Monday Back in Oregon

I slept in until almost 9. I rose and found liberal coffee (i.e., Fair Exchange certified), assembled the French Press, and made coffee. I found the last of my steel-cut oats and cooked them on the stove. I opened a can of peaches and scooped out about 1/2 into a bowl. I found yogurt with fruit and ate all that while writing the blog until the early afternoon. The doorbell rang, and I found the mail and packages that had been delivered. I had the mail held, and then everything was delivered today. I managed to get through the packages. It was like Christmas again. Linda’s glassware arrived intact (Deborah mailed it for me). I will toss the pile of junk mail and try to get through the cards, bills, and year-end papers on Tuesday.

Deborah sent me a board game for the holidays (and thankfully sent it to the house): AbDucktion. I am looking forward to trying it when she is here in February. I also received a Kickstarter Ostia Pirates, another add-on for my copy of the Ostia Board Game from a previous Kickstarter. I found my new apron from my sister. I had packed it in my luggage and discovered it says ‘Chef Wild’; excellent! My books also arrived. It was like another Christmas.

I used The Machine to do my laundry, but it is drying poorly, and I will have to review how to service it. I managed to do three loads; the last one is finished as I write tonight. I had enough clothing left at the house (leaving some to make my first day back easier) and soon cleaned up, dressed, and made lunch. I found Trader Joe’s frozen meal of Butter Chicken and some frozen naan for lunch and baked them. I talked to Deborah, who is back to work on her break. Next, I called Enterprise Car Rentals and ordered a two-week car rental.

I walked to the local Enterprise office and waited fifteen minutes for someone to help me. They got me a Ford Escape, grey colored this time, for two weeks. I managed to connect my phone and got CarPlay to work. Perfect!

I drove to the Volvo Mothership and spoke to the service folks. Yes, my service person is off on Mondays even when he agreed to talk to you on your first day back, Monday. I decided to continue with more repairs.

Dear reader, I decided to pick the cheapest and most convenient solution. When you can’t decide, I use the corporate approach of cost as the tiebreaker. To replace the XC60 2018 Volvo would mean buying a new car for likely $20,000 or more and disposing of my failing vehicle. Living without a car, while financially appealing, would be inconvenient, and I would still have to scrap or sell the XC60. Finally, if the XC60 fails again, I can still sell it, recoup what I can, and buy a used Ford Escape from Enterprise (they sell their cars when done with them). The fantasy of living without an expensive vehicle and using Uber and rentals to fill in would require much more attention than I want to give this problem. Paying to fix the Volvo seems the easiest.

With that decided, I headed to grocery shopping. First, at 185 Market, I  purchased fresh veggies at a reasonable cost. Next, I bought meat, canned items, dry goods, and cheese at Safeway. All this I loaded into the cargo hold of Air Ford (Escape). I unloaded and repacked the pork chops, chicken breasts, and chicken thighs into smaller bags of one or two servings and froze them. I held back two slit chicken breasts for dinner.

I soaked the chicken breasts in salt water for 45 minutes, dried them off, and baked them for 10 minutes with oil and spices (reading an internal temperature of 170F, perfect). I steamed fresh green beans and wilted them in a frying pan with butter, fresh garlic, and almond slices. I baked frozen Costco potatoes as the starch.

I finished the beans and had some more potatoes. I put away the second piece of chicken and potatoes as leftovers for another day. As the coughing worsened throughout the day, I took more meds. I am tired.

I took a nap and rose to write the blog tonight as I have a board game at Richards on Tuesday morning. Sorry if it was just a simple day, but I needed to go slower for a while. Thanks for reading!