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The day started early as Susie had some caregiving requirements at 6ish that started my day early. I was at work early and was all showered and clean for the first Zoom meeting. The morning was full of non-stop status and alignment meetings. Folks had worked all night on the 7/24 schedule, and we are now 24 hours ahead. We need to find four days to make the overbooked schedule. The status meetings went on for three hours.

I slipped out at 10:30ish to do some chores. First, I drove to the Beaverton Cleaners in Air Volvo to pick up my new paints. I usually buy pants online and have them shortened. I picked up three pairs of pants and threw away my pre-pandemic pants. I ordered another set from Landsend today to finish the process of new pants for the post-pandemic world. I hope that will be here soon. I received 50% and free shipping this time!

I grabbed a Mexican lunch, a chili Relleno with steak enchilada, at Don Carlos to-go. I have never been there in person. I used GrubHub for almost a year to order from Don Carlos. The place was full of locals speaking only Spanish having lunch. The drive-through was also busy. I saw a shrimp cocktail in a huge glass being enjoyed. I might get one of those next time. The food looked great and made so fast there was little waiting!

I got Susie a Happy Meal with apples.

Lastly, I stopped by RiteAid to get Susie’s prescriptions.

Home and eating my Mexican food, I then watched some videos on how to play Anachrony. I am planning to play games with Richard on Friday–maybe we can play that one. I painted Richard’s large figures for the game and wonder how it plays. It is an expensive board game.

More meetings followed lunch, more zooming.

I still have a terrible cough. I managed to finally suppress it by using my inhaler with an Aero Chamber (a long tube that lets you breathe in the meds slower). I took a nap as nothing was going with work for a bit, and I was tired again.

I got up and started cooking dinner. Steaks and baked potatoes and corn (frozen from Schwann’s steamed). I put the potatoes in foil and through on the grill for 40 minutes and incinerated them. I got them right last time. I will try again on another day. I opened a can of baked beans, and that worked as a replacement for the carbonized potatoes. I should note that I did soak the steaks, fillets from Scwhann’s, in teriyaki glaze. It gives the little steaks a nice look and taste.

Susie ate everything on her plate today. A win for the cook!

I looked at my apple tree today. It fell and was cut back to a small tree now. The tree is now lying and growing up out of the horizontal trunk. It looks like it will make it, and we will have apple still. It is part of the original farmstead. The official history of the area mentions the farmers planting apple trees to raise some additional money.

Today, Alan Turning is now on the 50£ note in the UK. Today was the first release of the new bills in the UK. I found a kit on eBay and will have one soon. I hope to get some more and give them away for Christmas. I have met people who worked with him breaking codes and building computers. He wrote the first general theory of computers and invented the term Artificial Intelligence.

326 people died from Covid-19 in the USA today. Reports are that these death all are non-vaccinated people.

We’ll Understand It By and By is one of my favs, and this version works for me. I am repeating my favs now that I have been writing this for so long.

The first meeting was 7ish this morning, so I had to be rushed this morning. I managed it and had breakfast while listening to discussions for about two hours on how to convert data. This was followed by the typical status and alignment meetings. We are running a 7/24 schedule, so there is a lot of alignment and discussions on not losing any time to various issues.

The day went on with meeting after meeting until 10:30. I get a break at that point today.

I rested a bit and then headed out to Old Chicago Pizza for lunch.

I had my regular, a stromboli and salad with iced tea, and got a to-go pizza (ham and pineapple with the thin crust for Susie).

It is not as hot as Monday, but the pollen was thick again. My coughing was awful. I had to stop a few times to use my inhaler.

Susie had some caregiving moments, and I had to stop working to care for her. She is OK now. Everything is back to normal again.

I nearly made the same mistake as I did a few years ago. It is important to breathe in and out after using the inhaler. I instead held my breathe to hold in the medicine and quickly stood up and walked. This can make you pass out. I managed to stop myself and hold on to the wall and recover. It did make me feel ill for a few hours. Breathing is important!

I had a few more status and alignment meetings. I then rested and checked emails a few times. The exhaustion and nearly knocking-myself-out caught up with me. I was deep asleep when Mariah called on the house phone, worried she could not reach me. I had left the iPhone by my computer.

