I had to get a CT scan of my nose and sinuses this afternoon (my allergist wants to see how well his treatment is working – I can still smell things, so I’m hoping he’ll be happy with the images). When I arrived at the radiology center, I was handed the usual bundle of forms and asked for my ID and insurance cards, which I handed over.

A minute after I finished the forms, one of the clerks called out “David”, so I went up to his window. He handed me a driver’s license, a Medicare card, and an AARP insurance card, which I put in my wallet, and he told me to go into the next room for the CT scan. But I happened to look at the form he’d printed – it said “Neck”.

I’m not a doctor, but I was pretty sure that my allergist didn’t care about my neck. So I asked the clerk to double-check against the original request, and he assured me the doctor wanted a scan of the neck. Then he added “for dizziness, just as Dr. [mumble] requested.”

“[mumble]” wasn’t the name of my doctor. Dizziness wasn’t my problem. And I wasn’t the “David” he’d called. So I gave him back the driver’s license, Medicare card, and AARP insurance card and went back to my chair to wait.

A few minutes later, a different clerk called out “David Singer”. She gave me my license and insurance cards, and the form she’d printed was for a nasal/sinus CT scan.

The CT scan itself was uneventful, and I walked out with a disk full of images that I can’t really interpret – I expect to hear from the allergist in a couple of days.

We were at the Farmers’ Market this morning for the first time in a month; it’s still local king salmon season, so we had that for lunch today.

I spent the rest of the day catching up – and the rest of this post is basically documentation for Future Me in case I have to prevent SSL certificate expiration or if I want to track down what really made a flight late. Feel free to read along, or to stop here!

While we were traveling, I got an email telling me that the SSL certificate for this blog was going to expire on September 1. This surprised me because I thought I had it set up to automatically renew itself, but I didn’t want to do anything until I got home. Today, though, I took a look at the problem.

First, I had to get rid of the last traces of the temporary domain I’d used while migrating the blog to its new server. That was easy and almost obvious.

The second thing I had to fix was the DNS entry for one of my auxiliary domains – it had an “A” record for the old address of my server, which no longer worked. I changed it to a “CNAME” pointing to the server – that way, it’ll move automatically if I change the address of the server.

The final problem was harder to figure out – the certbot renew command failed with an error message telling me that my account (with Let’s Encrypt) didn’t exist. After a bit of digging, I found that I’d created a new account when I set up the new server but that the old account was still specified in the configuration file in /etc/letsencrypt/renewal – changing the account line in the configuration file fixed that problem, and I was able to renew the certificates.

I won’t really know if I fixed everything until the next renewal attempt in about 60 days, but at least now I’ve documented things for Future Me.

And speaking of documenting for Future Me, I wanted to find out more about why our Boston-LA flight on Friday was so late and whether Delta had actually held the LA-San Jose flight for us.

FlightAware is my usual tool for looking at flight histories – I used its search tool to find the LA-San Jose flight and then used the “Track Inbound Flight” link to go back through all of the flights which that airplane (tail number N289SY) had taken on Friday. Its first flight of the day left Reno more than an hour late, and it never caught up – so it arrived in LA late and Delta didn’t have to hold the departure for us.

I was also curious about what had happened on the Boston-LA leg; FlightAware wasn’t any help. I knew there was a site that showed every event affecting a flight’s timing but I couldn’t remember its name – it took a while to find it again: FlightStats.

I looked at FlightStats’s record of events for that flight (DL346). There were four different airplanes assigned to the flight, starting with N707TW at 3:05am EDT on the 11th. A bit over a day later (4:26am on the 12th), they changed to N722TW. At 11:40am, yet another change, this time to N717TW. And a mere 43 minutes later, another reassignment to N545US (that’s when they downgraded us from Delta One and sent us credit vouchers).

But they weren’t finished making changes yet – at 11:32pm on the 12th, they changed the expected wheels-up time from 11:10am to 4:44pm (oops!) and two minutes later, they changed the airplane to N537US, which eventually brought us to LA.

What happened to all those other planes? I thought you’d never ask. N545US got assigned to the morning BOS-LAX flight on the 13th, which operated on time. N717TW didn’t go anywhere on the 13th (it spent the whole day in LAX – I’m guessing maintenance). N722TW flew LAX-BOS on the afternoon/evening of the 13th. And N707TW had a busy Friday the 13th, flying LAX-BOS and BOS-SEA.

I’m glad I’m not in charge of scheduling airplanes for Delta (or anyone else)!

We got home a few minutes after midnight this morning. Our flight from Boston was late getting into LA, but the flight leaving LA for San Jose was also delayed, so we and our luggage made the connection (and they were able to put us into First Class for that flight, too).

This was our first trip on Delta in a very long time; I had mixed feelings about the experience. On the good side, everyone from the airline was VERY helpful and did everything they could to make our trip pleasant. On the other hand, I’ve never had so many itinerary changes (not even counting the delays yesterday) and trying to reach someone at the airline by phone or chat took a very very long time.

We’re flying them again to my 50th high school reunion in October – I’m crossing my fingers for a smoother experience.

This morning, we looked at the garden – it’s been busy while we were away. In particular, the cucumber vines were very generous, though they may be done for the season.

We’d set the alarm on Diane’s phone to make sure we’d be at the airport in time for our 11am flight. About ten seconds after it sounded, Diane asked me what the two texts from Delta meant – I’m not sure I’d opened my eyes yet, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be good news.

