Today 6July2023

Today the hardest item was to learn that Susie is down to 69 pounds and was not interested in eating today. Ask Susie, and she will not remember breakfast (or the lack of it). We have added Ensure and upgraded to Ensure Plus Protean, and Susie is still losing weight. Michelle Nixon and her staff at the hummingbird house need a working care plan for Susie, which may mean moving to hospice or end-of-life care for Susie–just options now. Barb, Susie’s sister, is coming next week, and Susie may bounce back. Also, Susie got better and graduated from hospice care last time. It is not unusual to see this. A new set of medical folks focused only on comfort and care often brings someone back from the edge–it is the nature of these things.

It is a lot for me to deal with, as you can imagine, dear reader. And while it is best not to indulge in beer and food as a solution, I might try some to help here at BJ’s Brewhouse with my usual waiter Eric. I did change my order and went with the chicken. Someone else ordered it, and it looked so good. Eric and I agreed to go that way tonight. I listen to experts (unlike many people) and find their advice often the best.

Warning, liberal statements: BJ’s Brewhouse has changed some staff. The gal from Philly is no longer here, and the assistant manager has left. The bar staff is the previous waiters for the bar, a couple. But Eric is still here (and Mo on other days), and the food is still good. The bar, while you won’t get rich in Oregon, with a high minimum ($14.20) wage (plus tips), a good crowd, and high-end items on the menu, will make it worth your time. Now if I were in Idaho, the food would suck, and the service would be terrible as the wage today is $3.35 (with tips). The entree would be $5 less (from what I can see on the menus on the Internet). If you believe that folks making $3.30 an hour are who should bring you food (remember, the wage covers the cooks and most of the staff), then you are braver than me.

Aside: A tipped minimum wage is $7.25 an hour nationally, with the employer having to make up the difference. Thus, in Idaho and other states with low payments, the worker must do multiple tables to reach the minimum. So when you are at a pancake place in one of these low-wage states, please tip the poor staff, even when they are so rushed they can barely talk to you. They have to work to break breakneck speeds to crack their nut.

Returning to the narrative, I started the morning tired, and I woke before 6AM and rested until 7AM, skipping breakfast (and my pills in error). I cleaned up and dressed. Next, I boarded Air Volvo and rushed to work. Traffic (school is out) was light, and I was early. I did my first Zoom meeting, found some breakfast and coffee (Starbucks tasting of capitalism), and continued my day. My boss brought me a crisis of the moment, and I had to work on that issue until lunch. There were other crises of the moment that I explained (a miss on data conversions) and continued to identify the absence of testing as new tickets (software bug fix requests) showed that integration had never been run end-to-end until go-live, ugh!

I was distracted by my task, but soon I had jambalaya for lunch from one of the trucks provided for us. Excellent. I sat with the master data governance engineering team, the central team I support, and had a biz director join us, Scott R. It was nice to see him–we go back to the beginning of Nike’s use of the software SAP.

After lunch and hanging out with our team and Scott, I saw Susie at the hummingbird house in Portland (Tigard) at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. I arrived without issue or much traffic and woke Susie in her recliner in the shared living room. Susie wanted to see the park, so Jennifer moved Susie to her wheelchair, and we headed out into Metzger Park. The smoke has stayed to the East (with the Columbia Gorge blowing most of the smoke away), and the warm temperature (nearing 90F or 34C) was comfortable in the shade.

Susie seemed to wake up and feel better once we got to the park. She watched the people and dogs with interest (lots of dogs with most on leashes). Susie chatted with Leta, and we saw the butterflies spinning in circles again. Soon, I needed to head back to work, so I took Susie back to hummingbird house and then kissed her goodbye with a promise to return on Friday.

Work included more crisis of the moment and discussion of standard approaches to error recovery. Nothing to cover here (boring). I did the last status meeting at 4:35 and listened to more tickets of avoidable failures (thinking: f**king test the integrations!), wisely making no comment about the obvious.

My trip home was fast, and soon I was headed to BJ’s to have a meal and try to find my calm. While I did poorly on calm, the food and booze were excellent.

Thanks for reading!