Monday

Going backward, the soy sauce bottle crashed on the floor, the bottom broke off, and the floor was covered in salty brown stuff intermixed with broken glass. This was not my plan at 11:30ish at night. I do not remember why I opened the frig and reached in and knocked it off the shelf. Dripping with soy sauce, I stripped off my PJs and cleaned the mess. I threw the PJs at The Machine, returned to the bedroom, put on a clean pair of PJs, crawled back into my covers, and returned to Elric stories. I soon was sleepy and put away the book. I slept and dreamed forgotten dreams, none including Elric’s soul-destroying sword. I woke twice for proof of hydration.

Before all this, I was at Wildwood Taphouse, delivered by Air VW the Gray, still charged over 80%, and had “beers as black as my soul. ” In this case, I must have had some cinnamon in my soul, as the beer was sweet and spicy, reminding me of Christmas and not of doomscrolling. I enjoyed the small glass (these are high-alcohol beers that are best to sip and enjoyed in small glasses). I revised my story “Chat Holmes and Watson” that I wrote as a distraction to grief and cancer recovery in 2023-2024. The copyright for the detectives has expired, and thus, I thought I should give it a try.

This was my fourth or fifth edit and writing, and I usually stop there. You got it by then, or it is best to forget it. I made a few updates and let Grammarly find things that Grammarly did not find a year ago, the last time I worked on it. Nothing that bad. I rewrote a few poorly formed sentences after Grammarly replaced them, losing their meaning. Yikes, the AI needs to come with an undo button!

I added more to the ending, which also was lighted up in red by Grammarly as it was new and had not been reread with much care by my year-ago self (red is bad and needs to be fixed, blue is suggestion, red for a paragraph means a subroutine of Grammarly wants to rewrite it all–all can be very exciting). I made corrections and then let Grammarly weed out some superfluous wording, though I retained some as the Holmes and Watson canon used more words we use now. I made a point of leaving in more decoration words at the start and then letting the story become more compact as it goes on. It is as if the chat version of the storyteller, Watson, becomes increasingly modern as he becomes more integrated into his new reality.

I liked the story and sent it to 2600 Magazine, The Hacker’s Quarterly, to see if they wanted it. They published my last couple-thousand-word SciFi story. According to professional writers, I am doing this backward. You should pitch a story, and when someone buys it, then write it. Being retired, I can write what I like and then see if someone will publish it (for free or, in this case, a year’s subscription or a T-shirt). I got confirmation that the PDF arrived, and I am being considered (with all the warnings that if they can’t read the text, you will get nothing).

Before this, I made dinner. I baked some chicken thighs, boneless and skinless, with Moroccan-style spices. I made couscous with spices, almond slivers, and raisins. I heated couscous sauce from North Africa from a bottle. I put the couscous in a bowl, covered it with sliced chicken, and then covered that with sauce. I had a salad to go with it, adding green olives to make it fit the theme. I might have had two bowls. Much was left over as I cooked four thighs and plenty of couscous. It makes a great reheated leftover. It looked like the kitchen had been blown up when I was done. I left the dishes for the house elves (sadly, I did the dishes on Tuesday morning).

Before this, I was at Safeway. I wrote a list and wandered from it occasionally but tried to be frugal. I am not very good at being frugal. Eggs were interesting. The excellent and heirloom eggs were $6.99 for twelve in a see-thru plastic holder showing 11 blueish eggs and one reddish. The regular large white eggs in the usual paper container that easily opens and dumps your eggs from the usual supplier were $6.99. Confused as to what to do, I picked the heirloom eggs. Why not?

With my list completed, plus a few extras, Aws checked me out. He was happy to see me. Aws, a legal immigrant from Iraq and a previous war, and I discussed the cost of eggs. He spoke of his hope that the new President would make it easier for the middle class with a tax cut or other help. While I let him know I am not for President Trump, I agreed that Trump kept his promises before (though I disagreed with much he did), and there was hope. It is hard for a liberal like myself to give support like this, but folks need hope, and maybe it will work out.

Before this, I called the towing company, and they picked up the Volvo, which is now the property of Oregon Public Broadcasting. I hope they can get some money for it. I had thrown on some clothing and dropped the papers off at the dealership that still had the ruined XC60. Everything was in order, and I will likely just get a gift receipt in the future.

I wrote the blog all morning and enjoyed coffee with a banana and a biscuit I made the night before.

And that takes us to the start of the morning at 7ish. Thanks for reading!