The Burrow

My brother and my cousins and my daughter and my son  - they all were there and they've all agreed that I can share their stories.   Brother sent this to me and his Chicago-based daughter.  He tells a great story. Some of the language is not suitable for children, but there are no Alternative Facts in the tale. ***** Tina (our German citizen neighbor across the street ) drove ...to the Metro at  8:00 am .  Curious how an International Monetary Fund employee, a non-citizen, is protesting for women’s rights in Washington DC.  Imagine you doing that in Tehran or Ramallah. Wife and Daughter and Crowd We got one of the last parking spots.  It took 10 minutes to walk down the usually empty stairs to the  Metro to fight the crowds to get on the train which left Shady Grove at the end of the line completely full. Never been a crowd like that.  We elbowed our way through the crowds ... (and  t here was a farecard kefuffle and Brother...

Niece The Youngest is moving to Chicago, so Brother drove out to pick her up at O'Hare.  Drove out from Maryland (see below) and spent a lovely evening with FlapJilly and her parents and Sunday after noon with TBG and me added to the mix.  He's thoughtful and funny and dropped off a 300 pound piece of machinery to people who are moving within the next month or two.  I could not leave 3 glow-in-the-dark headbands because it would be one more thing to move,  but such is the wonderfulness of Uncle Brother that SIR was thrilled. I love these random encounters with him.  He plots his travels to buy a belt at a leather shop in Indianapolis, after visiting a fraternity brother in Southern Illinois.  He found the machinery on Angie's List in a community vaguely along the way.  He's right up there with the most interesting people I know, and his birthday post deserves a re-posting. ********* Pause a moment and wish my younger brother a Happy Birthday, wo...

She was insistent.  She was persistent.  She was annoying.  I couldn't hang up. She was calling from Windows Technical Support.  She'd noticed that I had been accessing sites which were dangerous and she was calling to fix the problem.  She didn't ask me for a password.  She gave me an American name through a thick but understandable accent.  And always, she insisted. Go to Control Panel  and after several more prompts she knew exactly what the code looked like on my screen.   CMI....that is very bad   and that's where it got dicey.  She gave me a string of letters and numbers to type into a box on my monitor.  That would allow her colleague to gain access to my machine remotely.  He would then fix the problem Alarm bells began to go off in my frazzled head. We screen our calls with Caller ID.  If it's an unknown number or a blocked number or a series of unrecognizable digits or the name of an institution to w...