Today started at 6AM, too early, and I started the blog early. Saturday’s blog is always long, 1,600+ words this time. So I started up and made coffee and drank too much of it. I was bouncing around after that— I need to stick to two cups!
I had yogurt, banana, and NYC coffee (thanks, Smiths+Krammers) for breakfast in the home office while I wrote and wrote some more. I watched the sunrise and remembered my father’s words a few years before he died, “There are so many sunrises left for me; I get up for them now.” I am not ready to get up every morning to see the sunrise, but I will someday.
The weather is wonky again. We are back to being in Northern California instead of the Pacific Northwest–the rains stopped in November (which seldom happens), and we had a partially cloudy day with sun breaks. The streets dried out! We have dry leaves in the street–oh my!
I finished the blog just in time to get ready for church. I showered, shaved, and so on to be prepared to dress. My gray suit today with a ruby vest and a Mandelbrot tie. I added the pocket watch and chain that so impressed everyone–it is cheap but looks the part. Black plain leather shoes and a black homburg hat finish the look.
I arrived a few minutes before service in Air Volvo, amazed to be driving on dry streets. Church, First United Methodist Church of Beaverton, was the usual service, and I, not thinking, got even more coffee. I sat in my familiar space, missing Susie next to me. Jean and Orville Nilsen, also gone ahead, are gone and used to sit behind us. I can almost hear the cloud of witnesses when I sit down to say good morning, and though we went ahead of you, we are happy to see you here today with us. My voice cracks unexpectedly on a few hymns as the words bring Susie’s passing back into focus. But, I manage only wet eyes.
Today, I noticed that the Pride Flag on our church that I replace often looks faded and worn. That has never happened before. Someone usually takes them by now. How nice that we might have to retire our first Pride Flag. I called out in our joys and concern at this moment.
Pastor Ken did an unusual, he said experimental sermon. He stated that he believes God created the Sabbath and sleep as gifts. God, the one shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, had set aside one day out of seven to rest and also created sleep to give us a release. We need to respect the Sabbath, but we need to accept sleep too. It is too easy to not respect that we need to sleep to be our best selves and to connect to the vision God has for us. That faith and rest allow us to lose the fear and night terrors brought by the arrows of the day. Pastor Ken was clear that he is not asking us to do yet-another-thing–actively manage sleep and rest–but to find what we already know, we need the rest that God created for us.
After church, I had, yes, more coffee, but I avoided the cookies, at least. Christmas cookies! Next, Air Volvo took me to Sherry’s and had lunch with the Rev. Anne and Dr.Rev. Wayne Weld-Martin. We had a pleasant lunch, and I ordered a too-large club sandwich. It mainly was bread with bacon somewhere with a hint of generic deli turkey and lettuce, but it was still strangely appealing. We did a little Thanksgiving planning as I am joining them for dinner on Thursday at 4PM.
We headed out, and Anne noted my tie, Mandelbrot, and asked me about it. The tie is a simple creation of the basic algorithm described by Mandelbrot that became popular when I was in college but decorated with colors for various values. The algorithm is repeated with the results from the previous and included in the next iteration, including imaginary numbers. The effect is a strange pattern produced by the imaginary numbers and repeating process. It has, I am now just remembering, no predictable pattern and is called Fractal. The same technique is used to create sort of random items, like tree branches, for computer graphics. Fractals are marvelous shortcuts for generating graphical backgrounds that look natural.
I said goodbye to the Weld-Martins until Thursday. Air Volvo got me home, and I returned to more ordinary clothing, read, and fell dead asleep for part of the afternoon. I managed to get started again and put away just a few items in the garage just to say I got something started.
My fairy lights started today. I had hung more of them yesterday. They looked lovely.
I reheated the Indian-style chicken I made a few days ago. I heated one piece of naan (flat bread) to go with it. I started rewatching the Sherlock episodes from the BBC show; I forgot how good the show was. I have all the seasons on my Apple. I watched while making my dinner and eating. I also made bread dough to rise, the no-knead loaf I like, and will finish it about lunchtime on Monday. This is the NYT recipe. I add more salt and a cup of grains to give it a more earthy taste–a mix from King Arthur Flour. This time I also added more water as the flour seemed to drink more water (I keep my bread flour in the frig to stop the ants from finding it).
Once I had the bread started (18 hours to rise), I finished dinner, put off finishing the Sherlock episode for another day, and returned to my office to write this blog.
For those wondering, I have Thanksgiving at 4PM with Anne and Wayne, as I said, and then a 6AM flight to San Diego, arrive there before 9AM, a room for two days at the US Grant Hotel, and will be back on Sunday morning on the 7AM flight back to Portland. All my flights are First Class (I finally burned some miles–seat 2A) and direct. I have Dungeons and Dragons at M@’s at 5:30 that same Sunday. I might fit going to church in there.
Thanks for reading.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 