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Today started at about 8:30ish. I was a bit tired and decided to skip out on church and even a lecture on Rome. I just was going very slow. I cleared off my working table and did the dishes, and started the laundry. About noon, I had the painting going again.

I purchased two 3D printed factory models for the Scythe board game. I primed them and then over-sprayed them in white to get the coloring to look 3D. I used a special shade-built-in green paint for the roof.

I purchased another Scooby-Doo figure set from Hasslefree Miniatures in The UK. I promised a painted set for the Weiss family (Susie’s cousins). I have started on them today. I got out the set I finished to match the colors and remind me how I painted them.

Usually, I get to paint a figure just once. This makes it always new and interesting and filled with some regrets as you notice that the colors are not as bright or not really working. For me, the figures are usually put in a bag or a drawer (if metal) and used here and there for Dungeons and Dragons and other figures using games. Some are great, and some are OK.

The special painting jobs are for board games that have figures. Here I try to do the best work as they will be used repeatedly. I have been able to get multiple copies for some figures in board games; you can often buy an extra set for a minimal charge. This allows me to exchange unpainted figures for painted figures. I think I have done Scythe figures three times. My last set looks very nice.

The cartoonish or bright figures are undercoated white. I prefer to paint figures with a flat black undercoat with white highlights as I can use less diluted paint for brighter colors and let the diluted paint show the shading from the dark primer. These figures have strong contrasts. With a white undercoat, I have to put in all the shading. These shadings have few contrasts and usually just enough to create a more 3D look for the figure.

I now use oil paints for shading instead of inks and varnishes for shading. I paint the model with a clear-coat and then shade it with oil paints. These oils dry the same color and mostly the same darkness as I applied. I can also wipe them off without damage to the underlying paint.

Note: I might still use inks and varnishes to change the paint color. For example, the Scythe model’s roof will get a hint of blue ink to suggest a copper roof.

While I was getting to all of this, I got a call that the Gay Pride flag was apparently needed by someone and was gone. I met Dan “Mindful” Gray at the church and replaced the flag. I buy replacements and store them in my garage until someone needs a flag.

There are some new tags on the church, and someone threw a traffic cone on the roof. There is construction near the church, and maybe a construction person will want to get the cone back. Neither Dan nor I felt young enough to climb up on the chapel’s roof and get the orange cone. Nonetheless, the flag is back in place. Dan will be overpainting the tags.

I returned home and then painted figures and other items and read a bit today. I did stop by Rainy Day Games and buy a Frostgrave book–more on that another day.

Mariah hooked up with us, and we met her at Khao San in Bethany for Thai food for dinner. Khan San specializes in street-style Thai food. Susie had crispy sweet potato fries. I had Mussaman Curry Short Ribs with Roti. Mariah had a curry with noodles. We saw the staff being careful and the customers keeping their proper distances; we felt safe. We enjoyed dinner, and we all returned to our respective homes. Recommended.

I then started back at work on IST morning, our 9PM. I followed along until about 10:30.

17,894 people were vaccinated in Oregon yesterday. This number will likely increase as it takes 72 hours to collect and report all the data.

1,245 people died today from Covid-19 in the USA.

I picked a political song today: The Thai National Anthem.

It is Saturday and the second Saturday that I am not working on the shoe company’s issues. A whole day off–the second one in February. I slept into 9ish. Corwin was up and made breakfast of fried egg in toast and bacon. I started slow and tried to unwind a bit.

Evan and I connected and decided to try our first board gaming outing in 2021. Mox Boarding House is not opening for food and playing until Monday, so we had to find an alternative location.

I called the Wildwood Tap, and they said they would not mind a small group playing games, two of us. So today is the first game not at the house in a long time. They are a tap, so they have no food. They have a large number of taps and tables to drink at. You can bring food in or have GrubHub deliver there.

I picked up some Indian Food at Biryani Corner. It was a bit hard on both the guy taking my order and me as we are both trying to understand the other muffled by N95 masks. I tried to ask him what he would suggest and that got more questions that ended with me or him confused and one of us saying, “yes.”

