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I started the morning, as usual, at 6ish, and, as usual, I then went back to sleep for 30 minutes or an hour when there were no meetings in the early morning. I was back at it 6:30ish as I could not sleep anymore.

I started into my emails and missed text in Slack. I was caught up quickly, making breakfast as I read and then eating it.

Another busy, crazy morning of status meetings, but no progress on some pressing emergencies. I send out a few requests for updates and start back into the coding I was doing again. I am trying to restart the work I left back in February.

Instead of walking in the pollen-enriched air, I cleaned up some more stuff in the house for 30 minutes. I am slowly getting my working spaces back to the normal before Covid-19 look.

I make soup for lunch, veggie beef from a can, as I am trying to reduce expenses—much less GrubHub in the future and more sandwiches made at home. Before, I felt I needed to help as I was working, and many others were not working. But now, it looks like a lot of money that I could use. Again, trying to find the normal.

I managed a walk in the grass today, and some more roses are out. One more is now starting to bloom.

 

So far, two roses are yet to bloom. One is, I believe, 50+ years old red tea roses and came with the house. The legend is that the previous owner’s mom’s rose bush was transplanted here in the 1980s. The other rose that is yet to bloom is Mr. Lincoln, and it is the newest and looks like a stick with some sickly leaves. It may require some intervention.

Work went on for a bit. I was coding new scripts. Switching from the programming languages Groovy to BASH and back. I then run the revised and new scripts using the open tool called Jenkins.

I was working up to the moment I needed to leave for the Dentist.

The car would not start!

Air Volvo uses a fob and has no ignition key. A live working fob is needed to use Ait Volov.

The fobs’ batteries are 2032 coin cells. They are dead, both at the same time. I walk to the dentist for my cleaning. It is a mile.

The cleaning goes well, and there is no need for extra work. Another escape! I then walk back.

I take the fobs apart and replace the batteries. One is working now. Volvo wants me to bring the car in and check the fobs. If I can get the other one working, I will not need to visit them! I will take the one that is not working apart again and find another battery. I use the 2032 coin cell for electronic hacking. It is possible I just used a dead 2032 as I only had one in the packaging. That one now works.

For a moment, I had visions of having to have Air Volvo towed to the mothership. One fob is working well now, so I think I will avoid the mothership. Air Volvo had been to the Volvo Spa just a few months ago to do the scheduled 40,000-mile items.

The walk back, the pollen, dentist, and having to make dinner have left me tired.

Dinner was pork chops from Safeway, 1/2 thick and a nice size, that I prepare the same way I usually make chops. I fry them in a large pan with oil and sprinkle them with salt a spice, Herbs de Provence, and brown them just slightly on both sides. I finish the pork chops in a 350F oven remembering never to grab the pan’s handle.

I had some nice bread that I sliced. I made green beans from Schwann’s also the usual way. I put them in the microwave. I cook on the stove almond slices and salt in butter. I add the beans when done and finish them on the stove.

Around dinner time, I spoke to Cory, and we will play the board game Wingspan on Sunday night. He bought a copy about a year before the pandemic but never got a game in. Now that we are all vaccinated, I can do a teaching game on Sunday night. Exciting, more normal!

I am dragging tonight.

607 people in the USA died today from the virus.

I decided to go with a favorite, In The Garden, as I thought about flowers often today.

I have to admit I awoke after just lying down to read for a few minutes about 4:30ish and really woke up with a start at 6PM! I was more tired than I thought. I had interrupted sleep all night, but I thought I could keep going. I did manage to make it to 4ish for the shoe company.

I slept into 7ish, but I woke at 6ish and was very tired and dizzy, so I slept another hour.

I was on my first status meeting at 8. I made breakfast while listen and left on the video. I think everyone wanted breakfast after that, a bagel with cream cheese and a banana, all with coffee.

This meeting was followed by meetings all morning on Zoom. The lack of sleep started to get to me a few times as some of the discussions were long on talk. I tried to pay attention and help. I also had some trailing emergency of the moment that seemed to be restarting from the previous day. I tried again to put them away.

I had some vendor patches to apply, but that broke as I need special authority. That was not forthcoming. I decided instead of lunch. I split my lunch with Corwin, Massaman Cury. Today is Corwin’s birthday. He went to the beach with a huge load of firewood for a great fire on the beach tonight. Today is an epic blood moon. I suspect, if the clouds are less, I will get quite a picture from Corwin about 1:30 Thursday morning.

