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It is Saturday morning, and I am having trouble recalling Friday; it was a simple and slow day. I had trouble sleeping, slept until 8, and woke up tired and still disturbed by things I had not finished yet. I did get one hotel reservation done for my trip in September; I still have to pick a hotel in Nashville.  I spent the morning writing until 10. I found a flagpole and another Pride flag (a Progress flag, technically); I buy them in packs. The flag on Beaverton First United Methodist Church disappeared a few weeks ago. My memory is that this was the third loss this year. I do not have a count of the number of flags I have replaced. Bill B started this, and we started taking turns replacing the flag and flag holder as needed. I buy plastic-based flags as they are impossible to burn without an accelerant.

Folks have suggested cameras, tracking devices, and reinforcing the flag to make it harder to take. I argue that we are not in the prosecution business (“Nobody expected the Methodist clerical police!”) and are more turn-the-cheek people. Flags are cheap and easily replaced.  And there are words like “meek inheriting the earth,” and “blessed are the peace makers,” and of course “don’t steal” in even older texts. Best to just keep replacing them.

I make coffee and take my pills. And I write the blog and finish by 10, to my surprise. Again, I have only coffee, and soon dress and head out with my laptop and the Call of Cthulhu adventure I am running on Tuesday. First, I stop at the church and discover my flag, a cheaper one, needs hooks, and my pole is designed for a more expensive flag slides on the flag pole. Oops. I also meet Brian and Dondrea there, who are on a scouting mission for a church video. Z is there with Brian’s kids and enjoying running around in the quiet church.

I head to lunch and to find another flagpole and clips. I do Pastini’s for lunch and have cream-based pasta with garlic bread and a small Caesar salad. I have iced tea with it. I read the rest of the adventure, which is creepy but not scary. Interestingly, the author comments that there is no usual solution to the adventure; it is up to the players to decide what to do.

I stopped next at Ace Hardware and found a wooden pole and an extra clip ring to make it work. After spending $20, I had a pole and a ring, and I returned to the church. I could hear Brian practicing a majestic organ piece in the church while I assembled the new pole and flag. The flag holder has a pin that locks into the pole to keep the wind from carrying the flag away in a storm, but it is frozen; I will have to replace it next time. I believe I have a spare with the spare flags and pole. In the past, a storm sucked the flag away and threw it on the roof, and later it fell off in another storm and was recovered. We were all amazed.

Deborah and I talked here and there. We try to keep connected on these long breaks from seeing each other. Deborah was having tire issues that were resolved with a free repair at Bell’s Tires in the Midwest. We talked here and there, and I said good night to her later in her time.

I managed to get one piece of paperwork done, but I could not find the other, so I called Kathy to have it resent to me. I will try to resolve that later.

I stopped at Walgreens and got supplies for the colonoscopy party. Broth, little cans of soup, some gas meds (required on the list), and ginger ale in expensive little cans. I would have one of the soups reheated in my cheap microwave, and I felt better then.

I have some figures for the Call of Cthulhu tabletop role-playing game that I ordered from Etsy, and the new Duel of Moloch board game that need painting. I had put away my paints, brushes, glue, and so on. I found the glues; most of the CA was hardened and unusable. I found the remaining brush version of CA, and after retrieving my CA accelerator, I was able to assemble the new figures. I will find paint, inks, and brushes on Saturday.

I was feeling well and maybe a bit sad, and instead laughed through Ted Lasso episodes and loved the one in Amsterdam, a favorite place of mine. I like the museums, food, and odd culture. I priced a trip back, as well as trips to Egypt, since the Cairo Museum is opening (finally), while I made soup. I felt better after some food, got some figures started, and enjoyed season 3 of the show.

I did go to bed early and felt sleep just overwhelm me, like a warm rush of blankets and a summer breeze. I did quickly overheat, wake, uncover, sleep, wake cold, and recover. This process went on for a few hours. I am retired and no longer worry about waking and ruining my day. Instead, I embrace the night and enjoy the waking. Sometimes I think about getting up and writing or something, but then nod off before I can get moving.

Dreams are all forgotten, but the emotion was pleasant tonight. Thanks for reading.

