Author: alohawild

Monday was my prep day for my next trip starting on Tuesday. Off to Nashville, arriving late in the evening. With no direct flights, there were no easy options, and I decided that an easy set of flights would work best. The time change, two hours, and a one-hour layover stole at least three hours from the day. I was not going to fly all night this time. I wanted to be awake for the American Civil War tour on Wednesday.

I woke up in the dark, proved hydrated, and dreamed bright dreams of traveling on various buses, planes, and trains that matched my upcoming week. I slept through the sunrise, with black turning into dark and then lighter gray. Our overcast fall days are here, but will soon be replaced by hot, sunny days. Our usual September of gray and blue skies, a mix and match of summer and winter.

I saw the squirrels busy burying their caches in the ground while I wrote the blog, and the hummingbirds enjoyed the low-wind days and feasting on the rushing ants and heavy pollen. Soon it will also slow as the rains and dark come. They all stay for the winter like me. We will watch each other all year.

Words, narrative, and musing were my morning. Not all I thought about will be recorded, as some things remain private and others are not my tale to tell, but much was cast into molds of words and sentences. Then, for me, hammered out like a blacksmith. Rereading, like reheating in metalwork, has me check the work; Grammarly complains, and I decide which red underlines (mistakes) for it to correct. I look at blue underlines, glowing like heated metal, suggestions, and often ignore Grammarly, and I fix the sentence by adding a word here and there, like a blacksmith hammering something back in place. Often, adding the missing word or phrase works. Grammarly often becomes satisfied. I watch the word count at the bottom; if it was a quiet day and I reach 500, I have enough for a post. I try not to fill it with musings or boilerplate commentary, but try to write without concern. Stream of consciousness, heated and hammered into a reasonable work that is produced nearly every day.

Monday, from the habits of the pandemic, was laundry day. I stripped the bed and tossed it in the washing machine. Later, I tossed in the towels in use for another load. I later divided the clothing into two loads. Shirts and pants, and a mixed load. The new Costco-purchased laundry, the usual, executed with precision. The combo machine for the same amount (and never refunded) is not missed and is not recommended.

I completed a short blog and heard from Deborah by text. She has lots of balls in the air on Monday (back-to-school for adult education), and I try not to add to her concerns. No need for a needy boyfriend who needs constant reassurance. Though, of course, I miss her and the often-morning call, I tell myself I will be brave and wait. We talk later, and both feel better hearing our collective voices.

Cough meds, in lower amounts, are still in use, and the world seems slightly misty, and time moves in sprints. Morning was slow, the afternoon disappears, and dinner was long. The evening is late before I am ready, and I find myself remaking the bed late.

I put on the funny and crazy Terminator movie, Genesis, which I can always recommend, but you should watch it after rewatching The Terminator original movie first. Arnold gets a new catchphrase: “Old, but not obsolete!” Corwin stops by, and I take him to La Provence for lunch; he has had a bad week and could use a nice sandwich.

I try to bring some order to the house and pack. I don’t fit everything for my one-week trip into my smaller bag, which is also a suit bag. I have to carry a coat in my carry-on. Likely the right thing to do anyway.  I then manage to get it all together. Packed. I set out a few items for my final packing (meds) and my hat.

I meet Dondrea and Z for dinner at Pepitas and end up with too much food. I have a margarita and start my vacation early. We talked about travel, church, and nothing. It was nice to relax.

I package shows today: a Calamity Ware teapot to match the cup Deborah gave me. She watched for it, finally found one, bought it, and sent it to me. Excellent!

I am time-boxed, have a flight today (I am writing this on Tuesday morning), and that covers the day. Thanks for reading!

I woke up closer to 8, coughing but not as bad, and at first felt quite well. It is fading, but I know better than to believe it is gone. It fills my day with coughs, and I take cough meds all day. They mostly work.

I rise, reheat the coffee, and find my almond-filled croissant I made the night before. Still good. I like chocolate better, but these make a good change. The squirrels are busy, hiding nuts in the backyard and collecting leaves for their dreys. The roses have slowed as there’s less light, and the climbing rose has two canes over the top of the fence, but then they seem to freeze at that height. Mister Lincoln has two stalks rising to bloom again before winter slows, and most flowers then melt away in the wet before they open. No rain is forecast for a week. I’ll likely get a few more lovely blooms before the rains set in.

I spent the first hours of Sunday writing the blog, not very long, as the cough and my slowing down to try to stop it made the day less interesting. I managed to finish it before I needed to get dressed to be on time for church. Gray slacks, white shirt, pride tie, and a green sweater vest. Black leather shoes and gray/black patterned socks to finish.

