Story 7Sept2022: Quiet Wednesday

Let’s start with some issues. The Grammarly ticket returned that it was not a mistake but a feature I was unhappy with. They have made the WordPress editor nearly useless for me. I am not very happy with Grammarly, and since I was using the legacy non-Java editor already, I am not sure what options I have. I will have to look for a replacement.

I will write the day from tonight back to the start. I was, as I said, just updating the support ticket with Grammarly with unhappiness. I was just checking my new Jupiter 3D Printer, and it is happily printing the test file of two chess pieces, rooks. It will be done soon, and I will try to print something from Space Race, the board game next. They make very tall models that I could not print before. It will be a good test.

Aside: I discovered that the first printing failed. Not a happy start. Looks like I did not correctly set the base. I failed to push the set to zero button.

I put the coffee cup in the tank for size.

Before returning home, I was at First United Methodist Church, Beaverton, for choir practice. I don’t sing but play board games with Zophia while she waits for her mother, Dondrea, to finish. Tonight we managed a few new ones. We played the basic version of the Istanbul board game. It is a unique game of resource collection and management. You can also get some valuable superpowers. Zophia beat me by two moves. I spent too much time upgrading my cart instead of collecting items. She liked the game.

Zophia hoarded all the gems after winning.

I had picked up a used cheap copy of Pandemic (yes, there is irony all over that statement). This is the original cooperative game that started me back into games. The second edition came out with corrections, but I had an old copy and never updated it. I gave it to Goodwill as we were not playing it very often. I saw the new version that was cheap and picked it up.

The game starts easy and then starts to build pressure on you. Zophia and I were not removing infections from cities, and soon we had outbreaks, and explosive growth nearly ended the game for us. We just managed to cure the last disease and win.

Next, we played Azul and Zophia slipped by me by just a few points. It was a good night for Zophia! Azul is a pattern-matching game with some competition and meta-gaming that can hurt your head: Trying to find the right choices for yourself while not giving away too much to your opponents.

It was a fun night, and I got a cupcake too.

Before being beaten by Zophia, I was at the house and got the new 3D printer to start and print (with the zero set wrong, oops). First, I had to assemble the printing surface and remove all the packing. It is a huge printer, and I was happy it was alive and working.

Moving back further, I had lunch at BJ’s Brewhouse at the bar. There was nobody there, so there was no chance of getting Covid-19. Kate, the bartender, was friendly, and we chatted while I had lunch and wrote a bit. She is 23, and this is her first gig as a bartender, and she likes it. Kate has been in the Pacific Northwest for less than a year, but she loves it here–she enjoys the outdoors. I had a burger because I was tired and thought some protein would be good.

Before lunch, I saw Susie at the hummingbird house. She was having a slow day and eating breakfast when I arrived. She can feed herself, but she easily chokes.

We went into the park to enjoy the sunshine and the cool breeze. The park was primarily empty today as school had started, and it was the middle of the week. I was happy to see a swallowtail butterfly again near the entrance. Summer is still going.

We then watched the new Lord of the Rings (LOTR) show in Susie’s room, The Rings of Power. Susie was only good for two episodes, and I could not blame her. The story moved strangely, and the actors were all rather stiff and not sympathetic. I am hopeful it will improve. Tolkien is hard to write and make real (I wrote one adventure in the setting for a special version of Dungeons and Dragons made for LOTR, and it is an exciting process to write in such a constrained setting). I am hopeful.

Moving back further, I wrote the blog and more of my Naval Institute fiction. I have to 15Sept and have managed 1,500 words so far. I will try to get to 2,200-2,500 and polish it.

I started at 7AM and had only nectarine for breakfast with liberal coffee.