". I listened to a few more chapters of "Kingpin". At one point I stopped, took out my AirPods, and heard the sound of the clear plastic bag filled with cans and bottles, the one I leave out for the old man that gather's them the afternoon before trash pickup, being violently tossed about in side alley, and the sounds of individual cans slamming and banging against our house wall and the fence separation us from our neighbors Richard and Stephanie and their kids AJ and Brooke. Whose bedroom window was on the other side of the fence. The sound of aluminum cans rolling on aggregated cement at 11pm is, well, not exactly sleep inducing. I pride myself on being considerate of others, and what I could hear could not be 1/4 of what was in the bag, so there odds were that the noise would only escalate. Thus, I ventured out in a t-shirt and shorts and traipsed through the puddles as I gathered about a dozen of the 12 dozen cans that managed to get out. I put 'em back in the bag, put the bag in an empty bin and went shivering back inside. We both heard some sort of crack and thud later as the winds tore through the neighborhood, but it was only in the morning, as I was returning from the back yard after briefly letting the dog out, that I noticed the pieces of what had been one of the large plastic covering I put on the patio in the winter to protect the inside and make it more habitable. That segment had cracked once before but this time it was not going to be resolved with some clear sealing tape. I took the largest remaining segment and put it inside against the screen in order to limit/reduce any rain, which would require some serious winds, from coming in. Not a big deal. We walked the dog as usual, and while walking through the court as we passed by the house of the neighbor that was have build a rapport with over the years, Lawrence, let us know that his wife passed away after being hospitalized for 3 days with an infection. It was a truly hard blow to get this news. I really admire them as a couple and they would go on long, long walks daily. I'd pass then way down the road when heading to or from work and admire that they were getting out and about daily, and on top of that they are both very funny and pleasant. They are the kind of active people I want to be at their age. And now, with little warning, she's gone. We stopped and shared our condolences and availability to help in any way. As we walked away I fought back tears. The work day was busy and quickly took my mind slightly off the shock. There was a very funny moment in the end of Scrum. The topic of hair salons being closed came up. One of the people on the call said that her hair was down to her butt, and made a reference to how when it wet, in the shower, it's weird that something is touching her there. Another person on the zoom, a guy with a really long braided goatee, started to add on about his braid's length, pulling it up on camera and showing how long it was, and I immediately said "no no no, I do not need to hear about your showering experience." We laughed for a long long time. It's been good to have little 'micro conversations' in our daily meetings, it helps us stay connected. I made a run to my mom's at lunch and spent about 30 minutes further isolating the wifi issue down to her Modem. I am still thinking through some ways to resolve it. CardzMania with the usual suspects was really fun. It's wonderful to have Shiela on board and I was moved to hear that Steve sent Bud a long letter, the only way left to communicated due to Bud's sudden loss of hearing. It sounds like he's handling it well. Jen made a "lentil soup" and it was delicious. But I think we both ate too much. It was perfect with a Malbec though. Oh, and today I learned that I can option-click on the Wi-Fi status indicator in the OSX menubar and obtain a significant amount of additional network details. Fascinating.