I arrive too early and spend part of the time chatting with Deborah. We try to start and end our days together when we’re apart, and we often chat while driving. I then head to the nearby coffee place, Ava Coffee, and get a London Fog. I managed to resist the pastries, cakes, and muffins filling their case. There was no apple strudel.

I returned to First United Methodist Church and noticed that the new lights had brought all the colors back to the sanctuary, and the side lights now looked pale and unneeded. Before, the side lights seemed to glow because it was so dark. The carpets now look less dark (and less clean). Hmmm. More work.

A visitor came in, said she was happy to join us, and then started demanding and collecting social media and personal information from folks. I later refused her as she was leaving; she tried to guilt me into it, then all but threatened a bad review. I have seen this before with salesfolk showing up for a few visits to collect contacts. It is an old-school con, now made easier with iPhones.

Dondrea gave the sermon, and it was, with some irony for me, about including people not like us. Dondrea suggested, like in the story of the dinner (Luke: 14-15-24), that we include people we do not know and bring them in. That, with the start of the Revival, we be inclusive.

Coffee and Brian, the choir director and organist, played roaring music; it didn’t quite shake the new light bulbs loose, but it was strong and loud while still being edgy and friendly. Very interesting piece. Find the sermon and Brian’s playing here.

I headed home and had reheated Chinese-style food for both lunch and dinner. Deborah got the gift I sent her. Both goofy and practical. From Who Give A Crap: 48 rolls of bamboo-made toilet tissue, with each roll wrapped in an image of a US National Park. She loved it. They have single-ship and subscription services. I sent a single shipment.

I am re-reading American Civil War history as I head to the Franklin Battlefield next week. I wanted to tour it after reading the story: The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah by Wiley Sword. The battlefields (Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville) have not been saved, but some pieces are available as small museums and views, and I have a Grayline tour on Wednesday. I also left Thursday open if I need to return, but I will likely try Cheekwood Estate instead, a Gilded Age mansion now a garden and art museum. Uber out and back. Dinner and maybe some local music after that.

I watched the next Terminator movie, #3 Judgment Day, my least favorite of the series with Arnold. It seems like a redo with better acting, a female Terminator, better music, and better special effects, but with a really inane storyline. Best to ignore it. But a few fun lines like “She will be back” did make me smile.

Hot tea and lemon are my prescription for the evening, and I keep up the cough meds but reduce it to one pill during the day. I down the nighttime liquid stuff and soon slip into a dreamless sleep. I slept until sunrise.

And that was Sunday. Thanks for reading.

 

 

I finished Saturday baking some Trader Joe’s almond-filled croissants. I found they need extra time to rise. I let the frozen croissants rise all day. I baked them at about 10-ish at night and slightly overcooked them (twenty minutes next time). I did not have one, as I did not want to start coughing again. The dry flakiness might not work well for my cough at night.

As for my cough, when the four hours of effectiveness of the cold/cough meds reached the third hour, the coughing returned. I would slowly, at first, start to cough, and then it would become more frequent and then much worse, and it felt like I was trying to cough up a lung. I decided to stay mostly at home.

I watched the last season of Slow Horses on Apple TV to get ready for the new, and I believe, last season of the story. The previous season was fast-paced, and I watched three episodes back-to-back.

Mariah texted me, and I agreed to an early dinner and to meet her at 4:30 at BJ’s Brewhouse at the bar. Mo was our waiter. Mariah and I just chatted, and I filled her in on all the challenges (some not to be shared here), and we talked about my travels next week and what was happening with her. I imagine I bored her with AI details I was learning and struggling with. I ordered the prime rib for too much money and Mariah a steak (I had $20 in discounts), and I had a Spanish Coffee, my go-to for a cough. We said our goodbyes after sharing my dessert.

Before that, I stayed home and even ordered delivery. I had Chinese-style food with soup and moo shu, which I assembled for a late lunch. I watched an episode of Matlock with Deborah. We are still winding up the last season. We manually sync and watch on our separate TVs, but keep the phone on. We can hear each other laugh and comment. We would chat for a few hours on Saturday, since we both had no plans and needed a day off. It was nice to just hang out, even on the phone. I will be back in Michigan in October. For Deborah, classes start next week, and she teaches too. She will be busy.