We arranged to meet for dinner. I drove Air Volvo to the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. There Mariah and I had a Portland Dip (turkey, not beef in a French dip sandwich). After we got our sandwiches, we learned that horseradish sauce was one of the items they no longer carried (!?). It was still good, but we did feel a bit cheated. It needs horseradish sauce! Susie had a plain burger, skipped the bun, and enjoyed the burger, cheese, and bacon. I had their Ruby and Susie, and Mariah enjoyed Purple Haze; all their in-house made beers.

I drove home and am very tired.

I will stop there as I am tired again. I do have to finish a load of laundry before I rest.

As usual for most Mondays, I started at 6ish and then went out to my Nike laptop and checked. Nope. Nobody needed me, and I return to sleep until 7. I then returned to emails and messages and alignment processes until it was almost too late to get dressed before the first Zoom meetings. I managed it and was there smiling clean and shiny at 8 on Monday. Susie had her Spa day on Mondays with Zerida at 9ish; I had to rally her while folks talked about status and other alignment issues. The project is in 7/24 mode, so it is important to have status and alignment on what needs to be done.

I helped here and there, and soon it was my break around 10:30ish. No walks in the 90+ pollen-filled air. The dry, burning hot air is killing the pollen, finally. My coughing was much less today. Instead, I read a bit and took a 15 min nap.

More emails and trying to help. I then take Air Volvo to Gyro House. The temperature makes me think of days in Istanbul, and the last hint of humidity from the night suggests the seas in the East. I enjoy the food and the memories of that ancient city.

I took my Apple with me and wrote a few more paragraphs of Howard’s Unlock. It is a bit better now. I reworked the transitions and added more color. No samples today.

I returned home and started back in after lunch: more meetings and more alignment.

I decided to make lemon chicken breasts today. But, first, I had to get the chicken out and cut the chicken breasts in half the hard way. I had frozen them last night and thawed them about halfway to make the cutting safer. I was multitasking in the kitchen and the Nike emails and slack messages. I was beating chicken flat and checking emails!

I managed to get the cheese grated, the eggwash ready and mixed the cheese with flour for the breading. I then fried the breasts. I had the oil too cold at first. I had two do batches, and the second batch was better. Learning!

I made a lemon butter sauce, but it was a bit weak. I was not happy with the results. Not enough salt and flavor. I will look for alternative options.

Susie actually liked it. So we will try again. The kitchen looks well used. I have to clean that up tonight.

I rushed dinner and work as I had Dungeons and Dragons 5E on Roll20 tonight. We lost a player tonight, conflicting schedules often happen in the summer, but we agreed to go on. The adventure played well. The only shocker was when the wizard turned my giant purple worm (think Dune) into a tiny worm and had it carried away by their pet owl. That is not what the DM expects to happen to the boss monster! But it is according to the rules…So a fun evening with the players trying to find the adventure and understand what is happening. A good mix of combat and mystery solving. I managed to delay the game with some optional monsters so that the rest of the adventure will happen next week. Everyone had a good time and looked forward to finding what lies within the center of the endless sandstorm at the ruined city center.

There is a good possibility of 100 to 110+ temperatures next Monday.

213 people died from Covid-19 in the USA today.

I went with Lift Every Voice and Sing as I keep hearing it on various media.

It is hot! It is the Summer Solstice. It is Father’s Day.

I made teriyaki boneless ribeye steaks for dinner on the grill. The deck was so hot that, even in my socks, I had to stand on the part of the deck in the shade. I imagine that we could cook eggs in a black pan today just set on the street in the sun.

Tomorrow will be hotter. We have the AC on, and all the curtains and blinds pulled. No baking or cooking. I even grilled carrots (almost to cinders). The potatoes in foil did better.

To make dinner, I picked up another tank of propane today. Now I have only one that is empty. When it is under 100F in the car, I will get the other one refilled! Today is not the weather to put a possible leaking propane tank in Air Volvo and drive it to the gas station to refill!

Returning to the morning, I spent the morning painting some Scythe figures and managed to finish the basic painting on the Saxony faction (black). I painted everything brighter than before as I liked the look I did for Richard’s Anachrony figures.

Evan spent the night reducing his commute to a pickleball training camp. He was out by 9.

Susie slept in; I headed out to a coffee shop. I first tried Insomnia Coffee. It was jammed, and every spot was taken. Yes, it is 90+, and there are lines for coffee. You must be in the Pacific Northwest! I drove to Starbucks near the Barnes and Noble bookstore–a double hitter for me, and it was busy but not full. I got my old fav of a giant Americano with a shot of caramel syrup (I decided to make an exception to no sugar in coffee today). It was huge and dark and sweet. Usually, I order an extra shot–but I am out of practice and wanted not to have my hands shaking.

