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The morning started at 8ish for me. Susie was up a few times in the morning. I could try to go back to sleep or get up. I started the day. I have figures to paint!

Today I managed to get the 12 surf orcs painted and ready for shading. I just finished the warrior’s figure painting. I am letting them dry a bit while I made and served dinner. Then I did the dishes and folded laundry. I have to fix up the warrior bases before I spray them with the first protective spray. I still have three personality figures to complete.

I was hoping to complete the orcs this weekend as a treat to myself for the holidays. Just too many things going on to get them done. It is a bit difficult as it is twenty figures!

This morning I was painting and doing dishes. I also had the dwarves drying. This is the next faction I am painting. I have the first coat of black on them. I tip them over and paint them, and then, using rubber gloves, I straighten the figures to dry. It is a bit tricky but produces a very nice finish. I paint the front and the back this way. Previously, I would mount the figures on a board using sticky tack and hold them and spray them with the other hand. And breathe in lots of paint–not anymore.

I made cheese burgers for lunch which was breakfast for Susie and Corwin who slept in.

Susie and I then watched the second half of the musical Chess. This is the staged version done at Royal Albert Hall. The DVD was a thank-you gift for a pledge to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). Here in Oregon, we have one PBS station, OPB, and it is broadcasted on different channels in different places. Originally, the state covered the costs for OPB, but Republican control of the Oregon House changed that, and now OPB is 100% funded by donations and grants–no tax dollars. We all admit that it is better this way.

I started dinner, flat iron steaks from the restaurant supply store–defrosted, baked red sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter, and salad with chopped celery and carrots. I am trying to make dinner from what we have in the pantry and the frig.

I marinated the steak in Teriyaki sauce (also from the restaurant supply place) and then grilled them on the gas grill. I forgot that sweet potatoes are baked in a disk, they leak sugar, so I have a small mess to deal with in the oven. I put them in tin foil like regular potatoes–wrong.

Here are the surfs all ready to be shaded with oil paints.

Here are the warriors that need a few fixes on their bases.

And here is one of the personality figures getting close to finished.

I return to work for Nike from home on Monday. Susie has a nurse here on Monday at 11:30. We will try to make it work. I am approved until January 3rd, but I want to see if we can make this work and start back on Monday.

The reports show that more than eight-hundred ten people died today from Covid-19 in the USA.

I liked this version of What Child Is This? I like Greensleeves.

Susie was up and down last night. She could not sleep. I started my day with interrupted sleep at 8ish. I had a 10:30 appointment for a haircut with Zerida. I needed to be back to help Susie get going to make the 1:30 appointment for hair, nails, etc., also with Zerida. We have a nurse coming on Monday to talk to Susie that does yet have a time; apparently, they will call and let us know. We could not do Susie’s normal Monday, so Zeriada moved it up to today. So a chaotic morning and early afternoon.

I made my appointment and even managed to stop by McDonald’s and get their burrito breakfast with coffee. I was beginning to have that mad scientist look so it was good to get my hair back to the “you can trust me I am an old IT guy” look. I return to work on Monday (working from home Zooming) and need that safe look.

I then returned home. Remembering that it was Black Friday weekend and local business support day, I stopped at Tammies Hobbies and bought a book on figure painting with an example orc. I was already painting orcs, so I bought it. It is for museum quality and for a huge model, not a 28mm figure. I am painting an army, so I will be taking some shortcuts. I was happy to see I use the same brushes, Kolinsky sable for most work, and some of the primer painting on the model also matches my approach.

I then rushed home and got Susie ready. She was out for a few hours. I had ordered lunch from Biryani Corner using Grubhub. I wanted to try their version of Chicken Tikka Masala with plain naan. I used to make this for a few hundred people, and I wanted to try theirs. I ordered not spicy. Biryani Corner’s version flavor was less complex than mine, but it was nice to try it. Mine, even the Methodist version, is more spicey than their plain version. I should make it again!

Corwin and I removed the glass doors from the shower. I received the new plain shower curtain, clips, and rod from Amazon over the last few days. The occupational therapist required that I remove the doors. Done! Susie has more room now and the doors are no longer in the way.

I then started on Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea board game orc figures. I spray painted the primer and the first highlighting last night. I first dry brush white to bring out even more details.

