Wednesday

Going backward, I am writing the blog Wednesday night after walking home. The hiking boots I planned to wear to Michigan were killing my back, and I decided I would not take them with me. I will just take my walking shoes and hope that will be good enough.  I dropped off an Air Ford (Escape) and thanked it for being a perfect fill-in for Air Volvo, which is currently in the repair shop with no ETA. Estimates run to as much as $8,000, including maintenance costs, once the damage is repaired from the water intrusion. The sunroof seal failed, and the car flooded. The streets were poorly lit, and I am glad I didn’t make that walk every night. Susie used to walk it with a flashlight many nights when I was traveling.

I am packing lots of clothing, but no suits this time. Instead of suits, I will wear sweater vests and a nice red vest for Christmas. I also know I will buy anything I forget or need. My carry-on will include my laptop and its charging cables. The battery I carry for emergencies and for missed charging options can power the computer for a day and recharge my phone multiple times.

Tonight, I was at the church to play games with Z, and Shawn’s daughter, Lauren, joined us. We got shooshed once as we laughed a bit too loud. We were more careful after that. We all had a good time.

Lauren had not played the heavier board games but allowed us to teach her Wyrmspan, and she soon got it and was playing her turn with minimal help. This game is a revision of the well-loved Wingspan with dragons, not birds, and many efficiencies and a logical flow of the game that makes it easy to play and learn. We played the first round with all of learning and re-learning the game again. We had not played it for months. Z got the game for Christmas; we took advantage of me being there to play again, allowing Z to be ready to play with family when I was not around.

By the third round, Z and Lauren were doing well. I had the usual frustrations, such as why the dragon cards were the wrong type! I filled my board with many dragons cards and had various end-of-game scoring dragons but had not yet fulfilled the requirements. I needed more time for that shockingly high score (what Z and I refer to as evil plans). Lauren was with Shawn and headed out when the Praise Band was done. We ended the game early and scored. Z won by one point (my plans had yet to come to fruition), forty-seven, with Lauren only three points behind me. An excellent game, and even stopping early, everyone had a chance to win. Lauren seemed to be surprised at how much she liked it.

We made too much noise, putting the game away, and were asked to be quieter. Oops. Z and I switched to the fast (and quiet yet intense) game Furnace. A favorite for quick play and a small footprint. This is a resource management game in which you run plants in a network with the input of one fed by another to produce more of another resource or sell the goods for money. The player with the most money wins after four rounds. We played the base game with a player setup that uses an automated third player. Z was just six bucks below me at the end.

Going back further, I was home doing laundry and putting away dishes. I want to have the house picked up and as clean as possible. I later washed the toilets, removed all the trash, and put away all the clothing. I made a toasted bagel for dinner with sour cream (I was out of cream cheese) for the spread and added some bacon that I fried a few days ago and a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

Going back, I drove Air Ford (Escape) all over Beaverton to get my Dungeons and Dragons players their Christmas gifts for the holidays. Nobody was home, but I put everything in holiday bags and left them at the front doors. School traffic was heavy as I was traveling during the dread school end time, about 3:15, and I had to backtrack once to get to a road not choked with cars locating various children.

Going far back to the morning, I rose early, made coffee, and soon was crossing Cooper’s Mountain on a near-perfect sunny day (just a short break in the weather) for the usual charming drive looking down at the valley, home is the Tualatin Valley, but across the mountain is the huge Willamette Valley. This split between the valleys is wine country, and I lost count of the vineyards I passed by.

In Newberg, in the Willamette Valley, I met Pastor Ken, and we talked for about ninety minutes at Five Guys and had lunch. He wants me to help with the administration of the church. I said I would help; more to come later.

I drove back, stopped by Great Clips, and waited a while to get my usual biz man look. I was getting a bit spiky. Soon, that was done, and I stopped by Rite Aid there and got some of the bags for gifts.

Returning to the end of the day, I assembled my bag with underwear, socks, PJ, and T-shirts on one side. Dress shirts, cotton LL Bean pants, and vests with hangers are on the side. This then gets crushed into the carry-on-styled roller bag (well, a large one). I will check it anyway. I thought about trying to roll it through security, but I feared I was not careful enough, and it would get opened, and then I would have to sit on it to close it again. Nope. Check for $35.

I started arranging my gym back carry-on with my usual cables, batteries, etc. I put the remaining clothing in The Machine and wore my robe while I wrote, cleaned, and tried to bring some order to chaos. I wrote this blog. I was sleepy and soon had issues forming meaningful words. It was time to sleep.

I showered, reassembled the bed (I had stripped and washed the bedding that morning), put away the still-damp clothing, let it dry on the hanger, and read until I could not stay awake. Time to stop.

Tomorrow was a quick cleanup and dress, and Uber had already ordered me to the MAX to take the Red Line to the airport, PDX.

Thanks for reading.