I rose later but woke as usual with the Sunrise. Coffee from yesterday remained, so I reheated it and returned to my office. I found the last Greek-style yogurt in the fridge and had that with a banana while I wrote the blog. James could not make Tuesday morning games, and so I passed on two-player games. Also, this let me get ready for Emma, my niece, coming for a short weekend to look at a college and apartments. She wants to sample the local public transit (the robust Public Transit was one of the reasons I moved here back in 1996).
I wrote the blog and found that yesterday was not interesting at first, but soon I found things to write about, and it was at least 500 words, which is my measure of whether I at least covered a day. I found that a count below 500 is more of an outline than a story of my day. When I am short, I often reread it, remember more, and soon the text blows past 500 (around 800 yesterday).
The weather is not helping. It is sunny, and the skies are blue here in Oregon. I don’t want to write. More like California than the endless gray of late Spring and Early Summer in the Pacific Northwest. While my roses are happy to get sun and will likely top the fence before June, I suspect the moss and the snowpack (which feed the rivers and streams in the summer) will miss the rains. Smoke and fire will come, and the animals will suffer.
I finish the blog, do my usual checks, and mangle a bank transfer (I managed to cover the checks and payments on Wednesday morning). I wish to get to other writing, but I have to prepare for my Sunday School class first. I want to send the notes and plans for the class at least a week early to Joan and the Pastor (plus Dondrea, as she often mentions it during worship); thus, they will be informed of the class content with time to ask questions or request changes.
Lunch is warmed-up leftovers, and I am soon dressed and ready. I do fit in another Star Trek DS9 episode while enjoying my reheated repast. Next, I boarded Air VW the Gray at 85% charge and returned to the local Insomnia Coffee, where I found a table. The EarPods, new to me, work to eliminate any noise, and I connected them to my laptop (the iPhone voice interrupts me with text and updates) to listen to music from my playlists. I spent the next two hours reading and updating my notes. I translated the Greek (often looking up every verb and noun, as my memory of the words has faded, and I cannot pronounce any of it). I am using the NRSV translation, which echoes the Greek structure for The Book of Revelation. That is why you see so many ‘and’s and some wooden wording in the NRSV. I keep my notes to 4 pages and avoid copying too much information from decent Wikipedia articles. I am annoyed that the NRSV changes clear words to more modern words that may carry more meaning than the original. ‘Prostitutes’ to ‘fornicators’ is a leap in my mind and creates an out-of-context problem, as it suggests an additional punishment for infidelity or legal divorce that is not in the text at all. NIV goes further, and it is hard to map the Greek to its rewording, at least for me.
Lost in the Greek for hours, I think I need to add one more topic to the class to fill the 45 minutes. I like to have too much material so I can edit or carry some of it to the next class. I also like to get ahead of the class by at least a week, meaning that if something happens and unexpectedly takes all or most of my time that week, I am still prepared. No midnight cramming for me! An advantage of being retired, I can invest my time as I wish.
I stopped by Market of Choice (I forgot cereal for breakfast) and got bags, tin foil, plastic wrap, and food for dinner. I saw a box of Jambalya Mix and decided to try it. There was a special on Andouille sausage, and that got me going in that direction. I returned home, cooked the chicken thighs (boneless and skinless), and then the one pack of sausage (the other went to the freezer). I added a sliced green pepper and celery. I should have drained the oil/grease. The pack went in, but the final version was OK, but the spices were subdued by the oil.
I downloaded a new NOVA episode, “Angkor: Hidden Jungle Empire,” and watched it while cooking. There is new learning using new drone technology and LADAR tracking, and our understanding of Angkor has expanded. This is my hope for archaeology that new technology will create new information before a spade is lifted or a drive started. I hope that someone will use the same technology (with adjustments for an overlap in a modern urban setting) for the mounds in the USA. I also hope that ground-penetrating science will improve, allowing us to avoid digging some sites (saving money and leaving the site for the future and even more advanced technology).
Aside: What I would hope for is that shipwreck scanning gets so good that we can see the markings on the ancient jars. We can then start tracking where these jars come from and create trade lists. And maybe the clay from some of the broken jars can be retrieved, giving us more information about the location where they were created. Can we get a tree cross-section from the surviving timbers? Carbon date them and create a weather model. Did some DNA survive? Pollen? What is the source of any metal? So much microdata to retrieve.
Aside: LADAR has been something available to me for robots, but it was expensive (a few thousand) for my minor stuff. But I have read about it and even looked at the coding to read the data and make assumptions about the readings. Yes, you can build a drone to do this in your garage.
I had two bowls and watched more of DS9, and I enjoyed it. I finished the folding and putting away of the laundry as I found my happy place in NOVA. In Thailand, they have begun reconstructing the water systems at Angkor, and they will provide water even in the dry season. It works! Wow!
I read Violet Blue’s summary of Black Hat Asia 2026, a top-notch hacker convention that just finished, and she was the keynote speaker. Her words are behind a paywall, but she had a good time in Singapore. Again, she reports in her weekly Hackers’ update newsletter that Corporations are hiding their failures instead of fixing them and that governments have found that they can buy personal information rather than collecting it themselves. ICE is training its people to use some heavy-hitting hacking tools; I think nothing good will come of that.
Aside: Violet Blue is a writer whom I have followed for years. She resides now in New Zealand. I have spoken to her once. I have never met her in person.
I put away the laundry, started more, and organized the guest bedroom from something more of storage with a bed. I washed sheets and blankets for Emma and moved other items to different places in the house. I then dressed for bed, read for a while, and soon turned off the light and slept. I woke once to prove hydration, but now at 1, not 3-4. Some of me is still on Michigan time!
My watch reminded me that it was International Dance Day, and I did send Deborah a video of me dancing to Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Here for your own dance.
Thanks for reading!
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