Author: alohawild

I decided to write this blog the next morning after taking out the trash and breathing in all the smoke without a mask and was then very tired. So, I will be more careful today. But, the air is, why yellow, is not a hazard.

The day started with starting at 6:30ish and me doing the normal stuff of getting up, catching up on work and my home email, and then reading the status and other information at work in various slack channels. The morning was dullish, with the smoke already making everything yellowish.

I had hours of status meetings in Zoom to cover status and various other issues. We had a build in the morning, and I helped with some of the planning. It was a bit old school, and we found our way.

The afternoon was a few more meetings and taking a short rest. I tire easily now.

The smoke was in the valley, and I was often coughing.

I had Mexican food delivered again by Grubhub. The delta variant and the smoke kept me indoors today. It is no longer about overcoming fear but surviving again!

I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for Susie and me.

I had a theology pub meeting in Zoom (we used to meet at a bar–most folks have a drink while on the Zoom meeting), and we talked about religion and the problems of inclusivity and elitism. Much of the discussion was about how to include and how the “elect” or the belief in elitism (that you are right with God or gods and others are not) impacts how people see religion and, in our case, how it impacts a group of Methodists. We did not find many answers on Thursday night, but being inclusive seems a start.

After that, I read and then slept.

Friday started at 6:30ish with me not getting dressed as I read lots of emails and status and even attended a status meeting. Today is bonus day at Nike, so my bonus showed in my bank account. I paid off some small debts, and my only debt is the house loan for a few moments.

I managed to slip out of the meetings and shower and dress. I then helped solve a break and looked at a few other issues.

I finally broke away from work to get some chores done. Then, I had a haircut at Zeriada’s, and now with the mask mandates back and smoke, I was wearing an N95 mask. I also have to call to get the door open as the place is fully locked.

After the haircut, I drove back and picked up the prescriptions waiting for Susie and me. RiteAid had called me with a recording to come and get them. They also have flu shots. So I had one. I learned that I was the first person to get the shot at this RiteAid. The pharmacist has given me many inoculations over the years.

I watched work email and the Slack channels on my iPhone, and nothing was an issue.

I rested and read a new book: The Cthulhu Casebooks – Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows. It is a reworking of the Holmes story rewriting the first story and explaining why one character disappeared in the original stories; something I had wondered about.

Mariah is back in town and text and called, suggesting having some beer.  So we celebrated bonus day by having dinner at BJ’s Brewhouse. Everyone was back to masks again. The AC was working well, and we had a nice dinner with drinks.

I ordered a double gin and tonic. Surprisingly, Susie’s drink was delivered as a double while mine was the normal size! But, of course, Susie took a nap when we got home.

There is now a fire burning in the coastal mountains, and they are white with smoke now.

I am trying to get caught up on the blog. So I again will try to skip the less interesting items like what was for lunch. A year ago or so, I was still getting questions about how safe it is to get food delivered.

Monday was a day off for me, and I decided to try to sleep in. I managed to sleep until 8:30ish. Then, I was up and made a light breakfast and read emails, and tried to ignore the dishes in the sink. I was almost out of clean clothing, but I also resisted doing laundry on my day off.

I found an old Doctor Who I could not have seen before. The BBC in the 60s erased shows instead of keeping a copy. Thus many episodes are lost. For $2, I could buy a re-recreation of an old 1967 show. Apparently, a voice-only recording was available, and this was combined with computer-based animation to reconstruct the show. The sets are recreated from photos and other records.

The show has many episodes, and watching them used up the whole morning. It is at best an acquired taste as these episodes were made 50 years ago. They are more like soap operas than SciFi. I enjoyed the show and was watching how they recreated the screen to match the sounds. It was fun, but again you have to really like Doctor Who to watch this.

I made my lunch and got Susie her lunch.

I ordered pizza from Pizza Hut for dinner, and we watched the news for a bit.

I attended the Social Action meeting for the church at 7ish. I have never been able to attend as I usually have a Dungeons and Dragons online game on Monday nights. I have a new flag for them, a gay pride flag with a diamond shape with more colors to represent the trans and other communities. I just learned about this flag and have one now for the church.

I called Dan Gray after the meeting to ask about how to fly or mount the new flag. We are still trying to work that out. We plan to keep flying the original pride flag also.

I managed to slip in a bit of rest here and there as I still tire easily on Monday.

Tuesday morning started at 6:30 in the morning, and back to work. I started by putting on music and doing all the dishes, three days worth.

Next, while listening to Zoom meetings, I did the laundry. I have not folded it yet. That will likely be during Wednesday morning meetings.

I had hours of status meetings and alignment meetings. I also had to read a few days of emails and Slack messages. I did this between chores and while listening.

