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I woke early to my alarm at 6, threw on some clothes, and headed outside to freeze. It was at least not slick. I walked about 1/2 of my usual. It was too cold for my hands, and I, in light gloves, was cold, and I was concerned it was too dark to be safe, let alone some unexpected ice or frost. It would not do to fall while trying to get some exercise. Morning walks in the winter are out.

(Yes, a slightly grumpy blog. I have a baguette and am not afraid to use it.)

There were police everywhere, and rescue trucks were prominent. Sirens wailed in the predawn. I did not find any news references to the police and rescue worker pile-on (And Grammarly stopped working again). This also had me scamper home: a police car, all lit up and with brights on, stopped by me, then backed up and did a U-turn. Their Nav was off, and they headed to the pile-on. I was concerned there was a call to stop suspects who matched my description amid all the ruckus, but nope. I vowed that my next walk would be in the daytime, after the ice had melted! Yikes!

My new locks worked well and did not take the keys with them. I have not hidden a key yet, in case the lock’s battery fails or otherwise, so that I do not get locked out. I like alternatives.

On silly subjects, LG contacted me about the delivery of my replacement for The Machine! I called the service center, and they are escalating my request to be paid rather than receive a replacement. Yikes! I was clear about my wishes, but I suspect that, when given the choice between replacement and payment, someone overrode my request. I was told it would take up to 5 days to change this, and then there would be more forms. I told them I would NOT take delivery, and that got them moving on this. Not unexpected, as I am cynical about multi-nationals being helpful; I used to work for another customer product multinational. Nothing in my memory is messier than reverse logistics, where every possible mistake in a supply chain exists simultaneously.

Costco has scheduled the new laundry for Wednesday afternoon. No coin laundry this week! Yay!

I figure the coin laundry costs $20 for 90 minutes a week. This means no water or electricity (I use electric dryers at the house). Calculating $1040 a year plus water, which I would guess at no more than $20 a month. Now I travel and miss about 10-25% of weeks, and I can do full loads from travel for that $20 (making it the conservative value and likely high). Thus, I reduce the total cost by 10%, and the same for water and electricity: $936 plus $18*12 = $1252. That means the return on investment is less than 2 years. As long as I don’t buy the new laundry on credit, the investment makes sense, since I plan to live here for 5 years or more (though I sometimes want to sell the house).

Tuesday is a gaming day, and I have a 9:30 game at Richard’s to play with James and Richard. Sadly, my would-be dermatologist office calls, and we cancel the appointment. They don’t actually take Regence’s personally purchased insurance (only corporate versions); f**k! I call Regence, and they explain that my network is smaller on my plan, but yes, my doctors take it (thus why I bought it). The customer service person suggests that in Nov 2026, I check their website and pick a better, larger network. I cannot change until open enrollment.

Maybe insurance is worse than reverse logistics. And yes, for those who wonder, Americans cannot, for example, pay a price to join Medicare (which would be less than any of these corporate offerings) or change their insurance once they are locked in for a year. Americans who have no employer-based insurance (putting aside the reason by law that your employer is your source of insurance — a form of being indentured) have to guess which one they want and then pay 20-30% more than employer based insurance (with the illusion that your employer is actually paying anything for the insurance — they pay you less and then pay for it from those funds).

Aside: I would suggest that if we passed a law in another country requiring them to use the American system, there would be a revolt. Nobody would ever be willing to pay so much for such terrible and expensive services. No person would think, in the other Western democracies, that employers should supply health care.

We play cooperative storyline games and are currently buried in Tainted Grail. Today, after feeling that our last play was just bouncing randomly across the board, we started finding some threads to play and forced a few cases, as we are tired of bouncing around. Some checking on the Internet discovers that we are missing some awards from the previous chapters; oops. We begin our tracing threads, and Richard remembers one; this one was offered at the start, but we did not have a character capable of it back then, and our knowledge of the game was too new to solve it. We manage it now, along with other small items. We play until 2:30 and pack in the game. It has a save process, and we put everything away for next week’s game.

My travel back was non-eventful, but my trip into Portland made me 15 minutes late (James, who came from Washington State, was late too). There were two wrecks on Highway 26, with one causing a slowdown even with the accident in the other direction! The accidents all looked like the usual failure to stop and rear-end collision.

