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I took Friday off, and Susie was ready about 12:30ish to on me for lunch. So I decided, forgetting it is 95F+, that we were going to Portland for lunch and shopping.

I had started the morning by sleeping into 8ish, logging into Nike, putting on my out-of-office, and doing my timesheet. I found the kitchen a wreck, and so did all the dishes and had breakfast. I then scanned in some documents and sent them to the New York Times reporter. I will not put much about that here. As has a few other historians, the reporter has found one of my late relatives very interesting.

I drove Air Volvo through a surprisingly congested Beaverton and hit more slow traffic on 26 to get to Portland. I have been trapped in the Friday post-lunch traffic jams before.

We made it to the Broadway Grill, but parking was hard. Finally, I managed to find a spot only two blocks away near a church and some homes not yet turned into businesses or rents. Susie walked about halfway, and I pushed her, sitting on her walker the rest of the way.

The folks at the grill were friendly, and we soon had two cold beers. Mine was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride Red, and Susie had raspberry wheat. I ordered the Italian Grinder, and Susie had a ham and pineapple small pizza. Our drinks came fast, but there was a long wait for food. Again, I suspect they, like all food joints, are having trouble getting cooks and staff.

I pushed Susie back to the car. It was hot, and I found it a difficult task.

I then drove Air Volvo to Cargo, a strange store with an altar to RGB’s memory and other Portland-Weird items. They also sell some nice imports from Asia. The shirts often work for Susie. Susie was a bit overwhelmed by the store and walked a short distance and then just sat in her walker. She has been here a few times.

I saw the light as very shinny. Every muscle hurt. It was painful to move. I had rolled Susie to the Cargo and helped her get up the stairs. The AC in Cargo helped, but I was not feeling well.

I bought a little wind chime and then used the elevator to leave. Unfortunately, a train came and was between us and the car. I waited ten minutes sitting on a hot jersey barrier near the tracks. I then managed to reach the car, hot inside now, drive Air Volvo to the store, get Susie in, and head home.

At home, I went to bed with the AC on and was ill the rest of the night. However, I am feeling better this morning. But I know you have to just wait it out and stay cool and not move a lot.

I did oversleep this morning, but I had trouble sleeping and had only, even oversleeping, only four hours of sleep. It was a hard start. It made the hours of status and alignment meetings this morning very difficult. It is hard to not lose your focus when you are tired.

I slipped out and got another picture of Mister Lincoln in full bloom.

I had no crises, and then Susie startled me, I walked into the dark hallway with this owl flying at me. It was Susie in her Owl shirt. I took her to lunch, and we went to Sonics. I wanted my fav and my father’s and mother’s fav, a coney island with onions and cheese. Yes, they have a one-pound long dog. Susie had her usual plain cheeseburger.

We took Air Volvo home. No warning messages. I have scheduled a Spa visit to the Mothership today for Air Volvo in mid-August. I will go without a car. Like everywhere, the staffing and resources are not available–I would have to wait until September to get a loaner car! They will get me an Uber to get me home, and then I will be using Uber and like services for a few days.

After a few more hours of Zoom meetings and I was done for the week. I took Friday off this week too. The CEO gave folks Fridays off in July, but our project cannot afford the loss, so it is still running to some degree on Friday. I have no tasks this Friday; I will take the day.

I got a call from Dan Gray from the church. The pride flag is gone again. Oddly, a red plastic bag for holding a safety item was clipped in the place of the flag. Art? A bike chain is also locked onto the post that holds the flag. It is not connected to anything. I feel that someone was upset that the flag was missing and put what they could in its place to say they wanted it back. A square red flag is a storm warning.

I put the red bag folded below the flag, allowing it to be reclaimed. I put on my replacement pride flag on the old pole. The pole is old; it waved my USA flag through the pandemic until my flag ripped in the wind. I have a metal pole and a new flag now. I tested that the pole was still strong enough by waving the flag. I resisted singing Le Miserable, Just One More Day.

From there, I took Susie to the Movie. The Rock stars in the new Disney movie: River Cruise. Emily Blunt manages to help Rock all but re-make a mummy or Raiders of the Lost Ark movie but Amazon River-based story set in 1916. It was entertaining, and its villain is WWI son of the Kaiser with his own U-boat! The movie stalls when too focused on The Rock and is then revived by Emily Blunt’s character.

We tried Century Theater for the first time in more than 15 months! Some of the staff was masked. But, all were friendly and happy to help. I left my phone in the theater, and they brought it to me.

Back to the movie, Susie liked it. She thought it was fun and it had some old gags in it. The terrible jokes always said on Disney’s boring River Cruise become a running joke throughout the whole movie. Even some lame special effects are demonstrated by The Rock at the start of the movie on his tourist cruise that starts the movie. I was laughing through much of the movie. Recommended as good entertainment.