I ended up with a lot of food, Chicken Marsala with naan with so much garlic, all vampires cleared out of Hillsboro and rice. And a Samosa, just one. I took it to Wildwood, and I could only eat about 1/3 of it. It was wonderful and too much for one person. I texted Evan that I had lunch for both of us. He finished my lunch. We put the remains in the outside trash bin.

That was the first Indian food for me in, I believe, six months that I did not cook myself.

We then played Vindication with the new mat and new cards I just received–another upgrade from the game creator, and I beat Evan by just a few points, but I had every mastery–Evan wanted revenge. We played again, and he took me to task beating me by 30+ points—total smack-down.

We had some more beer and moved to Concordia. This, too, is a fav and is an economic game focusing on resource use to build the greatest Roman trading house. We picked the Mediterranean board, which is also a fav. We played a standard game with the Forum add-on from the Concordia: Salsa expansion (if you are to buy Concordia now, you should buy Venus Concordia, which comes with all the best add-ons).

I find Concordia an intellectual challenge, and I usually have my moves planned out two or more ahead and then adjust as my opponent(s), Evan, this time, sometimes makes a hash of my plans. I enjoy expanding my trading by building more and more trading houses in far-flung empire backwaters. The game is also a balance of building and buying and creating opportunities with the cards you can purchase to improve your overall game experience. Still, these card purchases use the same resources you would use to expand–hard choices. I love to try to make the “engines” run in the game and surprise my opponents. There is almost no chance and no dice. You must make do with what the game’s world hands you and find a way to build the greatest trading house. I love it!

I managed to build a trading house in 10 of 12 Roman provinces and get five colonists out. I also ended the game by building all my houses—this gave me even more points. This gave me the game.

Wildwood was filling with Saturday Night drinkers. Time to go!

We left Wildwood and went our separate ways. Evan wanted to catch the Blazers game–Susie was expected dinner out. I picked Susie up, and we went to a local Mexican place, Mazatlan. This is a local chain, and this one is only two blocks from the house. We like it.

The staff at Mazatlan are cautious and always wear masks, and the customers are careful. We always feel safe there and ate a very nice dinner together—Susie’s first dinner out since the last lockdown. I had flan and coffee while Susie finished her first beer out in 2021!

I spoke to the owner-manager; she was so happy we had come in today. She told me, “it has been so hard.” She said that they could not do take-only and survive. I might have to Mazatlan once a week. Hmmm.

20,646 people in Oregon received the vaccine yesterday. We are back to high numbers, and even these good numbers may increase as it takes 72 hours to collect all the data. By the end of February, Oregon medical people will have given out more than a million shots.

1,907 people passed away today from Covid-19 in the USA, a still terrible high death rate.

I am tempted to start tracking Senator Ted Cruz as another disaster, but I will resist.

I went with Santo, Santo, Santo for today. This is a more Rock version. The English version is Methodist Hymnal #64 and Spanish on #65. The designers of the Hymnal have the book open to both.

Today was started at 6:45ish. I had a meeting starting at 7:30, so I did not have to rush as much. I was dressed and ready for the meeting with my last bagel from the freezer. I had coffee ready too.

I had three hours of Zoom meetings and a request for a vendor patch an OSS note for those who speak SAP software.

I managed to slip in a walk. I walked just a bit further than yesterday. My lungs seemed stiff, and I was coughing a lot this time. I am feeling better, even with the pain. Aspirin worked to reduce the pain and the inflammation. I was am feeling better this evening.

I put the vendor patch into the sandbox system, and it came back with a pile of changes to do. So I went heads down and put in all the changes—hours of work. I listened to the meetings while I coded the changes. I also got out my extra monitor to have the instructions on one screen while I made the changes on the other screen.