I do not stop in Portland for lunch and a beer (not after gaining 30 pounds) and head back to Beaverton. Instead, I stopped at Paris Baguette and got a sandwich and some baked goods. I am hungry, it is past 3, and I ate my chicken sandwich in Air VW the Gray.  I remember a baguette sandwich in Paris with local cheese and ham, and a wicked mustard, and I also think of New York City back in 2026. I discovered Paris Baguette there in 2021, and it was one outside Mount Sinai West Hospital. I would go there for lunch while wearing my mask.

I sent Cat in NYC a text saying I was thinking of her and NYC. I hope to get back there sometime in 2021.

I returned to writing the blog and texting with Deborah. We are counting down to her visit to Beaverton, starting on February 12 and ending on the 21st (ten days). Deborah was busy.

It is 4ish before I get the blog done. I found the package in the house and other hints that later Corwin confirmed was his checking in. He stops by the house here and there and has my permission to do that and raid the fridge and other sources of food. He has the code for the front door (I love my new locks). Some of his mail appears here.

I lose track of time; it is soon 6:30, and I have a church meeting. That went for an hour and was surprisingly pleasant. With that done, I do some minor stuff on Kaggle. I cannot get my head around my problems and challenges; I instead decide to take a day break from coding AI stuff.

Having seemingly lost control of my day and it disappearing, I discover I did not get out for another walk, and it is dark again (yes, I realize I should not be surprised that it gets dark at night, but I really wanted a walk). I have not had dinner, and it is approaching 8:30.

I arrange the smoked salmon, pickles, left over backed beans, and sliced fresh baguette. Sort of a disassembled sandwich that I eat in pieces. I clean up the kitchen, make coffee for Wednesday morning, and then assemble the bread machine to make French-style bread (but it never comes out crispy enough for me). I added some grain mix from King Arthur Flour and some water, and the sticky mass started the bread machine dancing. I have it on a towel and on the top of the stove, and that will stop it (I have too much experience with this) from jumping off the counter (again).

The Social Security Administration sent me an email that they are working on my application in Carlson City, Missouri (?!). I signed in to SSA, and it showed me the second part of the process, promising a response in 30 days or less. After Elon and Trump messing with all of this, I hope these estimates are correct, but I would not be surprised that, as a person from wartorn and undocumented persons overrun Oregon, I will have to prove my identity and worthiness to be paid the money I already paid in (and receive about a 10% return on my investment). But let us, dear reader, hope for a better outcome.

I did not read in bed; it was nearing midnight when I climbed in. I soon fell asleep after a late call.

Thanks for reading!

With my weight changing from the 240 that I was working on to 270 (F**k!), I woke in the cold morning before 6, dressed (more like threw something on), made coffee, found my hat, coat, sweater, gloves, house keys (just in case), and left the house in the pre-dawn darkness. With the polar vortex slamming south, we have high pressure and clear skies here in the Greater Portland, Oregon Area. I cannot remember a January where the rains halted for more than a week.

(The Reedville Presbyterian Church HOPE is back)

The walk was cold, so I returned to get gloves and a hat and started again. More practice with my new locks. I managed just under a mile without going out of my way too much trouble. Better.

I get more coffee and make some toast. No maramlade. I will make bread again as my bread is almost gone.

I use my cheap Amazon Basics bread machine, follow the French-style bread recipe, slice it with my sharp bread knife without cutting myself, stuff the slices in a ziplock, and freeze. I do not eat it fast enough to beat the mold. If I follow a milk-bread recipe, which I enjoy making and involves cooking flour in milk first, that stuff lasts. Milk powder versions also last. I don’t buy bread because mine is better and cheaper (compared to higher-end breads). I recommend it to you if you just want bread and don’t mind assembling it (Under $70 here).

Aside: I have resisted the more expensive bread makers; my cheap one works. Having had the cutting-edge tech recently (a dead Washer/dryer from LG and two safety recalls on Air VW the Gray), I prefer making no time or financial investment in more complex tech that may produce a perfect loaf (or not). Basics work for me.

I listened to MLK: I’ve Been To The Mountaintop! and I recommend the whole 43 minutes. I think the stronger message is in the middle. He points out that folks must unite and though poor can cause change by boycotts and turning to locally sourced services like Savings and Loans (something we don’t have now after the S&L crisis during the Reagan Administration), insurnance and remove their united spending away from powerful companies that should force change, but enjoy the status quo. He also uses the parable of the Good Samaritan (here, for those who do not know the source and meaning of the story) to remind folks that they must now help their fellows with protests and support. Not later, or join community services that will slowly make improvements. He describes that, like someone bleeding and lying on the ground, action must be taken; it should not be avoided.

