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I awoke about 7ish with allergy symptoms and was going to get up. I blink, and it was 9:30ish. I got going, but I had nothing but a haircut at 2PM, so I just went slow. I had a bagel and took my medications.

I finished watching the second half of the old Stargate movie.

I got ready, and Corwin came in, and we headed to lunch. Susie was still resting. I decided on sushi at our local Wasabi restaurant. Their food is not cheap, but the medium combo late is almost large enough for three. I ordered the deviled eggs too. We could have just gone with the medium combo plate! I have a beer from Japan.

This is the second time I have had sushi since the emergency started. Susie can’t eat fish; this is usually a treat on a Saturday lunch when Susie sleeps in.

Aside: Today is the second year of not having Game Storm. I have already paid. I called Matt V and told him I was missing playing games with him and others in Portland this year for Game Storm 2021.  Matt V and I talked and maybe we will restart in June with Dungeons and Dragons and other board games.

Returning to today’s story, I drove back, dropped Corwin off at home, and headed to my haircut with Zerida and was late; there were many more cars on the road in Beaverton than on recent trips. Almost the level of traffic before the pandemic. I will have to leave earlier next time.

I returned home after the haircut and finished watching the new recut of The Justice League DC comic movie. The original movie was a bit of a fail. The original movie did now flow well. I watch the four-hour movie stop and start today and would say it is better than the original. It is still not great.

Susie and I went to our usual drive-thru of Taco Bell for dinner. Susie had tacos, and I tried, still missing the Mexican pizza, the chicken quesadilla with a taco. We ate them in the parking lot, watching the rainbows form in the normal gray skies and side-ways rain of March Oregon.

I found the old movie Star Trek movie, Voyage Home, on HBOMax or Prime. It was fun to see the save the whales Star Trek again. Susie remembered some of the stories, and there are some hilarious gag lines in there. I need brain cookies today and this fits the bill.

I would like to say I did some robot work or read something meaningful or painted something or played some games, nope. I just took it slow.

22,630 people were vaccinated yesterday in Oregon. This number may increase as it takes 72 hours to collect and post all the counts. Our county, Washington, has reached 20% of the population have been vaccinated.

792 people are reported today to have died from Covid-19.

I turned right to Be Thou My Vision today in the Methodist Hymnal and found this well-produced version.

I was up at 7ish this morning after being up almost to 1ish working. It was hard to get going again.

My first meeting was with the American SAP User Group (ASUG). This meeting is a forum for customers of SAP software to meet and discuss how to influence the design of the Fashion solution, the version of SAP used by Nike. It was good to see our friends and talk to other customers. We might help with a presentation soon.

Soon I was in endless Zoom meetings, emails, and Slack channel updates. I applied vendor patches (SAP notes to those who speak SAP) while listening and following along. I was multi-tasking and chatting online all at the same time.

I made coffee and had a bagel while multitasking, jumping about every 15 mins. It was a crazy Friday morning.

Susie got going late morning, and I got her breakfast-lunch. I drove to Burger King and got a Whopper Meal with onion rings, remembering how bad their fries are, using the drive-thru with a mask, and talked to Dondrea on the phone while I ate lunch in a parking lot. I don’t know if it just the lettuce, onions, and the big tomato in the burger, but it always so good. The onion rings will be skipped next time–just not quite good.

After that, I returned home and had a spare Diet Coke for Susie and back to the endless meetings. I had a few architectural discussions and alignment meetings. Some I was a bit direct. I apologized for being grumpy, but I did not get overly direct.

At about this time, my chair broke, and I was face down on the floor. My ribs are bruised, and my arm hurts. The wooden folding chair had got a bit creeky, but I was still surprised. I got my roller new chair back and am back to work.

I had some back issues and had changed to a straight-back folding wooden chair. I had been sitting in it for about six months. I put the broken chain in the garage on top of the last one that broke. The folding chairs break, but not usually quite so violently.

I made dinner today of baked chicken breasts, defrosted from Schwann’s, green beans finished in a pan with butter, also from Schwann’s, and couscous with almonds, raisins, and spices. This is my standard couscous of frying cinnamon, cardamom, almonds, and salt in butter. I microwaved some veggie broth from a box while I cooked this on the stove. I stirred in two cups of couscous and toasted it with the butter and all the goodness. I then add the broth; it boils a bit from the heat, and then I get the pan off the heat. It was a bit dry tonight. Next time three cups of broth!

As usual, the chicken breast is a bit plain but still good.

I watched the news while serving Susie, who liked dinner.

I then took a nap and woke up on time to join the Saturday morning India time meeting. One more night this week.

23,038 people were vaccinated yesterday in Oregon. This number may still increase as it takes 72 hours to collect all the counts and apply them.

1,268 people are reported to have died from Covid-19 today.

I went with This is the Day for today. I remember singing this every morning with Susie in 1990 on our trip to Isreal with my old church in Maryland. The Jewish tour guide would get us all going each day with this song before covering where we were going that day. So I always think of the pilgrim site of Israel when I hear it.

I am still working on India time. It is now after midnight. I am still working while writing this too.

Before returning to work, Susie and I met Mariah at Rock Wood Fired Pizza place. Susie had a late lunch before, just appetizers for her. Sweet pizza dough and some chips and dip. I had a calzone, and Mariah had a small pizza. We had a different waiter this time, but most of the staff knew us.

It was the first time I used the bathroom at the Rock and walked into a man not wearing any mask. I stepped back like he was a vampire appearing. He did not know why I would not let him hold the door for me and then realized he did not have a mask on. He apologized. I was still in shock to accept his words, and he quickly left. I then used the facility and washed my hands with great care. I used a paper towel to open the door. Yikes!

