Sunday 03/01/2026

Sunday morning stuff as has been my pattern now for about 7 years: water the plants, do the big crossword. Not much else. Well, yes, I’d given myself the assignment of choosing a poem to read for Poetry Out Load which comes up tomorrow. About 2am I had recalled a couplet from a poem I once knew well. At 2am I was able to recall the name of the poet: Robert Browning.

Later in the day I looked it up. The poem is “My Last Duchess” and it is a dramatic monologue by a medieval Duke, in the course of which we find out that he is not a nice guy at all. As soon as I started reading it, it was all familiar. At some point in the past I did a dramatic reading of that poem. I’m guessing, maybe during my year or two as an undergraduate English Major at UW? So, 1963 or so? Anyway it will do very well for tomorrow.

Later in the day Joanne texted wanting to know if my hip would allow me to walk. So in the afternoon we got together and drove down to the Baylands and walked and talked. Very nice having a close friend like that.

I had a big lunch at the fancy Brunch service we are doing now, so I had a modest sandwich in my room for supper. Read on a couple of books in my backlog. Watching some TV.

Saturday 02/28/2026

Did something or other in the morning. Early lunch. At 12:30 picked up Fred from where Joanne parked him at 11:30 and headed off to the Museum to lead a tour. Private tour for a family, supposed to be 16 in the party but only 7 actually showed up. Nice folks, very patient with me.

Back home, changed out of my red shirt and tidied myself up for an evening out. Joanne had invited me to join her with her visiting friend Nona, for dinner at Joanne’s favorite restaurant, Vino Locale. We picked up Nona from where she is staying with another friend, in Portola Valley. (That was after Channing House messed up Joanne’s reservation of a guest room, mentioned earlier.)

Vino Locale is a very pleasant place. I’ve mentioned how the staff recognizes Joanne and greet her whenever she shows up. The weather is good, the evening air was warm, and we ate out on their back yard patio, listening to local musician Terrigal Burn playing piano. We sat and ate and talked for a couple of hours.

Friday 02/27/2026

Four point two miles on the phone, I’m not really sure how that happened. I wanted to rendezvous with Joanne when she finished a dental hygiene appointment, so I walked most of my standard route, then we walked another mile plus to the bakery and back.Problem was, I woke up with a sore right hip and just kept using it so now it hurts.

After lunch I met with Jean to mentor her doing video editing. And then at 4 met with Mary and Arlene to practice “Lida Rose”. Arlene is funny, a firecracker of a 90 year old who plays the piano extremely well, and also was enthusiastically directing us in how to stage the song, and keeping the rehearsal going. “Ok, let’s do it one more time, and David has to come in on that second beat, here’s your intro…”

Thursday 02/26/2026

Or it might be written, 26-02-20-26.

Anyway. Today had no planned commitments and I was just wondering what to do with myself, when I got a call from Patty. She was in touch with another resident, Martha. Martha had driven herself to Stanford Emergency yesterday afternoon, concerned with some cardiac arrhythmia and high blood pressure. They had kept her overnight, and she didn’t know when she would be discharged, so could Patty rescue her car?

Sure, sounds like fun. I called Martha and she told me where in her room to look for her spare key fob. Then Patty and I drove to the hospital in Patty’s car, and I got out and searched in the garage to find Martha’s car. Found it no prob, drove it home and parked it in our garage. So that was a nice adventure doing a good turn for a neighbor.

Then I decided to go down and get a head start on my FOPAL work. I knew that next week is the pre-sale week and there were several things that needed tidying up. Joanne had plans for the car, I didn’t even check with her, I just took the #21 bus, which is pretty much direct from here to there and back. And using my Senior Clipper Card, it’s only $1 each way. So I did that, spent a couple hours there and got a lot of little shit done.

Practiced some music, took a nap, that was about it for the day.

Joanne has a friend from up North coming in to visit for 4 days, and she thought she had reserved a guest room here at CH. When she went to check on that today it was, no, we don’t have any record of that, and the guest rooms are all full, sorry. Fortunately the friend also has another friend in the area, in Portola Valley a couple miles away. So they were able to hastily arrange for the friend to stay with that friend for the long weekend. But imagine the consternation and the apologies and the fuss. Really unfortunate.

Wednesday 02/25/2026

Not having anything better to do, Joanne and I went for a medium walk in the morning. Later in the morning, and again around 5pm, I did some guitar practice. I suck.

After lunch I accompanied my neighbor Susan on a shopping trip to Best Buy to pick out a monitor to replace the old one she had for her Macbook Air. I had hoped to take one home, but no it had to be ordered, to arrive Monday.

At 4pm I met with Mary and Arlene and we practiced “Lida Rose/Dream of Now”. Spent some time deciding how to present the song and rehearsing it. To be repeated Friday.

In the evening I ran the AV for a talk by Edwin Bernbaum on his book, Sacred Mountains of the World. Nice stories of climbing, and great photos.

Tuesday 02/24/2026

Busy day. Tidied up for the housekeeper. Writers meeting — I had nothing to contribute, but the cue just didn’t hit with me — then running my laundry. Went to Line Dance class. At 4, went to the annual Heritage Circle reception. The Heritage Circle, I’m sure I’ve mentioned, is a fund raised entirely from resident contributions, that doles out grants for projects that benefit resident’s lives. Today the speakers reviewed its history, started 16 years ago with a few hundred thousand, now sitting at nearly 7 million, has funded all kinds of stuff. I’m sure I mentioned the auditorium equipment upgrade a couple years back. Anyway, the reception had such a fine spread of finger food and drinks that I wasn’t hungry for actual supper, so spending the evening in my room.