I then paint the bases and let everything dry for an hour or so. I watched the Mandalorian on Disney+. I then returned to the mostly dry figures and added some basic colors. I mix the paint with a flow enhancer and water. I want the paints to be very thin, so the shading already on the figure comes through the paint. This saves me lots of work as I avoid the multilayer painting to get the shading and highlighting.

Susie returned late, about 4PM, and brought her own dinner, McDonald Happy Meal. Susie got her fav: Six-piece Chicken McNuggets. Corwin and I had leftovers. I dropped the ham and broke the plate. It was a gift thirty years ago at our wedding. I was not happy about that!

I checked, and even the replacement center does not have one at some exorbitant price! I am on a waiting list.

We put on the musical Chess from our DVD (it was a pledge gift from PBS years ago), and we watched about half of it. Susie was tired and went to bed early to read and relax. I went back to painting. I was rushing a bit as there are so many figures in this little army (twenty figures). I managed to finish the basic painting for the surf figures (twelve) and started on the others (five warriors and three unique personality figures).

I will finish the details on the surfs and then finish the rest of the painting. Next, I will spray them with a protective coating and then use oil paints to add more black shading. Oils do not change color when they dry, unlike the inks I used before, so I know what I am getting. I then spray another light protective coating, and the figures are done.

On medical items, Susie is using a journal to help with her memory problems. It seems to work. She writes down what the day is, what pills she took, the food eaten, and the event that happened in the day. The memory then seems to stay.

Susie still gets tired, and you have to be watchful when she is this tired. I have been checking on her all afternoon and evening.

I should say I did all the laundry too and picked up the house a bit. I will vacuum and clean the bathrooms on Sunday. I decided I want to paint the orcs this holiday weekend. I will paint the dwarves for the same game during the week and finish them up on the weekend. If I am not painted-out, I will do the elves. That would get the base game painted.

Today more than twelve-hundred ten people in the USA.

I thought it is time for the Little Drummer Boy, African style.

I managed to avoid most of the sales for Black Friday. I did get the fruit cakes and fudge out for friends and relatives last night and this morning. I also sent my traditional Christmas gift to the pastor, a set of Frankincense, Muir, and some gold (a tiny amount), all this time in a nice wooden chest via Amazon. I would get candle sets in the past, but this being 2020, where everything is in doubt, I went with the real stuff from Amazon!

I started a bit late at 9ish as I was tired and did not get to sleep until about 1ish last night. Susie slept in even later. I headed out as I had a few tasks to complete. I send cash to Susie’s nieces and nephews, off to the bank. I had to drive to the large branch as the Aloha branch is closed. I was provided with Grants and Franklins.

This evening, I ordered some nice cash cards and envelopes from Esty.com to send them in a week.

Returning to the morning events, I stopped by the game store, Rainy Day Games, as I need some Chaos Black spraypaint. I use it for priming figures in black. It is Black Friday, so they had some specials, and I had to wait outside until they could get the store people-count back to a safe level. They strictly manage the safety of the shop–masks in place. I picked up a gift that was 30% off, a figure I like (the headless horseman), and ordered the paint–they are out (yes, the irony of being out of black paint at a store that sells figures on Black Friday is not lost on me).

They know me at the store, so we chatted about figure painting a bit. I told them I had a Scooby-Doo set of figures painted. They looked up where to get the figures, HassleFreeMiniatures in the UK, right then and looked at them. We all want this Convid-19 thing over with so we can get back to serious game playing!

I picked up a few supplies at the pharmacy and returned home. Corwin has a late Thanksgiving today with a small group of friends and was making potatoes, cheese sauce, and ham. I printed him out a recipe this morning.

I put on Love Actually from our DVD copy. This is one of Susie’s favs for a holiday. I believe it is one of the best put together movie I know, and the music and weaving of multiple storylines into a continuous narrative just works.

I made the same cheese, ham, and potato dinner as Corwin made as a side dish. I put on the old classic Casablanca for this. Another sort of Christmas story that weaves multiple stories into one fun rump. Such lines as “I am only a poor corrupt official” and “the usual suspects” I just enjoy.

We then watched the news while eating, on PBS. I also got two load of laundry in the basket and on hangers. Folding and put-away is likely tomorrow.

I washed a group of orcs from another dudes-on-board game, Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea, to begin the painting process. The board game, I purchased at about 40% off a year ago, comes with seven races that are represented by 20+ figures in the Dungeons and Dragons scale (28mm or 1/54). I have two races painted: Humans and Undead.