At 10AM, all the meetings stopped for a bit. I am feeling better as some of my health issues are starting to go away. The actions I am taking have positive results. Thusly, I went for a 30-minute walk to help get my legs to feel better and help my breathing. Use or lose it!

More status meetings and then lunch.

Lamb kabobs for lunch at Gyro House. Their AC is working in the 90+ heat. So I do more reading on my laptop while drinking iced tea, unsweated. It was a nice break.

Another meeting, and I am free of meetings. And that is good as the exhaustion starts. I have overdone it a bit.

I order Chinese delivered from Taste of Sichuan. Their food is better than most of our local places.

I am feeling better, but the work, excise, and house chores have made me tired. A good tired. I think I will stop here.

I was very busy this weekend, and my current health issues make me tire easily. Also, I feel that a blog needs to cover more than what was for lunch now that we are coming out of the pandemic. Of course, we may return to lockdown, and I will be writing about lunch again if the variants get worse and we all lockdown again. Then just getting lunch delivered and groceries send is a big deal.

So returning to Friday, I started the day as usual and had a few status meetings and emails to read and send. I also got my lab results and was a bit unhappy as there are some issues, but no medical person said anything. We have a website and even graphs of results from previous tests. I did follow up with a message about one missing test appointment.

As it is summer and Friday, I decided to stop working in the afternoon. Nike has summer hours on Friday, and so we often stop at noon.

I went to the hobby store for a few items and brought back Susie’s dinner, her fav, McDonald’s Happy Meal. Then, I drove in usually easy traffic into Portland to Richard’s house.

We played two games of the Vindication. I spent most of the first game explaining and helping others. We had a four-person game, and I was the only veteran player. Unfortunately, I managed to score last! However, Kathleen picked up the game fast, Richard managed to score high, and Alex managed to pull just ahead of me. They mostly liked the game, and we looked up how to buy a copy once the new Kickstarter ends.

I drove Kathleen home after playing one more game of Vidincation that we had only three rounds until we tipped an end-of-game trigger. I managed to repeat the same score positions (I was last!). Everyone seemed to like the game. However, they were unsure of the end-of-game triggers as it seems to end the game too soon, and the game felt a bit random to Alex.

Saturday was a slow start for me as I had trouble sleeping. It is hard to get to sleep after playing games at night, and the medical issues were on my mind too. I had the classic too tired to sleep. I managed to sleep for only a few hours and was up at 5:30AM.

I had time to do all the laundry, dishes, cook breakfast, and watched an episode of Warrior on cable. Evan was over at 1ish, and we had Mexican food for lunch and then headed to The 649 Taproom to play two games of The Lost Ruins of Arnak.

This is a new fav board game of mine that came out in 2020. I bought a copy after playing a two-person game with Richard. I like the theme of the 1920s Hollywood version of archeology with hints towards Indian Jones and Lara Croft.

This is often called a mid-weight worker placement and Euro game. It also includes a deck-building mechanic with deck thinning, which I think adds to the game’s charm for me. We played on the advance board this time, and we also had some misplays. For example, we did not get the iconography in some cards that only apply to campsites, not the more valuable explored sites. We corrected that and a few other mistakes.

Evan crushed me in the first game, and I came back and took the second game, but barely.

We returned and picked up Susie and went to the movies and saw the next Suicide Squad movie. We loved it. It was a freaky, fun movie. Peter Capaldi was the bad guy and seemed to channel all his villains from his Doctor Who days to make a believable and horror of a mad scientist.

We finished with the Spaghetti Factory for dinner. We had caught the early evening movie so we could make dinner work. We had a nice dinner, and that was the end of Saturday.

I managed to sleep a bit. We were up and out by 9ish to drive to the coast to see the Smith family at their beach house. The drive was 1:45 long with a strange wicked drive on a highway innocently called 53. It was two lanes and was a workout to drive. My speed was seldom above 30 as there were so many curves. It climbed within sight of Saddle Mountain’s summit (I was a bit surprised by seeing that). Apparently, Kat Smith, David’s and Michelle’s daughter, followed the same guidance and drove this on her trip too. It is now known, to the Smiths, as Kat’s turn-off, and it is avoided.

We were there at the beach house before brunch time. We had not met in 15 months. We were delighted to see each other. We then had brunch at The Yolk. The Yolk is open for brunch only and offers amazing breakfast food (except the biscuits and gravy I had, which was average at best).

After that, we returned to the Beach House and played Concordia, another board game. I had to teach this game too. Michelle and Kat played with me. Susie and Kat as a team. It took a while, but soon Michelle understood the game and started building her Roman Trading Company; the goal of Concordia is to build the best trading family. Kat started to get it and focused on food production. Kat built her last trading post and started the end of the game. I managed to pull just ahead of Michelle with Cat far behind; she had not purchased as many personality cards as Michelle (having cloth and wine trade covered), and I (bricks, tools, and having all my colonists out) and thus scored less.