Aside: There is a law that makes it a crime for a US person to support a foreign boycott against an allied country (Israel being the usual target). More information here. These laws were enacted during the First Trump administration in 2018 (with later updates). Many consider this law to be in conflict with the First Amendment, but it has not yet been ruled on. So far, local boycotts like those MLK mentions in the speech above are, from what I have read, not enjoined by this law or by other state laws (though I am not a lawyer).

I wrote the blog all morning and spoke to Deborah a few times. I also posted, as it seemed to fit, the Schoolhouse Rock song about the Preamble of the US Constitution (here). MLK saying, “They put them down on paper,” or words to that effect, in the Mountaintop speech (he also refers to the US Constitution as an uncleared check in “I have A Dream”). The song says the US Constitution was created for freedom.

The morning soon disappeared, and I chopped carrots and toasted French-style baguette slices into croutons. I boiled eggs, peeled them, and added one, sliced, to a pile of lettuce. A salad for lunch. I also went for a second walk and reached 5,600+ steps on Monday. Better.

I watched more of The Umbrella Academy; I am not sure I like it. Corwin stopped in, and we put on The Agency, which I did not mind watching again, but did fall asleep in mid-episode. Corwin finished off my baked croutons, which also worked as crackers, for Trader Joe’s Pub Cheese spread with horseradish. He headed out, and Deborah and I then connected and watched two episodes of Elsbeth from season 2.

Deborah finished some laundry between episodes. I cooked and assembled dinner. I had some smoked salmon from Costco, home-made pickles I bought at the UFO festival that I recently opened (buying some green and pickled seemed the right choice), boiled some noodles as a starch, and some canned baked beans from Trader Joe’s.  I buttered the noodles, not too much, and added some salt (I use unsalted butter).

Dinner was consumed while I waited for Deborah, and during the second episode.

Deborah was sleepy after that, and we said good night.

I grabbed my Apple, did some more coding on Kaggle, and tried to work out how to add parser information to my runs. I could not make it work. I am still thinking about it.

I read for a while after heading to bed early. I fell asleep quickly but woke at 3ish to prove hydration, then managed to sleep until early Tuesday.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

I finally stepped on the scale at the end of Sunday, thinking my weight, which had been stable for months, would be +/- 240. Nope, and this explains many of the issues I have been having; it was up over 20 pounds. F**k! When did that happen! I felt, like many others, like a total failure and resolved to fix it. And the first thing I did on Monday, MLK 2026, was walk about a mile in the cold, frosty predawn. Back to plan.

What went wrong? Nothing. Just events. Winter weather, rain, thieves, and broken appliances have been sources of frustration. I just need to get back to simple exercise and forgive myself and the world (and LG). My knees and feet have hurt, but now I know it is because I am carrying an extra 20+ pounds.

It made it hard to sleep, and I woke at 6. My dreams were unfriendly but forgotten. On Monday, I threw on some clothes and was out walking at 6; I did a mile. I will try to start today with two miles. I know the weight slides on easily, and some, but not all of it, suddenly drops. The last ten pounds are a long haul. But again, this Monday morning, while I write the Sunday blog, I am content with my plan of returning to the usual plan.

Sunday started with me rising, writing the blog, and chatting with Deborah. The coffee was waiting. My memory of Sunday morning is a blur of writing and texting. I assembled a story of Saturday’s events using my tools and my limited storytelling ability. Grammarly chased my typos and obvious mistakes in red underlines and then more insidious AI suggestions in blue underlines that often suggested wording improvements, and I would agree maybe 50% or less. Even the red underline has to be reviewed, as a spelling correction is often the wrong word, followed by blue to rewrite the sentence to match the unintended change. I did check, and Google searches are now finding me and my newer content. But older content is not found.

After the blog, I rushed. I showered and all of that. I picked my red sweater vest (not realizing I had worn it for our visit to the Whitney Plantation on the trip to the American South). I put on the tie with whales on it that Deborah got me. I use suspenders to keep my pants on (that comment will make more sense soon).

Paul, an obvious street person with pants falling off and torn, came to our church service at First United Methodist Church in Beaverton. I was ushering, and Paul was a regular. He was sober enough (not always true; he had slept in a pew before), but his clothing was tattered. I had only coffee and donut holes (I am thinking about bringing sandwiches to give out), but also made sure he and others are welcome. I try not to be a ‘cop’ when I usher, but sometimes I still, with my tie, look the part. And I follow folks to ensure they are safe.

