Day 263: Extended Lockdown

Gov. Brown of Oregon declared our area to be in extreme danger from the virus, and we will continue with the lockdown for at least two more weeks. Susie and I are being even more careful than before as the hospital rates and deaths spike here. Oregon is running about 85% ICU beds in use with a close match for regular beds too. California appears to be headed to having no beds left. I have heard that Oregon is hosting the Idaho folks that need hospitalization.

The UK is getting the vaccine now. The USA will approve the same vaccine on the 10th. The Russian vaccine began general use today.

I finished the orcs painting today for the board game Heroes of Air, Land, and Sea. The oil paint for the shading is drying now overnight. I use the oil paint as it dries without a color change and can be whipped off or even removed with thinner without impact the color underneath (I applied a non-glossy transparent spray to protect the initial painting).

Twenty figures is a lot to finish. I finally finished the three personality figures that are unique. They look better shaded but not much darker. The shading brings their faces forward.

The morning started at 6:30 as I was tired this morning. It always feels better to sleep-in those extra minutes!

I had meetings this morning that were mostly status meetings and crises of the moment that needed to be resolved. Some issues have been brought up many times before–I was a bit surprised how little was resolved when I was out for three weeks caring for Susie.

I managed to find a break, I was late for the next meeting, and took a short walk further than yesterday. I usually try to make each day’s walk longer than the day before until I reach about a mile.

Carie from PT came a bit late this noon and worked with Susie for 30 minutes. We wanted to keep it a bit light as Susie fell after maybe overdoing it last time. Susie is to keep doing her standing and sitting exercises. We also went over how to better turn the walker as that was what caused the fall.

I had to stop and leave two meetings as I had calls from the medical people. We arranged for Susie to have physical therapy today at about noon and then again on Friday at about 2:15.

I had the leftovers of Yellow Curry Chicken Thai I made in the Instant Pot yesterday for my lunch. It was terrific a second time. Susie had yogurt and cereal.

Work ended with discussing options on how to flow data out of an SAP ERP to other platforms. This discussion has also been on-going.

I made a more comfort-food dinner for Susie, putting aside all the exotic cooking today. I made chicken cordon bleu from frozen. I made Hollandaise Sauce from scratch to pour over the chicken cordon bleu. I have a whale-shaped egg separator that helps. Adding freshly made Hollandaise really dresses up the generic chicken cordon bleu from the freezer. Next, I made green beans from a frozen microwave pack, but I heated butter and toasted sliced almonds, from a bag, with salt in a frying pan and then dumped the hot-from-the-microwave green beans on top and combined it. This greatly improves the green beans to wilt them a bit in butter with almonds. Dinner was well received.

I then, as I covered above, started back to painting. I found a lid of a pasta sauce jar–I save them; I set it down in my painting area to use it as a little basin. I smear a bit of dark “Starship Filth” oil paint from a tube and pour a bit of “Odourless thinner” in the cap. I have oil paintbrushes–cheap ones, and I use them to brush to shading colors on a figure. I just want enough shading to fill in the lines and get the 3-D looks back to one color area.

BTY: I seldom paint eyes on 28mm figures as I think it a waste of time–a figure with painted eyes looks, to me, like a doll then. Plus, you cannot see the eyes on the gaming table–the eyes are too tiny to see when using the figures. Also, the human habit of seeing faces in random pictures known as pareidolia means I only need to suggest where the eyes go, and most people will see the eyes I did not paint!

I have already primed the dwarves. Next, I will start work on them.

The US stock market was going up and down. It still below’s it high. There are some bets that inflation or interest rate would increase. These bets appear to have failed, and some losses are being realized now that we are at the year and quarter-end; some window-dressing is ongoing on Wall Street. Elon Musk made some new inflammatory remarks about the Tesla company failing despite the 23% gross profit last quarter.

Today the USA had the highest daily rate of death so far from the virus. More than two-thousand eight-hundred thirty people died from it today.

I will go with the fav of O Come, All Ye Faithful with a modern take.