Author: alohawild

I started the morning with more vivid dreams about change and searching. The themes that repeat in my dreams. I woke before my alarm at 6:40AM this morning. I needed to write the blog on Sunday morning. I was too tired and a bit depressed on Saturday night, so I did not write the blog then. I do my best writing work in the morning (while I am best at figure painting and model building in the evening). So I start right out of bed to begin to write. I stop to make coffee, using the newly cleaned French press from the dishwasher, and have a banana with some cornbread muffins I made the day before.

Aside: There were no bananas at Safeway today (there was a handwritten sign that more would come on Monday), but I remembered in the pandemic that, bananas were unavailable for a while. So I was singing, with apologies to Parrot Heads, “The last banana in paradise” when Corwin and Evan turned the last banana we had at the house into a daiquiri, and I might have sung, “Yes, we have no banana today,” in Safeway today.

I wrote the blog without difficulty and finished it in time to not rush my shower and dressing for church. I put on a white L.L. Bean shirt (old-school oxford with button-down collar) and a banker’s tie with a sweater over everything. My usual most formal wear. I grabbed my Apple in case we would watch online instead.

The trip to the hummingbird house was uneventful at 9:40. Air Volvo arrived just around 10, an on-time arrival. Susie was ready, but Anassa was concerned that Susie was coughing and choking on her breakfast to the point that Anassa helped Susie eat. After that, Susie decided to stay home, and we moved to the social activity room after putting away Susie’s coat and scarf. Anassa arranged Susie in a comfortable recliner, and I set up the screen and my Apple to play the service.

We were ready, but First United Methodist Church, Beaverton, had no video for about ten minutes. Susie was already falling asleep in her comfy chair. Susie had stopped coughing but turned pale, and I was worried. Susie was profoundly sleeping. Her color soon returned to normal, and she was just sleeping. I tried to listen to the sermon, but I was distracted by Susie and tired myself.

Pastor Ken talked about how Jesus had created a conflict in folks by talking to those who were usually pariahs (Apple selected a spelling fix to ‘piranhas’ which strangely fits), tax collectors, Romans, and other folks excluded from good company. He believed this created a conflict for Jesus’ followers as they had to work through their reactions to these unwanted people and align with Jesus’ teachings. So that we have to work through these reactions; imagine Jesus coming to you and saying, “Follow me.”

Susie was well-rested by the end of the church. Having me there and her warm and safe goes a long way to make her feel better. I played some music for her and then called her mother. Leta and Susie chatted for a while. I filled in facts here and there. Susie started to get tired again, and Leta rang off. I played some old rock videos, and Susie sang along to some of them.

We opened a box from my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Martin for Susie. PJ and socks for Susie. Susie was thrilled.

Soon it was after 1PM, and Susie was hungry. Anassa moved Susie back into her wheelchair and made her lunch.

I headed out just for lunch. I drove to the nearby Red Robin, found a chair at the bar with an empty seat next to it, and had a Diet Coke and an Ensalda plater (two slit chicken breasts cooked in southwest spice and a salad with southwest ranch dressing). It was perfect.

It is a strange Red Robin. One of the door handles is missing, making you wonder, when you reach it, that they are even open. The next set of doors is out of alignment and hard to open, again making you wonder. The bar is cramped, and you can’t walk between the chairs without bumping into folks–very strange. Natalie was the bartender again today. I had her last week, and she was happy to see me and quite helpful. But at the bar, it was mostly chaos around me as kegs failed, and they seemed to be training everyone to put in orders. I just ate my lunch and read my email–I brought my Apple with me. I had to use my iPhone to supply a connection as they don’t supply WiFi. My food was excellent and hot, and everyone was happy to help me. I was fine.