Note: The 15.6″ monitor has high-quality graphics and runs from a ‘C’ USB plug. It also can daily-chain the ‘C’ USB, so I plug the monitor in from the power source and then plug my laptop from the monitor. I have to plug an HDMI cable in from my laptop into the screen.

I went to Burger King for lunch–drive-thru. I had a whopper with cheese and a whopper jr for Susie with just cheese. As usual, it is amazing how bad Burger King fries are and how good their burgers are.

I continued with my work and then completed the patches (OSS notes). I then went to apply the same fix in the development system; it appears that I put all this in last June! The one note went in at least.

I was asked to back it out as it was not working as expected. Such a strange day!

Susie’s last week of Physical Therapy is next week. Michelle came and ran Susie through exercises and started a discussion on a list of items to do every week once the in-home care ended. Susie did very well.

Dinner was from Schwann’s, potato skins with cheese and bacon. We also finished the breadsticks from The Olive Garden that reheated in the microwave. We had hot chocolate as dessert.

Back to work after reading a bit.

I am reading the rules to Frostgrave 2nd Edition. I like the changes they made to the first version. I have ordered some new spell cards for the revised game. I ordered the official mat to play on and some terrain items from the UK. I also have ordered some other terrain items from a California 3D printing house–more ruins. This should look really good once we get it quickly painted and decorate it with a bit of snow.

Returning to the rules, this game still uses dice and has characteristics like Wisdom which you would find in Dungeons and Dragons, and like Role Play Games (RPG). Frostgrave 2nd Edition is a figure-based game, not an RPG, and the characters are represented by figures on a board and all the action is on the board. Instead of playing a character with lots of focus on one character’s abilities, the game focus is you running up to eight figures, a Warband. You hire cheap thugs and expensive knights to your team. Then you, a wizard, lead your team in the pillaging the ruins of the city of Frostgrave. In each scenario, your team is trying to recover the treasures while trying to survive the savage undead, demons, and other horrors that lurk or have recently defrosted. Another player has a competing Warband, and they, too, are trying to grab the treasure. While it is not good to fight another team, accidents do happen.  More to come.

Work was 9-11 at night again. So this is running a bit late.

18,709 people were vaccinated yesterday in Oregon. These numbers could increase as it takes 72 hours to get all the data posted. Over half a million people in Oregon are now vaccinated–4.2 million people are believed to reside in Oregon at this time.

2,428 people in the USA died today of Covid-19. The death rate is still showing a steep reduction. Oregon is still the 46th state for death rates from Covid-19.

I decided that a familiar prayer was a good choice today: The Lord Bless You and Keep You.

Starting backward, I just ended my session working India’s morning at 9PM. I had about three hours between my shifts. We are trying to get ready to convert complex data, and there is a lot to do. We are trying to run two shifts.

I also managed to figure out what was wrong with my groovy code while listening to the second shift–multitasking. I started making errors on purpose to see if the connection would react and found I was missing the obvious. I was calling the wrong API according to the online manual for the software I found. Fixed.

I made dinner before this, pork chops, green beans with almonds cooked in butter, and pasta boiled, drained, and then cooked in butter with Herbs de Provence in the pork chop pan. The chops are Schwann’s bone pork chops, and the green beans are microwaved and also from Schwann’s. It came out well.

I destroyed the almonds and had to dump the blacked version when I had the heat too high. I made a second set with more care! Nobody knew.

Work in the afternoon was more status meetings and a few discussions. All this punctuated with crises of the moment. I was also working on coding some groovy. I also demoed how to use some of my code and got a developer to save me some data to use.

Lunch was reheated chicken alfredo from The Olive Garden. I split it with Susie. I finished the salad that we had left too.

Before lunch was hours and hours of more Zoom meetings.

I did make it out for a short walk wearing now an N-95 mask as the CDC is now recommended two masks or N-95.

The morning started at 6:30ish, with me getting going and making coffee and rushing to be ready for the first meeting at 7:30.

14,414 people were vaccinated here in Oregon, USA, yesterday, and the previous day has also been increased to better numbers.

