I will try another way to write this today; I will cover important events in the day and assemble the rest of the day in that narrative. So let’s see if that works for this Wednesday, shall we?
I was a bit late to see Susie and arrived in Air Volvo at Humming Bird House at 11ish, avoiding any collision with the local drivers and having no police entanglements. Susie had stayed in her wheelchair waiting for me–she wanted to go outside with me and enjoy the lovely day (a high of 92F was still yet to be reached with the temperature still comfortable when we went for a walk). So instead of the park, I wheeled Susie through part of the neighborhood. There are no sidewalks, so we took to the road; the streets were not busy.
A magnolia tree, still flowering, seemed an excellent place to stop for a bit. There was some grass, so I could park the wheelchair off the road. We called Susie’s mother, Leta, on my iPhone, and they could see each other on FaceTime. Leta saw the magnolia tree in the background on the iPhone and was surprised to see it in bloom. Our summer is delayed by the rains. After they finished the call, we traveled some more in the area, and Susie loved the magnolia tree. It was a nice healthy one.
We returned to hummingbird House, and I was out of time, so I had a kiss goodbye and left Susie in Jennifer’s hands. Jennifer is the nurse today. I reached the office without issue, but I saw Beaverton’s Finest handing out tickets on 26. Today, Wednesday, lunch was from a truck and free. I had the Chop Chop Chicken Sundae from the truck with the same name. It was a rice bowl with chicken, cheese, veggies, and gravy.
Earlier I had my annual review with my boss. I cannot cover most of this here, but I can say that he and Nike seem to want me for another year. I do not now plan to retire early with Susie in Adult Foster Care and having bills of $8,000 a month. Thus my review was fine, and I received the usual raise, below the inflation rate. I read the policy, discussed it with my boss, and read the information on social media.
Aside: Again, I will not do a rant here, but I will point out that corporate profits are running more than 2% above inflation so far in 2022, while the cost-of-labor is up only 1.5% in the first quarter of 2022 (far below inflation of over 8%) for the USA.
I headed home at about 3PM after following along with the project and doing some AI experiments on my servers. I was getting sleepy, the AC could not keep up in our area, and I had started at 5:30AM this morning to make the 7AM meeting. So I had a rushed breakfast of a banana and yogurt. I had a small sample of the breakfast in the command center–it just smelled too good not to try it.
I have not slept well for the past three days, and it is hard to do much more today.
We did have an All-Employee meeting at Nike today in the late afternoon, which is always fun. John Donahue, Nike CEO, did a live presentation from Korea, which covered much of the direct-to-consumer process in Korea now in use by Nike. The production was not just speeches and covering agenda topics but included the cool Nike videos (some only seen internally and some exciting externally directed videos too–all flashy and fun) and some interviews. It was a good show as always.
I made pasta with sauce from a jar and sweet Italian sausage. I had too much, but the rest I will put in bags for dinner over the next couple of days.
As I said, I am short of sleep and will stop here. Thanks for reading.