I returned to the hummingbird house with Susie in her recliner in the shared living room. Susie asked to move to her room. Anassa moved Susie to her bed, and we put on Snow White, the original version from Disney+. Susie stayed awake for most of that. I nodded off somewhere before the poisoned apple scene and woke with the chase and fall of the crone/Evil Queen. It was now past 4PM, and with me falling asleep, it was time to head out. Susie was sad, “I need you,” but relented, and I was soon gone with a kiss.

I returned home; my emotions were still too close to the surface, but spending most of the day with Susie was good. I cry easily and have to stay focused on getting things done. I am happy Susie recovered from the coughing, as I was worried.

I changed out of my church clothes and headed to Safeway. There I spent an hour getting groceries. I received word that the church wants me to make the Bourbon Chicken dinner for Mardi Gras, so I picked up some of the basics to run a small test batch on Monday.

Aside: Molasses is hard to find; it is by the pancakes (not baking). There were no eggs, so I bought a container of Egg Beaters. I have 11 eggs left.

One of the checkers at Safeway, Ise, is Iraqi and has been in the USA for about a decade or more. We are always happy to see each other. He asks about Susie and my health. He is very kind to me, and we are always excited to see each other–we made it through the pandemic and still going!

I get all my loot to the house and unload without incident. I then make jambalaya (no seafood) for dinner. I added the diced tomatoes, cajun sausage, kielbasa, and some ham (defrosted Christmas ham) to make it great. I had three bowls!

I watched The Legends of Vox Machina as I wanted to rewatch it while eating. I liked it better the second time. This is animated series based on a Dungeons and Dragon campaign, and the animated version was created by a Kickstarter. It is profane, funny, and does remind me of my own games.

I start to write the blog at 8ish.

Thanks for reading.

My ad campaign, a whim after reading about this on WordPress, had 2,700 imprints (ads sent to folks on the Internet), and that resulted in ten clicks, and my $10 is all used up. So yes, that was a buck a click.

And while I ignore this, my blog has lost about ten percent of its traffic. I think folks are not at home on the holidays and reading. I have all these crazy tools available to me. By the way, the China military seems to have moved on–yes, in the middle of the pandemic, I had followers in China and Russia. I suspect they were trying to understand how we were doing during the pandemic and reading some blogs. What a strange world!

The day started with me having an easy start. I had written the blog for Friday on Friday, so there was no rush or getting up early to get writing (unlike now on Sunday morning, when I am writing this). The weather was gray with light rain that slowly got heavier in form and turned to snow/sleet. It was 36F (2.22C), and frozen rain quickly melted. There was no wind Saturday, and the warmer air at the bottom of the valley had stayed; thus, the colder higher air dropped the frozen stuff on us but then the snow/sleet melted in the warmer layer of air.

I had forgotten to run the dishwasher, and I also ran a load of laundry. I made coffee in the coffee machine but failed to turn it off, and it heated the coffee for most of the evening, oops. I decided I wanted something to go with the banana and made corn muffins from Krusteaz Honey Cornbread mix. They were good, and I had three!

I headed to Susie’s before 11 with five muffins to share. The travel in the sleet was easy, and the traffic was apparently scared away by the weather. I arrived after 11, and Evan was also there. Susie had two visitors! Susie was happy to have some of my cornbread muffins.

With the cold and the snow/sleet, Susie was not interested in going outside or heading to the mall. So Evan and I got chairs, Susie got her rocking chair, and we watched the hour-or-so-long Sleeping Beauty on Disney+. This is the 1959 version that is rather scary for kids (I remember being scared) with the 3D layering of images you don’t see in computer-generated animation (invented by Disney). It is hard to imagine that the pictures were hand drawn, painted, photographed, and placed in cells for a film. While very old-fashioned, the music fits in well–much of the animation looks fresh and impossibly perfect (you see some haziness in Snow White that is not found in this and later animated films). Susie was singing along and knew every word.

I had an overwhelming sadness that had tears in my eyes for the movie and the music. I was depressed by the gray weather and the difficulties of the past months. I am concerned with layoffs and what shenanigans in Washington will do to my retirement holdings. It is hard to always stay on the bright side, especially when you have no control. Nevertheless, I am trying to return to my zen-like positivity (yes, the writer in me was happy to get to write that sentence).

