I rose before the sun did on Wednesday, 7-something, and found the coffee made. I had been organizing the house and not packing much. Richard, my gamer friend, thinks nothing of hiking all day, told me on Tuesday that we could just drive through or catch the shuttle bus for the Utah parks, Zion and Bryce, and they are great, and hiking is optional. Perfect for Deborah and me, though we managed to enjoy long sets of steps and slippery rocks in Iceland.
Z is not available for games; school work calls.
Another happy surprise was a note from the USA Social Security Administration that my application was accepted and my decent-sized (for early retirement) would start, using the unique government logic, in June. A month more than I expected, but still, it is all done, and I have my official letter of benefits. This fits my planning from years ago. I will have a steady income for half of 2026! Excellent.
My focus is to get the family (fireside) room cleared of loose items, as Jeff will be in next week to replace the flooring. I have moved all my post-tax cash, except my L3Harris stock (which is not yet at 16 months ownership and enjoying an insane 67% increase), into a moderate-interest savings account at US Bank. I have the home improvements/maintenance changes to pay for this year and wish to defer any withdrawals until later (and maybe after the slow correction I am seeing in my investments reverses). I have medical bills piling up and some mold remediation (nothing unhealthy) that I am putting off for now. I figure that I want something I can walk on now.
I am experiencing some return of the skin rashes, but at a much slower pace. It is interesting. My next shot of Skyrizi is three weeks away. Something for after Easter. I suspect I should not decorate the pen with bunnies and ducks to celebrate April.
Re-focusing on the narrative, I write all morning, have a banana with my coffee, liberal (i.e., fair trade) and red-bagged Equal Exchange brand, while I assemble a long narrative and struggle again with Grammarly (which leaves Richard’s name mispelled, but it wanted to rewrite sentences to different meanings). I am beginning to agree with Deborah that I should write my text in MS Word, then copy it into WordPress, and abandon my seven years with Grammarly. Hmmmm.
I finish the narrative by 10:30 (I prefer to be done by 10, but that is not happening for a while), and start my day. I add more items to the spare bedroom where my new suitcase waits for its first chance to travel with me. I also started adding the usual items to my red Nike gym bag. I continue to organize the house more. I take Susie’s beer glasses, put them in a box, and will give them to Mariah.
Corwin arrives after I have corned beef and mushy veggies (adding some fresh cabbage as I reheat it in the microwave) and has some left over too. We move the table out of the fireside room, remembering how to disassemble it, fix a pin that came loose, and put it back together in the dining room (its former home). The area is now crowded with the stationary bike, which I often still use. I had recycled a pile of old iPhones, iPods, the broken Epson Tank printer (not getting one of those again), and moved the table for the printer in the garage.
With that done and agreements for Corwin to clean the house the week before I return in place (I will also have him stop by as DHL is sending a package on Tuesday (small book, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, from the 1920s I ordered after reading about it in the footnotes of the 1929 narrative I am reading). Mariah suggested a Happy Hour dinner at Hopworks in Portland, but Corwin could not make it (He makes at least $50 a day, seven days a week, before taxes, delivering food, and this, plus his dishwasher/cooking job, pays his bills and leaves him with some extra). He can’t afford a work night in exchange for dinner. I respect that.
I give Corwin a leaf that is mounted in a frame. Susie had it painted as a phoenix in China for the aristan that was on our boat for the river cruise in 1998. Corwin also got a tiger card from the same trip. All to remember Susie.
The trip across Beaverton and Portland is lousy with traffic, and, as I talk to Deborah, I miss my usual path and instead head to Richard’s. Oops. But I take an alternative route that does not make me late and is a nice change from being stuck on bridges, though the view is nice up there. I arrive at Hopworks still early and enjoy chatting with Deboroah and our joy of seeing each other on Friday (assuming the war, Trump, random events, and TSA lines do not make a hash of our travel plans). The local Rosarians, the folks that run the Rose Festival in Portland, are meeting at the bar too, and look excellent in their blue sport coats (men and women). Jeremy Emerson, the group’s President, is smiling and chatting; the parade is on June 6th.
Mariah appears, and we enjoy chatting and some drinks (I stick to one cocktail as beer and I am not doing well). We try the chicken wings (very bad for you), and they are excellent. I get the sweet chili sauce as I do not want to discover what Buffalo sauce would do wtih my tummy now. I see Mariah’s new ride, a new blue Honda hatchback. Mariah tells me she is shocked by how nice and fast this gas hybrid runs and enjoys its 50 miles-per-gallon efficiency. She could not be happier with it. A surprise for a gear-head and now former Mustang owner.
I hand over the glasses with instructions that they are not relics and can be given away, recycled, or used. I am happy to find them a home.
I return home in light traffic and finish the second Star Trek Academy episode. I read, clean, and organize some more. I discovered the tattered remains of the paperwork for trips to Istanbul, NYC (when Susie had her stroke), and my second business trip for Nike (I kept the copy of the visa application for India I discovered in case I needed the information for another visa), while sorting papers stuffed here and there. It looks like in the chaos of my busy working life, I never sorted or returned to these piles; I just stuffed them in a drawer or under some gaming stuff. Playbills and other flotsam and jetsam are the paper trail of travel. My eyes get watery when I remember all the good and bad, but I trash it, since it is just paper and only has meaning to me. Clutter from a good life of travel, some more than a decade old. I have less emotional trouble trashing my 2015 taxes.
I finish the day reading more of 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation and reach 1933. FDR is not elected, but chooses, even with a begging letter from Hoover, to do nothing until his inauguration (March in the old calendars, now done January). FDR takes much heat from historians now for this cold-blooded political move, as the US economy will slip past the tipping point in these months. It is good reading, but the author is now less narrative and more historical. The wealthy seem untouched by The Crash so far. Hmmm.
According to the book, Winston Churchill was in the USA during the Crash and remained a guest of the rich and powerful for a few years. Getting paid for speaking engagements. He is identified by the author Sorkin as one of the many victims of Wall Street’s salesmanship. He owns tens of thousands after The Crash, as he was far out on the margin before the crash (he needs money, lots of it). In 1932, nearly the end of his trip, he stepped in front of a car (looking the wrong way), and he was seriously hurt. His losses, accident, and political fall (he is out in the Wilderness, as he describes in his autobiography) depress him. It is a cautionary tale of the 1920s, as Sorkin points out.
I close the book and sleep. I wake after midnight, thinking it is morning. I do a lot of rolling over. I finally sleep about 2:30. I do not rise until about 8 on Thursday, with no dreams that I recall. I am spinning as I am not packed yet and have to travel on Friday.
Joan S has agreed to drop me off, but with the war and possible traffic SNAFUs, we changed my pick up to 6 for a 10 in the morning flight.
Thanks for reading.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 