I rose after 7, having ignored my 6 alarm and risen an hour later. It felt like only minutes more. I made coffee and some toast from the wheat bread I made in the bread makers a few days ago. I smeared peanut butter on it and cut it into squares. With that and my meds taken, I returned to my office to watch a gray morning while I typed and composed a narrative for Monday.
Later, I would hear a loud thud. In the late afternoon, I found a small to medium-sized dead bird on the deck. It is always sad to lose one this way, and window strikes are always a surprise. The bay window still gets window strikes after more than twenty years, but this is the first time I have found a dead bird. I can see a few feathers on the glass. It always makes me sad.
On birds, I saw a scrub jay and other larger birds I have returned, along with hole-drilling flickers and downy woodpeckers. Fall is here. The squirrels, now that the apples are fermenting, are enjoying the apples. I saw that some of the windfall had been enjoyed by little nibbles. The murder of crows is missing. I do not know what happened to them. When I would leave the car outside in the winter, they would decorate it. I believe their absence has allowed the other birds to return.
I wrote and completed the blog, but I am now running late to travel to Portland to Richard’s for the continuation of the role-playing board game, ISS Vanguard. I was 8 minutes late, with James even later. Robin, a woman who plays and owns lots of games, is joining us: Richard, James, and me. Robin was not familiar with the game. I noticed that as you explain a game, you suddenly realize how much you have learned and understood. This is a massive game, and it has an app to control it. It fills the table and overflows onto other drink and food tables. We also save the game and leave much of it set up in the pocket under the wooden gaming table cover. We all help Robin play as our new fourth.
The game takes about 2 hours and change to get to the away mission. Many reviewers like this administration, and Robin watches me as I handle the card process for this play. We have many hours of this process now, and I have a handle on which cards are what and where they are in the box they are stored in. Robin, I can see, is not sure what type of game she had joined (endless SciFi administration), but then we put away all of that, and then get out the planet stuff, load a ship, fly down, and start exploring the planet–in effect, a whole other game built inside of the administrative game. This is very immersive, and today’s planet is interesting and full of risks. We have advanced in the game, and the risks are higher. Without going into details, we didn’t finish the whole challenge after discovering a world within a world. We don’t have the supplies to do both. We do finish our objectives and missions. We also have some ‘rare’ items to help with research for the next play. I won’t be in Beaverton until near 4, after dealing with a traffic mess on the way back!
I stop by the church office; I have a borrowed key and now a fob for the door system. My back regrets the four heavy boxes of cards for the church mass mailing. We are trying to re-invite Beaverton back to First United Methodist Church. I carried them into the post office, and the 4,000+ are now on their way to the good people of Beaverton.
With that done and accepted, I headed across Beaverton, thinking about a Ford Dealership, but instead decided to handle my missing lunch, and with dinner coming up now, a burger at Shackshake seemed a good solution. Fries, too. I then watched the Battleship New Jersey YouTube video (I had my earpods) while eating, took a call from Rev. Anne, and agreed to stop by.
At Anne’s place, I replaced the printer cartridges in their HP color printer. There is a trick: you have to close the scanner to open the printer and replace them. They were in the wrong order, and once I corrected that, it all worked. I took out the toner from the other printer, the black-and-white one, and showed Anne how to remove it, along with the drum that might need to be replaced. I found that shaking the toner and the printer would keep it going for another few months; I shared that with her.
The cable was also fritzing. It is Comcast, and I know this one: new batteries in the remote. If you lightly strike dead batteries, they will generate a short-lived charge by reviving the chemical reaction for a moment. I was thus able to bring the remote back to life for a moment and saw the Comcast warning that the batteries were dying on the now-working cable-controlled screen. Anne was relieved not to have to call Comcast, and we replaced the batteries, and all was good again. We chatted about other things for a while, and then I headed home.
I watched more of For All Mankind season 5 and sort of liked it better. I read more new Sherlock Holmes material and soon fell asleep.
Thanks for reading.