We finished the night with a late fast-food fest from McDonald’s.

It is already late. I will stop there.

Working backward, I started to read Fresh Brewed Murder by a local author and set in a coffee cart in Portland. So far, it is adorable, but I expect it to hit Portland Weird any moment as the murder is somewhere after page 21, where I am now. I like it, and it reminds me of other West Coast writers. The words and story could be Seattle or in foggy San Francisco, but it is set on a rainy July day in Rose City.

I started to read after coming home with Susie in Air Volvo from the Golden Valley Brewery, where I had a steak salad. Mariah matched me and shared a 1/2 Wine Wednesday Bottle of a Malbec from Argentina. Susie had a ham and cheese that was as good as one can make a ham and cheese.

But, before getting home after dinner, Air Volvo signaled a low tire; yes, it monitors pressure on all the tires. I asked Air Volvo to recheck (using the touch screen to recheck), and it discovered the tires are fine. However, temperature changes can trick Air Volvo into a false read–I remember the previous Volvo getting the same warning on a cold day and me soaking wet putting air in the tires. I will be eyeing the tires and will have them checked when Air Volvo visits the Mother Ship in August. I always have my vehicles served and detailed in August, right after Nike bonus checks come out. My cars always seem to detect the bonus, and service lights come on, or they stop running. The cars can smell the bonus.

Dinner was nice, and Susie and I were the only ones with masks on getting into the restaurant. We were sitting outside, so there is no real risk.

The shoe company’s last meeting for me today was an all-employee Zoom meeting with thousands of folks listening to the CEO and some of the other folks that run Nike. Their focus was, as you can guess, the Olympics. So it was mostly a cheering meeting for our last earning (95% improvement!) and for the Olympics, which was nice, but we just re-org’d, and we are all trying to understand the changes.

Before this was more alignment meetings, and I took a short break.

Lunch was lamb kebobs at Gyro House and then a quick trip to Barnes and Nobles for an electronic magazine and another book on New Orleans. I am still considering a trip there, but air-flights are expensive (first class for Susie). Barnes and Nobles still do not have my fav wargaming mags. I asked, and they said the UK mags are just starting to come back. Maybe next month.

While at Gyro House I did get a few more paragraphs done of Howard’s Unlock story. I also corrected some wooden and confused writing. It is always relaxing to tell a story about Howard even if just to myself. I hope to find some time to spend a few hours advancing the story more. I also still have to edit some of his stories. Editing and reworking are never done!

The morning was Zoom meetings. I was trying to write a few slides on some architecture I am suggesting while listening to status and alignment meetings in the morning. I try to help and give some advice and follow along. However, I hate it when I get a question that I missed, and I have to ask them to repeat it. I don’t want to be that guy. I pay attention.

The morning started at 6:45ish as I wanted to get going.

Mister Lincoln flowered again. I love these red roses!

I had a meeting, unexpected, at 9:30 so I am late now writing this.

Later tonight, Emmeline Duncan, the author of Fresh Brewed Murder, tweeted me back after I tweeted that I liked the book so far. She was happy to learn I bought it at Powell’s. She signed it on Saturday! I am following her now and joined her newsletter. It is so exciting to read a murder mystery from a local writer that tweets back!

Getting late so I will stop there.

I started this morning at 7ish and read email and Slack messages. I got ready in time for the weekly meeting at 8:00. I then went for another three hours of Zoom meetings on mostly the status and alignment of some software changes.

I then skipped out, I meant to send out an email that I was out for a few hours, but I did not hit send on it (?!). I was done about 10ish with the morning stuff and wanted to walk. But the coughing was driving me crazy. So I instead headed to Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossings Mall in Beaverton. I walked around for a few hours, trying to get the kinks out of my legs and back. I found a few books, A New Orleans Travel book and Fresh Brewed Murder (a new author writing mysteries in Portland, and the book is signed), that I could not resist.

I also wanted to do some research for my stories on Howard, but the book I was looking for, not normal fare for a Kindle, was not on the shelf: 666 Crowley. I wanted to read more about this “wickedest man in the world” and self-proclaimed “Beast 666.” I ordered it when I got home for pick-up. Another excuse to head back to our local Powell’s.

The store had a mix of masked and unmasked customers and staff. Everyone was respectful and kept their distance. It was Tuesday morning, and the store was not busy. Half the folks in the stacks were employees. The online business has been going strong, and the employee I spoke to said they were happy to be busy and seeing healthy sales for the Cedar Hills Crossing store.

I then headed to Pastini, an Italian food chain, but this one is usually perfect. I was in about 11:30ish, and only a few folks were ahead of me. The one waiter, Rachel, was trying to look happy and bright as she had all the tables. There was, as usual, a manager delivering food and one person greeting and handling to-go chaos, which is the new lifeline for the surviving restaurants. I saw another waiter start about noon. I thanked Rachel for her handling all the tables. “Thanks, most people don’t even notice,” was her response before rushing off more orders to the kitchen.