I could feel it on Thursday, and my body was saying WTF to me. I am not as young as I think I am, and those endless steps in NYC, various foods, airplane air, and time changes finally slowed me down. Thursday was less of a rush, and I felt it; soon I was tired and sad. I think the post-trip depression and the weight of all the church paperwork I need to do are weighing on me. But Brazil came back by finally accepting my photo, and reading Eternity at Sea by Sean Branney of The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for Tuesday’s Call of Cthulhu game brightened my day (the version I have includes premade props and even 3D paper structures that fit 28mm figures for play). Things are moving forward.

I had a church meeting on a Stewardship program (for non-Methodists, about getting pledges for the church budget for 2027), and that was mostly a chat about what had been done and some themes. I managed to finish the blog just as the Zoom started; I lost track of time and mostly listened after Pastor Ken reminded me about the meeting, and I connected. It was on my calendar, but sometimes I get quite intense in my work and miss things.

The morning was reheated coffee in my new, slightly larger countertop microwave, a cheaply made Emerson model. I put a note on it and reminded Corwin that you must push the open button to unlock the door. This is to protect children from being burned by hot items, I read.

I showered, dressed, and all that, then headed to McMenamins Cedar Hills and arrived at 11:45, with Scott W arriving a few minutes later. We ordered Hammerhead beers, then another while we had burgers (I was ravenous after no breakfast and too much coffee). We chatted about travel, family, and pet updates. We are staying healthy, but pets are aging. I talked about my new interests in Rust (a programming language) and quantum computing after the conference, and my surprise at the amount of tracking the Hope Network Operations Center (The Noc) could do. Every movement, even with rotating MAC Addresses, could be tracked on the hardened, fast network. Attacks were easily turned away, too — tens of thousands. More to follow up on Rust and quantum computing.

I connected with Emma, and I picked her up after returning home and dropping off my laptop (it is a hot day for a laptop to be in Air VW the Gray). I also added the new game Vestige (here) to the collection already in the EV. Emma and I headed out after I picked her up at her apartment (classes have not started yet) and, using navigation to avoid less efficient routes, we soon arrived at Rune & Board. We grabbed a table and started to play. I did the “teach,” and Nic, the owner, was interested in the game and how I thought it compared to Vindication, also from the same game company.  I think it is a better game, as you make more choices instead of facing random cards and removing the real estate grab, but I would still play Vindication anytime and always enjoy it. I have not learned the nemesis rules for Vestiage yet. I forgot the Special Ops cards in the setup, but we were able to correct that without loss. Emma missed a rule, but soon I was running hard to keep up (never underestimate Emma or Z in a game). Emma tripped the second End-of-Game condition (they are random, as in Vindication), which ended the game. I managed to win by just over 5 points. I had claimed lots of areas, like in Vindication, and that ensured a win.

With that done, we packed up and got Emma back to her apartment for her Thursday night online game with Greg. I headed home and used water to defrost some chicken thighs. Fried some mushrooms I sliced, then replaced them with the chicken, browned it with just salt and pepper, and finished it in the oven. I made a pan gravy with butter and flour, and added the mushrooms again with Masala cooking wine. Sadly, this wine has salt, and it tipped the salt content over the edge for me. I heated a frozen garlic naan and had two chicken thighs with mushrooms and naan for dinner. I then watched two more episodes of Ted Lasso season three. Deborah was right about the show; I cannot recommend it enough.

I did not find the focus, and I was too tired to pick up any more church items. I soon started reading and fell into an unruly sleep, with things to do in my dreams and unable to get to them for various reasons. I woke at 4 and could not sleep (jet lag), and I will focus on more church things (I have already sent out an update on the visa process for Brazil).

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday was a day when exhaustion surfaced, and jet lag made me drag through my day. I found it a slow start, and I stayed that way. This was a mundane day, and I am afraid it is not a very interesting story, but still, for me and my writing discipline, every day needs to be remembered and recorded. Let’s begin!

I rose again at 7, having slept through the whole night, and dropped to 228 pounds after my NYC trip. Both a surprise. I had risen with the sunrise and rolled over. I made coffee with OP Beans and took my pills. As I went to bed on Tuesday, I took all my pills because I had forgotten the morning pills. I remembered my meds this morning, and the usual rule: no coffee until pills are taken.

I no longer ignored my luggage stuffed with clothing that needed to be laundered; I sorted it and started the process. The new laundry is marvelous and often finishes faster than I expect, and the clothing is never soaked when I remove it from the washer and place it in my electric dryer.

While the clothing spun, I wrote the blog post about my crazy-busy Tuesday. I was back around 11 the night before flying in from NYC, and I had Richard’s at 9:30 the next morning and ran a game at Rune & Board from 6 to 9. It was part of my plan, and I am back in time for a colonoscopy on Monday, the 24th. Yikes!

