Saturday with Games

Saturday started with me waking up with my alarm, but I had already rolled over as the light was rushing in one last time before daylight saving time. Yes, it is back (think Poltergeist movie). We must now purchase the Spring (20 March) with an hour of sleep.

I find coffee and the last banana (I will stop by 185th Corner and get more on Sunday) and have some babka to go with it. Jeff will be back on Monday for a few more items, but I am alone in my improved house this morning. I write the blog and enjoy writing it. Today, I am sharing more about depression and my thoughts on donating some of my 401K when I write. I have no plans and just write.

I also updated my settings in Quicken. I have a new investment IRA account at US Bank. I transferred the balance of IMPAX as shares and adjusted the 401K balance in and out to move it to the new account. The money is coming as a physical check made out to the account (not really me) without withholding. I will likely hold this as a cash balance in Quicken and adjust it monthly as I did before for Fidelity.

I showered, shaved, and dressed to start my quiet Saturday afternoon. I get out a jar of pasta sauce, Prego, a box of bowtie pasta, and defrost, shred, and fry sweet Italian-style sausage for lunch. Yes, more than I needed,  but it was fun. The pasta water, boiling hard, spills its saltiness on the stove, but it is not an issue. I do manage to burn the sauce, but I manage to save it by pouring it into the fry pan, and the burned bit, not much, stays with the pan. I finished the sauce in the frying pan (the sausage was not too fatty, so there was nothing to drain off). I drained the pasta and then combined it all. I have to admit I had a few bowls.

I watched the first half of the first John Wick movie while I cooked and heard, “John Wick…is a man of focus, conviction, and sheer will.” I am a fan. And the evil hotel, The Continental, also. So good. Here is the same scene from the first movie.

With lunch inside me and the rest in the frig, I cut up and freeze the ham still in the frig for almost too long, and then head out. I needed room for the pot of pasta. It is a lovely sunny day, and Mount Hood appears to be just beyond the turns of TV Highway. Mount Hood is about a two-hour drive of 85 miles away, nearly a straight-line drive on 26. The pioneers seemed to have placed Highway 26 (the Sunset Highway) from the mountain to the sea in a roughly straight line. TV (Tualatin Valley) Highway parallels it down the middle of the Tualatin Valley, my home.

I spoke to Deborah in the morning and later when I headed to Big River Coffee. There, I tried to get organized to write another sci-fi story focusing on a fantasy Dungeons and Dragons-like setting. I purchased Scrivener to help me manage my fantasy world I plan to create and write a longer story. I do well at SciFi at 2,500-5,000 words, but I wanted something longer this time. I spent the afternoon looking at various offerings, but the support and tutorials got me to risk $59 (less than the price of an add-on for my board games) for Scrivener. Later, I learned that Grammarly works inside the Scrivener editor. Yay!

I return home. The Air VW the Gray is fully charged and barely registers the trip. At home, I watch video tutorials and play with Scrivener. The food and yesterday’s grief seem to weigh me down, and I steal a nap for thirty minutes. I then jump out of bed and make dinner. Just an over-easy egg (from a blue-shelled egg) on a reheated biscuit with a melted slice of cheddar. Excellent. I even washed the pan and ran the dishwasher.

Aside: I noticed that one of the failing orchids appears to be coming back. It may have been dormant. The cattleya orchid has a green leaf, and I see another one rising from the roots. These orchids are two to four years from being large enough to flower. Orchid growing is a hopeful process.

The drive into Portland seemed to be in rush hour traffic, which I seldom see on a Saturday night. Drivers were making many extra-legal lane changes.  With Spring Break approaching and the time change this weekend, the local drivers seemed more desperate than usual. I had to brake and give way a few times. Yikes!

I arrived early and helped set up the board game Carnegie, which I had only heard about. Richard’s copy was the maxed-out Kickstarter version. The game uses a strange mix of components, iconography, and color usage, making me almost dizzy. It mixed freely with a shared board and individual boards. Actions were shared each turn, allowing all players to play the full set of actions (in order from first player, who picks the action, and then around). This was a resource management and worker placement game with progress tracks (which did minimal) and some meanness (meaning that some significant resources were limited, and you needed to scoop them up). I had never played it before, so I made quite a few mistakes as the process and icons confused me. Only 3/4 through the game did I begin to understand it. Kathleen got it right off and nearly took the game from Richard, who had twice my low score. Lauren scored just below Kathleen.

I can’t say I liked Carnegie, but it is highly rated. I would like to play it again to see if I like it better. Kathleen and I talked about it on the ride to her house after the game, and we think the game felt unfinished. Some of the elements did not score enough points to be done—why include them? It seems to be the first draft of a better, more streamlined game that dropped many less essential items. The board game Grand Hotel Austria, which covers much of the same mechanics, is better, I believe.

The EV got me home with much less traffic on Portland’s roads. The VW was already on the new time, warning me how late it was. The new lights on the house welcomed me. I was soon in bed reading, as I could not fall asleep. I took half a Benadryl as I broke out in a rash from my allergies. Ugh!

Thanks for reading.