Saturday started with me rising at 7ish and feeling like the morning came too soon. I had no plans except for a game at Richard’s house at 6 at night. I found the kitchen, it had not moved and started making coffee. Today, more Kenyan coffee will be roasted and ground in Hillsboro. It was more northern California with the bright sun, but it was cold in the morning and going to the low 80s later (26C). The house and outside smelled of pine smoke, and I would be sneezing and coughing despite the good air quality rating. There is something in the fire that does not agree with me! I feel tired and have to use my inhaler all day. I will not be walking today with just 2300+ steps for the day. But I did not carry my phone in the garage when I was looking for it; the count should be much higher.
I write the blog, read the news online (still mostly political), and update my Quicken with the newest transactions. Now, I have to put in a code each time for my Treasure Direct account. I am waiting to see if my first experimental purchase of a $100 savings bond (index for inflation) will process. My Alaska Airlines card is replacing my US Bank card and my AMEX. This is to get miles and remove the bank card from providing direct access to my checking account.
I am done by with the blog by 10ish, clean up, dress, and ready to face the day. But it is smoky, and I am affected. I decided not to take up a sitting project like writing, model building, or figure painting and decided to find the garage. I do not plan to do any heavy lifting or organizing (if I do, I will ask Matt V over who would like to help with that), but I suspect there are plenty of easy recycling and trashing things I could do. I will also limit my head moving below my waistline; falling is a bad thing, and since the brain surgery, I am at risk of losing the location of the floor and sky. I have no balance left on my left side, and my sight is compensating. If I am looking down and cannot see the horizon, I might not know where up and down is.
Before looking for the garage, I did try outside by watering the roses and a few other plants. The air made me sneeze. I also got covered in dust as I tossed an old ruined hose (I replaced all the hoses in the Spring). I am still collecting and throwing away the old hoses.
In the area formerly known to be a garage, I keep my feet pointed down the whole time. I manage to throw away junk that has accumulated over the last few years. I discovered that resin had run all over my work desk from a bottle of epoxy. Since it is not mixed with the other 1/2 of the epoxy, it has not glued anything and just made things sticky. I have to clean my hands with alcohol to get rid of it. I will have to clean the workspace and items with alcohol–that is for another day when it is cooler.
I find my Nike move boxes. We moved four times when corporate was sending Information Technology (IT) people to random buildings not on the WHQ campus. It was impossible to take seriously after so many chaotic moves; in frustration, I stopped unpacking four of my boxes and just stacked them wherever they moved us for the next two years. For each move (more than three), I would pick up my laptop and a few personal items, put the new location label over the last one, and let the corporate move people move them to my new location, where I would then sit. I am where my laptop is.
Jokers would put a single ream of paper in a box with my name and location and send it to me. I might have retaliated with a wastebasket on the next move. These moves went on until Nike leadership decided that desks and locations were no longer needed. Soon, we were reduced to a locker, and an ad hoc location that was “first come, first serve” in a team area and a specific building, and my boxes were then just forgotten in my garage. Until today…
After cleaning up some areas and stacking a few items to make it easier to negotiate the floor, I grabbed the first box and found my old biz cards and various items I used to have on my desk. This included a shoe for the upgrade back long ago. Nike IT now gives awards not in plaques or framed certificates but in specially made sample shoes. I also found my old rewards that predated that. Some went in the trash as not very interesting.
I found my years of service awards, each framed, and will consolidate them into one frame with the last year, XXV, showing. I have seen folks put their biz cards in a frame, and now that I am retired, I think I will do that. I have cards, somewhere, that go back to the 1980s. I tried to keep a few from each job for the day when I would frame them and look back. That seems to be now. It is a strange feeling to finally reach the point to frame and look back after imagining it for my whole working life (starting in 1985 as a part-time computer operator as a summer job).
I found old coding standards, once-expensive books on coding and standards, and various technology books from yesteryear. They are all now in the recycle bin (even a COBOL book). I also found my homemade CDs, back when I would write my own playlists on a CD to take my music to work. In those distant days, we used desktops and had a built-in CD player with a place to plug in headphones. Later, laptops would provide the same useful plug (Bluetooth was a failing technology back then). All to the trash, but a good memory.
However, I found the DVD of Nike’s software, which was converted from SAP version 4.6 to 6.3 by SmartShift. I did not think I had anything of value in these boxes. I sent a picture to Brad (my old boss) and Michael G with a picture of a box with all my move labels. I will return or destroy the two DVDs, but Michael replied with a friendly note. It is good to remember all of our good works.
I also found endless, so it seemed, convention lanyards and travel items from Turkey and Florida. I used to travel more than 10% of the time. I was in Istanbul and Europe for three years in a row, working on tax software compliance with the Turkish and other governments. My glass Turkish tea glasses, forgotten in the box, are now in the dishwasher.
While the garage is still missing and replaced with what looks like a wrecked warehouse for a gaming store, model building, electronics, and yard work items, there is hope to soon recover it. The goal is to park Air Volvo again in the garage. I need some new shelves and to throw away or recycle items that have never left their shelves for years.
After all the work, my back and legs complained. Again, my iPhone was safe in the house and did not record the hours of work. I changed clothing and cleaned up again. I then boarded Air Volvo, adding Unsettled to the cargo hold of board games.
Next, Air Volvo headed to Portland. But I stopped by the local coffee shop and got a European Mint Mocha. I was tired, and smoke was likely contributing to my sleepiness. Dark chocolate, mint, and coffee combined are my secret weapon against these feelings. Energized, the trip to Portland took 35 minutes in light traffic. There were some instances of four-lane at once change, extra-legal, but it was done with a blinker and full usual Portland politeness. The older model, BMW, who did that at 50 to reach an exit, almost deserved a golf clap.
Today, we played the beautiful and fun to play the newest and, I assume, deluxe version of Yedo. A worker placement, card play, and resource management game with a Japanese theme. You collect resources and workers to do missions of various difficulty to receive victory points–kind of mini-goals. There is also a stacking of cards that can get even more cards, and I did find us waiting as five cards, keep two, would be run over and over. I discovered that the game is mean and that some resources are unavailable if not acquired at the start. Next time! I also learned the hard way that the bidding process is just one bid.
I scored above Chris but behind James and Richard (who won) by quite a distance. They both had played the game many times and knew the best places to get victory points. I was told my score was excellent for a first-time player. I enjoyed the game and would play Yedo again. I will consider buying a copy if I play it again and it plays for less than four hours.
I returned home in light traffic. I took the huge on-ramp to Freemont Bridge, which is taller than the bridge’s roadway! It was like being launched into space in a sci-fi movie. With the exception of the high flying, it was an uneventful trip.
I gave my wooden pieces to Richard for Grand Hotel Austria, but some are missing. After returning home in Air Volvo, I searched the house but did not find them. I will look more.
I took a shower and soon was in bed. I woke at 4ish cold and crawled under the covers after proving my hydration.
Thanks for reading.
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