I was right. They’d already changed the connecting airport twice since we booked it (from Atlanta to Seattle to LA). Yesterday, they told us that due to an unplanned equipment change, we’d have to fly First Class instead of Delta One (lie-flat seats) and they were giving us each a $500 voucher for the inconvenience. Since we hadn’t booked Delta One in the first place and we were traveling on miles, I thought it was a pretty good deal.

This morning’s message was a different story. Our BOS-LAX flight was delayed nearly five hours and we’d miss our connection home. One of the messages implied that we’d been rebooked on a later flight but the other one implied that we’d have to go online to rebook.

I played it safe and went online – we hadn’t been rebooked. And the system wouldn’t let me rebook. So I called; all agents were busy, but instead of waiting on hold, the system offered to call me in 28 minutes or so.

35 minutes later, after we’d finished breakfast, I downloaded the Delta app to try their text support; their automated agent put me on hold, too!

But a few minutes later, my phone rang and it was Delta – the agent was extremely helpful and got things straightened out to ensure we could take the later flight out of Los Angeles.

What could we do with an unexpected morning in Boston? We hadn’t been able to see everything we wanted to see yesterday, so we called our son and arranged to meet at the Paul Revere House in the North End. We’d walked by it on the Freedom Trail many times, but we’d never gone in.

Like the birthplaces yesterday, it was a quick tour – four rooms on two floors, but unlike the birthplaces, the building was air conditioned, which encouraged us to stick around and ask questions. They also own the adjacent building and have filled it with artifacts and information about aspects of Paul Revere’s life other than the Midnight Ride. I’m glad we were able to visit.

We continued along the Freedom Trail to Old North Church, another site we’d passed by on previous trips.

It was quite interesting, but very hot – we decided against touring the crypt, but we did get to see a bust of Washington that Lafayette called a “faithful image”.

After a relaxed lunch at Boston Public Market, we hiked to Benjamin Franklin’s birthplace – which burned down centuries ago. The current building honors him (see if you can find it) – but it wasn’t worth the hike.

We said goodbye to Jeff again and returned to our hotel, only to discover that our keycards didn’t work. Pro tip: if you ask for a late checkout after the start of your stay, stop by the front desk to get your keys updated.

Then it was off to the airport for our delayed flight. We had to walk a long way to get to the right checkin counter, and somehow Diane tripped and fell along the way. We were immediately surrounded by Delta and Logan people who were eager to help her – they called the paramedics and arranged for a wheelchair to take her through the terminal. They even gave us access to the Delta Sky Club! The paramedics wanted Diane to go to the hospital “just in case”, but she declined – she’s a little bit scratched up and her sunglasses didn’t survive, but she’s otherwise ok.

Our flight was further delayed, but we’re finally in the air! Our new connection in LA is very dubious, but hope springs eternal. And we have clothes for tomorrow in our carry-on anyway.

Another day of American History today; we took the T to the Quincy Adams station for a planned 10am visit to the John Adams and John Quincy Adams Birthplaces, part of Adams National Historic Park. Google claimed that the Birthplaces were an 11-minute walk from the T station, but its omniscience fell short of routing us through the construction zone at the station, and the MBTA’s signage was no help, either. Eventually, we got outside and called a Lyft – and the driver had a hard time finding us, too.

We got to the Birthplaces 15 minutes after our reservation, but they had waited for us, and all was well. Both houses are “saltboxes” – we could only see the first floor of each one, which had very similar layouts.

We started at John Adams’s birthplace – he lived there until he married Abigail.

The first room we entered was the “Great Hall” (it was, perhaps, 15 feet on a side), which was used for general living; the fireplace was kept running 24/7 to keep the house warm (not a problem today!).

From there, we went into the “Summer Kitchen” (I don’t think there was a “Winter Kitchen”), where all the cooking happened.

The final room on the ground floor was the “Best Room”, where company would have been entertained. Adams’s father was a deacon (and was, of course, named John), so it was used a lot.

We passed by the well that the two properties shared (our guide said that digging an extra well was much harder than sharing one!) and went into John Quincy Adams’s birthplace. Abigail and John lived there until he became VP (well, she did – he was a world traveler!).

The “Great Hall” here was decorated with portraits of John and Abigail.

John used the “Best Room” as his law office, and he put his clerks into what Abigail thought was going to be her dining room (they worked and slept there!).

John made some improvements to the kitchen for Abigail’s safety – he put in a kettle hook and put the hearth outside the fire. During the late 18th Century, burns were a major cause of injury and death to women, and John wanted to avoid that happening to Abigail.

After the tour, we decided to walk the Presidents’ Trail to Abigail Adams’ Cairn (where she saw and heard the Battle of Bunker Hill).

The trail was marked by stickers on the sidewalk like this one:

Unfortunately, every sticker had arrows on the top and bottom, whether the trail continued straight or turned – we walked quite a bit more than we needed to before we figured out what was happening and let Google guide us.

After visiting the Cairn, we’d had enough walking in the heat and humidity and took a bus into Quincy Center for the rest of the day.

We explored the Hancock-Adams Common in the center of town and paid our respects at the Hancock Cemetery (I would like to know what a “Receiving Tomb” is and why it wasn’t bricked up like the others).

We would have taken the town tour and seen where the Adamses were reburied in the “Church of the Presidents”, but the tour was cancelled because of the extreme heat warning.

Instead, we walked to “Peace field”, which John and Abigail bought while he was Minister to Great Britain and where Adams descendants lived until the 1920s. It’s a beautiful property with a very nice garden, but because of COVID, there was no access to the interior.

They said that the library had several thousand books in thirteen different languages, all of which John Quincy Adams could read.

We’d hoped to visit some sites in Boston during the afternoon, but it was just too hot and humid. Next trip!