Wednesday seemed to be running slow, and I was able to finish most of the writing at 10:30; then I realized I had nothing to eat. I checked what was easy and not colonoscopy-banned (no nuts). I settled on defrosting and frying up some ham and green beans. I cut up some chunks of cheddar and beat three eggs. A scramble worked. I finished the blog while I ate.

My insides were troubled; travel usually impacts me, and I had some incidents of rushing to the restroom, which I thought was unfair with my “colonoscopy party” coming up on Sunday. It passed (so many jokes there), and I was able to shower, dress, and finish the laundry, though it is still on hangers and needs folding. I reheated my coffee in the LG Inverter (a microwave to me), and nothing changed. Corwin had told me it had stopped working. Humm.

I took out some of my purchases from my bags from The Strand Bookstore in NYC to send them on to Michigan, one for Linda (who was thrilled to get another coffee for her birthday from Oregon), and something for Deborah too. I placed them in envelopes from my mailing supplies, printed mailing addresses on paper, and used clear shipping tape to affix the addresses and reinforce the envelopes. Off to the post office.

It was the usual chaos of folks not knowing how to mail things; some instructions were spoken two or three times, but I finally got my turn. Before I could change it, one was sent with the usual pre-paid sticker, but Deborah got real stamps, and some high-value ones. Better. And even hand-canceled, perfect.

At some point during the day, Brazil again rejected my visa application. This time I did it the way I thought it should be done. I cropped the high-resolution photo to just my shoulders and head, like in a typical visa photo, and replaced it with the full photo I tried to use before. This also removed the words from my T-shirt in the photo. I then, again, for the third time, sent it in. I learned on Thursday morning that it was accepted. Finally! My visa application is now back at the Brazilian consulate and not with the Dubai pre-check company. The status check did not work from that email, as before. I am hopeful this time.

Next, another return to Rune & Board. There, I picked up my reserved copy of Stonemaier Games’ Duel of Meloch, copy 26,367 of 35,000. This is a crazy add-on and standalone game. It comes as a retail copy, and the components are paper and wood, not the swanky stuff I have in my copy of Scythe or my metal items in Expeditions. The Scythe matching components include mechs and a new character that will need to be painted to match my copy. I will have to make some decals to cover parts to make them look less plain. The color for the new faction is gray, which is close to white, but I think the shades will work. If it does not work, I will color it silver.

I open the game at the store, and Aaron, one of the staff at the game store, and I look at it. There seems to be a steampunk Constantinople character, but the box cover shows a woman who doesn’t match anything in the box. Aaron points out the bear on the cover near her, and the character seems to be one from the original Scythe, but with a few items that would fit Turkey better and no longer in fatigues. Hmmm. I will have to get out my paints and finish up this new addition.

The Scythe-style airship model is missing, and there are no metal options. Both, I later learn, are available only for pick-up at the GenCon gaming convention. Hmmm. Later, I order replacement coins and life-like resources that match my existing Scythe game. I also order spare Scythe-board markers in the wrong colors. I can paint them to match, and extras are sold for a buck a piece.

It is a small-footprint game that uses a rolled-up neoprene map, eliminating the need for space for a board in the box. It plays with only 1-2 players, with Stonemaier’s usual solo mode. The rules use the same textured paper and style as Scythe and Expedition. There is also a replacement deck of combat cards with wild options added–not sure it can be used in the Scythe gameplay. You can also use various cards from Scythe if you like to play, with a warning that some may not work (and should be ignored, and a new card drawn). My memory of the board game Expedition, based on the same art and world as Scythe, is limited, as I played it only when it was new, but it, too, can be mixed and matched in this add-on. My copy of Expedition is languishing in my pile of seldom-played games. 

Next, after agreeing to pick up Emma, head to Portland, and meet Mariah at Hopworks for happy hour, I went to Costco to look for a microwave. None. Deborah checked for me on a cheap, good microwave, but the returning-to-college purchases depleted the Costco stock, and I ended up getting a cheap one at Fred Meyer’s.

Deborah and I chatted here and there. We are getting used to being in different time zones again, and Deborah’s workload is picking up as fall starts soon. We are counting down the 57 days until we are together again.