Today’s sermon, “The Cry of the Oppressed,” by Pastor Ken, started with slides and a description from our trip to the south. Kathy, not Ken, recounted our experience at the Whitney Plantation (my blog post is here), with pictures (including me in my red sweater vest). She was excellent. My emotions, no longer raw, still rose when she returned me to that day. The treatment of people as disposable and as an element of currency is what you learn in reading. Seeing the names of those people, standing in the slave quarters from that time, and learning what little we know of them, mostly their names at most, and knowing they were treated as disposable assets, was too much for me. It still is.

Ken attached this to Martin Luther King’s (MLK) message and the stories in Exodus of slavery in Egypt. MLK said he saw the promised land and that we have to continue telling the story and driving for justice in the USA. I was mostly distracted with usher duties and did not hear much of Ken’s sermon. I did pick up the theme that God did not say there would be no suffering, but that we must call it out, not cause it, and try to bring the suffering to an end. We can see the promised land; there is work to do.

Paul’s pants keep falling off. I have completed my usher stuff, including collecting and walking the offering to the altar. I take off my sweater while he watches and offer him my suspenders, explaining that I could not give them up sooner because I had to usher (I cannot lose my pants, even for a good cause, while doing that). He takes my suspenders, and I show him how to adjust them.

I have some other work to do after church. I collect some folks, and we work with Jack to get the round tables back near the fireside room, just three. The chairs have disappeared again. I last saw Paul happy with the suspenders (to have been seen, his problem noticed by someone else, I think, was more important than the gift of suspenders).

I head home, having to hold my pants up (what Paul was having to do before), but soon home. I stop by Popeye’s and get some chicken. I find an unopened package of suspenders, adjust them, and put them on. Back to normal.

I am tired and fall completley asleep in the chair (I did start watching season 4 of The Umbrella Academy). I move to the bed and do not rise until 4. Next, I talk to Deborah after my long nap. Instead of getting a walk, I eat more (still stress-eating) and start coding more AI after Deborah goes to bed. I wish her a good night.

I returned to my office and logged back into Kaggle. I forked my work (starting from a copy for those who don’t speak software development) and revised it. I coded a new matching algorithm based on token (word) matching rather than letter matching, and it scores worse. This creates a bias towards long and short texts as solutions. It is a good lesson on how AI (and matching) can develop bias that should be obvious. I was not surprised when it scored lower, but still interesting.

I spent the rest of the night (not getting any workout, except in my mind, which was running hard) defining a class to hold the training data as the first step in my new design. I also explored how to update Python to include English parts-of-speech tagging. I think I am allowed to update my coding environment and will try this next.

By 10:30, after a short break for more The Umbrella Academy, I completed what I intended and was surprised to find I managed to get the printing working for my new classes. I was excited that I remembered how to do this, and I also got a lambda function to run and run an apply method instead of coding a loop. 

As I said, my happiness was ruined by my use of the bathroom scale.

Thanks for reading.

Breakfast was with coffee that I reheated from the previous day. I had left most of it from Friday, and I could not throw out a nearly full pot. I sliced a nearly fresh croissant and had it with my coffee while I returned to the office (formerly a bedroom) and started my usual process. Deborah was free in the morning, and we talked here and there throughout most of it. I had no plans for most of Saturday, and it was Deborah’s day off (she still teaches).

I have started rising before sunrise, remembering my father always waking for them, “There are only so many left, and I want to see them.”

I am waiting for the check from Allstate to replace the printer and UV hardening machine. I purchased the laundry from Costco, and it will appear on Wednesday. I am waiting for the final settlement and a check from LG for The Machine, and, sadly, it will be hauled away. The potential ease and simplicity of The Machine are not lost on me. I was tempted to try again, and LG offered me an additional 20% off my next LG machine. But I am not ready to return to the fold, so to speak. GE Profile brand offers a more usual laundry, with a mid-range-priced version from Costco as a bundle, which was the more sane choice. I cannot afford the time and money to experiment with something so mundane. I bought the stands too, but not stacked. I need this to go away.

While I am covering this, Air VW the Gray lease is approaching its first year and 1/2 point soon. VW leasing would like me to buy some mileage, as I have 9K with a 7.5K annual rate expected driving. The trip to LA and back is showing in the total. I have mixed feelings about this. I will see how cheap the miles are now versus later. I would rather use their money than use my own. This is my first leased vehicle.

