I was home at 11 at night after an easy drive from Portland. I had left a pile of dishes in the sink. The newly repaired sink was still not leaking, so I spent the next few moments arranging the dishes into the dishwasher. I watched Alton Brown’s newest video on cooking chicken wings, including a DIY crazy device to make the perfect wings. He was experimenting with Air Frying, which he holds in low regard, but tried it anyway. It was fun, and I watched while I waited for the dishwasher to start discharging while watching for drips or worse. Everything was ship-shape, and I went to bed after taking my meds and applying some of the any psarius creams and soon slept after reading a whole chapter of Bruce Catton’s The Civil War, a classic I understand, but I did read some judgmental words in the text, and there are no footnotes, but there are 100 pages of indexes, chronologies, and maps. Unlike Shelby Foote’s almost musical text (who also eschewed footnotes and is criticized for his sympathies to The South), the text is more a lecture than a story. I will read more, but dear readers, I would send you instead to the book and video by Ken Burns. Maybe it gets better, but it is from 1960.
Before this, I mostly enjoyed the new board game Entropy at Richard’s house. When I saw it, I thought it was another of Richard’s endless detail games with secret point-winning engines that you have to know. I found this game easy to learn, and it was fun to play, with complex, difficult decisions. I ran the processes and discovered ways to meet the challenges and complete the goals. It was a race game with simple turns. I liked that. Anthony, the other player I hadn’t seen for months, was racing with me. Richard seemed to be on a different path, always worrying, and suddenly he was racking in points.
There was an upgrade of a sun that just gave victory points, another engine for just points, ugh, just for the count of planets. It is not about running the mechanics of the game, but instead just a simple multiplication. This really made me rethink if I liked the game. I needed to end the game fast to win. I missed that I needed something and gave Richard another spin of his engine, and I lost by over fifty points and just above Anthony. I saw nothing that would generate points faster than what Richard built, and that makes it a really uninteresting game to me, if true. But maybe I could add that into my flow next time. Next time!
I will have to try Entropy again.
Before this, I was at Lucky Labrador in Portland. I wanted to return to some of the things I did before. I feel like my return this time has been a crowded mess of tasks and chaos. It was nice to just have a beer and plan my trips for hours while eating peanuts and watching the crowd play games. I also got a BLT (lettuce, for some reason, is not a threat here).
I got my changes to my trip for Deborah’s birthday (October 19th) and a weekend dinner and haunted tour at the Whitney Mansion in Detroit. I moved it to the Saturday before her Monday birthday and made it later to better match the 9:30 tour. I added airfare and will fly in on 15 Oct on Delta (my usual 7ish evening arrival) and leave on 20 Oct (my usual morning exit). I used miles, and it cost me about $12 in fees. Got my favorite seat 14A in comfort there and back.
I next looked at my trip in September, which is still messy. I booked the Civil War tour to Franklin, seven hours of immersion in the battles. Excellent. The initial reason for the trip (and the flights were cheap too). Next, I looked at hotels and cars. Well, Hertz offered a good price, even with me dropping the car off at NOLA airport, but they close at Nashville airport, from what I can tell. And then I realized I only need the car a few times. What if I replanned?
I learned that Birmingham, Alabama, is on the Amtrak route to New Orleans for the Crescent, the NYC-to-NOLA train. Could I Uber to a Hertz and then turn the car in at Birmingham? There is a Civil Rights museum there. Montgomery, sadly, is not on the same Amtrak route and takes two trains. Not going to try to make that work. If I use Amtrak, I will start at Birmingham. I could also extend my stay in Nashville. More to follow.
Before this, I was at the house. I did the laundry, even putting it away, and wrote the blog. I also tried to get my visa for the Brazil trip in November. I need the contract information in Brazil to finish. I managed to get everything up to that point. You do need the dates of your parents’ birth and their country of birth and citizenship. I had to look mine up. I sent a note to Gordon G to get the contract information. I also like a letter to carry that has local contacts for when things go sideways in-country. I have had to show it once for a work trip.
While I was in the office, I saw busy squirrels building a new drey in the pine tree. One was gathering fresh small leafy branches from the nearby tree and then jumping to the fence with them clamped in its jaws. Next, they would jump from the fence, legs out, to the tree. It looked exhausting. Later, the squirrel would collect the leaves and, instead of dropping them, hold them in its jaws and walk from one tree to the other. I suspect there was some form of rodent eye-rolling once that was figured out. Another squirrel collected soft grass for their bedding. I saw later that some dried-out pine needle branches had recently dropped from the tree. I suspect those were not fun for a home.
My nest of blankets was comfortable until about 7, and I rose before 8 was close. I made coffee by grinding some beans and following the usual process. I did not need to jump from one room to another. I just walked my coffee and a banana to the office!
Thanks for reading!
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 