Today 27Aug2023

Today, I will leave the usual blog format and boilerplate items behind. I am late as I was relaxing, cooking, eating dinner, and watching one of my favorite videos: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Extended Edition) in Swedish. I should have been writing the blog, but I love cooking a Hungarian goulash, adding potatoes and carrots instead of making noodles. The show is hard to stop watching–Excellent.

Moving back to essential items, Cat Smith is back from NYC, her home, and spending a month or so with David and Michelle, her parents; she texted me, being from the generation that texts, suggested we meet at the Dahlias show in Canby. This required reshifting my plans and doing lifts of Susie. My right shoulder hurts, but I could pop Susie in and out of Air Volvo’s co-pilot seat. I did lightly bump her head once, but not too bad.

We toured the fields with the Smiths; David and Cat had cameras with impressive lens extensions. In contrast, Michelle had a catalog and her iPhone to identify possible additions to Smith Mountain’s garden (as I call their home on the southern side of Bald Peak). Susie was happy to have a new place to visit and got a bunch of cut Dahlias to share at the hummingbird house.

We took a break; the water in the fields had made the area humid, and it was 90F (32C). Plus, the light was yellow and gray from the smoke. There is a bad fire near Salem and another further south in the Cascade Mountains. We found some shade and got Susie some ice cream as she looked too warm; strawberry was her fav. That helped.

The Smiths helped put away the wheelchair while I successfully loaded a tired Susie into her co-pilot seat without issue or me enjoying too much pain from my shoulder.

Aside: A new bunch of muscles are explaining what they thought of my lifts. Painkillers have been taken.

I returned Susie to the hummingbird house after enjoying the extra just-before-school-starts traffic for Sunday night. It was only twenty-five minutes driving time back (an additional ten minutes there from southbound traffic near Wilsonville, always a choke point). Louis was the Sunday evening nursing aide, and he took over care of Susie from me and took her to rest before dinner. I headed home, thinking I would make dinner and relax a bit.

Just before we headed out to see the Smiths, Dan and Janet Gray visited after church at Susie’s place at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. This is also known informally as the hummingbird house. Dan called while driving to find his way, showing he is from the generation that calls, not texts, and we got them to the correct location together. I was outside and waved them in as the houses all looked the same. Dan and Janet were there to learn how to visit Susie, and they met Anassa, the weekend nurse aide, and were happy to learn the phone number and that they had just show up to see Susie.

We had about thirty minutes to meet and enjoyed the short visit; we established contact information for when I am in Michigan. Dan and Janet will visit Susie while I am at my sister’s wedding on 10 September 2023.

Before this, I managed to find time for a rushed shopping trip to Safeway to refill the necessary groceries and cleaning supplies at the Volvo Cave. I used the only cashier and bagged the groceries for him to get done faster (also, there was a long line behind me). I am unsure if I can afford the extra time to shop at Safeway if they refuse to have checkers–I am not self-checking a load of groceries. I may have to go back to ordering stuff online.

Retracing my day to the morning, I did do yet-another-weekend Zoom meeting for the shoe company at 9AM. We are still working 7/24 through weekends for some of the teams. We are on call as the master data was done weeks ago. We do attend the status meeting in case there are surprises.

I did eat the cold fried chicken from last night for lunch while enjoying Ship Happens on YouTube. I did not have time to finish the new excellent video from Nerd of the Rings on Rohan–soon!

Returning to the start of my day, breakfast was hot instant oatmeal doctored with walnuts and dried cranberries, plus liberal coffee. I enjoyed my repast while the Zoom meeting seemed to go on forever.

Moving to the very start, I found the strength to make thirty minutes on the Immobile Schwinn while watching Bloomberg re-runs for free–Today, it was about a retired NFL star now running a private investment firm and doing well. While I thought the presentation dripped with privilege and all the statements about the personal relationship being the most important thing. This sounds like opaque communication to me. I don’t trust that as a good thing, but still, it was well done. Something to learn while pounding the pedals. I did not go six miles today.

Thanks for reading my events for today.