Today 13Jan2023: Friday the 13th 2023

I am writing this on Saturday morning with a desire to not rush these next four days. It is MLK on Monday, and Susie has a doc virtual visit on Tuesday, so I took that day off too. I will try to do a bit of rest and recovery these days. No rushing.

Friday began with not rushing and getting up at the last moment for Zoom meetings. I managed to get up in time to make coffee. Friday, often declared a meeting-free day at the shoe company, is seldom that. Our weekly staff meeting is held at the end of the week for India. Always a pleasant meeting, as the master data engineering team is a great bunch of folks. More status meetings follow.

By 10ish, I was through most of the meetings, but a few crises of the moment kept me busy. I slipped in some breakfast of toast, and of course, the coffee was liberal and made in my French press. I was busy until I needed to get a shower and dress.

I was in Air Volvo by 11ish, and soon, the traffic was none too heavy to quickly reach the hummingbird house. The roads were damp but not flooded; the rivers of rain were south in California. The puddles around the Volvo Cave have dried or emptied. The now-cleaned gutters are making guttering sounds and gargling all day and night. I think I miss the sound-deadening gunk and leaves! Driving was easy and safe today.

Susie was delighted to see me and was sitting in her recliner in the shared space, watching Judge Judy. She was dressed in her new Lunar New Year t-shirt with Bugs Bunny to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. We called Susie’s mother, Leta, using my iPhone and using FaceTime so they could see each other. Leta shared what her day was like and her plans for the day. Susie responded here and there. I filled in a few details here and there. Soon my twenty minutes (twenty minutes to get there, twenty minutes to be present for Susie, and twenty minutes to home/work–A total of one hour) were gone, and I had to leave (I had stayed a bit longer actually–when Susie is feeling awake, like today, I take a few more minutes). Susie was sad to have me leave, but it was Friday, and she was happy to hear that we had a four-day weekend yet to come.

I stopped by Tammy’s Hobbies on the way back and got a few items. I bought from their wooden shipbuilding section (shrinking, I am afraid) and found a tiny ship wheel, wooden granting, and a few other small items I might need. In addition, I saw purple Dork metallic paint and a metal paint that suggests it will look like natural brass and can be polished. I need all the things for my Spelljammer ships that I am decorating; I want them to be more a model and less a generic role-playing terrain item.

I returned home, reheated the tamales I had purchased from a gal for dinner, and continued working on a few crises. I was up to midnight with work items in India, helping folks there with a presentation the night before, and I was starting to drag. I managed to keep going until about 4PM and then closed the laptop. I have a few more meetings with India planned over the holiday–They don’t do MLK day in India.

I read for a bit; The Last Magician has reached the page-turning last hundred pages. The book has improved. I find the characters less sympathetic, and their relationships are troubled. It is just hard to love them. However, the book is well-written, and the story flows well. It is in the first person switching between two characters’ perspectives, and I like that style. I recommend it to folks like me who enjoy time travel, old New York City, and steampunk with magic. I will be reading the next one. I am at the final pages; I had to stop reading at 1:30 this morning!

I returned to my model work. I painted the round power band (?!) for the spacejammer metallic purple (more silver than purple), having to apply four coats to get the look (I wanted it more purple, but that did not work out–I have had mixed results with Dork Metalic paints so far). I then splattered the ring with green, blue, and purple to make it look more magical. I abandoned the electronics for this model as there is no place to hide the batteries.

I created a steering wheel station and gratings and replaced the levers with tiny stick shifts. I pinned the steering wheel complex to the deck and then glued the grating next to it and the shifts. I have small and expensive premade tiny buckets that are too large for a 28mm Dungeons and Dragons scale; I remade one into a windless for the anchor. I glued an anchor I bought together, wrapped the windless (a capstan, actually), and then carefully drilled a hole in the deck and put a metal porthole in the hole to make it look neat. I threaded the scale hemp rope and finished with the anchor hanging just below the front (bow) of the spelljammer. It looked good (except I wrapped one loop of the anchor rope around the push bar for the windless–It is too late to fix it).

I had painted the exposed laser inscribed (to make it look like boards) deck with a clear finish. Next, I painted the bird-like figurehead brass with the new paint adding a strip of wood to make it look like a ram bolted on. I used Pine dye on the rest of the exposed wood of the ship and painted the base black after priming it.

I read some more and could not sleep. India contacted me and canceled the call tonight. Mariah turned me down for dinner, and I made a chef’s salad. Mariah rethought that, but I was already eating. I watched the Buzz Lightyear movie. I laughed and even cried, so I would recommend it, but I thought some of it was contrived for kids, and the story seemed forced a few times; I still laughed and cried, so it must be good.

I read more and could not sleep. I drilled the model as described for the anchor. The mast is going to be a clear plastic rod. I had hand-drilled tiny holes in the material with a pin vise hole. Brass deadeyes for attaching rigging to the mast. Unlike wood, this stuff is hard and takes pressure and time.

I knocked over my tiny drill bit collection that spilled on the carpeted floor. I think I recovered all the carbon drills. Just a terrible, sharp, miniature mess. I broke a bowl today. Putting Utterly Smooth on your hands (and toes) every day means dropping things. I have dropped everything at least once today, including the whole spacejammer.

The mast hole with a power drill had the drill lock and spin the model. I managed to extract the drill without too much damage. However, the mast hole will need a bit of clean-up once I have the mast glued in. I was going to do it but decided that 1AM was not the time to do the risky and must-be-prefect attachment for the model.

I finally went to sleep before 2AM, satisfied and enjoying my model building. I forgot how much I love to work with my hands. Wood is also a different experience than plastic, brass, and figure painting. It seems more alive and working with you (plastic always feels like it is resisting). Rope, I hate it, but I try to make it work. I just need more practice with it, but rigging makes a model look more authentic.

Thank you for reading.