Air VW the Gray is back to the mothership in two Mondays. There is the year 1 check (leased), a safety recall, with an expected 2+ day repair. I will use public transit for a few days. Always exciting.

The blog was done about 10:30, then I did some dishes, and I watched some YouTube videos from ShipHappens and LinerDesigns about the design for the Bismarck. I reviewed Drachinifel’s redesign of the armor and secondary battery, and added triple guns (though he admits the four-double-turret design was not bad). Making it almost an Iowa copy. I think the crazy mixed secondary and weak-to-non-existent anti-aircraft defenses on battleships were de rigueur for 1930s designs, and would have been replaced had the ship lasted longer, though her sister did not get these updates. For example, Yamato looked quite different in 1945, having been updated.

I had the last of the leftover Chinese-style food while watching the videos and chatting with Deborah. I then decided to code more in Python for AI and try some of my ideas. It was a lovely but code day, and I enjoyed looking at the bright day while I tried to translate Akkadian to English using my regular tools.

I believe I need to define a class for translations and use it to generate data to feed an engine or a matching algorithm. I will likely split the training data set and use it to evaluate my work. I have never done language processing, and I see references to AI inference engines and canned models everywhere. But their examples are still scoring low, and I think the data needs an intermediate form to achieve better results.

Instead, I just try to get more Python working for me and look online for Pythonic solutions (instead of coding loops or other structures). I use the token processing (turning a text into a list of words) and then use the set operation to create an intersection, just one line of code (!). It is why we use Python. It is so overloaded with cool functions to process messy data.

I managed to make two slow-matching processes, doubling my runtime (no surprise to me), and I submitted it with new logic to use the best-rated match (with little logic to decide that) and scored worse, but at least different. I looked at the provided dictionary file and am trying to figure out how to use it. I also see that I can download files to my space. I might get the English parsing files and upload them. There is also more reference material, and I may assemble even more information into my structures (very little, I think, will help with the matching, but it is interesting), as well as some new ideas. It looks like the challenge hosts are trying to help with the Assyriologist part (we are coders, not ancient language experts).

It is my almost birthday. I have reached 61 and ten months. That means I can apply for Social Security Benefits. I visited their website (I have had an account for years and strongly urge folks in the USA to get one and check their balances) and submitted my application. The surprise was the information on deceased spouses. You need the location of death (I checked it on Susie’s Death Certificate). It was also good that I knew my last employment dates, as I could answer the questions without concern. With that all done, I submitted my electronically signed application. I printed the required materials and have them on my desk.

I headed to Richard’s in Portland after that in Air VW the Gray. The traffic was light, and it was about forty minutes to get there from the house. We have a new gamer joining us, Anthony, and we returned to Darwin’s Journey, so we had to remember how to play. Richard soon lapped us in points, but the rest of us were only a few points apart. Anthony got 2nd with one point on me. Chris was only back ten points. I had played it a few times many years ago, but I remembered some of the rules. I missed getting an extra worker, and Richard was sure that if I’d done that, I would have been a distant 2nd, chasing him. Interesting.

(Yes, there is a lot going on)

Darwin’s Journey is an excellent, well-themed worker-placement and resource-management game (87th overall on BoardGameGeek). It flows well, and the turns can stall with so many options (so many choices), and players seldom interact with each other. The first play is hard, as you finally start to get it by the third round, and then we are past the 1/2 point, and now it is a race for points.

It is a Kickstarter game with too many fancy pieces, ways to vary play, and endless add-ons. The way it plays makes it different than most and an excellent game. But like many games like this, the next big thing on Kickstarter (which this once was) will send it to the back of the game collection. It was great to get it out again, and at less than $60 on Amazon, it’s not a stupidly expensive game. But to get all the bling, it can quickly add up to 200 € on the publisher’s website bundle.

While I was playing, I got a goodnight text from Deborah. It is always good, when separated, to start and end our days together in some way. I sent a picture of the game and a ‘good night.’

My return home was without incident, no ICE folks to shoot me down in Portland or Beverton and then arrest me for getting shot, and soon I was sleeping. I dreamed of being chased by tornadoes and running, and nobody but me seeing the risk. Yes, the robbers, laundry, repairs, and AI stuff have my mind in a tizzy; I have not dreamed like this since I retired. I woke at 4 and after a bio moment, went back to bed and dozed until 7 when my alarm rang.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

I rose later, but before the sun, stripped the bed, and pushed all the dirty laundry into my basket for that kind of stuff. I added towels from the bathroom and kitchen. I threw on clothing, washed my face, and brushed my hair to make myself more presentable. I added hangers, laundry soap, dryer sheets, my phone, and the Apple laptop to my collection (getting heavy) and schlepped that out into Air VW the Gray.

