Tuesday with Movie

As usual for these past couple of days, I rose late, around 8. I usually start the blog just before 9, as I read emails and news (mostly political) and update my finances in Quicken. I was done with the blog until after 11. My writing is slower as I try to be more correct and leave out Dryer’s words. I am an agent of change (retired IT software designer) and, thus, a student forever. I work to improve at things that matter to me; writing matters to me (spelling does not). Grammar is a tool, and I try to use it properly to make my words and meanings better for the reader.

Lunch, after finally publishing the blog and hearing the lawn service clean up my lawn (while parched, the lawn and gardens look fabulous), is more chicken over more rice. It is just OK. I leave the dishes for later. I collect Susie’s purses (she had a bag full of older unused ones), check them for missed items (a few movie stubs and other small items), and combine them with some blankets. One blanket I had forgotten goes back to before I knew Susie and college. It makes me cry as the image is quite powerful and echoes Susie’s passing–I will spare the reader the details of Susie’s death. I take all of it, adding some more stuffed animals and a coat I missed last time to GoodWill.

But before GoodWill, I head to Reedville Creek Park. The pizza and carbohydrates from yesterday’s dinner with Dondrea and Z in Portland’s Pearl District weigh against my mind (I could not resist that pun). My face is a bit puffy from all the salt, and Dondrea and I pledged not to look at the scale for a few days. Dondrea texted me that she had already gone for a long run. I needed to match her with at least a long walk.

I made five loops, I think, for a total of 4,000 steps for the day (I might need a FitBit or to dust off the Apple Watch that Nike’s SEC program gave us to report this better), with each loop being 725 steps or so. I saw only a few folks on the track, and as it was past lunchtime, the park was nearly empty. Despite the salt, carbs, and some stiffness, I was feeling better today, more like myself, who walked 10K steps in Casablanca. I am on week nine of the brain surgery that removed the slow-growing tumor. I was told it would be slow to work back to normal, and it is. This would have been my back-to-work week had I not been laid off.

I was a bit worn out from the emotions of another trip to GoodWill and the walking. After Air Volvo returned me to the Volvo Cave, I read and napped. The Volvo is running well and seems to enjoy the new oil and sparkplugs (and the $43 oil cap and O-ring that caused the exhaust/mix issue). I have not scheduled regular servicing (it is getting close to 70K); I have done 1/4 of that now. I may pick a non-Volvo place (cheaper) to do tires and brakes in the fall.

I contacted Jack and asked if he could do an ad hoc moment and head to the movie theater down the street: Regal’s Movies on TV. Soon, we caught the last cheap playing of a movie (cheap being $9 each with free popcorn for Regal members on Tuesday). I picked Twisters, and Jack, being a voice actor and radio guy, enjoys the previews and commercials (and I have taken a second look at them through his eyes and now watch how they are put together and executed). The movie, with no high-paid names, was cleverly written, and all the actors helped suspend disbelief and become the people in the story. Entertaining and a fantasy set in Oklahoma, skipping politics and the usual divisions, and a hymn to the US Great Plains’ people suffering from weather change and economic constraints. I would watch it again and again. Recommended.

After the movie, Jack and I headed to our respective homes, and soon, I was chopping veggies for a salad with tuna for dinner. I was resisting anything else as I had enough calories on Monday. Matt V suggested the tuna packets instead of cans; they are perfect. I opened the tuna envelope into a bowl and scooped out the tuna (the water or oil I tossed). I discovered that my copy of the movie Midway (2019) was now corrected on my Apple, and I started watching that movie. While I know the story better than the writers, the special effects are incredible. To see USN’s Enterprise CV-6 and IJN’s Yamato in full color and crashing through the Pacific is worth the price of the movie. The explosions on the carriers are rather dramatic but not necessarily wrong. I have the story of the USS Lexington CV-2, which is lost in the movie on my shelf, signed by the author who jumped off the burning ship and published during the war. The movie is long, and I did not finish it before my salad was done. I will watch it over the next few days.

The day disappeared, and the sun was down, and it was dark in the house. While it is obvious that the days are getting shorter, it shocked me that I missed the sunset (sunset is still late at 8:49). I spent the rest of the evening preparing to work on my electronic project by trying to load the libraries and other software to run the XIAO round display.

XIAO is a useful miniaturization of the already small Arduino microcontrollers from China. I am using them as they were the example in a build I am copying and enhancing to make a miniature diving bell and hopefully a submarine for an aquarium or a small pond/pool. The round display was not part of the original plan, but it comes with so many useful extensions that it might be great to use.

The install to get a working compile took until 10ish. The directions were not updated and did not include adding a graphic library to my Arduino IDE software. The Arduino IDE has been in active development for years and is the software I use to create C/C++ code for my microcontrollers; and has been revised to handle all the strange hardware variations that are now part of the greater Arduino family, including XIAO. I discovered that missing in the direction was that the special one-off library is not needed as now the code is in the regular library (and that the one-off does not support my hardware). I also needed to include a real-time clock library, which I missed in the instructions as it said it was optional (not really optional). I have yet to run the hardware test sketch (‘sketch’ is what programs are called by the IDE) on the XIAO as I need to solder pins to the tiny controller to plug it into the XIAO round expansion board or disassemble my breadboard version to use it in the pins.

With success I was more tired than usual at 10 and showered and read for a while. I slept with the house at 75F and the back door open. I woke after midnight, cold now, and rose to get some eye grease and proof of hydration executed. I returned to bed, with covers now, and slept.

Thanks for reading.