Next, I found an Elton John concert, his goodbye tour, that Disney+ has available, and we watched that for about forty-five minutes. Susie was singing along with that too. I left with a kiss as it was approaching 2PM. Susie needed lunch, and I was starting to get tired.

Next, I headed to Portland. The snow and sleet had stopped, and traffic was light in Portland. I used Highway 5 instead of 26, got off on the wrong exit, and drove through Portland to reach the Pearl District. The city is still showing signs of the wear of the last three years–I was hopeful that we would start to see the repairs and clean-up, but the city is now looking like a graffiti-ed ruin. Very sad for me.

We met at Von Eberts, and I ordered a nice beer, Ode to Joy, and wings. While the wings were OK, they were not smoked like before (slightly burned) and appeared to just be baked (the feathers still on the wings gave it away–ugh). While the baked and Korean BBQ flavor is better than you get at other places, the wings were not the best I have had. I had a second beer, one of their best IPAs, and while good, it reminded me why I never order IPAs; it had intense flavors.

Evan wanted to try Belmon Station near Laurelhurst, nowhere near the Pearl District. So air Volvo crossed Portland and the river to find the Laurelhurst gates, traveled through the up-scale neighborhood, and back through the gates on the other side. It is a nice drive, and the traffic, the most Air Volvo faced today, while it was not light, was not an issue. Unfortunately, as often happens in Oregon, one car braked in the middle of the intersection, forcing me to drive into a red light as I was already in the intersection when the driver in the other car slowed down. I hope that one does not have a camera for Portland to send me a bill for that.

Belmont Station has hundreds of beers and terrible service and facilities. Small tables with hard chairs that all but say, “drink and leave.” A food truck provides food that serves “Smashed Burgers” for $10. We found a picnic table, about 1/2 sized, in the back room.

Evan and I played the board game Vindication, two games, with us splitting the wins. The game is mostly about resource management and exploring (randomly drawing tiles to represent the island’s locations from a cloth bag with the words “Scumbag” on it). In the first game, Evan drew everything he needed and most of the exciting stuff and beat me when the end-of-game tripped when we were both “vindicated.” In the second game, quickly resetting while the sun sank, the game randomly gave me some advantage, but I also returned to the land grab that has served me well (I also had a companion that gave me a bonus for taking land). Evan drew the cursed power to steal masteries and took my only one. Since he had that cursed power to steal masteries (we played with all the dark curse cards), I skipped getting any more. I instead visited the sights and got a card from each. As before, we tripped the end-of-game early, and I was far ahead in points (like Evan was in the previous game), and the final score had me winning. We are playing two-person, and sometimes you see this back and forth with two players who know the game well.

We moved to a table that had better light. We switched to the board game Brass: Lancashire. We managed to play the first epoch, and the scores were one point different. I was cold and tired and in a dark place. I was done, Evan stayed to finish some beers, and I drove home.

Air Volvo arrived without issue, once again crossing Laurelhurst and passing in and out of the gates. I picked up a chocolate shake and fries at McDonald’s. This is my best pick-me-up, and I ate that while watching Nerd of the Rings newest Tolkien story on YouTube. I went to bed early as I was sad, cold, and tired. I felt better and was reading about early nautical steam engine design for paddlewheel ships described in an excellent book on the Beaver, including drawing with most of the details needed to build a model. Just a daydream to build it from scratch.

With early steam engineering and paddlewheel proper design ratios running through my mind (Beaver’s paddlewheels surprisingly being slightly out of specs–too low), I was soon back in bed, still early for a Saturday, and asleep before midnight.

I am feeling better on Sunday. Thanks for reading.