The orc figures are next placed standing up on a cardboard piece and are now being painting the color Chaos Black. When the black covers the figures, about three coats, I paint them with a mist of white primer from above to create a shadow. Next, I will then paint them with washed-out paints to retain some of the undercoating shadows from the Chaos Black primer. This usually means a quick paint job as there is no repainting. Museum-quality is done in multiple coats with different lighting for each coat and takes time. I just want nice looking.

For Black Friday I started painting undercoat of black!

Today more than thirteen-hundred sixty people died in USA from Covid-19.

This is one of my fav songs and this is my fav version: Mary Did You Know.

Susie fell last night just after I went to bed. I developed a migraine just as I was finishing “Day 256” and was in bed when I heard the tell-tale thud. I knew it was not a serious fall as the thud was moderate and did not have a crash or a second thud. I am a connoisseur of falling and rushed out to help, thinking it was a more simple fall. Susie was on her back, not what I expected, and she had fallen backward. She somehow tangled up her feet when arranging the living room (!?) before going to bed. She could not stand when I pulled her up on her feet. She was just exhausted. I think the PT and the exercises tired her out, and she just went down. We all be more careful.

Today, the morning started about 9ish with us missing some call. Because of the fall, I forgot to put the phone in the bedroom. We started about then. We had no plans other than to pick-up three prime rib dinners from Golden Valley Brewery at 2:30. Susie watched the Macy Parade. Susie was fine and not showing any new weakness.

I made a pumpkin pie. I make it every year–exactly the same and from the same label off of a can. There is a story, but I will keep that for another year. In the evening, I dropped off two pieces of pie at the Weld-Martins as we usually do Thanksgiving together, but not in 2020. They still get my pie!

I finished making the pie this afternoon, and then it was about time to get dinner. Corwin got home right after I left Susie. Golden Valley Brewery had ten cars at least picking up food. In about fifteen minutes, they had me sorted and on my way.

The food was perfect prime rib with mashed potatoes and fresh and maybe undercooked (to my taste) green beans with a perfect roll so light it just melted away. The salad was with blue cheese with nuts, cranberries, and a sharp but perfect vinaigrette. The prime rib was huge. Susie ate about 1/3 of her prime rib. She will have it for lunch tomorrow! She had pie a bit later and then 1/2 of the apple tart supplied by GVB.

Thanksgiving was a success, and I called GVB and identified myself, and thanked them for a wonderful dinner.

Please note, here in the Greater Portland Area we have a 30+ year tradition of Kink.FM playing at 5PM on Thanksgiving the song “Alice’s Restaurant.” We listened to that after dinner and while relaxing a bit. The 1968 version, the original version, is 18+ minutes long and gets only played twice a year. Susie, Corwin, and I were singing along and smiling at the funny stories.

Returning to gaming things, I also ordered cards for one of my games today, Twilight Imperium 4 (TW4). I just got a new expansion for the already huge and complex game, but I learned that I was behind the times. I had not seen the Omega items. Apparently, a new set of replacement content and new content was published back in May. The publisher has not created a set of official replacement parts; instead, you can print your own!

I went to the Make-playing-cards website and uploaded the images, supplied from the Board Game Geek website, and then ordered the cards made for me. It was actually fun to follow the instructions, all on a post on Board Game Geek, and create 56 cards, front and back, for the game from the supplied images. I ordered a small practice set of just 16 cards to see if I got them right. I will get the cards about mid-December. I just love the Internet.

Lastly, today I took the new expansion for TW4 and applied it to the base game. The new rule book for “Prophecy of Kings” covered how to do this. I had to remove some replaced content and then add new content to the existing part of the base game. This would not be hard, but Twilight Imperium 4 has over 500 plastic pieces combined with the extension! There are now 31 different factions to play with different markers, powers, cards, and likely special markers just for them. All add to be updated and stored in separate ziplock bags. I will not be playing this game until the virus is under control as it is best with six players and takes about six hours to play.

Today more than thirteen-hundred ten people in the USA died from the virus.

As we are now in Holiday Season, I picked my first seasonal song: 𝕺 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖊, 𝕺 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖊, 𝕰𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖚𝖊𝖑. This version is in Hebrew and English. Happy Holidays!

Today started about 7ish this morning. Susie had physical therapy today at 10, so I had to get going early if she was to be ready. Susie was going about 9ish.