Work was full of emergency after emergency. I started at 7ish, and meetings started, and I was helping to get some changes done. It was just a day of herding cats explaining that we need the fixes to anyone and everyone who would listen.

I am tolerating my new medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol. I feel like I am a water filter now. I am still having some nausea and I felt unwell right after dinner and then I was better.

I will not cover much of this as it was just a long and busy day: endless Zoom meetings and texts and slack channel updates, still ongoing now.

I am too tired to do much more.

18,412 people were vaccinated yesterday in Oregon. This number may increase as it takes 72 hours to post all the counts. The Wednesday counts were increased from the low numbers I reported yesterday.

1,705 people in the USA are reported to have died today from Covid-19.

I picked ‘Tis the Old Ship of Zion for today.

I started at 6ish this morning and went to 4 with only a few 30 min breaks. I made lunch between meetings and was rushing the whole time. I had a salad and chicken noodle soup from a can that I shared with Susie. I got her some peanut butter toast to make it a more filling lunch.

I managed to attend the online ASUG (American SAP User Group) for Enterprise Architecture today over lunch. It was good to see Todd Lutz and Peter Keller, who I have presented together at many SAP conferences. It was, of course, a Zoom meeting.

The project I am working on is started to reaching real deliverables and facing some challenges. This means that an architect, like me, is needed everywhere all the time. So I had 8 hours of Zoom calls today! Some were booked over other calls making me late for some.

I am also facing new medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol that I started yesterday. The side effects are different than my previous meds, and I nearly relived my oatmeal breakfast. I did manage to hold it together. The headache, nausea, and endless stops to the bathroom did ease-up this afternoon. Ugh!

However, the dizziness and fuzziness are gone. My thinking seems clearer and more like myself. But I will not have oatmeal Thursday morning!

Work was full of items for me to work on all simultaneously—the usual about this point in a project.

I disconnected my USB-powered monitor from my Raspberry Pi and used it as an extra monitor for work. I have to do some vendor patch (OSS note to those who speak SAP) with complex manual instructions. I put the instructions up on one screen while I made the coding and setting changes on the other. I ran into procedure issues. I think I can resolve them, but I will likely try to fix it this coming morning.

I was so busy I had to get out another screen!

I stopped at 4ish and rested a bit. I seem more tired than normal. Again, this may be new medications or the long hours working Portland and India times. Or even that it is time change week.

I boiled a corned beef today for nearly three hours and then baked it for 45 minutes. Perfect! I dumped most of the water and put red potatoes, carrots, one sliced onion, and a cabbage head cut into large pieces with more water. So Irish styled dinner today. I cut the corned beef against the grain, of course. I managed to slip this in before another meeting.

Susie and I enjoyed dinner while watching the PBS BBC news. I only saw about 1/2 the news as I might have nodded off. I put the oldie shows Susie likes and went and took a nap and read a bit.

I have to work again at 9ish, India morning.

Only 7,849 people were vaccinated in Oregon yesterday. This is less than half the normal count. These numbers may be low as it takes 72 hours for all the values to be collected and posted.

1,288 people died from Covid-19 today in the USA. The numbers are still staying high.

It was a sunny cool day and the local woodpecker is hammering my metal chimney. I yelled up the fireplace and he left (it is a male that hammers metal to summon mates and to tell the other males to move-on).

In the Garden by Johnny Cash just seemed a good song for a crazy day when you can only look out the window.

I got started at 6:30, even with my alarm going off at 6. I just rolled over for a bit. Trying to get through the time change. My first Zoom meeting was an alignment meet between a software vendor and Nike and is India and Beaverton based people. This followed with hours and hours of more Zoom meetings. I was triple-booked a couple of times, and meetings appeared dynamically too. So a crazy meeting-filled morning.

Susie was up at 7:30 for her 9ish appointment with Zerida for hair, nails, etc. We moved this to Tuesday. Susie’s driver was on time.

I ordered lunch from Ma-Now Thai, Massaman Cury–my usual. Susie brought back a Chicken McNugget Happy meal, her fav with apples.

I was doing e-paperwork and Zoom meetings all afternoon with a couple 30 minutes breaks. I had a few architectural meetings as we are now getting down to deadlines, and items must be decided. I was done about 5ish. I did slip out to get my prescriptions; more from yesterday.

We also slipped in a walk for Susie between meetings down our street. It was a sunny cold day. By late afternoon it was warmer. Susie walked about 1/3, and then I pushed her back on her walker–it has a seat and wheels.

I made Schwann’s baked potato skins with cheese and bacon for Susie, and I had a salad and sneaked maybe two potato skins. Corwin ordered Mexican and had it delivered.

I did some work on my Raspberry Pi 400. I wanted to write a program to get the CPU temperature in Python. I found an example that did not work in Python3, but I worked out the issue and can finish it tomorrow. I plan to get my “space lobster” robot control program working soon on the 400. I will then take the code and install it on another Raspberry Pi built into a boat. More on that later.

AdaFruit package arrived today. I have all the parts to build an inductively charged item embedded in resin—so more crafty work to come.

I am back online at 9 with India morning (now an hour earlier for India–9:30AM instead of a more pleasant 10:30AM). We are having a working session on a very detailed conversion process.

A very long day!

13,529 people were vaccinated in Oregon yesterday. This number will likely increase as it takes 72 hours for the counts to be all collected.

1,248 people in the USA died today from the infection.

I found this hymn for the late 1800s that is pleasant, My Faith Looks Up to Thee–Methodist Hymnal 452. I think I have sung it before, but I do not remember it well, just the “Savior divine!” phrase.