Going backward, it is the early evening on Friday, and I have been sleeping since 4ish. I am tired today. I tried to read and just fell asleep a few times. I finally got going at 7ish. I finished the chicken Ceasar salad I brought for lunch from Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake Pizza. I bought an uncooked NYC-style pizza for lunch, baked it, and ate it during another meeting on a crisis of the moment. I followed along, but that was my last Friday event at the shoe company.

When I had a moment, I finished the Spelljammer ship by tying down the last of the rigging–it took only a few minutes but must be done with care and perfection. Last night I made a fife rail (I had to look up the name as I have not worked on sailing ship models in a while) with the premade belaying pins that I purchased some time ago. I attached that to the deck on one side of the mast. Next, I used the fife rail’s belaying pins to tie down the running rigging. Finally, I glued the SciFi ring under the skiff’s deck and glued one more piece of thin mahogany to hide the hole for the mast. The sewing of the mast last night was stressful as I had to manage it without breaking anything. The usual problem with these rigged models is not breaking the previous work while finishing something difficult. The model could use more rigging to be more functional looking, but for a model for tabletop gaming, it will more than do.

The see-thru mast and sail, I think, correctly mix the old-school rigging and wood with the idea of Swords and Sorcery in space that is the Spelljamming. Years ago, I bought a partially finished and mostly wrecked wood kit on eBay–it has been languishing in the garage. I kitbashed it for some of the wood–all that nice mahogany strips. Over the last few months, I got new tools, wood stains, and some extra parts from OcCre, a newish supplier of wood model kits in Spain. I have been collecting little bits here and there for the ballon model I built last year that helped with this model. I also have a source of very nice stuff in the Czech Republic: HIS. They made the laser-cut decking. I was inspired by Alex’s model’s channel on YouTube: Here. His Albatross build videos have me back into wood!

Before this, I visited Susie but could only stay a short time; I had a 1PM meeting and needed to find some food still. So I drove across Beaverton in Friday traffic which, while not heavy, did include some very imaginative lane changes by my fellow drivers. I am not sure why, but folks have to change lanes when the traffic is slow and slams their brakes. I got there at about 11:30 and left with a kiss at just past noon, yes, a brief visit.

We called Susie’s mother, Leta, and reached her home. Susie, Leta, and I chatted for about twenty minutes. Leta has a hole in her roof where animals have come in, and she needs that to be repaired. A red squirrel seems to have moved into the spacious area, for a squirrel, in the ceiling of Leta’s house. Barb, Susie’s sister, and Gordon (her husband) will be having a look at the squirrel invasion issue this weekend.

Smith’s (plus Jason’s) flowers continue to bloom.

I left, and after facing the paint-risking lane-changing crazy Beaverton traffic, I stopped by Papa Murphy’s and had enough time to bake the pizza before the 1PM meeting via Zoom at the Volvo Cave.

Somewhere in the morning, I found twenty minutes for stretching and exercises. The back pain is less, and my legs were more stable today. My knee hurts less, so I will stay away from the knee stretches for another day.

Before this, I was online starting late at 7:30ish; I made liberal coffee and had a banana for breakfast during the weekly staff meeting. I then spent another hour or so in Zoom meetings on status, the usual fair for meeting on Friday. I applied vendor patches while listening to the meetings (OSS notes for those who speak SAP). I then requested testing of the performance fixes to the process we assign products to a store in the accounting systems (SAP HANA with Fashion for those, again, who speak SAP software jargon).

I have been attending meetings, doing Jira updates (Jira is an excellent software package to track building software by using Agile), applying vendor patches, and doing some engineering while the Master Data Governance Engineering team, one team I work with, is understaffed. It is a privilege to fill in on all of these things. Like a tour of the software Agile development process at the shoe company on SAP systems. So fun.

Starting the day, I woke tired and stayed that way. I struggled to push through Friday. There were a few extra days in the last two weeks, I believe. It is good that it is finally Friday!

