The New World of Lonnie Mandigo

Yesterday moved from SESIG's technical discussions about solar inverters and sodium batteries through guest preparation to Joey's arrival and Corvallis tour—Coffee Culture barista recognition, Airlie Winery's lovely flight and vineyard photography, E.E. Wilson pictures, finishing my Suds beer card earning the T-shirt, and Old World Deli dinner where Joey made new musical contacts. The day divided between morning engineering talk and afternoon social adventure, both satisfying in their own ways.

Yesterday brought lower deck cleaning that transformed the hot tub space, a quest for storage containers yielding wooden boxes at Bi-Mart, and a squeezed-in Planet Fitness workout where I caught up with Steve. Brief beer at Suds with yet another new bartender got cut short by a call that canceled, leaving time for Minecraft before yoga. Post-yoga conversation with Cathy about organizational change, while separately noticing Suds now runs two shifts daily—new rhythms, new bartenders, new patterns emerging from what used to be stable.

Yesterday brought chats with many people, Zoom conversation with Gwen about British travels and retirement aspirations, and an abandoned Planet Fitness workout after discovering my padlock had wandered off. Evening beer and pizza with Steve included pondering how humans know and trust anything—thought experiments about dropping stone age people into modern government or average people into AI-saturated worlds, questions about abstraction tools we lack for understanding complex systems. We've always dealt with incomprehensible intelligence though: other humans. Those relationship tools work but aren't generally accepted for AI.

Yesterday moved from SESIG discussions about grease through England blog migration to solar system engineering, from First Tuesday lunch stories about Alaska to solo yoga that proved painful and good. Jerry at Be Solar clarified I'll need to engineer my own system, Aurora the new Suds bartender draws an interesting crowd, and I chatted with Emily on Strava—pleasant conversation, though these days you have to wonder if online connections are actually human.

Yesterday moved at a gentler pace—photo processing interspersed with naps, solar installation discussions acknowledging expensive realities, and the discovery that tree clearing created an impressive layer of dust on my upper deck. Between conversations with Tom from Earthlight Technologies about energy independence costs and checking off bottled beers at Suds with Tim, Brian, and Jack, the day accumulated modest progress without demanding urgency. Sometimes productivity means accepting a restorative pace, letting tasks unfold without forcing momentum that isn't naturally there.

Yesterday divided between abstract political theory and concrete image-making, between refining democracy arguments at Coffee Culture and processing Mika's photos at home, between Zoom conversations with Terril and showing friends my transformed view. The democracy piece continues evolving, the Mika photos turned out pretty classy, and Mary impressively completed a 25K run that morning. My house, unfortunately, wasn't prepared for visitors—a reminder that maintaining guest-ready domestic space requires more attention than I've been giving it. My sister Nancy will visit this week, adding another layer of social navigation to the calendar.