I am enjoying the changing of laptops today. I can’t quite get the keys in the correct order or the right one. My Nike laptop and Apple are just a little different, and when I work on the Nike laptop all day, the Apple becomes a trial of backspaces and everything switching to capitals as I miss the shift and hit the shift lock instead. Tonight, after playing a game with Z at the church, the rains returned in the pure dark–no moon and indeed no stars. We were blessed with blue skies and leaves drying out for two days.
At Nike, I saw an army of ten men with leaf blowers forcing a wall of dried leaves into long walls to be sucked up by a vacuum truck. Getting rid of the leaves is life and death here. We need the rains and their resultant water to flow. We cannot have everything blocked by masses of leaves. We remove them and compost them. Otherwise, we face flooded homes and roads, deeply flooded.
Returning to the start of the day, I started after 6AM when my alarm went off. I had worked on yesterday’s blog beyond 11PM and woke to prove hydration a few times. I also am suffering with my arm hurting when I try to reach with it, and my left heel is sore, possibly ruining my trip to look at historical ships (not a buying trip) in San Diego (while I love nautical things, I get seasick easily). Dondrea has recommended Arnica gel, and that has helped some. I will not change my plans, but I might have to use more Ubers than I thought.
I rose and found the kitchen and the last banana, and I cut a slice of my baked bread (no-kneed bread from the NYT recipe) and covered it with butter and some low-sugar jelly. I made almost the last of the NYC Zabar’s grind (thanks, Smiths-Krammers) and carried the coffee and my breakfast to the office.
I did the usual reading of emails and Slack channel updates. Nothing was critical, so I went to my Apple, read the news and my emails. I downloaded the transactions from Quicken, but I have made a hash of the transfer to US Bank, so I need to spend some time rebalancing, finding the mistake, and catching up on the transactions.
I showered, dressed, and boarded Air Volvo, limping on my left side, and put my Nike laptop on the co-pilot seat (it is not heavy enough to trip the airbag–there is a display for that on a Volvo; you can tell the Volvo that the weight is packages and not a person and thereby turning off the airbag). I arrived at a near-empty parking lot and parked in the front. Nobody from my team other than my boss was in today.
With nobody in my area, I just did my Zoom calls sitting at my usual desk. I had to read and approve a few items. I also got clearance from my boss, Brad, to take another trip for the last full week of January. I blocked my calendar, updated other’s calendars that I would be out then, and put in for the time off. I saw that my official Paid Time Off (PTO) totals were three days higher now. The first correction has been done.
I contacted Grace United Methodist Church and now have the 18th of May reserved in Michigan for Susie’s Celebration.
I called Leta in the afternoon, and she was happy to answer, not from the hospital but from The Willows in Lansing for physical therapy. Leta was glad that one of the folks built a special splint for her hand to help reduce the swelling and help the nerves get back to working as expected.
Leta can be found at: The Willows, 3500 Coolidge Road, Room 302A, East Lansing, MI 48823.
I reached lunchtime and headed out of the buildings on an excellent, dry fall day like you would see in Northern California but not in the Pacific Northwest. Twenty years ago, we would not see the sun except for a few days in January for six months, but not now. Before, we would have hard freezes and black ice on the parking lots, with folks falling when getting out of their vehicles and getting hurt- yes, really. We are not seeing that now.
I have been meaning to try Frank’s Noodle House, so I drive a short distance and walk in. It is sit down, and I order a plate of noodles, which I got. It’s not the best thing for a diabetic! It was good, and I would say the handmade noodles were chewy and good, but not again. I will look for Pho or Korean instead. I like the broth and smaller noodles better.
Air Volvo returned me to Swift, and I parked in the front again. More folks have exited for the holidays, and it is getting quiet. I talked to my boss a few times about issues with data access, copying, and APIs; nothing I can share here. I return to my desk, alone in our area, and work for hours on getting the 2024 team vacation tracker ready. It is a tedious task to rebuild a calendar for 2024, but it has to be done, and I want to put my PTO in it, so I recreated the new calendar for 2024; it took hours of manual work. I did not mind refreshing my Excel skills on the more recent version, and it took me a while to remember and find all the new icons. All good.
I was done with that in the late afternoon and left a nearly empty Swift building, at 4ish. I headed to Beaverton and Shack Burger place. It was light traffic, and I soon found the strip mall was not yet busy. And I quickly found a parking spot. I had the avocado and bacon cheeseburger with fries and a small Diet Coke. It was terrific, and the burger was not that large. The fries were well-cooked and not oily. Excellent.
I reread the rules of the board game Ottoman Sunset while eating, looking for a way to improve my last play. I think I needed to use more resources to force back the invaders. This is a solo game with you playing a simulation of the Ottoman Empire (and the Young Turks) in 1914-1918–just survive the events of history to win. I was unsuccessful the first time I played it, and I need to play more aggressively from what I can fathom.
After food, Air Volvo took me in light traffic to First United Methodist Church in Beaverton, near the fountain and library, to meet Dondrea and Z. Z was free to play some games tonight. I was early and took a nap in Air Volvo, but soon Z and Dondrea showed up, and Z and I agreed on the board game Concordia, my all-time favorite game (thank you, Will, for teaching it to me so many years ago). As Z did not remember the game that well, we played the basic rules on the original board of the Roman Empire. In the game, each player is a Roman family trying to build the most efficient trading house. The players pay for resources and money to build new trading houses. Extra staff is represented by cards, and you can buy those for resources. The staff will generate money and resources and build trading houses. The game is played with each player playing a card, representing a staff member, and doing the simple actions the card allows. But the strategy is complicated, and the sequencing is mind-blowing.
Easy to play, simple, fast turns, and a challenge to sequence your actions to be efficient and fit with your purchased cards. The cards determine the scoring at the end. Z liked it again once she got into the game’s groove and scared me, but I managed to pull ahead by just ten points. A close game.
After the one game, it was a shorter night for choir practice tonight, we were done, and soon, the choir broke up. We also wished each other a lovely Thanksgiving, and I took Air Volvo back to the Volvo Cave. The rains returned as I drove back and would start to get heavy tonight. My lawn service works on Tuesday and all the leaves were gone–I am sure they enjoyed the dry leaves this time. That seldom happens, but maybe it is the new normal.
Well, that takes me full circle. Thanks for reading, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 