I received a call from the insurance company for Nike that they have approved my leave. Today is, in fact, the last day of my leave. Thursday and Friday are holidays for Nike WHQ. Interestingly, my request is until this coming Monday, and they approved me until January 3rd. A last-minute approval!

The PT guy, replacing our previous gal, pushed Susie hard and had her standing up and sitting five times in a row three times. He also helped her walk down the hallway and back without her walker. Lastly, he had me toss a stuffed animal at Susie to catch and throwback ten times. Susie was exhausted when he left and took a nap.

I had chili for lunch. Susie was happy with a scone. I started on the laundry. I also watched some more of Hunters on Amazon Prime. This is a Hollywood story of Jews fighting Nazis. The last couple of episodes are not working for me. It is just too fanciful, and the main characters are less sympathetic.

I did more editing of Howard in Amsterdam. I had to get some tea as the editing was putting me to sleep. This is my story of my hero in Amsterdam and is based on our visit there for Christmas.

Expedition Unknown was the only thing I saw on TV that was interesting—the show on Egypt was well put together and fun to watch, but I knew most of the findings. I know about the archeologist’s new findings on Hatshepsut, the famous woman pharaoh, and the archeologist Nefertari’s new thinking about Nefertari’s identity. The next episode I watched was about the Mayans. I did not know much about the Mayan’s lost first historical period as that was not in my long-ago world history classes. It is a newish finding. I really like watching the new Mayan sites being discovered.

The next episode I watched was about The Secret. It is a treasure hunt still on-going for hidden boxes buried in the USA in the 1970s that I did not know about. Three of the boxes have been found. The treasure hunt is based on a book of the same name; Josh, the host of Expedition Unknown, says that their story about The Secret gets a lot of mail, and he has searched for the boxes for years. They did this as a follow-up episode. It was fascinating, but I am resisting buying the book and starting my own search!

Switching to board games, I also opened a few of the card decks in Twilight Imperium 4: Prophecy of Kings board game extension I received in the mail yesterday. I wanted to learn some of the new changes. I read the new rules yesterday, all of them. Much of the new stuff is in the components and not in the rules. I discovered the new technology cards and cannot wait to try them out. The new planets, all on cards, in the fictional universe, also looked interesting. For the base TW4 board game, the extension is quite a lot of internal change. Again, I need Covid-19 to end so I can play this. It is best with six players, something I cannot do in a pandemic.

Dinner was an experiment. I partially defrost a couple of pounds of skinless and boneless chicken thighs and then set-up the Instant Pot to cook them. I found a recipe on the Internet that called for 1/2 an onion, some garlic, seasoning, and adding two cups of water. Set the cooking for 14 for frozen chicken thighs. I was skeptical that the Instant Pot, after the C8 errors and using mostly frozen chicken, would not ruin the food, but one has to learn. I did forget the salt (I try not to use it anyway). The chicken needed salt, no surprise that, but even eating it with just steamed green beans from the microwave, it was still a good dinner. I got Susie to eat a lot, and she needs the protean. So it was a success.

So far, the Instant Pot is working and was my first pre-Black Friday purchase. I also received an email from the board game Vindication designer, Marc, one of my favorite game designers from the local area. They had a special update for Vindication going on for Black Friday. I tried to use the link on the email last night, but the website’s servers failed under the load. I tried again and again, but the problem did not clear up. It was a time-out in the underlying infrastructure. I found this intellectually interesting and tried to work my way past the time-outs, but I finally gave up. Later today, I finally ordered my copy of the update to my copy of Vindication.

So now I am on holiday, not leave. I do not feel like I have to be doing something all the time now. I always felt I needed to be doing something because otherwise, I should be back at work. A sort of guilt and I got very tired some days. I am trying to pace myself and try to enjoy the next four days. I plan to return to work on Monday, working from home. Susie will still be my focus. Nike has granted me leave until next year if we need it.

The US stock market retreated a bit from the highs. Nike stock continues to fly straight up to more than $135 today. My 401K reached it lowest point in May this year and then climbed to add 50% back reaching a positive growth for the year of about 16% now.

Today more than twenty-three hundred people lost their battle with the virus in the USA.

I do not remember doing this one before, Camina, Pueblo de Dios. This is in the Methodist Hymnal, #305, and in English, this is Walk On, O People of God.