Hosting Two Brothers

Last Sunday (23 January), my mother and I welcomed my brothers Rick and Brian for a few days. Brian arrived at St. Louis Lambert International Airport first late Sunday morning, flying in from New York. Rick arrived a few minutes later from Charleston, South Carolina, via Chicago. I picked them up from the airport and drove them home.

They mostly spent time at home while I was away at work Monday and Tuesday. Rick and Brian helped mom around the house and visited with friends in town. Last night, Rick and mom went to AT&T to get hardware for DirecTV Streaming, with intent to replace Spectrum for TV and internet service. My brothers helped set up the TVs in the house. While the upstairs TVs (family room and mom's bedroom) worked fine, mine in the basement bedroom didn't. 

This morning, AT&T service came to work on the internet service. They tweaked the wiring going into the house and installed a new 5G modem. With this in place, my TV worked better and our wireless internet (for laptops and smart phones) went much smoother. (For me, this also meant I could send items from my laptop to the printer without having to get offline to use the printer's Wi-Fi connection, as had been the case in recent weeks.) Our landline phones should be transferred from Spectrum to AT&T in the coming two weeks.

After posing for pictures, Brian took Rick to the airport to fly back to Charleston. After lunch with a friend, Brian came back here. Late this afternoon, I drove Brian to the airport for him to fly back to New York. It was good for my mom and I having my brothers home, if only for a few days.

Later.

Websites of Entities Mentioned in This Post:

St. Louis Lambert International Airport: St. Louis Lambert International Airport (flystl.com)

AT&T: AT&T Official Site - Unlimited Data Plans, Internet Service, & TV (att.com)

DirecTV: TV (directv.com)

Spectrum: Charter Spectrum® Official - Internet, Cable TV, and Phone Service

Back on the Online Radio and Into 2016

A week ago yesterday (2 January), I co-hosted Writer's Block, from ANCA Radio. Host Tim Pylypiuk and I discussed Miguel de Cervantes' classic novel "Don Quixote" and its influence on Western literature. The program--followed by Radio Drama--can be accessed here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/autistic-people-/2016/01/02/writers-block-don-quixote-10am-pstradio-drama-the-princess-pt-one-11am-pst.

After the show and lunch at home, I headed to the Church of the Immacolata (http://www.immacolata.org/) in Richmond Heights, Missouri. There, I took in the 7th Annual Mary McDermott 3rd Grade Basketball Tournament for boys and girls Catholic Youth Council (CYC) teams. This tournament was a fund raiser for a new hybrid cardiac catheterization suite being set up at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital (http://www.cardinalglennon.com/Pages/default.aspx). This unit will be named for Mary McDermott, an Immacolata parish member and student who died at age 24 in December of 2008. I am friends with Mary's father, graphic designer and soccer commentator Bill McDermott (http://www.mcdermott-design.com/bio/), and I saw Bill at the tournament. Funds were raised through admissions, concessions, and a silent auction of memorabilia. I was very happy to help out this cause in at least a small way.

Back at work last Monday (4 January), I did my part to keep out rental branch going great. We said goodbye to Hannah this past week, as she transferred to the Airport location, and welcomed Alex from the Airport to Ellisville.

After flexing out of work on Tuesday afternoon, I started work on the new issue of Middle Marker, journal of the Missouri Aviation Historical Society (http://moavhist.org/). I spent some time going over the tutorials for InDesign, the software for laying out the publication, and got going. I am anticipating getting this done by next Thursday, when the Society next meets. I worked on it some more on my off day Thursday (7 January).

Friday saw a change in our TV service at home. After about 5 1/2 years using AT&T U-verse, my mom and I switched to DirecTV (http://www.directv.com/). Mom found they had a better package for the money than U-verse. We made sure our televisions were hooked up and running properly, and we could find the many channels available to us. Our voice and Internet remain the same.

While working at the branch yesterday morning, it started to rain, then snow. We got a nice temporary coverage of snow on the ground, but it would not last. The ground was too warm, so the snow melted early that afternoon. It wasn't too comfortable being outside in any case, but my colleagues and I got things taken care of in good order.

After work yesterday, I headed to Kitchen House Coffee (http://www.kitchenhousecoffee.com/) in St. Louis' Tower Grove East neighborhood for the Saint Louis Singles Group 40+ Meetup. There were four others there at the coffee house--more had reserved, but several backed out due to weather concerns. We did have a fine time enjoying coffee and scones, produced locally. (The facility is an extension of an urban farm, with chickens in the back.) This Meetup group can be found here: http://www.meetup.com/Saint-Louis-Singles-Group-Ages-40/.

Last night was cold and windy, with the temperature early this morning reaching 10 degrees F (-12 degrees C). Fortunately, the heater in my room was operating well.

Tonight will find me at the IPMS/Gateway banquet in Oakville. Details on that event in my next post.

Later.