Today 7Jan2023: Saturday

I am back to the weekend habit of blogging about the previous day’s events in the morning, and then I rush into the late-morning events. So I am writing Saturday’s blog at 7AM Sunday morning. I had two coffees at Richard’s house as I got cold and needed to warm up. Unfortunately, the caffeine kept me up most of the night. So it is a challenging start this Sunday morning and hard to write, but let’s get going.

I slept in on Saturday, and this, as I suggested above, had me running late and rushing. The sleep was welcome; it was the first good night’s sleep I had in a few days. The blog writing went on for 1,400 words, and thus I was late finishing at 10:15. The shower, dressing, and then driving across Beaverton meant that I arrived very late at the hummingbird house at 11:40 or so.

Susie was delighted to see me. Susie was sitting in her recliner in the shared space, looking alert and feeling good. Anassa was the nursing aide for the weekend, and she said Susie had a busy morning but was doing well.

Evan, taking on additional overtime at his telco call center, still wanted to meet up today and was at Susie’s place at about 12:20PM. I waited for him, so we called Leta, Susie’s mother, while waiting. Leta was home, and Susie and I had a friendly chat with her.

I grabbed Susie’s warm and waterproof brown leather coat (a good choice here in Oregon with a waterproof hat or pulling up the hood), and Anassa put Susie in the wheelchair. The nurse aides can just pop Susie in and out, and they always amaze me.

Evan showed, and I took Susie to Air Volvo, got out the stool, put the lifting belt on Susie, and then lifted her into the co-pilot seat. Susie is not standing, so I must handle the whole of her weight and swing her into the car. Now that I am ready for that, I get her onto the seat and then reach in and pull her fulling into the seat. Evan put the wheelchair for me in the cargo hold and then took a passenger seat in the second row.

Aside: Air Volvo is a 2018 XC60 Volvo, an SUV, and is grey-green in color, I traded in the previous XC60 as I did not like my first one, but the newish 2018 version is a dream to drive. It is a gas vehicle, as only hybrids existed for the size of SUVs I wanted and were priced relatively high. I looked last weekend at a perfectly sized Tesla SUV for Susie and me, but the $121,000 price tag (also the price point for the nice Mercedes EV SUV) has me staying with my existing vehicle. Also, Telsa gets no federal tax credit, making it a costly EV SUV.

We drove a few miles to Washington Square Mall, parked, and unloaded Susie. The lift down to the wheelchair is more straightforward as I just swing and lower Susie to the wheelchair. We then crossed the parking lot, always taking the covered parking so we won’t enjoy an Oregon downpour when loading or unloading Air Volvo.

We walked pushing Susie the whole way through the entire mall. Evan wanted to see the menu of the world-famous Korean restaurant that was now at the mall. It is famous for its dumplings. We stopped at the food court, which is very busy for an after-the-holidays January, and got our usual for Susie and me. I had a giant hot dog with onions, ketchup, and mustard, and Susie had a scoop of strawberry ice cream in a cup. Susie mostly fed herself today–yeah! I also had some fries, and I shared a few with Susie, who ate a tiny bit of the deep-fried potatoes without a choking incident. Evan found some Indian food but would not recommend it.

We then continued the visit and found Williams Sonoma was selling their excess (a huge pile) of the Christmas goodies at 1/2 price (meaning now it was not too expensive). Susie agreed to share hot chocolate and peppermint bark at the hummingbird house. Susie also picked out some cut flowers to take back with her. A stand for flowers is in the mall hallway made out of an old van.

Afterward, we crossed through the mall and returned to the parking lot. I reloaded Susie after pulling out Air Volvo halfway and turning on the flashers. More folks had arrived, the parking spot next to Air Volvo was full, and the remaining space was too tight for Susie and the wheelchair. We managed without incident.

Susie was quite tired as we had skipped a few outings for various reasons in December and January–we were out of practice. Susie was leaning now in her wheelchair, and I had to be very attentive not to have her fall forward and out of the wheelchair. Susie was soon safe at the hummingbird house, looking for lunch (even after the ice cream) and some rest. We left Susie, happy and tired, with a kiss and a wave.

Evan and I stopped by a Viking-styled taphouse, Iron Tap Station, not far from the hummingbird house. I ordered a beer, and we got out my choice of the board game Brass: Lancashire. Evan had played it last week and cost a bit lost, and I wanted to try again. This time Evan got it and beat me by a tiny four points or so. We still had a few problems with card draws–from here out, cards will not be drawn until income to ensure that no extra cards are drawn in error. Evan often had ten cards in his hand as he would finish his turn and still have a full hand.

Evan won by building ships that are high points in the game and automatically flip to the point side–very valuable. I had ignored this as there are a limited two places to build ships in the two-person game, but Evan noticed that you could build trains to the other sections of the board and build a ship with the general cards. I had not thought of that and was schooled thus by Evan and lost by a few points. Evan was proud of his win.

We use Iron Clay poker chips with Brass, which improves the game experience. In Brass, the player that spends the least money is the first player on the next turn. This means that all the money spent is put on the player marker, counted at the end of the turn, the turn order is revised, and then the money is returned to the bank. This means a lot of movement, and the poker chips make this much more manageable.

We finished our beers (just one for me) and then packed up and went our separate ways. I drove through heavy traffic. A car slammed its brakes on 217 and nearly caused a multi-car pile-up with Air Volvo in the middle. The auto braking started, and it was hard for me to understand what was happening (the polite trolly car bell); then I threw the wheel to the right and slammed the brakes taking Air Volvo into the on-ramp lane. Other cars, now sideways in various angles, joined me there, but no paint was lost. Traffic quickly resumed, and Air Volvo had no more trolly car bell events on the way to Richard’s.

It was just the two of us, Richard and I, and we played the board game War of Whispers. It was more than a year since we tried it, and it took us a while to get the somewhat arcane process in our heads. This game is unique in my experience and is loosely based on the Game of Thrones (GoT) world. But you could imagine it anywhere, as only a bit of the iconography resembles GoT. In this game, you have a set of hidden tokens that list what factions (simply colors) you support, are neutral towards, and ones you wish to damage or destroy. You and your opponents advise these factions and get some control of them. Likely, you will only have partial control of a faction, and you have to guess your opponent’s plans. It is a fast game and has some crazy GoT power cards that can tip the game back and forth as you treat the factions (colored armies) as pawns. It is pretty fun, and Richard made a last-minute attack that crushed blue (my second best) and wounded red (my best) by expanding brown (his best). Richard won by four points–next time!

Next, as that game, even with the rules checks, took only 90 minutes, we played a couple card games. Innovation is an insane card game from 2016, like nothing I have played before. I started to get the hang of it and had Richard running scared for a bit, but in the end, his better strategy won as he blocked my rush to finish the victory conditions. Innovation is just a box of cards with an under $20 price tag and plays 2-4 players in about an hour.

We played, and I forgot the name, a fun and easy matching card game based on Star Trek, and that was fun. We played two hands, as it was fast and easy. Richard pulled everything he needed in the second game and had a massive score.

I was cold and asked for more coffee. This was a mistake as I slept poorly, if at all, on Sunday morning. Richard made French press, and there were enough coffee grounds for a pot–I was fully awake when I left at 10:20.

My drive was fine, and the roads were dry primarily as the rains had stopped for the evening. However, on my last trip, the showers were so heavy that there was standing water on the on-ramps to bridges–on-ramps that are five stories tall!

I had a ham and cheese sandwich at home, which helped a bit–I had no dinner making the coffee wallop me. I dozed a few times, but deep sleep did not come. Next time, no coffee at the end of games.

Thanks for reading.