Day 114: Saturday

I am writing this on Sunday morning. I am up early to try to write before church. It is a dry morning with some fog.

Saturday started with me sleeping until about 7:30 and getting started writing the blog for Friday. I wrote until late in the morning. I also did my usual download of transactions using Quicken and assigned anything that needed manual intervention, but most things still needed manual work. I closely follow all my active accounts. I update the 401K, IRA, and deferred compensation at the end of months or quarters. I tried to log on to the IRA and discovered it is somehow connected to a strange email account. I will have to call customer service and get it fixed. Ugh!

Taking a pause from writing, I made breakfast: a NYC Zabar’s Everything bagel with cream cheese and Equal Exchange French Roast liberal coffee. There is nothing like the taste of liberal in the morning.

I returned to my 1/700 scale (small going on tiny) model of the WWI SMS Derfflinger. The jewelry cement worked, and the model hull is now looking better. I practiced painting the black strip at the bottom of the model. This is a waterline model, meaning, for you non-modelers, that it shows only the parts that sit on the sea–there is no bottom. I have some of the dark grey and black now on one side; it looks good. Next, I mixed up some epoxy clay (two parts you combine to make it harden), just a small amount, and filled in an opening on the end of the model where the deck was not fitting well. I also filled the crack at the very ends of the hull from gluing the two pieces together. The bow needs to be smooth and impressive. The treated areas dried in an hour, and I took out sanding sticks and carefully smoothed the areas. It looks good. I will have to paint them primer using a brush.

I found the practice etched practice set and my cigar box of folding tools. I then went through the practice of folding a box and a tube. I need to remember how to do this and get the skills back. It is very intense and tiny work. I use my safety glasses with the 3X bifocals with a very bright light. I learned that the etched brass will fly and disappear. There are little tabs that hold a piece to a sheet; you cut these with a good heavy hobby knife. I cleaned off these tabs, and one piece flew off the table after the cut. I forgot to hold it with a transparent tool as the force can flip the tiny piece like tiddywink. More practice is needed before I start on the ship parts!

It was time for lunch. I called Leta while I was driving; I still try to call her every day. She mentioned that the strawberry poppy seed dressing salad was at Panera Bread again, so I decided that worked for me. I arrived there safely in Air Volvo without witnessing any local driver shenanigans. I connected to my account on their touchscreen ordering system and soon had a cup of hot tea and a salad to enjoy. The salad was perfectly made, and this particular store looked cleaner and more organized than the last time I visited. Excellent.

I had some time, and I was meeting Evan at The 649, so I headed to Best Buy. My appliances are all looking sad, and my washer leaks. Neal, the sales guy, explained the new super one-door washer and dryer combo. The one he was pushing required me to rewire the circuit for 30 amps—almost the same as the stove! There was a European model from LG that required only a regular wall plug and did the same thing in a smaller physical footprint. Now, that got my attention. All these are over $2,000, but it would reduce the total laundry footprint.

Neal also told me I could probably fix the leak issue by checking the filter he showed me. I had spaced that there was a filter. He suggested cleaning that and suspects the leak will go away. He said he would still like the sale, but he was an honest guy. Good move, Neal. I come from a long family of salespeople. Trust gets you the big bucks.

Next, without Neal, I looked at the stoves and dishwashers. LG has a special sale for $100 off for each additional item you buy. I liked their dishwasher, and they have a nice stove with two ovens. It’s time to upgrade, I think, but as usual, I will see what I think on Sunday (it is a pile of money). Sleep on it.

With dreams of new appliances, Air Volvo gets me to The 649, which is already busy. Evan is waiting for me. There is a political rally there at 4PM, and we are told to use a round table. Crystal and Stephen are bartenders and opened. That surprises me, as they were on Friday night, too. Natalia joins them later in the afternoon as the place packs with the political folks. I noticed that the dress style of the bartenders was comfortable today as they would be working with a large, distracted crowd.

Evan was thrilled to beat me by three points in the board game Concordia using the Cyprus map. He rushed to build the last of his outposts, thinking he was further ahead than he was. I was just one city from winning when he ended the game. I had missed the Farmer and Metal cards to Evan, so I purchased a pile of other cards and started building brick cities as I had the Mason card. I also got out all my colonists, which awarded me many points. Evan played very well and deserved the win.

We tried to play the basic two-person Furance using only the base rules (excluding all the new cards except for the one fixed card). I got lucky and landed a huge pile of resources, which allowed me to make money each round. I purchased a few cards but made money from the resources I collected from missing out on purchases. I scored high and won as we were squeezed out by the rally. We packed up and left. I had to return and find my hat and laptop, and I was on a chair that had wandered a bit.

I spoke to the manager, Kareem, and he is happy to see us come and play our games. He shared that his wife especially likes to see all the colorful games when she is working and likes it when we explain them to her. We are quite welcome there. Nice!

I headed to Richards and arrived in moderate traffic. People were making the usual lane changes without reason, but I managed to avoid any lost paint. I was early, and Richard had me come in early. He had spent hours preparing for today’s game. I, too, had read and watched videos on social media about today’s game: Inventions.

This is a massive board game and a brain-burner. It uses a chain process that allows you to take extra actions on your turn. You also stack actions. Thus, you start one, leading to another; you complete the new one and then return to the original. You almost need a notepad or a memory marker. The magic to the game is to find a mix of actions that leads you to chains of what you really want to do. It took us an hour to teach; Chris was new to the game. We then spent under four hours, with some turns taking a long time as the player searched for a magic combination. Richard won, Chris was not far behind, and I was far behind as I could not find the combinations and stayed in the Stone Age too long. While we need more plays, it is a good game for monster-sized brain burners and follows board games Lisboa and Weather Maker, which are all designed by Vital Lacerda. I

I returned home via Air Volvo, traveling in the Oregon mist and through local flooding (the usual for Oregon in March). The mail, which arrived on Saturday, included my refund from the City of Portland. It was over $700 and covers 2022-2023 taxes, yes, two years. My adjusted income following Oregon and not the new SALT-reduced federal (Trump administration tax increases) rules meant the city needed to return most of the tax to me. Which covers the Earthquake insurance bill that was delivered on Saturday, which was $611. I will point out that the optional insurance cost has not increased while the required insurance on the house has doubled. Allstate and other insurance companies all explain that their costs are higher, yet optional policies are still unchanged. Hmm.

I had a late shower and went to bed.

Thanks for reading.