I did think of dad a lot these couple of weeks. I remember he found January-March to be a challenging few months to get through. He had a bell on the door for the old Wild’s Furniture and Appliance. I think to wake him up on some days–it was none too busy in the freezing winter in Laingsburg, Michigan. I remember when dad, Bob Wild, would call me after school and tell me about the movies on channel 8, The Four-A-Clock Movie. Yes, a busy day at the store when dad is calling with movie suggestions! While I am busy, I notice that everyone is trying to find their way after the holidays. I missed sharing stories with dad these couple of weeks.

2013, my last photo of Bob Wild.

(I deleted a section here about the economy and my thoughts on layoffs. While this is on my mind, it can’t be here in a public space. I have strong feelings about this, and I am concerned for the USA economy and layoffs, but I can’t publish those–those words do exist in a revision should I think I should return them–this would be something I would talk to dad about)

This blog is about my experiences living day-by-day and should not draw conclusions.

On the more pleasant news at work, our greater department is moving back to Nike WHQ, and there are rumors that even we in the project may move to WHQ. That would be nice.

Thus, I am resting. Trying to ignore the layoffs and economic chaos and doing good work. Thanks for reading.

We are finally making it to almost the end of the workweek, Thursday. I woke by my alarm, knowing it could not be 6AM already; it was. I had gone to bed at 10ish as I was not feeling great on Wednesday, but I still woke to wonder how the night could be so short. I decided then, my back was complaining, not to do my excises. I felt more Belz Lugosi as I rose, but I decided to get it over with and did most of my stretches and excises anyway, leaving the standing knee stuff for another day.

It is a work-from-office day (WFO), so I was rushed to complete everything necessary. I made peanut butter toast with my banana and liberal coffee made in my trusty French press. This leaves me with enough coffee to fill my thermal cup for the ride in and for the first set of status meetings.

I spent the morning reading emails, texts, Slack messages, and my own email. I also check CNN for essential news. Ever since the September 11th attack, I check the information every morning, hoping for no more attacks. Unfortunately, I had not checked the news on 11Sept morning and learned in my car as I drove in to work at the shoe company that the twin towers were no more in New York City. At first, I did not believe it and thought I had misheard the news.

Air Volvo was headed to the office, the Clubhouse office building not on Nike WHQ campus, by 8:30 and arrived around 8ish and started my first meetings at the new time of 8:05. Meetings at the shoe company are now not to start on the hour and half-hour, but to give five-minute breaks. This allows, and it is, so silly to do this for bathroom breaks and to give folks the time to walk to the next conference room and/or to connect via Zoom. Too many folks were getting back-to-back meetings and could not even get time to use the restroom. My friend Michael G, who got no lunch multiple times a week, threatened to wave a cardboard sign in the meetings to bystanders that said, “I will come to your meeting for food.”

I spent the morning on meetings and then had a crisis of the moment as some software needed to be installed, now. I worked with the release manager and got this done. I got a few more crises and worked them too. The morning was refreshingly busy instead of the usual status-filled slog.

I headed next to Susie at the hummingbird house (I forgot to take pictures, sorry). The travel was through light traffic, with me patiently watching as my fellow drivers switched lanes with little concern for Air Volvo’s paint. I arrived, intact, from my travel from Highway 26 to 217 (Highway 217 called, with no love, “The Devil’s Bowling Ally”).

I waited for Susie to finish her breakfast. The Comcast cable was down in the area all night and into the day. Jennifer, the live-in nurse aide, has selected her personal copy of the musical/movie Hair Spray (2007), and Susie was not eating. Instead, she was watching one of her favorites and singing along. Jennifer and I had to remind Susie to eat. Here is one of my favorite songs: Timeless. Susie, distracted, finally finished her breakfast.

We called her mother, Leta, and surprised her by being early. My lunch meeting was off this Thursday, so I was running early on Thursday. Leta and Susie chatted for a bit, and I filled in here and there. It was a pleasant time with Susie wheeled into the social activity room–I did not need a mask there as long as I was just with Susie.

