It is hot on Friday, and it is expected to get even hotter on Saturday, 100°F+. A tough weekend for Hood-to-Coast runners! The air is thick with pollen, and my nose, eyes, and ears (though only one has hearing now) are all bothered. I rise early, still confused about what time zone I am in, and get coffee that I assembled the night before.
Today I was meeting Kathleen in Portland for a writing session. Yes, we would both just write on our devices and talk about our stories. We would try out Lucky Labrador on Hawthorn, with me there early to avoid traffic. I don’t mind a few beers and peanuts, and I loaded some solo board games into the cargo hold of Air VW the Gray to play if I get tired of writing.
I invested the morning in writing the blog, replying, and writing various church paperwork on the refresh I am working on, and updating my finances in Quicken. I had moved money to my checking account to be invested in US Treasury Bills (short-term instruments, 17 weeks, Aug 25th auction, about 4.something% state-tax-free interest). I am tempted to invest in 20-year US Treasury Bonds amid concerns about an impending interest-rate cut. The US bonds are unlikely to be this delightful in the foreseeable future, but this money is intended for my expenses. So tempting — paying almost 5% of state-tax-free interest and will likely appreciate in market value when the rates are cut.
Cake and eat it too, like moment. No cake, but breakfast is just some biscuits with my favorite spread, Orange Marmalade.
I shower and all that. I wear my new pants, and they fit well, being slightly longer, which means I can now pull them up further. I failed to start the laundry, and it is too late to fit in the two hours needed to run the small Friday load. My laundry days are Monday and Friday, with Monday getting sheets and towels. This is a habit from the days during the pandemic when Monday and Friday were still work-from-home days.
I also read more quantum computer stuff and still am quite confused how one will actually do anything useful, but I am still learning and skilling-up.
I collect my Einstein poster that I have had since college and never framed. I have carried with me since the 1980s, and now it will find a wall. I collect the MoMA poster of Starry Starry Night that I had shipped from NYC. I have two informational posters for my class that I loaded with all of this into Air VW the Gray.
It is an investment to frame Einstein and Starry Starry Night at the frame store. Mounting the educational posters is not cheap, but they will be more useful that way. The framed items will take a week or more, but the items for my class will be ready this weekend. I return to the house, it is already hot out, water the roses and trees, and have a bowl of reheated chili for lunch.
Traffic is messy, not what I expected, but later learned that OMSI was an organizing site for the Hood-to-Coast Run. Lucky Labrador was not open when I arrived at its opening time, 2PM. It is too hot to wait, and instead, I visit Guardian Games Portland and discover that they have the Flip 7-card game for $10. I get a copy. It is a fun and quick game. There was nothing else that got my attention.
I returned to Lucky’s, and it was open and blissfully AC’d. I ordered a beer and peanuts. I wrote another church email this time, specifically for the Civil Rights trip in November in the American South. I read more news, doom scrolling for us liberals. As I start editing my novel, I find many wooden phrases and outright mistakes. I use Grammarly to help, but it often changes content instead of fixing something. I mostly use it as a suggestion tool to see what it wants to change. I usually take a word or two that I hand change, but reject the general updates. It is seldom helpful in its complete form. Deborah reminds me, when I talked to her later, that this is the process of moving from draft to final form. Still, I am disheartened by the mistakes.
Kathleen joins me after a long day at work, and we chatted before getting to writing. It was loud, as the place was full of people, many playing collectable card games. Most of the tables are in use.
Kathleen puts on noise-canceling headphones, while I ignore the noise (with my hearing loss, it is easier to ignore). I continue to use Scrivener to write my story, and I read through the previous work, fixing and updating my character lists in the tool. I am having trouble remembering them. I began aligning the text with the correct names and incorporating some later writing. Kathleen draws a map of her fantasy world, and we are both writing fantasy. We continue for an hour or so.
I stumbled upon Rimsky-Korsakoffee House while searching for a dessert place. We had sandwiches for dinner, but a sweet dessert seemed right after writing, and maybe it will be quieter, and we can write there. We pack up, I pay the bill, and we take Air VW the Gray for the short trip in the hot early evening in Portland. I manage to parallel park the EV without effort, forgetting how much smaller it is than my previous cars. The place is packed, loud (if not louder than Lucky’s), dark, and the tables are small. It is not a place for writing. We have excellent desserts, and I remember it is cash only, and I have only $25, and Kathleen happens to have an emergency $20, so we can pay (I would have had to find an ATM otherwise). My tea and ginger cake were excellent. Kathleen had a Sunday and a hot chocolate.
We will search for other dessert places and venues that are friendly to writing but also offer food and drinks. We were both happy to get somewhere without writing. We both headed home, traffic was sane, and though I did cross the tall bridge and the huge on-ramp, I arrived intact. I had a car that stalled out after the tunnel in the midlane, causing a sudden brake and a traffic mess. I managed to not hit anyone or be rear-ended. Yikes!
I arrived home and did the laundry, dishes, and assembled the coffee. I tried to read more on factoring algorithms and downloaded a file of the first million known prime numbers. I learned that the hardest factoring is semi-primes, which are large integer numbers that are the product of only two prime numbers (remembering we already have lists of millions of primes that take only a single lookup to check against). I am already envisioning a Python program to solve factoring. I also began reading about newer technologies that utilize elliptical curves and factoring combination, following the discovery that factoring could be broken (the NSA appears to have knowingly recommended a breakable standard, to the disgust of the computer community).
Back to the laundry, I finished my shirts and pants, and let the rest finish while I went to bed. I read for a while, finding my Kindle device to let my phone charge (and the Kindle is kinder to my eyes). I was soon sleepy and forgot my dreams, but I woke often.
Thanks for reading.
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