Story 12May2022: Tired Thursday

By the end of the day, leaving work at 4ish, I was unsteady and sleepy. So it was time to stop. But that is not where the day started, and the finish was not too bad either, thus:

The morning started with my alarm at 6:15 not waking me as I had left my phone charging and woke myself up. I was disappointed when the alarm did not ring when I woke minutes before it. I was happy when I found the phone, and there were no calls last night.

Starting my day, I read emails, both work and mine, and some news while eating a bagel and a banana. I drink Fair Exchange coffee–liberal coffee every morning. I wanted to be at work before 8ish, which I managed.

I had a few meetings in the morning. I was mostly reading today as it is always quiet before a go-live. The skies were gray, and the rain blowing sideways. My hat was endangered by the wind.

I headed to the Forest Grove Rehab and Care Center found at 3900 Pacific Highway in the rain at 10:30. I needed to be back around noon as we had a visit from our new VP. Another rushed visit, I am afraid, and I was soon walking into room 44A to see Susie after driving on 26 and the back roads without event today.

Today Susie was awake and thrilled to see me. She had her morning workout already with the Rehab team. I was rushed, and we called her mother, Leta, who could not speak for long as she was headed to her car after shopping. I then stepped out and talked to the Administrator, Dan, and he let me know that the head of Social Services was out with Covid. I spoke to another gentleman in Socal Services, and he will call Michelle at Allegiance Senior Care to start the process of transferring Susie to their care.

Rehab is happy with Susie’s progress, and I expect her to get another week of care covered by insurance in Forest Grove. So it would be great if we could transfer her two Fridays from now, but that may be too complex, and medical stuff always takes longer than you want.

After talking to Social Services, I was out of time and left Susie with a kiss and a promise to return on Friday. My plans are to watch a movie together on Saturday, maybe her fav of Giggi. I will try to get there in the morning on Saturday.

Work included a pizza party and a chance to meet our new VP. After that, I read some more and started looking at possible uses of Machine Learning in our existing platforms. I am also interested in getting some users to access the extracted data from our new platforms going live this July.

I was up and down the stairs more than ten times today. Finally, I reached my limits at about 3PM and got one more coffee, a free one from our coffee cart: an Americano with cream. I was fatigued and needed to stop at that time, and I drove home at 4ish.

The mail included a new item for my stamp collection, the famous F**k Off stamp from Ukraine. Why yes, there is a Ukrainian stamp set with a guy flipping off the famous Russian cruiser that is now sunk in the Black Sea. The set comes with a digital version of “F**K Off,” you can play, and other unusual additions.

I rested for an hour and then headed out to get some packing tape and other items at the pharmacy. I was going to have Popeye’s Chicken but remembered that there is a nice Sushi Track next to the pharmacy. Dinner was raw! It was wonderful! It was not chicken.

The food helped.

I returned home and decided to catch up on my stamp collection. During Covid-19, I have been able, from time to time, to purchase in auctions some stamps, mostly old used USA postage, for considerable discounts. I have done this as a distraction from cancer and all the other things. One of my specialties, local carriers, has been unusually cheap and surprisingly available (local carriers’ postage is rare and often expensive and full of forgeries–only experts should be buying anything–while not an expert, I am skilled at detecting forgeries and even collect them). So tonight, I went through all my purchases and put the USA and CSA stamps into my collection.

That is an actual, unused Pony Express stamp (a local carrier). I have another version of the stamp used on the real Pony Express. Used stamps are more valuable as the Pony Express did not run very long, and there is a special cache of surviving items carried by the riders. Also, I have a forgery over 100 years old of that same stamp.

Aside: I don’t like to collect Confederacy stamps–I despise the Confederacy, but I have a collection of many of the stamps. There is a large amount of forgery and reprints for CSA, which keeps me slightly interested. There are also local carriers for CSA too.

After putting out the trash and the lawn waste for Friday’s pick-up, I then wrote the blog.

Thanks for reading again.