Soon, as often happens on work days, I needed to say goodbye with a kiss. Susie was back to watching Hair Spray (Timeless was playing when I left). Here is the best song, I think, from the movie: I Know Where I Have Been. I went to Carl’s Jr. and had a Western Burger for lunch. I needed a coffee later as I was getting sleepy from the burger and fries. I was feeling better.

I applied a few more vendor patches that were requested. I will, working on the crises of the moment, apply a pile of those to development on Friday morning (while listening to the endless status meeting) and hope to promote them to the release soon after. I drove home at 3:40ish and then logged back on from home and answered some more questions.

At 5PMish, I closed my laptop and rested a bit. I then got up and headed to BJ’s for dinner. I had a small steak, baked potato, asparagus, and my favorite beer. I wrote the blog at the same time. Eric was my waiter, and Mel, my other waiter, said hello (she liked the show I recommended, Wednesday, from the Addams Family).

So I am drinking my after-steak dinner coffee and writing.

Thanks for reading.

Going backward, I am home writing the blog. I met Zophia and her mother, Dondrea, at First United Methodist in Beaverton to play board games. I taught a new one to Zophia, War of Whispers, a hidden goal game slightly based on Game of Thrones. Instead of running the kingdoms (called factions in this game), there is a game for that (called Game of Thrones, and I have played it a few times), you are spies, and you have hidden goals to support and destroy empires. You place your agents to advise the leaders of the factions. There are multiple advisors, and unfilled slots are given to the agents in place. This is just a fun game of messing with kingdoms and ruining your enemy agent’s plans while trying to bring your plans to fruition before they discover them. Zophia managed to scrape by me by one point–I helped her to destroy her enemy kingdom, but mine still held one city, which counted against my score–one point. Next time!

While War of Whispers is fun, it is not easy and not an easy game to learn. Zophia did not get it until the second round. It plays better with three, but a two-person game is exciting because you can control many agents. So while a unique game and a Kickstarter I supported, it does not get that much play. Maybe we will play it more now.

Before heading to the church, I was home after work and had a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. I also had some more colon issues. Oh my! No accidents.

Before this, I was at work in the afternoon, helping with multiple crises of the moment and completing some year-end paperwork for various managers. As a result, I was pretty busy and missed a few status meetings today as I had more pressing issues.

Moving further back in the day, I was at my physical therapy (I have one session left), and they worked on my leg strength. I am having pain in my right knee that does allow me to bend it fully with weight–it flashes pain and then suddenly releases (yikes!). The lift for Susie makes this worse. They may extend the PT to cover this issue if it does not improve by next week.

Before PT, I was at lunch. I did not have that much time, so I chose a tuna fish sandwich at Subway in Bethany for lunch. Susie is allergic to tuna fish, so I never make it (even now, it is just a habit to never buy tuna). Subway toast it on fresh bread and stuff the sandwich with veggies–perfect. I had the sub with a small bag of baked chips and a diet drink. It was great, but the place was cold. Actually, I froze all day.

Before lunch, I was at Susie’s place. I left work after 11ish and arrived in Air Volvo at the hummingbird house as Susie finished her breakfast. I was not rushed as I had lunch and PT to follow and no work meetings (but I did seem to have many crises when I got back). We called Susie’s mother, Leta, from the social activity room. Leta had just got home when we called–she was back from grocery shopping. Susie and Leta chatted for a bit. Susie said she was feeling good and seemed happy. I stayed for about thirty minutes and then left with a kiss as Susie headed to her recliner in the shared living room.

(flowers from Smiths + Jason)

Before this, I was at work at 8 and did the stand-up to monitor our work. I found myself helping to execute the ceremony as our usual leader was out. I had to remember my Jira skills fast. Luckily, I had coffee!

I was up at 6 and did my stretches and exercises, skipping those that involved my knees. Breakfast was a banana and liberal coffee.

Thank you for reading!