My lunch, only $11 plus $2.50 for extra garlic bread, was a bit salty–there was a lot of pancetta in it. However, it was still good, just more meat than I expect in a Carbonara dish. As usual, I had a Tiramisu packaged for Susie to-go.

I returned home and offered Susie Tiramisu for her breakfast (she was tired and had trouble getting going this Tuesday). Susie had that with coffee, fair-trade liberal coffee where you pay extra to support the rain forests. She continued then to watch game shows and then the Olympics. Finally, I returned to work for a few more hours of Zoom calls. I managed to catch up without much difficulty.

Work finished about 4ish for me, and I made dinner. I defrosted the Angus burgers from Schwann’s and fried them in some butter (a sin). I drained off the fat with a spoon and fried them until a bit brown. I then added a slice of cheddar cheese to melt over the burgers. I steamed some frozen corn, Schwann’s, and served the burger just as it was with corn. It is a very American midwest meal. I wanted something smaller after the Italian for lunch. Susie was happy and even said it was good (high praise from her, the former food service manager, and retired registered dietician).

It is Christmas in July for many sales, so I turned to Once in Royal David’s City in the Methodist Hymnal and thought it would be good for today.

Strange to log back on to the shoe company computer at 7ish this morning. I took off the weekend and did not log in on Saturday and Sunday; I am sorry to admit that this was my first free weekend in six weeks. I was rushed as I had a 7:30 meeting, but I was shinny and all clean and ready in time.

I did manage some sleep last night, so it was easier to start today. Unfortunately, the four hours of Zoom meetings in the morning set me back a bit and had me yawning again. But I managed to keep interested and had three days of items to read in email and messages to keep my attention all morning.

Susie had her normal Spa day and was ready and out the door at 9ish. Her toes nails are all nicely painted gold. She is wearing the new Pink Nike sandals she picked up last week with now golden toes. Her driver always takes her to McDonald’s, and she gets her fav Happy Meal with apples.

Returning to Nike items, I discovered last year that I had a mistake in the settings of a tiny part of my retirement paperwork (worth $28), and I finally called to get it fixed between Zoom meetings. As I expected, I need to fill out a paper form. No mail address was provided. I was a bit surprised as I usually just drop this stuff in the mailbox with a stamp.

So when lunch came, I went to the UPS Store in the nearby strip mall and paid them to fax it. They still had limits on the number of people in the store, everyone still kept social distances, and there were screens at the cash registers. I felt OK there. It was $7 to fax it (remember it is for getting a fix on $28 of my retirement savings). Done!

Aloha Teriyaki is next door, and I got a Bento box to-go. A family runs this place. They have a few places to eat in. There is a screen to order food. Only the cook is wearing a mask. They are friendly and happy to see me, even in a mask. The food is always good. I am feeling safe, and everyone is careful.

I return to Air Volvo home with lunch as I wonder about spending seven dollars on fixing the twenty-eight dollar issue.

Work goes on for a while. I take a couple of breaks.  And then more Zoom filled hours of meetings. I stop about 5ish.

Mariah text me, and we agree to head for dinner at the Golden Valley Brewery, but we learned from Mariah, who got there first, that they are now closed on Mondays.  So we headed to The Rock Woodfire Baked Pizzas.

We are met by the manager at the door, who is excited to see us. No, he is really excited. He offers a handshake, but I tell him I am not ready for that. “No problem,” and we elbow bump. The restaurant is nearly empty. The staff I have not seen before and I have been there many times. I food delivery and table clearing people are clearly lost (and without masks). It takes a while to get our order in. The bartender is our waiter, even with three staff clearing and delivering food in a nearly empty place.

We are apparently on a training mission. We help them by being positive and clearly stating our orders. It takes three trips to get the four drinks delivered and three trips also to deliver the food. We clearly know more about The Rock than they do. We manage.

We brought super glue as requested, and I fail at repairing Mariah’s broken sunglasses.

The food was good, the staff managed, and we had a nice time together.

BTW: I was checking my 401K and the market today. My earnings on the 401K have expanded to more than 11% annualized. I was not expecting to break 10% this year, but here we are in July, already headed to another profitable year. My investments are a bit more conservative than I like but mostly follow the markets on cheap expense ratio indexes (Nike forces you into an age-based risk group of investments on your 401K–I did override my age to 35). I still have Nike shares in my 401K, giving me the benefits of Nike’s huge price run-up. Thusly, I have had another good year so far.

It was a sunny no-smoke day, over 90F. No rain. No rain for at least a week, and it will be 100+ on Friday.

I turned to a short hymn in the Methodist Hymnal and thought it would do: Father, We Praise Thee.