Running late now, I drop off the new appliance, reboard the Air VW the Gray, pick up Emma, and we take 38 minutes using the back roads to reach Portland and Hopworks on Powell (it is not that far). We have drinks, dinner, and spend hours chatting. Hopworks has pizza with meatballs as a seasonal special; my favorite kind of pizza is with meatballs, and I got them to add roasted red peppers (they did not have green bell peppers). I had no lunch and ate the whole small pizza.

I took Emma back after we shared a dessert with Mariah. I gave Mariah her next magnet, from The Strand Bookstore, and said our goodbyes. The trip back was uneventful, and I dropped her off at her apartment. The ukulele player, who had spent hours in front of the apartments, had left by then. Yes, it is Oregon, and ukulele people do seem to appear at odd places once in a while.

I returned home, unpacked the new microwave, washed it, and ran it. It has a child-safety lock that requires you to press an unlock button BEFORE pulling the door. Annoying, but I guess it makes sense, as kids will see Mom & Dad opening it and grabbing things. Better to make it less likely to be opened by a child. I will recycle the other one soon.

With that done, I head to bed. I review the next adventure I am playing on Tuesday and look at all the props. With mythos, props, and gaming planning running in my head, I fall asleep. I do not wake until 4 local time or 7 in NYC (yup, jet lag).

Thanks for reading.

I rose at 6, having woken to prove hydration once, but without any other side effects from travel. I was happy to sleep in my own bed (cleaned of doggy stuff) and sleep. I made the bed, and I checked that there were no remains of Hank the Dog’s ploy to own the bed. It is mine again!

I found my way to the coffee, ground more OP Bean from Portland, and performed the purification and summoning rituals necessary to grant the boon of decent Pacific-style coffee product.  I ignored the luggage still stuffed with clothing needing laundering after my visit to NYC and Hope 2026.

I started writing the blog and updating my transactions in Quicken. Just a reminder to readers (and new readers) that I connect Quicken to most of my banks, credit cards, and investment accounts, keep a running balance, and watch all accounts. There are bad actors out there, and my IRA balance and Social Security payments are what I have to live on for the rest of my life. It is important to watch and act. Also, with all my traveling, it is important to check that none of my account information has gone astray. Thus, I am disciplined about checking this every day. I try not to look at my IRA balance all the time, but it is fun, I have to admit, to measure the markets this way.

I manage to write most of the story, but I run out of time before I finish and to decorate the blog with media. I rush to the shower, then quickly dress in a T-shirt and grab some of my pencils from The Observatory and the NYC Library. Air VW the Gray is fully charged. I unplug it (forgetting to shut the door and pull over to fix that a mile into my trip), and head out to Richard’s for our 9:30 Tuesday game of the cooperative tabletop board game ISS Vanguard. This game was released a few years ago and finally made it to the table: James’s copy with pre-painted figures. It uses an app, books, and a complex system to simulate a Sci-fi story about a ship, the ISS Vanguard, traveling the universe and trying to understand a secret of the ancients. We have the advantage of videos, gaming aids, and some helpful add-ons from early adopters.

I am tired and jet-lagged and find it a little hard to be patient, but I let Richard and James mostly run the ship administration with just a few suggestions from me. Stories are important to me, and I remember more of the events in previous plays. Richard focuses on rules and efficiency, power gaming, or Min/Maxing in role-playing game terms. James wants to try everything and take a lot of risks. He wants to miss nothing from his investment. I am looking for a flow that advances the story without the farming and repetitiveness of video games. I search for the keys to open the locks in the game. I push to move forward.

It takes us to noon to work out a landing party. We manage to finish some necessary upgrades in the game and then return to a planet that we had visited before. We discover that we need to record more information and have to repeat the planet, but we select our first-rank characters to move them up a rank. We play one character in a landing party, and then we have one we share. I passed on playing a second one; it was my turn, as I was jet-lagged and felt I would be challenged with one. I was right, and James did struggle to play two.

The material is copyrighted, and I cannot recount it here. I managed to fall into some mistakes I made before, with a bad roll. This time, James recorded the final state of the planet, meaning we can return to it if we wish to skill up some more first-rank, but we will not repeat much of it (including getting infected with a suit-penetrating goo that I managed to get infected with again).

We lost no characters, though one of mine and one of James’s were injured and placed in the med-bay. We managed to level up and even expand our capabilities. We are trying to upgrade our ship and we only got some upgrades. We will be scrounging the area for tech and science until we can proceed to the rest of the systems on our map.