It was a clear, lovely morning, and the sun was rising behind Mount Hood, which was white colored. The volcano was sporting its winter wear of white snow and ice. It turns increasingly black and gray, ash colored in the summer. There were only a few people there at 8 something, and soon I had three small washers going ($3.25) for 28 minutes. I wrote the blog in a chair at the coin laundry as the sun rose.  The three became two dryers, and by 10ish, I was done with laundry and the blog was posted.

I paid about $2,000 for a GE Profile-branded (front-loading and usual-sized) set of electric washer and dryer from Costco, delivery, warranty, installation, and haul-away included. Jeff had cleared the vent and rewired everything; I should be ready. Delivery is set for Wednesday afternoon.

Two security cameras, also from Costco, that need to be installed were also delivered. I will work on those this weekend.

I had picked up McDonald’s breakfast stuff, but could not finish it. I had coffee as the coffee machine was assembled, the time was set, and it delivered coffee at 7:15. Yay!

With the laundry done, I returned home, put it away, and discovered the baked goods I had forgotten and left in the car. I was still missing my AMEX, but I knew it was in the house or car; I would locate it wedged in the chair on Saturday. I have to start using that tap thing from the iPhone that Deborah uses to avoid this.

I reheated some leftover Chinese, relieved that I got three (plus one Corwin) meals out of my expensive order. I have one lunch left, four then. I took the pork fried rice and a small bit of Mongolian beef to the office after a shower, wearing my robe, and started working on Kaggle again. I was still unhappy with my code and thought there was a more Pythonic way. I looked at other code and noticed I had missed the .appy function, so I made that work and deleted most of my looping code. Yay! Pythonic!

Ok, that may not mean much to you, dear reader, but I do like to write good code, and Python provides amazing options. I like getting it right.

With my code submitted and scoring the same (as expected). I read and thought a lot about how to make this work. Others are using a provided Google model to do Akkadian and submitting CODA and PyTorch processing, and looked like folks are copying and then working the parms to get better scores. I may get there, but for the moment, I will try my own logic.

I next headed to Hillsboro to walk and enjoy the good weather. I did the antique stores, but my legs felt stiff, and my back soon hurt. I was really out of shape or not feeling well. It took some of the fun out of the visit. Deborah called me and suggested I find some coffee, which I did. I still felt off and tired out.

I returned in Air VW the Gray to the house and then headed to decarli (spelled in lowercase) as I had a 14Feb dinner reservation and wanted to check out the new setting. I have not been back since they moved. I connected with Deborah, Leta, and Joan S while traveling. I was sitting in my car talking for a while, but I try not to be one of those folks who do that.

Traver was at the bar; I had not met him, but the host/manager I remembered from years ago. Their menu will not change for Valentine’s Day, I learned, because the manager told me they always sell their specialties, their short ribs and sturgeon. I went to the bar, and Traver made me a wonderful Old Fashioned, and I had the happy-hour meatballs (it was just approaching 5). It was enough food for two: five meatballs with sauce and bread. It became my dinner, and I exchanged a few words with couples at the bar, but this was date night, as far as I could tell, and chatting with me was not their focus. Still, I enjoyed my dinner and reviewed the dinner menu (wow!). Traver offered a dessert menu, but I was stuffed with meatballs, and their only coffee is an Americano; I decided to pass on that much caffeine and sugar.

I watched Traver make two drinks at once and pour them into two glasses at once. Wow! It reminded me of my class with Donnda and Dondrea in New Orleans, making drinks. Traver was amazing to watch.

At home, I tried Pluribus (PLUR1BUS) and enjoyed the show. I cannot dispel disbelief, as the story is too crazy, but the acting, camera work, and writing make it work for me. It is a masterclass in mixing horror and reality TV. I made it through two episodes.

I often thought about the Akkadian-to-English translation and approaches to make it work when I took a break from the show, but I decided to take the night off and did no more coding.

I read for a while, then fell asleep.

Nightmares came. Terrible ones. About being persecuted, trying to resist, chased, and finally found in the dark by a group of bad guys who meant me harm. I woke shaking cold at 5 on Saturday morning. I dozed after that.

Thanks for reading.