We played a partial second game and had to teach David the game. I think everyone liked the game. It is one of the best light-to-mid worker placement Euro-styled games. It uses a deck-building process, but there is no deck thinning.

Kat made vegetarian-styled burgers and with fruit. It was nice.

We drove home convoy-style that night. David led, and we watched the sunset in the Pacific as we drove along the beach for the first ten minutes of the trip home (David did not take 53). Unfortunately, our homebound trip was delayed by paving highway 26. I put in for Monday off after I got home. The travel and my illness slowed me down today.

I am time boxing this blog to two hours of writing. So I will cover Monday and Tuesday together tomorrow.

Thanks for reading! Be safe. And as an IT person, I always say, “And don’t break anything!”

The morning started with me ignoring my alarm and finally getting going at 7ish. The day is bright but yellow. The smoke is in the valley and changes the bright colors and changes to be more yellow. The air quality is still good. I can smell just a hint of smoke.

I started on email and Slack messages at 7ish and managed to get dressed and cleaned up in time for my first Zoom meeting. I had five hours of Zoom scheduled this morning, but some ended early.

I read the terrifying report from Violet Blue on the Covid-19 breakout. I subscribe to her report for an early version; you can find it on Twitter. With the smoke and the bad news about Covid-19, I ordered my lunch from Grubhub, Don Chilitos Mexican Grill. I was sad not to go out, but there is no reason to risk the smoke and the virus.

Work continued the afternoon with hours of more meetings. About 1/2 of them canceled, and so I was free.

I made potato skins with cheese and bacon for dinner from Schwann’s. Susie likes it, and I had managed to have two boxes of it in the freezer. So I baked two boxes worth, enough for all of us.

I would head to the movies tonight for the new movies. But I am unsure if it would be safe with the smoke and the apparently more contagious and possibly more deadly delta variant in a full explosion here in Oregon. Washington County, where we live, is one of the few counties in Oregon that are not at “high risk.” So I will be on the sidelines again, watching and staying safe.

The county and local government are not setting any standards. However, the bars and food joints in Portland are joining to have no-vax no-entry rules. Proof of vaccination will be required soon to enjoy Portland’s nightlife.

This Sunday, I may travel to the coast to meet The Smiths, who I have not seen in a year. With the exploding delta issues, I will drive out and back on the same day. I have done that a few times.

I am starting to work on some figures again. I am cleaning up my work area after building the hell war machine. I fixed a broken figure yesterday by drilling and pinning it to a base. I will paint the base after painting the base with primer. I usually use spray-on primer, but I will hand paint the base as the figure is already painted this time.

Holy Spirit Dwell in Me was a song I found when I was looking for something else. I liked it.

Last night the smoke was starting to show in the valley. The air quality is still good, but the bad smoke is already in the southern valley. Eugene, Oregon, is already in the yellow for air quality. We can still make out Mount Hood, and the Coastal Mountain Range is hard to see with the white smoke.

Last night I also found a squirrel sitting on the ground opening hazelnuts. The squirrels plant the nuts, wait for them to germinate, and then eat the sprouted meat. Not sure if they plan it this way or if it just happens. They leave little piles of broken nuts with sprouted leaves on the ground. I refer to them as squirrel circles. Not as cool as the wheat circles found across the county, but still a by mysterious. Do the squirrels farm the nuts?

It was in the 90F+ today and sunny with a nearly impossible 6% of rain.

I managed a bit more sleep, and my breathing is better. Today I was a bit busier at work as more items need solutions. I started at 7ish and managed to be ready for the Zoom meetings starting at 8 and enjoying hours more of the meetings.

Between meetings, I managed to redo the paperwork for my 25th work anniversary. I get five weeks off and other items. Our big project changed its plans and thus mine too revised back to the original dates.

I also had some caregiving for Susie as she took a shower while I helped. Again, between meetings. Everything went as normal. Susie only showers when I can be there to help.

Wall Street has fallen in love with brand names, and my Nike stock has hit levels I could never imagine. Wall Street believes in strong names and deep pockets. Nike has a lot of cash. Like many famous names, Nike’s stock structure prevents a takeover from raiding the cash.

I drove to Burger King and had a whopper with cheese and bacon. Oh my, that was good. Susie had just breakfast late, so she had dinner later.

While listening to meetings, I chopped onions, carrots, and potatoes. Then, I made a goulash-like stew from a German Cookbook that Michael Giessner’s parents gave me for Christmas years ago. Then, again, listening to the Zoom meeting. I was glad there were no questions for me. I was crying quite a lot from the onions!

I am going to stop there as I have already lost one set of updates.

A normal day.