I tried to do some coding of scripts for installing software today. I went back and reviewed what I had built in February. There may be a need for it soon.

And then Chrome took our my Nike laptop. It totally locked up, and nothing could fix it. I powered it off. It recovered the Chrome sessions and totally locked again. I then powered it down hard and restarted it again. Finally, Chrome detected a failure and offered to restart. I said, “No!” and my laptop lives again. Ugly!

Schwann’s came, that is why I woke up–the doorbell, and I got some cheese and bacon, potatoes skins for dinner, and other items for later. I made dinner and opened a can of peaches to share to go with the skins.

Susie and I ate dinner while watching the BBC news on PBS and then some of News Hour. We watched the news in the Middle East and the USA trying to deal with the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Already a year has passed.

I went back to painting tonight. Richard’s next faction I am painting is the squids. Not sure what they mean in the game, but they are nautical.

Washington Country, Oregon, where we live, is at a 55% vaccination rate.

It was reported that 669 people in the USA died from the virus today. Four of those people died here in Oregon.

After flipping through the Methodist Hymnal, I decided on I’m Gonna Sing When the Spirit Says Sing. I found this nice 2021 version.

Today we played Roll20, online Dungeons and Dragons 5E, as usual. One of our players, Matt, is leaving us as he is also our in-person DM. He will be focusing on his three re-starting in-person game. I am a player, currently a gnome wizard who sees dead people and specializing in charming.

I will be playing on Saturday night at a board game in Portland, and then Cory is hosting some board games on Sunday at his house. I am excited to be unlocking a bit and playing in person.

Oregon is about 50-60% vaccinated rate, and the infection rates are falling. We are also Oregonians, so we are mostly polite and follow the rules. Even when protesting, we have seen crowds socially distancing (!?).

Starting from the beginning this morning, I had only a few hours of sleep. Susie was up and down all night. I also had some caregiving to do, and that, combined with getting Susie out for her appointment with Zerida, meant I was not even dressed until almost eleven. No, the camera was not on for the Zoom meetings–me in my robe and my hair looking so, Einstein.

Work was made more chaotic with a schedule change that put an upgrade no longer next month, but now. I began all the steps to prepare for a major process. It will take me a few days to get ready and prepare the system. Then, it will blow out as we discover issues. This is the practice upgrade and is full of learnings and surprises. Often I have to work India and USA hours then. It can be hard on me.

Lunch, as I was ill over the weekend from a Popeye’s Spicy Chicken sandwich, was lamb kabobs (protein!) from Gyro House. So good! Not cheap, but perfect when you are running slow.

I did not do my walk or organizing the house as I needed to get dressed. It is silly when you have to plan when to fit in brushing your teeth!

I was managing a few crises of the moment and trying to prep for the upgrade.

I managed to slip out at about 4ish, after one more Zoom meeting, to buy groceries. We are were out of milk, and I picked up a few favs for breakfast for Susie.

I baked some breakfast sausages and made scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese for dinner. I even buttered the toast to go with it. Susie loved it. She had a rough night too, and so I wanted her to have a nice dinner, even if it is breakfast for dinner.

I took a few minutes to finish my book and started the next in the series, Blood Curse. I strongly recommend the Commissario Ricciardi series crime novels. Set in 1930s Italy and a mix of crime and ghosts and fate. Makes me want to write more Howard stories; I love good stories and writing!

You may wonder how I keep going when I am so tired, and things are so chaotic. I read good stories when taking a short break and listening to Opera (Carmen’s Toast to the bullfighters and Rigoletto song about love is a butterfly and more). I sing along in very poor Italian.

Turning to more pleasant thoughts, one of my other roses is in full bloom, and the next one is starting.

We are playing the Candlekeep Mysteries for Dungeon & Dragons in Roll20 this evening, as I covered before. This is prepared material from books published by the makers of D&D. It comes with color pictures and nice maps. The text is well organized to allow the players and DM to move quickly through the material. Tonight was mostly combat despite the book theme of the adventures. This was a bit of a surprise for the players. They were expecting mysteries and book stories. So far, the high-level items in this set of been working for us.

I hope you forgive me for stopping here. I usually count deaths. Not tonight.

Instead of a hymn, my song that keeps me going: Toréador, en grade. Computer Architect work sometimes seems to fit this song.