Monday 02/23/2026

First thing was to walk to the Sutter Health cardio lab, a mile, to perform a “stress echo” test. Where they stick about six little cardio sensors on me, and take an echocardiogram, then I walk on the treadmill to 85% of my max, then lie down and the technician takes another look at my heart on the echo machine. Max heart rate is the old 220 minus your age, i.e. 137, times 0.85 is (picks up phone) 116. Thanks to the metoprolol I take, it takes a while to get up to there but I eventually did. Everything seemed to be working smoothly, but now I wait for the cardiologist’s comments. Is that artificial aortic valve still sealing properly? Any electrical anomalies?

From there I needed to go to FOPAL. Joanne needed the car, she was meeting a friend for lunch, so I took a Lyft. I was carrying my laptop and my shiny new barcode scanner. I have found that scanning books and pricing them right at my section is much more efficient than what I did for the last 5 years, carry them back to the sorting room to use the computers there.

Just as I was wrapping up about 12:30, Joanne texted: she was done with lunch, did I want a ride? Sure, so I waited a bit in front of Piazza’s market and soon she came tootling in.

So next up was two meetings. The first, the Scribble&Sketch team meeting. Scribble&Sketch is the Channing House literary magazine, issued twice a year. Getting it produced takes a committee of about 10, and I joined this team recently in the lowly position of proofreader. So not a big commitment. But today was the day to plan the tasks and schedule for producing the summer issue. The meeting was chaired by, guess who? her majesty the recently appointed Production Editor Joanne Tyler. Who runs a good meeting.

Immediately after I went to the Common Areas Advisory Group meeting. This was to introduce a newly-hired designer, and to see her sketches of the very first phase of the ground floor remodel. A general brighten-up for the lobby and entryway. We saw and commented on her choices of colors and floor coverings and furniture and such, and gave her lots of good feedback and comments on how we actually use these spaces (so please don’t screw them up).

Sunday 02/22/2026

Read, messed around with music in the morning. I am discouraged about music. I enjoy playing and singing for my own amusement but somehow there are expectations that I will perform for others, and I just don’t have the discipline to do that. Real musicians enjoy practicing. For me, it’s a chore.

After lunch Joanne and I walked to the Stanford Campus, to the Cantor museum. Another resident had praised an exhibit there of art related to the witchcraft hysteria of the 1500 and 1600s. It was mostly etchings and old books, some hand-made scrolls and things. What an awful time. We had a drink on the patio and walked back.

I ate dinner in my room. Then at 6:30 we met again and drove to the Century Cinemas to see a movie, Midwinter Break. Link is to the RottenTomatoes page. Reviewers there don’t like it much. I suggested it because of a review in the Chronicle. It’s about a 70-year-old couple whose marriage is kind of dead. Both actors were excellent, they created believable characters. Joanne, who at one time trained as a counselor. said the whole problem was they weren’t talking to each other about what mattered. At the end they might have made a little breakthrough, but I don’t see much future for that pair. But it was worth watching.

Saturday 02/21/2026

Morning activity was a hike with Joanne, Erica, Joanne, and Martha. We went to the Baylands and put in about 3 miles. Nice day, sunny and chilly, with just a frosting of snow on the mountains to the east.

Practiced my guitar stuff and was awful. Then I went down to view a rehearsal of the May musical show. Mary R is directing a bunch of people in a kind of pocket version of The Music Man. My part is minimal and I wasn’t needed today but I helped work out some microphone issues.

After supper it was time for Saturday Night at the Movies by our ambitious new movie committee, this time The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Which I was sure I’d seen on TV, but I had forgotten all the details. Not a bad movie.

Friday 02/20/2026

As is our tradition (well, nearly a year-old custom) Joanne and I went for a walk including a stop at the pop-up bakery. The bakery is an ambitious local one, Little Sky Bakery. They specialize in heavy, solid stuff. Their peanut butter cookie is the size of a saucer and weighs half a pound I swear. On Fridays they put up a marquee outside a restaurant on Homer st, and that is where Joanne has a long-time custom of buying a bran muffin, which she shares with her circle of buddies at Saturday breakfast. I just tag along, well sometimes I buy me one of their cookies, which I dole out quarters of to myself over the week.

Anyway we did that. Then at 11 our AI interest group met. The talk was mostly about Stanford Robotics and their desire to use us as guinea pigs to test their robot companion. We’ll see, I’m dubious anything will come of it.

At 3, I went over to the AL floor across the patio to listen to a professional entertainer. They have in an entertainer every Friday afternoon, I hadn’t known this. I wanted to listen to how a pro performs for that audience. I didn’t get the gal’s name. She was very proficient. Sat on a stool with a guitar, she had brought her own mic and amp, had a wide repertoire of feel-good sing-along songs. I was pleased that she didn’t have any flashy instrumental chops, just strumming basic chords. But she made eye contact and kept people involved.

At 7pm there was a sing-along. This was all gospel songs, in honor of Black History month. I hung around for 3 or 4 songs then got bored and wandered off.