Wednesday Dinner in Portland and Mathematics

I rose closer to 8 as the winter weather is here and it is dark. The night is cold and wet; the morning is gray, and I have to turn on the bedroom lights to see even at noon. It makes the blankets comfortable and the pillows inviting. I still manage to rise, reheat yesterday’s coffee in the cheap microwave, find a banana I bought at the 185 Corner Veggie Market, and make toast. I used the bread maker to make a loaf of French-like bread. I then, as there was only me here, sliced it with care with a serrated bread knife. The knife is almost sharp enough, quoting the Panada movie, that just looking at it might cut you. I managed to get the sliced bread into a large bag and freeze the fresh bread without blood loss. I retrieved a slice, toasted it, turned it over, toasted it again, forgot to pop it out, smelled it, popped it, put out the bread that was now smoking, and remembered my sister Linda loved burned toast. I added peanut butter and enjoyed the strong flavors while writing the blog and drinking my liberal coffee.

I felt odd and out of sorts. The darkness, I realized, and turned on more lights and kept moving. Physical activity and light are the key to being in the Pacific Northwest when it turns dark. It is also back-to-school, and that causes sudden chaos in traffic patterns and stuffs the roads with cars, around 3, with parents who are stressed-out and rushed. I have already seen two low-speed accidents.

I spend the morning writing and the usual emails, checking transactions in Quicken, and watching my IRA bounce with rising yields, oil prices, and war news. Since US Bank Wealth Management shifted its focus to yields and indexes, my IRA has slowly risen despite the Trump-caused chaos and war. And while some readers would bristle at my comment, it is hard not to trace this to Trump’s love of stirring things up. But I remember my bankers telling me, “Let’s get out of Tech and specifically away from AI,” and do debt. My bankers suggested there will be a need for a lot of that. I am willing to bet on chaos. I successfully bet on boring when Biden was president, for those who wonder.

With the blog done, I found the mail, and from the UK was a signed comic book, Circuit Breaker #1, on the Fugitive Doctor from the Doctor Who universe. It is a special artist-signed. I also sent one to Rev Steve W and called to remind him that one was waiting for him. The comic itself was a bit dark in content, and the Fugitive Doctor was grumpy. I also have #2, which I found at Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland. We had a nice chat. Steve is a more classical Doctor Who fan, but I have always thought the Fugitive Doctor fits more the model of the classic Doctors.

I reheat pizza for lunch and watch another episode of For All Mankind. I then head to Beaverton and check out the finished work at Beaverton First United Methodist Church. I see Wendy, the church office manager, and then walk around and see that everything is done (except the light bulbs that are on order). I then head to Powell’s Books at the mall and find a cheap used book on complex numbers and their geometry for under $8. I do not purchase the matrix-handling mathematics textbook for $50, but I had two choices. It is hard not to love Powell’s.

I manage not to buy anything at City Home, but I did have to resist one item that I loved. I kept moving and walked through the store, and Powell’s and the seasonal depression wore off. I have to be careful; I have too many items (grief, cancer, brain tumor, and let’s not even include politics) that can spiral me.

I stop next, sort of retracing my route to Ava Coffee, and have 1/2 of a strudel (getting a bag for the second half that was lovely this morning while I write this) with coffee. I dip deep into quantum computing again. Coffee helps, as I was getting sleepy too. The sugar, coffee, and finally getting more linear algebra wake me up.

I pick up Emma, and we head into the slow back-to-school mess that is traffic inbound and through Portland. The aggression and extra-legal driving moves are increasing to winter levels. The relaxed summer is over. No cement colored painting is left behind as we arrive after taking Emma for a spin by Reed College, her first, which is somehow on the best path to Double Mountain Cedar House and Pizza. Navigation in Portland always seems like a mix of irony and sightseeing, as if Douglas Adams (from the Hitchhiker’s series) was involved in its workings (I do wonder what happened to those AI Large Language Models when they illicitly scanned his books). Mariah is waiting for us as we arrive after finding nearby parking in a neighborhood.

Dinner is a lot of drinks (I had one smoky drink somehow combined with blueberries); every night I have drunk a beer, I wake with leg cramps that night–sticking to hard stuff and just one. We have appetizers and then share a mushroom white sauce (I have to live off lettuce for a week after these past few days!). More high-calorie pizza!

We talk about making a trip to the coast, and I suggest Jot’s Resort (though I did not remember the name until Thursday morning after searching the Internet) on Gold Beach. The dunes are just north of that. It is six hours away, but it would still be fun. More to come.

I do not pick up technical stuff at night and read more Nero Wolfe. I soon fell asleep.

Thanks for reading.