Friday Writing and Lunch

I am sorry, I did not take any pictures on Friday.

I rose, feeling better, around 7:30, and the coffee was already made; I had assembled it on Thursday night. It is locally roasted liberal coffee. I had a Voodoo donut with my coffee, Portland Cream, and soon was suffering from a terrible sugar high and crash. Can’t do that again! Just plain cake donuts! And all the coffee did not make this better.

Despite the jitters, I managed to finish the blog while it was still morning. I also got my one load of laundry into The Machine and got it all on hangers or added it to the yet-to-be-sorted-and-folded stuff left over from Monday. I did not get a card out to Mom Wild. I will take that to the post office later.

Scott and I usually meet on Thursday, rescheduled to Friday, for lunch and a beer (I decided I can have one a week with Scott), and I was ready early, so I puttered around the house and collected the mail. I received an email with all inbound mail to the house from the US Postal Service, a service you can order, but it is often incorrect. Most of the mail I received today was not included in the email. Hmmm. The inbound package information has been correct.

I had only partially charged Air VW the Gray as I forgot to charge it the night before. I plugged it in for part of the morning. I had more than a 50% charge when I headed out, which was enough to get me more than 100 miles. I try to be a good neighbor by charging the EV only at night, when power usage is lower on the grid. Dear reader, the charging is about the same as running an electric dryer.

Aside: I belong to a group of customers of Portland General Electric (PGE) that agree to curtail our usage on days when the grid is maxed out (usually hot summer days). I get an email to cut my usage for certain hours the next day. PGE pays me a small bonus for the difference in my usage from the average usage that is credited to my bill. I am not always able to reduce my usage, but I often turn off the AC and play board games elsewhere. It is just a few bucks. As I understand it, power on the market is expensive when demand is high, and starting up bonus power plants is costly for a short few hours. By reducing usage, PGE can avoid the extra costs, lower the cost of power for everyone, and avoid purchasing power that may come from coal and other carbon-intensive sources.

The traffic is heavier for a morning trip after rush hour. McMenamins’s Cedar Hills was not busy, and Scott soon appeared. We spent lunch, composed of half sandwiches, soup, and a small salad, catching up. Scott has recently visited Hawaii and Paris. We discuss money (my plans for giving away more money but then using that to avoid some taxes on withdrawals from my IRA), investments (we are buckled up for more Trump-caused chaos), and our concerns about Putin’s adventurism and Trump likely TACO when facing a real challenge.

I shared with Scott that I am deeply concerned that Putin will break NATO by getting one of the countries to issue an Article 5 after some terrible event (i.e., an errant missile hit in Warsaw, for example). Trump will then ignore it and abrogate US treaty obligations. Xi will repeat the process for Taiwan.

(deleted political comment goes here; yes, I am very concerned)

Scott and I returned to more pleasant topics of travel and parks in Hawaii. Scott is headed to the Keys later this year for more diving and to help his kids get certified for deeper diving (Scott reminded me that most accessible shipwrecks are located in moderately deep water). It sounds marvelous. I do not dive; I am an armchair explorer of shipwrecks, using sonar scans, publications, and RV views. We also discussed my plans to visit Michigan for ten days in October and the American South in November.

Scott and I said our goodbyes and plan, now that we both are back for a few weeks, will meet again next week on Thursday. Next, I wrote Mom Wild’s card in the EV and then drove to the post office to post it. Done!

Clint, the other outlaw in Susie’s family in New Hampshire, texted me about some Dungeons & Dragons items and to get an update on my plans. Thanksgiving or Christmas? I have yet to decide. More to come. Holiday gaming with the Weiss Family!

I headed early into Portland and soon arrived without issue at Rogue in SE Portland. The traffic was not slow, but it was chaotic, requiring me to be extra careful when changing lanes and taking exits. Back to school, stressing out some drivers, I suspect.

I found a table and got an iced tea (not a beer). I sat and wrote and revised the new chapter of my fantasy novel. I have never written an action scene, and the transitions and imagery were incomplete. I often need to add words and even paragraphs; I get the bones down and then flesh them, and well, fix the mistakes. Others I know write and cut, but I follow my usual IT-like thinking. What is the vision? Expand the vision into steps and processes. Revise and adjust. I write like I code.

Kathleen showed up after 3, we spent most of the day talking, some writing, and even reading.  Kathleen listened to my thoughts on the refresh. She is a professional and licensed architect, and her views on my thoughts were interesting. We also talked about writing and read some of it to each other. I like Kathleen’s story, which includes fantastical quant beasts and a bit of snark. Kathleen thought my voice in my story was good and hints at a large fantasy setting or space opera. My action scene, she thought, was good. My updates, rewrites, and transitions had hammered the text into something better.

Various tourists appear and leave. Rogue is on various pub-crawl routes. We have dinner, with me going for the fish tacos (thinking them reasonable for someone wishing to lose weight). Kathleen went, and I was jealous, though my dinner was fantastic, fish and chips. He talked and often wrote until 8. It was dark, a sign that fall was soon to arrive, and we said goodnight and headed to our respective homes.

The return was messy. I decided to drive through Portland, ignoring the EV’s Nav, and soon discovered closed roads. I had to do some loops and dodge many cars that seemed to be lost. One car tried to turn into the one-way street I was on, threatening a low-speed head-on collision. They corrected, and I escaped Portland intact.

This weekend, as we move into the fall, there are many galas and events. I discovered myself driving around double-parked cars and folks with canes, formal dresses, and suits getting out of vehicles. It appears that the evening crowds, while later, were returning to Portland events.

I arrived home, and I felt tired, changed into my PJs, and decided to nap for a moment; it was midnight when I woke. I took my meds and headed back to bed. I did not set up the coffee, but I did sleep most of the night.

Thanks for reading!