Traffic on the way back from Richards was slow, and I wasted another 30 minutes. I usually don’t care, but today I had a Call of Cthulhu role-playing game to run at Rune & Board, “A Time for Sacrifice: Chapter One, Egg Out of Time.” I was in the original Kickstarter and have the prop set that goes with it. I needed to get my head back into this.

I grabbed a Western Burger from Carl’s Jr, a guilty pleasure, and it was unusually good. I got it at the drive-thru on TV Highway and Murphy. I munched it on the way home in slow-moving local traffic. I then got my laptop and my food and started to crash-read the adventure. I missed a few connections, but I had the basics back in my mind. I was surprised how little I had retained.

I managed to muddle through and discovered that the pre-made handouts were not marked. I also had a book of glyphs that I handed out, and M@ and Emma enjoyed translating the glyphs presented in the adventure. Also, one translation booklet was helpful for the props. Emma read the journals and summarized them.

The adventure is escape rooms, puzzles, and running away. M@ and Emma enjoyed this mix, and scoring impossible rolls allowed them to complete the adventure without too much insanity (M@ managed to roll a failure of 00 on one sanity check). We were able to hit the fast-forward without much trouble at the end, and at 8:45 we were packed and out as Bone & Board closed.

Emma and I then did drinks at The 649 and a snack (nothing too crazy, cheese fondue, as I have a colonoscopy coming up on Monday). We talked about the game and some family things. No insanity-causing secrets were revealed. No unusual family-tree members with strange and deep connections to the sea.

I took Emma home, and I was very tired but happy to have completed my week in NYC and the next day of playing games.

I woke early again, 7:30ish local time — sleeping in — and started on the blog while the sun rose through my window. The view had changed. Most of the buildings were now shrouded in white-gray as low clouds swallowed the tops of buildings like an inverted avalanche. Today there was no view of the Empire State or Chrysler Building to enjoy, and the city was shiny with rain and mist. Monday seemed like a surprise to the city, and traffic was down, as if everyone was late for work.

I wrote quickly as I had yet to pack (a process of squeezing random bits back into a small rectangle). Check-out time was a kind morning time of 11, but I like to beat that by an hour. My handwritten notes helped me quickly reconstruct my Sunday, along with the photos I took. Some of the afternoon lectures on Sunday were given by folks who had trouble assembling a narrative to share with slides. I tried to be kind in my recap of Hope 2026 Sunday.

I had to close my bags twice while packing before showering, and I forgot my PJs were on. I managed. I showered, shaved, and all that. I got a knock on my door around 9-ish from housekeeping. “I was not ready to leave yet,” I told the person. Later, I saw them in the hall and told them I was checking out. It seems housekeeping wanted to finish rooms quickly and early. I usually see them run late at most hotels I stay at.

I rolled out, said goodbye to the 33rd floor, and thanked the floor. Tesla’s floor, room 3327. While many would think it silly or spooky to thank an inanimate object, I find voicing my thanks to a hotel makes me feel better about leaving. My home for a week.

Check-out was productive, and I paid $5 per bag to store my two bags for the morning and part of the afternoon. I tried Tick-Tock for breakfast, as I was unprepared to face another bagel with 1/4-inch of cream cheese. The Monte Cristo was not as good, and I ate it by cutting it up. I skipped the syrup, as I like it better with jam.

With my bags in storage, coffee purchased and drunk, and just an average breakfast consumed (bagels all the way next time), I headed to The Strand Bookstore. I used navigation to find a subway. Something went strange, and it walked me around a whole set of blocks in a circle, and not to any subway entrance! I walked almost in a circle and found it was walking me to The Strand, sort of. I canceled that at the Madison Square Garden entrance, two blocks from my hotel, after walking six blocks to get there (?!). I walked to a subway station two stops away from Washington Park, then walked an additional two blocks in a direction not recommended by the navigation app. Ugh!

It was hot and muggy, and soon I was a bit damp from the outside and my own sweat. The subway was oppressively hot, and my joints were not enjoying the steps today. I arrived and was thrilled to be at my target, even after paying $3 for the short trip.

I did not stop to play chess, and I am always shy about looking like a goof in front of a professional, but I did see the same person I played last time. He had a tent over him against the weather and was lightly dressed. I reached the local comic shop, Forbidden Planet, but the next issue of Dr. Doom, #4, was not out yet.

