Sunday Good and Bad

I finally stepped on the scale at the end of Sunday, thinking my weight, which had been stable for months, would be +/- 240. Nope, and this explains many of the issues I have been having; it was up over 20 pounds. F**k! When did that happen! I felt, like many others, like a total failure and resolved to fix it. And the first thing I did on Monday, MLK 2026, was walk about a mile in the cold, frosty predawn. Back to plan.

What went wrong? Nothing. Just events. Winter weather, rain, thieves, and broken appliances have been sources of frustration. I just need to get back to simple exercise and forgive myself and the world (and LG). My knees and feet have hurt, but now I know it is because I am carrying an extra 20+ pounds.

It made it hard to sleep, and I woke at 6. My dreams were unfriendly but forgotten. On Monday, I threw on some clothes and was out walking at 6; I did a mile. I will try to start today with two miles. I know the weight slides on easily, and some, but not all of it, suddenly drops. The last ten pounds are a long haul. But again, this Monday morning, while I write the Sunday blog, I am content with my plan of returning to the usual plan.

Sunday started with me rising, writing the blog, and chatting with Deborah. The coffee was waiting. My memory of Sunday morning is a blur of writing and texting. I assembled a story of Saturday’s events using my tools and my limited storytelling ability. Grammarly chased my typos and obvious mistakes in red underlines and then more insidious AI suggestions in blue underlines that often suggested wording improvements, and I would agree maybe 50% or less. Even the red underline has to be reviewed, as a spelling correction is often the wrong word, followed by blue to rewrite the sentence to match the unintended change. I did check, and Google searches are now finding me and my newer content. But older content is not found.

After the blog, I rushed. I showered and all of that. I picked my red sweater vest (not realizing I had worn it for our visit to the Whitney Plantation on the trip to the American South). I put on the tie with whales on it that Deborah got me. I use suspenders to keep my pants on (that comment will make more sense soon).

Paul, an obvious street person with pants falling off and torn, came to our church service at First United Methodist Church in Beaverton. I was ushering, and Paul was a regular. He was sober enough (not always true; he had slept in a pew before), but his clothing was tattered. I had only coffee and donut holes (I am thinking about bringing sandwiches to give out), but also made sure he and others are welcome. I try not to be a ‘cop’ when I usher, but sometimes I still, with my tie, look the part. And I follow folks to ensure they are safe.

Today’s sermon, “The Cry of the Oppressed,” by Pastor Ken, started with slides and a description from our trip to the south. Kathy, not Ken, recounted our experience at the Whitney Plantation (my blog post is here), with pictures (including me in my red sweater vest). She was excellent. My emotions, no longer raw, still rose when she returned me to that day. The treatment of people as disposable and as an element of currency is what you learn in reading. Seeing the names of those people, standing in the slave quarters from that time, and learning what little we know of them, mostly their names at most, and knowing they were treated as disposable assets, was too much for me. It still is.

Ken attached this to Martin Luther King’s (MLK) message and the stories in Exodus of slavery in Egypt. MLK said he saw the promised land and that we have to continue telling the story and driving for justice in the USA. I was mostly distracted with usher duties and did not hear much of Ken’s sermon. I did pick up the theme that God did not say there would be no suffering, but that we must call it out, not cause it, and try to bring the suffering to an end. We can see the promised land; there is work to do.

Paul’s pants keep falling off. I have completed my usher stuff, including collecting and walking the offering to the altar. I take off my sweater while he watches and offer him my suspenders, explaining that I could not give them up sooner because I had to usher (I cannot lose my pants, even for a good cause, while doing that). He takes my suspenders, and I show him how to adjust them.

I have some other work to do after church. I collect some folks, and we work with Jack to get the round tables back near the fireside room, just three. The chairs have disappeared again. I last saw Paul happy with the suspenders (to have been seen, his problem noticed by someone else, I think, was more important than the gift of suspenders).

I head home, having to hold my pants up (what Paul was having to do before), but soon home. I stop by Popeye’s and get some chicken. I find an unopened package of suspenders, adjust them, and put them on. Back to normal.

I am tired and fall completley asleep in the chair (I did start watching season 4 of The Umbrella Academy). I move to the bed and do not rise until 4. Next, I talk to Deborah after my long nap. Instead of getting a walk, I eat more (still stress-eating) and start coding more AI after Deborah goes to bed. I wish her a good night.

I returned to my office and logged back into Kaggle. I forked my work (starting from a copy for those who don’t speak software development) and revised it. I coded a new matching algorithm based on token (word) matching rather than letter matching, and it scores worse. This creates a bias towards long and short texts as solutions. It is a good lesson on how AI (and matching) can develop bias that should be obvious. I was not surprised when it scored lower, but still interesting.

I spent the rest of the night (not getting any workout, except in my mind, which was running hard) defining a class to hold the training data as the first step in my new design. I also explored how to update Python to include English parts-of-speech tagging. I think I am allowed to update my coding environment and will try this next.

By 10:30, after a short break for more The Umbrella Academy, I completed what I intended and was surprised to find I managed to get the printing working for my new classes. I was excited that I remembered how to do this, and I also got a lambda function to run and run an apply method instead of coding a loop. 

As I said, my happiness was ruined by my use of the bathroom scale.

Thanks for reading.