I got a small snack too of cheese sausage sliced so thin you could see through it. I ate that with my coffee for lunch. I then managed a few more paragraphs of Howard’s Unlock story and covered Howard’s vaccination.

It was so nice to write and sit in Starbucks again on a stupidly hot day drinking hot coffee drinks. Usually, I have noise-reducing headphones, not today. I wanted to hear the goings-on of fellow humans surviving the pandemic.

I should also note that everyone wore a mask at Starbuck except when seated and enjoying a coffee product or other goodies. When not drinking or eating, my fellow laptop users put back on their masks and continued to work; there was a row of us in the window seats—the usual overly polite Portland behavior. I aligned to the local traditions, of course.

I found Barnes and Noble open and headed for the magazines. I am looking for two UK-based wargaming periodicals. Nope. Apparently, and I remember reading about this some time back, one of the main publishers of magazines went belly-up, and Barnes and Nobles have fewer options. The staff there also informed me that they reduce the issues to 60% of the total before the pandemic. I will have to subscribe. I have multiple-year subscriptions to 2600 The Hacker Quarterly and Strategy and Tactics Quarterly to help keep those alive. I will have to consider the others.

Masks were in use at Barnes and Noble, and social distancing was maintained. Brook, a sales gal, gave me advice on reading SciFi and Fantasy. I will be back to buy something next time. My Kindle is loaded up.

I should add that we return to Roll20 for D&D on Monday. I have prepared for another adventure. It is another book-based mystery story from Candlekeep Mysteries. It is set in a desert, and it will be near 100F on Monday, so it fits.

This is the weekend edition; we stop there. Thanks for reading!

I could not sleep late this morning. My allergies were making it hard to sleep with the pollen all but choking me. I was going by 7:30 and made a simple breakfast of instant grits and coffee. I finished the Norse (blue) faction for the Scythe figures and started on with the Khan (yellow) faction. I worked on them on and off today, and they just need some touch-up to be done. Again, after doing those huge figures, these smaller figures paint so much faster.

Nobody was moving at noonish; after dressing and all that jazz, I headed to BJ’s Brewhouse for lunch in Air Volvo alone. I got my normal, before-Convid-19-normal, that is, table in the bar and ordered what I always ordered, Chicken Peanut Soba Noodles. I also ordered a full rack of ribs to-go for Susie and Corwin. This, too, was a practice I did before the pandemic. It felt better returning to old habits.

I managed to have enough waiting time at BJ’s Brewhouse to write a few paragraphs of Howard’s next adventure: Howard’s Unlock.

Howard has lost track of the number of days, 14 months’ worth. Thinking about how long he has been in the Covid-19 lockdown, he is not surprised that he is unsure of the number of days. Howard is a time traveler, and he understands that our stable view of the universe is really more like standing on a bubble of a boiling pot. We see only the surface and have no idea of how tenuous our reality, let alone human life, is in the chaos that is the truth. “No wonder I have no count,” he says to himself, sitting at his sitting worktable.

Just the start and still rough; the rest I will keep to myself for now.

Aside: Howard is my hero named for H.P. Lovecraft, and I write stories of his adventures that usually echo my own travels and experiences. He lives in the twisted alternative universe of Lovecraftian horrors and pulp fiction that becomes real.

After getting home with my bounty of to-go food, I painted figures and did the dishes and light chores at the house for the afternoon. Susie had her ribs.

I watched more The Game of Thrones and watched the end of season four and was disappointed again. I thought the story got lost again, and there was a lot of grandstanding. I am not in a rush to start the next season.

I went grocery shopping late today. I got home about 7:30ish and brought dinner for Susie and a sandwich for Evan and me. Evan is spending the night. Ash at Whole Foods makes a great The Hammer sandwich. Sort of an Italian grinder on a pretzel bun, grilled in a press, and covered with olive oil from the red peppers in oil from a jar. It is wonderful and spicy.

Susie had a mini quiche Lorraine I heated up in the oven.

Susie watched Burlesque the movie. I spoke to friends on the phone, watching the bats as the sun setting started them on their feasting. On bat barely missed me–there not small. I went in after that.

It is the weekend version. So I will stop there—a lazy Saturday.