I also look closely into how to code quantum computer solutions. There are Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Amazon implementations to learn (and even a company in the UK, Rigetti, with a quantum chip it is trying to sell), each with its own languages, access, and availability (Rigetti quantum bits purport to be an option on Amazon servers). I looked up the market rates, and a director position pays $275K, surprisingly low, but these are start-ups, and I suspect the pay comes with options. It looks like a Gold Rush, much like shared ledger solutions (Bitcoin-like systems) looked ten years ago. Everyone had one. More to follow.

I watched another Arnold movie and picked The Terminator as my next series. I love the catchphrases and got to see the famous “I’ll be back.” The music track sounds like someone trying to do techno, but it is just one instrument; it screams low-budget! Still, it was fun to see again.

Quickly moving to the start of my day, I woke, feeling terrible and coughing, and rose around 7 to overcast skies and some Oregon mist. I got some cough/cold meds, and this improved. I struggled to focus but finished the block late. I did the usual things, including drinking liberal coffee, remembering what the comic Godzilla vs. Portland taught me: “Tolerance is not weakness.” I smiled, remembering that as I watched the squirrels assemble their winter quarters. It is good here in the Pacific Northwest.

Thanks for reading!

(Heaven Scent, a gift from Dondrea and Z to remember Susie, has put out a full-sized flower this fall)

I woke up coughing and tired. I rose close to 8 and began my day, dragging myself to the kitchen for reheated coffee and then more cold meds. With the coffee and my breathing clear, but coughing starting when I talk, I spent most of the morning writing my blog and finding my way again. The usual processes and habits of checking my email (mostly deleting and unsubscribing from political emails, both left and right). I watched the squirrels rush around, cut little branches, and take some to their home in the tree. I noticed the large bugs are mostly gone, likely lunch or gone after finishing their life cycles. The hornets and wasps seem desperate now to find that last bit of food to get their queens launched for their cycle. Spiders, all small so far,  have invaded the house, and I have ended everyone I find. Winter is coming, and I see the squirrels bank their nuts in the backyard. The smaller apples, windfalls, are gone. They are easy to transport.

The roses are producing smaller blooms as the season darkens. The dawn redwood, Susie’s tree, is a foot tall and looks happy. Still in a cage to protect it from the lawn people who can be careless. Someday I will have to cut the cage away, but that time is a few years from now. It will (and this shows I am positive about living here for the next decade) be a lovely tree in ten years.

The morning, as I said, was invested in writing the blog and watching the locals prepare for winter. I check, and markets are tired of falling, and the markets find a slight improvement in oil prices as a reason to rise. Yields are not relenting. There is too much debt out there to buy, and more cash is demanded to take on the debt. The Treasury’s plan to buy back some debt is more of a carousel than a plan. Spin buy. Spin sell. The only way is to stop spending at this rate, but Trump has never believed in not borrowing.

Aside: Dear readers, I do not blame the president for his addiction to spending. Obama and Biden both spent their way out of recessions. He won the election, and with a passive Congress, he gets to call the shots. I will say his simplistic approach towards the economy isn’t working, and sadly, it is time for massive cuts and tax hikes to bring the US back to order. The endless cash has caused a slow creep of inflation, according to the press, of over 40% since the pandemic (wages not matching that rate, of course). Going deeper, voters knew Trump and his predilection for deficit spending, both now and in the past. This is how hotellers think, debit gets you a hotel, and then you run it. Take the money. Bondholders get paid (unless it goes broke). Build another one. Repeat. And change the tax code to cover more expenses. Also, as we can see from pictures of the USS Abraham Lincoln, war is expensive — not just in lives; it breaks equipment, and the costs always seem to outweigh the gains. No action (more deficit spending) means inflation, higher interest rates, and a crashing stock market. Ye ‘ave been warned! We will see what the midterms bring, but I am not very optimistic about a blue wave. I am curious about turnouts.

Returning to the narrative, I decided to pick up my comic books at the Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland. I took Germantown Road instead of the usual highways. I do not remember using it before, and I enjoyed all the curves and greenery. It takes me west of Portland, and then I return, passing the St. John Bridge; I was tempted to cross it and take the inside road trip to Sandy Boulevard. It looks like the bridge to Oz (though Seattle is known by the sobriquet of the Emerald City). Instead, I enjoy a passage on I-5 South, which will close later for five weeks. Portland traffic is expected to reach chaos for the next month. My trip to the airport (and back) will be by the MAX train to avoid this mess.

I arrive, park on a street, and soon find my comic. I also see they have a special local cover of Godzilla vs. Portland. I have to have that. Local artists did the art, and I cannot wait to read it. I leave and head across Portland to the other side, to Hawthorne.