2,761 people died today in the USA from the virus, including six people in Oregon.

After searching for a while, I picked this one and realized I had not done it: Royal Choral Society: ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah.

Today the sun visited and finished most of the snow. It was in the 50s. It is Ash Wednesday. I have a package of items from our church, including ashes. Lent begins.

But, today, I heard the most amazing thing, despite windmills being around for centuries, the Governor of Texas claimed that windmills froze and broke their power system. We have had windmills longer than we have had Texas in this country. I happen to know they work in the winter in Michigan. He seemed to forget that I also know that natural gas pipelines must be buried and insulated; otherwise, they do freeze-up. One of the pipelines in the Washington DC area is poorly made, and Anacostia sometimes has issues. It seems that few of the pipelines in Texas are buried and insulated. It was not the windmills–gees!

I try not to make political statements, but we are talking windmills! I know that Texas wants you to burn oil for heat and power, but attacking windmills is just wrong.

Returning to my story, I started at 7ish and was ready for the first status meeting at 7:30. I had two hours of status meetings. I also had a few crises of the moment and helped with a few items.

I slipped out at 9ish.

I then took my note from the post office and managed to get to the post office at 9:15; surprised to see no line, I went in to discover that the post office hours had changed and I was 15 minutes early. I then formed a line outside of the not open post office (limit of two people) to allow anyone to use the Post Machine inside. Someone tried to use it by asking if they could, very polite Portlandia style, and I said, of course. Sadly the Post Machine was non-responsive. They joined the line.

I rang the bell after entering at 9:30 and soon was served two packages: One from Holand and one from Russia. I drove them home with my loot. I quickly opened my packages at home.

The board game Instanbul has a card that contains the items you have to trade and sell. A slight bump and the game could be ruined. GameFit in a city in Siberia, Novosibirsk, makes an overlay to fix this. This time it took three weeks to get here, eight weeks being the previous wait for an item for the game Terraforming Mars, and I was happy to assemble it. It is a bit wrong-sized but can make it work. I suspect that the Big Box version of Istanbul, the version I have, may have printed the wheelbarrow cards slightly larger. It will be OK. I only ordered four and should have ordered five. So it was mostly OK. I will order again and get that last overlay. The shipping costs are high from Russia; you don’t want to order just one item.

The other package is from the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam. I discovered a few months ago that they sell interesting esoterica books, posters, and even PDFs. This is a library that was recently funded by Dan Brown of the DaVinci Code. I purchased a set of books; I did not know they are this big, on The Influence of Hermes Trismegistus 15th-18th Century. How can I resist this?

I had lunch delivered. It has been a long time since I have ordered from Gyro House. I got my normal lamb gyro. Susie had lentil soup–it was not as good as before. My food was perfect.

I returned for two more hours of status meetings and some alignment meetings (these are meetings about items that would require a meeting unless we can agree).

Susie had Physical Therapy today. Michelle and a new gal Polly came today. Polly ran Susie through her exercises and then had Susie practice picking items off the floor. Susie was much better today.

That was the end of my of working when we finished PT. I checked, and nothing was outstanding at the shoe company. Mariah met us at the Golden Valley Brewery and our bartender, Stephen, who we have known for years at places all over Beaverton, is now our bartender at GVB! I had a “The Italian Job” burger, and Susie and Mariah had the meatloaf special. We had drinks and shared a dessert, careful to do it safely.

I had a few moments at home to rest before logging back on to work for IST (India Standard Time) morning.

10,653 people yesterday were vaccinated in Oregon. The number is increasing again. Let us hope it continues to improve as not all the information is available until 72 hours. Our county, Washington, finally reached a 10% vaccination rate.

2,537 people died from the virus today in the USA. It appears that the rate of death is finally decreasing in the USA and decreasing at a much steeper rate than before, suggesting the level of care is better now.

I turned to Here I Am, Lord when I opened the Hymnal. A good song for Ash Wednesday 2021.