Friday Tired with Walks and Plans

I rose later, but before the sun, stripped the bed, and pushed all the dirty laundry into my basket for that kind of stuff. I added towels from the bathroom and kitchen. I threw on clothing, washed my face, and brushed my hair to make myself more presentable. I added hangers, laundry soap, dryer sheets, my phone, and the Apple laptop to my collection (getting heavy) and schlepped that out into Air VW the Gray.

It was a clear, lovely morning, and the sun was rising behind Mount Hood, which was white colored. The volcano was sporting its winter wear of white snow and ice. It turns increasingly black and gray, ash colored in the summer. There were only a few people there at 8 something, and soon I had three small washers going ($3.25) for 28 minutes. I wrote the blog in a chair at the coin laundry as the sun rose.  The three became two dryers, and by 10ish, I was done with laundry and the blog was posted.

I paid about $2,000 for a GE Profile-branded (front-loading and usual-sized) set of electric washer and dryer from Costco, delivery, warranty, installation, and haul-away included. Jeff had cleared the vent and rewired everything; I should be ready. Delivery is set for Wednesday afternoon.

Two security cameras, also from Costco, that need to be installed were also delivered. I will work on those this weekend.

I had picked up McDonald’s breakfast stuff, but could not finish it. I had coffee as the coffee machine was assembled, the time was set, and it delivered coffee at 7:15. Yay!

With the laundry done, I returned home, put it away, and discovered the baked goods I had forgotten and left in the car. I was still missing my AMEX, but I knew it was in the house or car; I would locate it wedged in the chair on Saturday. I have to start using that tap thing from the iPhone that Deborah uses to avoid this.

I reheated some leftover Chinese, relieved that I got three (plus one Corwin) meals out of my expensive order. I have one lunch left, four then. I took the pork fried rice and a small bit of Mongolian beef to the office after a shower, wearing my robe, and started working on Kaggle again. I was still unhappy with my code and thought there was a more Pythonic way. I looked at other code and noticed I had missed the .appy function, so I made that work and deleted most of my looping code. Yay! Pythonic!

Ok, that may not mean much to you, dear reader, but I do like to write good code, and Python provides amazing options. I like getting it right.

With my code submitted and scoring the same (as expected). I read and thought a lot about how to make this work. Others are using a provided Google model to do Akkadian and submitting CODA and PyTorch processing, and looked like folks are copying and then working the parms to get better scores. I may get there, but for the moment, I will try my own logic.

I next headed to Hillsboro to walk and enjoy the good weather. I did the antique stores, but my legs felt stiff, and my back soon hurt. I was really out of shape or not feeling well. It took some of the fun out of the visit. Deborah called me and suggested I find some coffee, which I did. I still felt off and tired out.

I returned in Air VW the Gray to the house and then headed to decarli (spelled in lowercase) as I had a 14Feb dinner reservation and wanted to check out the new setting. I have not been back since they moved. I connected with Deborah, Leta, and Joan S while traveling. I was sitting in my car talking for a while, but I try not to be one of those folks who do that.

Traver was at the bar; I had not met him, but the host/manager I remembered from years ago. Their menu will not change for Valentine’s Day, I learned, because the manager told me they always sell their specialties, their short ribs and sturgeon. I went to the bar, and Traver made me a wonderful Old Fashioned, and I had the happy-hour meatballs (it was just approaching 5). It was enough food for two: five meatballs with sauce and bread. It became my dinner, and I exchanged a few words with couples at the bar, but this was date night, as far as I could tell, and chatting with me was not their focus. Still, I enjoyed my dinner and reviewed the dinner menu (wow!). Traver offered a dessert menu, but I was stuffed with meatballs, and their only coffee is an Americano; I decided to pass on that much caffeine and sugar.

I watched Traver make two drinks at once and pour them into two glasses at once. Wow! It reminded me of my class with Donnda and Dondrea in New Orleans, making drinks. Traver was amazing to watch.

At home, I tried Pluribus (PLUR1BUS) and enjoyed the show. I cannot dispel disbelief, as the story is too crazy, but the acting, camera work, and writing make it work for me. It is a masterclass in mixing horror and reality TV. I made it through two episodes.

I often thought about the Akkadian-to-English translation and approaches to make it work when I took a break from the show, but I decided to take the night off and did no more coding.

I read for a while, then fell asleep.

Nightmares came. Terrible ones. About being persecuted, trying to resist, chased, and finally found in the dark by a group of bad guys who meant me harm. I woke shaking cold at 5 on Saturday morning. I dozed after that.

Thanks for reading.