More aside: McMenamins has a passport program where you get stamps for visiting various pubs and facilities and performing experiences. If you complete it, you join the Cosmic Tripper group and get access to special events. It is fun, and I have been trying to fill the same passport for more than a decade. Someday!

I park a few blocks away, as all the other parking spots on Hawthorne are an hour or less. I have not been here, I think, in ten years. Since Susie’s illness got worse, I find the memories too painful at first. Now those memories have faded into pleasant smiles, with nothing to fear. I think Deborah and Emma would love it here now and would be delighted to rediscover and see that some shops and restaurants are still here. Like an old friend, I feel Hawthorne Street hug me and welcome me back.

I find the cafe at the Bagdad Theater, get a table, and have, remembering that McMenamins is always expensive and not always good food, a mac and cheese that I regret for the price and flavor. The beer was good, and I enjoyed reading all the comic books. I get my McMenamins passport stamped and realize how long it has been since I have been there (I have had that passport a long time). Still, it is good to be back, and I will be back again (maybe after I-5 is back).

Doomquest #4 is good, and I read it quickly. I find comic books too short for my liking and would prefer a book, but still I liked it. No spoilers. But I laughed through Godzilla vs. Portland. It is extra thick and contains multiple unrelated stories. It hit on the hipster Portland and weirdness and, of course, Sasquatch.

From the comic’s final words on Portland:

Some people think of Portland as soft, naive, and overly tolerant of weirdos….But you’d be a fool to interpret that as weakness. Because the fact of the matter is that you never know what sort of extinction event waits just around the corner or whose talents will help you survive it[!]

Texas is next. Next April, the book of all of the vs. US Cities will be published.

There is a Powell’s across the street, which was once a Deli and Powell’s special cookbook store, but now it is a coffee shop with a usual mix of used and new books, leaning more toward new. I find a new Lonely Planet Brazil book and snatch it up. I show the cashier the comic Godzilla Vs. Portland, and they looked up where to get one and will likely get one.

(A little blury and that describes me at that point).

I need a theater stamp, and Practical Magic 2 is playing, so I buy a ticket and cough through it, but I am away from people, and maybe popcorn was a poor choice. I cannot remember the original, and I did like the movie, but I found it very predictable and more of a fan work than a new movie. If you liked the first one, then hit this one. I cried a lot and even nodded off. But that was the beer.

I connect with Deborah here and there. She is busy, and we manage to start and end our day together.

I also booked a 7PM show on two Sundays at Snug Harbor Jazz in New Orleans (NOLA). I booked brunch that same day at Arnaud’s. I booked the house band on Monday @ 5 at Preservation Hall to make sure some days are booked for Linda, Jesse, and me when they join me in NOLA. I added, just for me, a cooking demo on Tuesday morning at the usual cooking school, New Orleans School of Cooking.

With my passport stamps, I returned home. I made a chef’s salad with ham and hard-boiled egg, finished the laundry (though it is not folded yet), did the dishes, and discovered that the recycling was missed (the cardboard will stay). Conan the Destroyer is my evening, and I then read and soon fall asleep sometime before 11. I dream and sleep and maybe walk through Hawthorne. Maybe I saw you there, dear reader. I wake, still coughing, but feeling better about the world. “Tolerance is not weakness”; that goes well with beer or liberal coffee. I smile and start Saturday.

Thanks for reading. Sorry for the many asides. These blogs are about what I experience, can share, and think. Sorry if it sometimes preaches. But sometimes a good sermon is needed, or even a messy one.

 

Dear readers, another day of coughing and trying to make myself better. It is boring. It is frustrating. But it is necessary. I slept in until 8-ish, missing the sunrise, but I did spend a few moments near sunset, hydrating with all the water and tea I have been consuming. Dreams did not stay with me. And I soon rose, but the coughing was quite unpleasant, the wheezing familiar. This is my usual mix of seasonal allergies and a cold that slides in.

Also, from past experience, nothing is in my lungs; they stay clear, and I just have the drip-drip of a head cold mixed with allergies. Unpleasant but not a threat. I also know the supreme court of treatment, steroids, will not finish it. Just something I need to pass through.

I write the blog with freshly made coffee and toast with peanut butter, my current favorite breakfast. Yes, I have no bananas. I do not dress until mid-afternoon, and that keeps me home and going slow. As boring as it is, it is not time to be galavanting through the Greater Portland Area.

