Today 10June2023

Saturday was a lot less exciting or busy than my usual day. I was working the night shift, so I could not take the time to play any games. Also, the shoe company emergencies in yesterday’s blog settled into normal processes and are resolved.

Starting from the morning, I managed to sleep until 7:30 and then made Fair Exchange coffee in my French Press and reheated the remains of the quiche from Whole Foods for breakfast. Next, I wrote the blog for a few hours. I finished the laundry while writing and managed to ignore the dishes for a bit longer. I put away all the laundry as I feel better–no piles on the floor near the dryer.

I paid the bills, updated Quicken, the desktop version, and reviewed and corrected some transactions in June. I pay Susie’s bills within a day. I pay bills for my medical stuff slower as I get rebilled by Legacy and other medical offices with items I believe I have remitted (they take my co-pay and then bill me again for it later). It is very messy. I then get a check later to reimburse me for my overpayment. This will make a hash of my taxes as I have enough medical bills to write off the expenses. Growl.

I cleaned up and dressed. I went then and toured my roses and cut a set of Susie. I mistakenly cut off the flowers (ala the Addam family) twice when removing the leaves. I had to cut more roses. I removed many of the thorns from the roses (careful not to remove the flower and not to stab myself with thorns). I skipped the Herbalist rose as it has impossibly sharp and hidden thorns. Soon I had a nice collection.

I traveled in Air Volvo through light traffic and the strange construction traffic–there are no construction workers on the weekend, so all the cones, sticks, barrels, and other traffic control items were neatly stacked on the roadsides. Oregon drivers, apparently having construction flashbacks, still drove slowly and ignored open lanes often closed by construction workers. You can’t roll your eyes constantly and drive Air Volvo at the same time.

Surviving the non-construction caused slowing, I arrived without incident at Susie’s at the hummingbird house in Portland (Tigard) at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. When I arrived, Susie was not at breakfast (having managed to get there just before noon), and Anassa, the nursing aide for weekend days, said Susie was exhausted and could not eat much and just wanted to rest in her bed. I retired to Susie’s room to find Susie deeply asleep under a light blanket. After waking Susie, I pushed the crash pad back under the bed and moved the overstuffed chair next to her.

Susie said no to a movie or going outside. She had black circles under her eyes and was pale. We then agreed on Elton John. I picked, and Alexia played Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Susie’s first album she ever bought), and Susie slept through much of the music. We did call Leta, Susie’s mother, on my iPhone and used FaceTime to see each other. Leta was up late and was not feeling well, too. Susie and Leta chatted for a while until Susie started to nod off. We then rang off. Susie then returned to a comfortable sleep with me next to her (reading news and work items on my phone), sitting in a chair.

Evan surprised me by stopping by and spending some time with us. We all chatted briefly, and Susie stayed awake now that she had more company. At 2PM, we headed out to let Susie sleep better, and Susie gave me a goodbye kiss.

Evan suggested a new place for lunch, and we found Broder Soder Beavert. This is Nordic food at a Nordic cultural center just a few minutes from Susie’s place. They are open from 8 to 3PM (breakfast food). I had the meatballs, and they were excellent. Evan had great eggs. We shared some Nordic-style pancakes in round balls with lemon curd and lingonberry jam. I had lots of coffee (I can’t drink beer before my shift as I will fall asleep or accidentally tell people what I am thinking in a status meeting), an excellent Nordic solid blend served with heated cream to lighten my coffee.

After finishing breakfast/lunch, I returned home and was able to read emails and Slack channel updates to be ready for my shift. The production issues were mostly resolved, and the next data conversion was long-running (two to three days) and frankly boring as hell.

Once everything had settled down and the status meeting was done, I returned to my radio project during the quiet moments. I soldered wires to the new nob, assembled the radio, including its speakers, and unattached the lights as I needed to replace the leads to be longer. I was happy to hear the music through the new speakers now connected to the mainframe, but the nob did nothing. I also could not get the push buttons to work. I drilled and broke the wood plate. I will be connecting the new modern buttons and new nob through this plate, but I was able to fix the wood. The break won’t show as I plan to cover it with veneer (like the rest of the radio) and use excellent brass screws to make it look original or fit the Steampunk theme.

I gave up on the radio after discovering nothing was working. I will pick that up again later and rework how to make the switches on a test Arduino built into a breadboard. It is handy, powered, and accessed by a B USB, but it is 5V, not the new standard of 3.3V. I am used to switching back and forth from 5V to 3.3V and even have special hardware to let me build a dual-voltage circuit (even switching a complex signal to higher or lower voltages as needed). More on that next week when I will have time again.

I ordered dinner delivered from Nonna Emilia Ristorante Italiano by GrubHub. I had the handmade beef ravioli in a meat sauce. I ordered too much garlic bread and a large ceasar styled salad with freshly made creamy pesto dressing. I had too much bread with it. The portions were not huge, and I ate all the ravioli as I was hungry. The leftover bread and salad will be for lunch on Sunday.

I then went over my Quicken stuff and printed out the reports for May 2023–Everything needs to be paper for accountants, CPAs, and IRS. However, I realized I did not have a notebook for this quarter. So that plan of doing boring hole punching and filing was also a bust. Also, the project panicked at 10:30, stopping me from having to clean something (my last task available).

The data loads had slowed, but it was decided the data set was causing the slowness. It is extra comprehensive data and would take more time as it generates many more updates than previous runs. BASIS and other system checks came back with our systems being fine. Just a fire drill.

I was getting tired, so I got a cup of tea made, Darjeeling tea, added a slice of lemon, and got a few German Chocolate cupcakes with pecan and coconut frosting. That got me back, and then I read some more of the famous Foundation books by Isaac Asimov. While showing its age (tobacco survives into his version of the future, for example), it is still a page-turner. I read that while waiting for the shift to end and the 12:30 status meeting. There were no more events.

The 12:30 status meeting was short, and I handed over a dull day to India. It is good to be bored when doing data conversions!

I had trouble sleeping as I proved my hydration too early in the morning, but after that, I slept until Sunrise and still managed to roll over a few times. No headache.

A few more notes…

During the day, I spotted a new role-playing game (RPG) adventure for Call of Cthulu (CoC), set in New Orleans. I have an excellent New Orleans setting book for CoC, and adding more material for a more extended play would be nice. I also found a 1926 map of New Orleans for less than $20 on eBay. I ordered both.

Paypal fell over, and I cannot work out if I actually ordered the map or just paid for it. Paypal shows, now that it is working again, that I made a payment. Fingers crossed.

I also bought a practice kit for building a plank-built ship model. I have a huge model that uses this–I have never done it before. So I ordered the kit from the Nautical Research Guild, which is a collection of folks that do build nautical models. I just joined NRG, and so far, I am pretty pleased.

I also renewed my Naval Institute membership (for the discount on the books) and Naval History Magazine (I just read the articles). I also ordered a new book (heavily discounted as my membership is still running): Leadership in Dangerous Situations, Second Edition. I thought this would be an interesting read, and it is good enough to make it to the second edition. That is always a good sign.

Thanks for reading.