Friday Mixed

I rose around 8 and had no plans for the day. I had acquired some new sheets for the queen-sized mattress at Costco and planned to wash and install them. I plan to clear the linen closet of all sheets and like items as many are mismatching, and I have not seen a bed in twenty years, more accumulation. I will buy full-sized sheets for the spare bedroom, reducing my collection to just two sets for each bed. The third bedroom is now my office (but in a shambles). I am also removing towels that are worn, stained, or mismatched.

I have decided to cut a square from the ruined quilts and name tags made by Grandma Bailey. The cloth she used was cheap (the norm in the 1980s) and has worn out, and the fibers failed after fifty years of use–they cannot be fixed. It is time to let them go; they have been folded in a closet for ten years. I will save a bit, frame it, and keep them with me for my time with them. I will eventually send them to a younger Bailey. More to come.

I spent the morning doing laundry and writing the blog. The area near The Machine was full of piles of clean clothing and shirts and pants on hangers; I finally moved everything and put it away late on Friday, when all the laundry was done. I used the Permanent Press setting, as The Machine dries thoroughly in this setting. Funny, Dad Wild told me this setting works the best on driers when teaching me how to do my own laundry a long time ago, so I just use it for everything, even on this new combo machine. Thanks, Dad.

I had a pizza from Costco (well, two, as you can just get one—they come as a pair as Costco always loads you up) for lunch. It has a strong fresh basil taste, which is not a favorite of mine. Too bad I have two. I will eat them, but this is the last one.

With the blog done and the trash still not picked up, I shower, dress, and board Air VW the Gray. The locals, would-be bird artists, have executed their newest work on the ID.4 AWD Pro, and I pay $15 to have that removed before it becomes more permanent. I travel to Target and buy some supplies, including a quad rules notebook for working on math problems. I park the EV at a fast charge station and am disappointed that my ChargePoint app does not work (nor Electrify America), and I am stuck using AMEX to pay $11 to charge from 59 to 100 percent. The free charging seems to be over, but I will return to the target near Beaverton for a free charge next week. Free is a reasonable price.

For those EV questioners, the ID.4 AWD Pro covers about 200 miles before it should be charged (keeping a 20% charge for emergencies like I used to keep 1/4 tank in a gas car). This is about 3/4 of a tank travel on Air Volvo and costs 1/4 the price or less if I don’t use fast chargers and charge only to 80% (meaning about 1/2 the travel of Air Volvo). Part of the reduction is that federal and state gas tax has not been carried to electric vehicles. Thus, we drive on the roads for free—not exactly fair. This lack of fairness echoes the loss of taxes and ‘plate’ buying on taxis, now replaced by Uber and similar services.

Returning to the story, I traveled to Costco again. I searched for more sheets, but sticking to their ‘bigger is better’ offerings, there were only King and Queen sheets. I did get cheap bananas ($1.99 a bunch), some cleaning products (the only small sheets I found), milk in boxes, corn chips (in a bag so large that it will likely go stale before I can even show progress), and a pair of pillows.

I noticed the intensity of my fellow shoppers at Costco. None of the cart drivers talked to other people and were focused on going fast and furious. While there were no explosions or flipping carts, I felt the same intensity of Rush Hour and the loneliness that haunts our modern retail sales processes. The folks handing our food seemed to just stack it and then call out to anyone hearing where to get some. No attempt to reach out unless addressed, and then ‘just the facts’ with an artificial smile. I find myself reversing directions; I don’t know my way around the store and am attempting to go upstream. The aggressive ignoring I experienced dodging carts could almost transform milk into cottage cheese! Yikes! The rush for check out and leaving was even more intense. I tried to make way for a person unwisely using a walker in the exit way, and I was then passed and the hole plugged with intense folks leaving and giving me the ‘hairy eyeball.’ The experience seemed like something Darwin would expect. So far, I have no happiness at Costco; I just buy cheap oversized items there.

I returned home, planning to make dinner and continue to make order out of the chaos that is Château Wild (no longer named for autos). M@ is coming by Monday morning to help bring some order to the garage (he helped about five years ago, the last time it was ordered). I want Air VW the Gray in its hangar and not out being decorated by our wildlife. I move some items into the house and move some books. I order a cart to be delivered on Sunday to hold some of the board games and other items.

I baked boneless and skinless chicken thighs for dinner after defrosting them and soaking them in salt water for forty-five minutes. I steamed some green beans from 185th Corner Market. I mashed potatoes I got from Costco that I baked first. I have been unhappy with the product, but being from Costco, there were many of them. I am down to the last pile in the freezer. I will use fresh ones once these are gone.

I continued to move a few items from the garage around. I also watched more Classic Doctor Who: The Revenge of the Cyberman (1975). This series was less good than the previous one, showed less logic, and seemed more about running around in circles than anything else. Tom Baker, playing the Fourth Doctor, had no good lines. It seemed to just fill time. It closes the 12th season with the Doctor and companions taking off in the Tardis after getting an Emergency signal from the Brigadier.

As I said, I made the bed, folded the new sheets, emptied the old sheets into a bag, and went to bed after showering. I tried to read some math, but being tired is not a good time for math. More to follow!

I was asleep soon. I woke at 4ish to prove hydration and had trouble sleeping. I managed to return to sleep and did not wake until 8ish.