I switch my playlist to “Too Fast,” and that helps me focus on writing and doing everything I need to do. Music like “Joy to the World,” “Diablo Rojo,” and “The Time Warp,” plus songs like “You Can Leave Your Hat On” and “She Blinded Me With Science,” pumps me up as I write. I manage to assemble a narrative before the morning ends, do my usual reading of the NY Times, update transactions for my credit cards and cash accounts, and post the blog to Facebook and email it.

Lunch is noodles in broth. I open the too-large Costco slicing ham (I will have to freeze it or give it away), slice off some bits, and heat them in a pan to brown them slightly and reduce the water content. I also select three uneven-sized eggs from 185 Veggie Market and boil them for hard-boiled eggs. The ramen has a matching broth that goes with them (eschewing the flavor pack), and I microwave it for four minutes. I combine a split egg (overcooked for this process) and ham, and then use a peeler to add some carrot peels, more as a garnish to get the two colors than for flavor. It is not as good as what you get at a noodle place, but it worked. I only used some of the broth, and I will have to get more noodles!

I watched more of For All Mankind season 2 and found myself reliving the forgotten Korean Air Lines flight downing by the Soviets. It was awful the first time, and seeing it again was just terrible. I completed the episode and can see where this is going. Not sure I want more.

I am feeling less bad, but I know it is the meds and going slow, and I decided to limit myself to just my chair until the Theology Pub meeting after 6. I read more about quantum computers and QuTiP, an open-source Python simulation library. My frustration is growing because I cannot understand how to code this or how it can produce the incredible results promised by this technology. Not the theory, which I understand (see below), but actually coding. I wander the Internet for more thoughts and code, find something for another version, and discover programming languages with how-to blogs and public access to run your program on their hardware.

With more digging, I learned that QuTip has an extension that installs separately to do the programming or circuits for quantum computer simulations. The AIs that provide the answer — the AIs are impossible to avoid now —are based on out-of-date material, and I found the updated versions, read that I need a separate install for QuTip quantum circuits, installed them, and started running code closer to what I expected. My notebook (my Jupyter Notebook) disconnects, and I lose my updates and references. I redo the work and save it this time. Yikes!

I also learned that the code in the documentation example is out of date and throws a deprecation warning. I made an adjustment, and it now runs without a warning. Yes, moving closer to the leading (bleeding?) edge. As a responsible coder, I may flag the documentation for an update. I need to check that I am reading the correct version before doing that.

Aside: All conventional computers use a clock, and that is one of those selling points of a processor: how fast its clock is. To run digital processes, we need a pulse that says, “do the next thing”: the clock. And while we can add more parallel processors and hardware, we cannot escape the space and heat limits and, oddly, the speed-of-light issues. Synchronizing this pulse across long wires and laser pulses becomes problematic even across a country. A quantum computer (QC) operates without this pulse and sort of works outside of time and space, running a probabilistic circuit, as these programs are called, not a strict 0-or-1 process of pulse-driven digital circuits. The theory is that they can solve problems without the restraints of time and space. Some believe 2030 is the year we will have the first working QC.

More aside: I am thinking of learning to code them and building a decision-tree process so they can instantly do AI calculations, then expanding it to a random forest of decision trees.

With that, I decided it was best to shower and let the steam help; I did the usual, got dressed, shaved, and so on, then went back to my chair in the living room. I rented Conan the Barbarian from Apple for $3.99 and enjoyed the insane movie that I loved back in 1982, my last summer before college. I cannot remember seeing it, but it was likely with Eric and either Rusty or Tyler. It inspired many catchphrases later in Dungeons & Dragons play. The ending is senseless and more about running out of money and accidentally setting the set on fire, which I learned later in a making-of video.

With that over, the clock was soon closing in on 6, and I took Air VW the Gray to Beaverton and McMenamins Cedar Hills. Soon, Dondrea and Z showed up, along with about eight more (plus one online). The topic was 9/11 and how we remember it and how it changed us and the country. One person had a family member there, and that person escaped a tower before it fell. Everyone was concerned that this was when the surveillance state started and has since expanded. We let it happen after 9/11; security for freedom was the offer we took. We now make the same exchange for schools after all the shootings. The expansion of surveillance and its misuse is now a concern. When is it no longer about safety but about repression and fear, and thus, conversely, making us less safe?

I had the electric tacos again and could still taste and enjoy the wickedly spiced beef, even with my cough and cold. I had one drink: an Old Fashioned. We broke up, and I headed home. I read, did the dishes, and soon was in bed. More cough meds. I fell asleep and didn’t wake until sunrise.

Thanks for reading.