Here, my colon decided it wanted attention. I was surprised, as I had not had any issues on the trip. I finally found a bathroom at The Strand Bookstore next door. The person at the desk was unfriendly and pointed it out. A NYC moment, but the desk was next to the bathrooms; I think the person was already tired of bathroom code requests. The rest of the store staff were a bit more friendly, but still had that NYC edge.

There, I located some NYC gifts to send to people when I am in Oregon. I also found in the “Best of the Best” a book, translated into English, Days at the Morisaki Bookstore by Satoshi Yagisawa, which I could not put down and finished 1/2 before I got on a plane at JFK. It is only 145 pages and easy reading.

With my insides calmer, I stopped at the Max Brenner Restaurant, a chocolate shop and restaurant, for Mexican Hot Chocolate; it was just 11, and time seemed to slow so I could see more of NYC. I also found, from a poster I spotted, that the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson was now a messiah figure. I have followed the movement around this religious figure for a while after receiving instructions from his group on how to be a righteous gentile. I lost track of them after they stopped sending me information when I let them know I was not Jewish. I remember how the community around him was disappointed by his passing. It seems things have changed since I last heard from them.

Deciding not to try chess again, I returned to the subway and took a short trip to the Flat Iron area that I had never been to before. John Wick’s fictional Continental Hotel was undergoing a conversion from commercial to residential housing (expensive housing). The building has been in a bad way for years, I read, and this conversion is seen as a salvage rather than an update.

The Teddy Roosevelt Museum (his birthplace and museum) was closed on Mondays. Next time. I sat in Madison Park and read as the rain had stopped, and I found a mostly dry chair. I passed on many places for lunch on my way back to The New Yorker Hotel. I again had trouble with navigation and walked the whole distance. I was going to ride the 1 Train but missed the entrance. I was warm and damp when I reached the hotel and then got lunch, again, at the Irish place, The Temple Tailors, the next block. I had a red ale and a beet salad. It was good, and I felt better.

I picked up my bags, saw some more folks from the conference, said our goodbyes, and then I rolled my bag to Penn Station IRR for a quick trip to JFK, just under an hour. It was about $8 for the train and another $8.75 for the air train. I did not have to carry my bags except once to reach track 20.

The IRR, with my paper ticket collected by a conductor, was not crowded and pleasant. The AC was mostly working, but the humidity was still heavy. The AirTrain was jam-packed with people and their bags. I did chat with folks, continuing to be my usual social butterfly even in the sardine-like experience (if fish had luggage).

I arrived and went the wrong way, a theme for today that I was not really enjoying, and walked to baggage claim to return to floor four to check my bag. It was a sea of Delta customers, and I passed along my status to use the less-busy First Class process. I did help some folks with the process by asking an agent to rescue the person in front of me. I managed to make a new mistake but did remember my phone. My bag fell off as I was called to check my bag, and my book was left on the floor without me noticing. The janitor brought it to me.

Next was the awful security loop in a poorly AC’d part of JFK, and it took thirty minutes to reach the TSA agents. JFK is a reason to have PreCheck TSA, but I have not done that. My suspenders had to go in their own tray, but otherwise nothing went sideways in security.

My gate was the last one on B, of course, and the concourse splits about at 24, if I remember right. It is a blur now. It took 12 minutes to reach the gate, according to the signage. I was ten gates away when I saw what my watch was trying to tell me. Gate changed to B24, not B55; now noted at B40. F**k. I managed to walk farther than if my gate was the farthest one. Wow!

I walked back and noticed that Wild Buffalo Wings, which I had been tempted to stop at earlier, was next door to my new gate, B24. I found a clean table; the open bar seating, my usual choice, was less clean. Soon I had a large beer, the only size they had left, and waited for ten overpriced wings to appear. Yes, $43 bucks is a lot for a beer and ten wings. I rushed at the end, but discovered that my plane was twenty minutes late. I did make it to the restroom to clean up all the sauce.

We would also spend another twenty minutes waiting for takeoff. I watched Hopper, a cute film from Pixar. I finished half of it on the ground. I found myself seated next to Rosie, whom I saw but did not meet at Hope 2026, is a director in the 44net community (covering Ham radio) and resides in the Portland area. We chatted and talked about the convention and were happy that nobody took the middle seat.

Corwin picked me up at the airport in Air VW the Gray and took me home. The house had been picked up and cleaned. The bed had been cleaned and was ready to use. I also uploaded yet another photo to Brazil, and we will see.

I was soon asleep. Thanks for reading.