Today 4March2023: March 4

I forgot to take pictures today.

Working backward, I was home before midnight and made a ham and cheese sandwich as a snack. I did not get dinner. I had that and took my pills which are best on a full stomach. After that, I crashed as I was tired. Bur, I ran all the dishes in the dishwasher before heading to bed.

Air Volvo delivered me from Richard’s house in Portland without incident. I took the tall ramp onto the Freemont Bridge; the ramp roadway was more elevated than the bridge’s (200 feet in the air), and I was worried that there would be puddles up there. No issues.

Richard and talked about taxes for a bit after the games. Mike, Caroline, and I played with Richard tonight. We taught Mike and Caroline the board game Vindication. This time Richard ran away with the game while Mike and Caroline were still learning the game. I tried to catch Richard, managing three masteries to his none, but his ownership of tiles pushed him beyond where I could catch him.

In the game, I never had a knowledge-based companion and found that a disadvantage. Early in the game, you need at least one strength and knowledge companion to get Vindicated and improve your movement speed (new learning for me). Richard got some of the best companions, and I should have gone back for more. That gave me a second-place score. Next time.

Next, we played War of Whispers as a light game. Ricard found a correction in the rules, and we played the game correctly this time. The game uses a unique set of processes, which has been hard to learn. This is a game loosely based on the spies of the Game of Thrones TV show. You place agents, and they control part of the kingdoms, and you have a randomly assigned victory measurement. The number of cities controlled by the Kingdoms is the factor. Thus one player will secretly want the red kingdom to do well, while another need red to fail. And this is hidden. The game has four rounds, and once you get the rules down (which we still have issues with), it plays fast. It is a chaotic secret motive game, fun.

I won by having my three top kingdoms hold on to most of their base cities. I was lucky to have overlapped with three players for the kingdoms that I did not want to succeed. So mostly luck and Richard misunderstood the rules, and that hurt him. Still a learning game.

It was nice to play a few games today. My trip from the Volvo Cave was without incident, and traffic was just stopped-and-go for just part of Highway 26 on Sylvan Hill. I was at the house as I had two packages delivered. One, Utterly Smooth 20% Urea for my hands and feet (to help with nerve issues from Chemo), and micro-controllers from SparkFun.

I left Susie’s place at about 4:20 and called into a status meeting at 4:30 while driving home. I would pull over if it got interesting, but the project still awaited a substantial single-threaded data conversion. I had to help with an issue in the morning, but there was nothing more for my team at 4:30. So it was a short meeting, and I had no problems getting to the Volvo Cave.

Going backward, I arrived at Susie’s place after 11AM. Susie was in her wheelchair (already falling asleep) with her coat ready for her. I offered to take her to the March 4th opening of the Portland Saturday Market and then lunch at Kells. I could see in her eyes that the idea of being in the wet and cold in Portland (windy and colder by the river where the market is held) did not appeal to her. So I offered the mall instead, which was not something she wanted to do. So Susie got her favorite: sit in her rocking chair and watch a movie with me in her room.

Louis, the live-in night nurse aide (and Jennifer’s husband), had watched the first Wakonda movie with Susie. So today, we would both get to see the next one. No popcorn, but it was still fun to do that. I got a chair that was comfortable and sat next to her. Susie held my hand for some of it and nodded off a few times, but soon she was closely following along.

Susie was tired but still talking and only slightly leaning to the right. So not too bad on Saturday. After the movie, I left Susie with Anassa, the weekend nurse aide, and headed out for lunch. Susie had lunch at the hummingbird house. I went to Chipolti’s for a chicken bowl with extra guac, chips, and a drink. I eat it with a fork and dip the chips. I was surprised when talking to Evan (he had a flat tire, so he would not make it over, and I thought it best to just hang out with Susie today, so no board games today with Evan) that the stock price was so high. I checked, and the food chain matched the general market and had a significant run-up, like most stocks in 2019-2021, and crashed back to the previous highs with the Ukraine War, inflation fears, and general Wall Street market grumpiness.

BTW: The market had a run-up after being grumpy most of the week. Churn and more churn. I have changed nothing.

I returned after my late lunch, and Susie was in her chair in the living room (no nap today) and was happy to see me. So I stayed with her, watching the movie Big (with a young Tom Hanks) in the shared space until I needed to leave before my 4:30 meeting. Susie was sad to have me go but was glad I had stayed so long.

Moving back to the start, I woke before my alarm and managed to sleep the night, except for one proof of hydration, and discovered there was no alarm, oops. I made liberal coffee from Fair Exchange branded coffee from Portland in my French Press. I had a yogurt for breakfast and later a cookie.

The meetings started at 8, and I was in my office eating and drinking coffee during the meeting. As is my habit, I read all the emails, Slack Channel updates, and news headlines to prepare for the meeting and the start of my day. I had to rally some team members as we had a critical defect, ugh, and soon it was being worked on and completed. This delayed my blog writing, of course, and made me late for Susie. But, I get paid for work, so I did the needful.

This is the fourth weekend I have worked in a row, and thus I have had no day off for a month. Life in the new world of IT.

Thanks for reading.