I started the morning at 9ish as I tried to sleep in as I knew sleep is hard to get during the weekdays. I stayed up a bit late to finish one more The Witcher series on NetFlix. I am surprised a few times by the plot, and I am unsure what the complex characters will do. I like it, but I am not excited enough to spend more than an hour every couple of days on it.

I dreamed last night of being on an elevator at Nike that went to the 99th floor and that the retired leadership was now running things. My arms were full of laptops and rolled-up paper plans. I could never find my floor to get back to work. The elevator just kept going to various floors I did not need. The retired director kept telling me my floor would be soon. Not sure what the dream meant. I finally woke up and found myself on the correct floor–home!

The pollen is nasty, and I cannot stop coughing.

I am putting the final coat of protection on Richard’s next set of figures for the board game Anachrony. I have never played the game. There was a huge Kickstarter for this version that included 36 huge figures. I have started on the last 12. They are three times larger than a 28mm figure, a Dungeons & Dragon standard figure, Which requires 8 times more paint and time than a regular figure. I use larger brushes and some techniques for larger figures that reduce the time from 8x to about 4x. They are impressive when finished.

 

The whole morning and part of the afternoon have been invested in completing the middle 12 figures. I have just started on the last 12. The next set includes a sea creature that needs a decal. I have created the decals from the source material for the game.

The decals will fail if not coated with a protective spray. The printer ink just washes away. The decals also will not tolerate much handling, so I will have to be careful. Plus, I have to use some special decal dissolving product to get the decal to not curl off when I spray the last protective coat on the figure. But it is a powerful image, so I think it is worth the investment.

Lunch, nobody was up, was a Popeye Spicy Chicken Sandwich that put me down for part of the afternoon. Not sure what it was, but I am not interested in another sandwich any time soon!

I did read a lot of I Will Have Vengeance while trying to not review the sandwich for a second time. I forgot how much I loved these books. I would strongly recommend 1931 Naples for a crime novel. I did recover without re-experiencing the sandwich.

I recovered and started the finish of the figures (the pictures above are of the finished figures set in their colored bases) and looked towards dinner. Nobody wanted to go, so I did pick-up and got to take Air Volvo for a spin on a typical May afternoon. Gray, sprinkles, sun breaks, wind, sideways rain, and repeat–often in 15-minute cycles. I parked my car at Olive Garden, and soon they put the dinner in my backseat. No contact. Excellent.

I served up dinner. I had the salad and Chicken Marsala (not very good). Susie had Chicken Alfredo. Corwin was not hungry, so he settled for a breadstick and a mint.

Laundry is started. Dishes next.

The reports show 288 people died of Covid-19 in the USA today.

I picked a non-religious (well, sort of) Beatle song as I liked the new video for it. It is a very positive note for today: Here Comes the Sun.

When working on models, figures, and any precise work that is a hobby (not real paid work), it is easy to be distracted or rushed. It is also tough to know if you are in the wrong state of mind doing extremely detailed work. My rule is that two mistakes made close together is a sign that is good to stop. I had just stopped painting figures for my gaming friend Richard when I made multiple mistakes. I will complete the green faction in the morning and do the first protective clear coat and the black-colored scary-looking faction. I will not do anything more tonight.

I have out the next faction and washed them in soap and water. I will let them dry overnight before I prime them.

Working backward, Susie is listening to the Moody Blues and reading. I made corn muffins and chili from a can, Stagg’s. We have the TV recording the big game for Portland, the playoffs. Evan will be spending the night and wanted to watch it. He has to be in Salem early for a Pickle Ball game, so I thought it better to stay here.

I was painting for a while. Before that, a headache threatened to be a migraine, so I rested. Pollen and detail work seems to be at odds with me today.

I took Susie to McDonald’s, and then she ate her lunch, a Happy Meal with apples, while we sat in the car and watch people walk in the park. We saw masked and unmasked folks. Nobody minded the masking and everyone kept social distancing.

Nobody was up got lunch at lunchtime, so I met Mariah at Buffalo Wild Wings. The nice deal they had all pandemic is over. The bartender said, and my final bill agreed, that the price is now double. I had a beer-like product, Coors Light. I went for my fav of Asian Zing. I had coffee instead of more beer or beer-like products.

I painted figures all morning after I did the dishes. I was going about 8ish this morning.

Sorry, not a very exciting day. I have more dishes and laundry to do.

468 more people are reported to have died from Covid-19 in the USA today.

Morning Has Broken, and this kid’s version looked like a good fit.