Friday Reading

I was awakened by the alarm at 6 and thought this was too early, but after rising slowly in the morning, grey with clouds, I found the kitchen. There, I made coffee, liberal. I found a banana and the last croissant to go with the dark caffeinated beverage. One sip, and you are ready to raise the taxes on the rich and donate to the local food kitchen. I have the Union Gospel Mission’s letter next to me. I will be donating soon.

I pause as I try to remember the day before and assemble a framework for the day. This often misses events and actions outside of my usual boilerplate. I try to remember my food, what I did between the meals, and my trips in Air Volvo. I often look at the dirty dishes, trash, and recycling to see signs of what yesterday’s refuse can bring back memories. I have always been like this, not something caused by aging; my focus as an agent of change is now and the future, and even as a kid, I would have trouble recalling what happened in school and what was for lunch. After school, I hoped to get home to see Thundercats or other cartoons and not homework or what was lunch.

I was time-boxed today as I had an early-ish doctor’s appointment with my GP. This is my every four-month check for blood pressure, A1C, and other issues. I wrote fast and was done too early, waiting an hour doing dishes and light chores. Air Volvo took me through light traffic to the Cedar Hills Crossing area, where Legacy has an office. Despite being twenty minutes early, my doctor soon saw me. My A1C was done to normal, 5.1. My blood pressure was 117/68, excellent. No weight gain. This means that there are no extra blood draws, and I get to see my doctor being happy. We spent most of the time talking about traveling and our love for New Orleans food (he has a conference at NOLA in the late fall). I did talk about the CT scan results of a thickening wall in my bladder, but he thought it was minor and could be ignored unless I was having symptoms. None. Ignored.

I am extremely happy and return to The Volvo Cave. I reheated yesterday’s pizza for lunch. While no longer crunchy, it was still good. I can see why some folks like cold pizza; microwaves make it mushy. I have reheated it in the oven, which works better, but it takes longer (and you must not burn it).

I headed to Safeway for a few items to make dinner and to get laundry soap that I forgot. I am a complete airhead and had to go back twice to get items I forgot. For various reasons, some good, my focus was well unfocused. I managed to get everything I needed with two extra tries.

I took a long walk in the neighborhood to get some steps in, hoping to reach 10K today. The sky is clear with only some high white clouds. Thus, there is no need for an umbrella. Any grey cloud means bring it, or you will be wet—Oregon is not tame. My back is a bit off this morning, starting when I sat at my working table for two hours writing. Not bad, but it seems misaligned. My walk is slightly uncomfortable, but little pain. I wave at neighbors who are getting used to seeing me. The stone fruit is mostly gone from the trees. There are some plums left, and the wasps are enjoying them. I avoided startling a yellow jacket and having it flying up my pant leg. Nothing I have experienced, but care is needed when the fruit is on the sidewalk!

It is after back-to-school, and the traffic is higher on all the streets now. I see some extra-legal driving at the four-way stops and some hand gestures. Nothing profane, as this is Oregon, but I witnessed some pointing to show that the order was violated and a request to align to process next time. I suspect the offender was waiting for others and just went when they all hesitated.

I returned home and read code on AI and Python data frame handling, trying to remember and also understand how all this works again. The Pandas add-on to Python creates the superfast data frames (the underlying code is in C for speed). The data frames are then used to align the data and to impute missing values. The resultant data frame is then split and used to train the AI structures, often a massive collection of decision trees or a mathematical model of neural networks. Pandas and Python have also changed. Thus, some things are new, but I am unaware of what has changed. Just re-learning.

I peeled and sliced two eggplants for dinner. I salted the slices in layers in a colander in the sink, which made the eggplant less bitter. An hour later, I unstack, salt the other side, and put the slices back in the colander. The salt is drawing out some of the liquid. I read more Canadian murder mysteries and more AI code.

I wash the eggplant to remove all the salt (salt water, which I would previously use, is not as effective as salting and washing) and stack the eggplant slices in clean kitchen towels to dry. I have plenty of towels now.

I read some more and then assembled dinner. I got two smaller glass baking dishes. One gets three beaten eggs and the other Italian-style bread crumbs. The larger glass dish is sprayed with olive oil-based PAM to make cleaning easier and prevent the cheese from sticking. I process the eggplant through the eggs to the crumbs and then to a layer. I cover the layer with handfuls of shredded mozzarella cheese and then some Paul Newman Sock-It-To-You sauce from a jar. About half for the layer. I have enough eggplant for two layers in my largest rectangle glass dish. Covered with sauce (spreading it out), shredded cheese, and then sprinkled with a Parmigiano Reggiano bit of cheese. The eggplant parmigiana goes in the oven for 45 minutes and is entirely done in less than the hour I expected. It is excellent. The eggplant slices shrink by about 50% in thickness when cooking. It was good. I stayed at 1/4″ or slightly thicker slices! I was happy not to have the skin on them!

I watched and finished season 3 of Slow Horses, a non-stop story you now see in many cable spy stories. Heavy on the action, too. Could not stop watching. While the show is hard to start, season 1 is opaque at first; it is an excellent show once 2/3 through the first season. I also like slow and complex spy stories, having read too many La Carré books in the Cold War years. I learned that Real Tigers by Mick Herron is the book on which season thee is based. There are three books, Slough House being the first and the fourth one of stories. I will try them soon. Sometimes, I find a good cable show is often from a poorly executed book, and sometimes the book is better. More to come.

I read more AI and still not coding anything. I am starting to understand again and think I have a plan. I find it better to think and plan than to code. Coding often takes no time once you have a good design or a mental image of where you want to go.

I do the dishes and wash the pans and glassware. I put it away as I don’t want the smell of cooked pasta sauce in the morning. One more look at some AI code and soon headed to bed early. I read The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny until my eyes closed, and I found my mind inventing words I thought I was reading. I put the book away and slept.

Thanks for reading!