Thursday 03/05/2026

Went for a walk by myself in the morning, over to Zoe’s and then up University to pick up a med at CVS.

At 11 we had a talk on “Brain Health” which I attended. Guess what: get exercise, sleep, and eat right. Nothing to it.

After supper, Joanne and I sat down to watch the first episode of “Riot Women” off Amazon Prime/Britbox. It’s fun, but in the first episode the captions are screwed up, 15 seconds out of sync with the actual dialog, so we turned them off, but then missed a lot of details, because British accents, duh. I checked later and the captions on the second episode look ok, so when we get around to watching that, it will be better. Anyway, fun show.

Wednesday 03/04/2026

Went for a hike at the Arastradero Preserve with Joanne and Erika. Shortish hike, 1.5mi. Kept it short out of respect for my hip, although that is getting near normal.

Did not much the rest of the day. At 5, met with Joanne, Betty and Jerry to go out for dinner. We went to the Parkside Grille. Had a very pleasant dinner, good service, good food, good talk with friends.

Tuesday 3/3/2026

Writers meeting again. I had not written for the prior 3(?) meetings, so I really felt under the gun. So from 9 to 10 I wrote something. The prompt was “the road not taken — a fiction about some life choice you made or didn’t and the result.” I wrote about how I failed to get a job at IBM and so returned to Washington and became a big-time dairy farmer.

Betty had a medical appointment so asked me to be zoom host, so I had to sign in with her ID and start the meeting, which I did. That all worked fine.

Went to the Line Dance class. Played some guitar. I still can’t decide whether I want to practice more, or give it all up.

Movie day. The Movie Committee continued their Diane Keaton retrospective with Marvin’s Room, a tear-jerker about a bunch of people who are all screwed up. And get only slightly un-screwed by the end.

Monday 03/02/2026

To start with, I installed Susan’s new monitor. I went with her to Best Buy a few days ago and picked it out. It arrived in the package room yesterday. So this morning I went and fetched it to my room. Unboxed it and set it up, and tried it out with my Macbook. Looks great. So I trundled it down to Susan and Harry’s apartment and set it up there. Mostly a smooth operation. A couple of glitches because her new Macbook is running MacOS 26 and I’m still using 18, so some things were different. But it all worked and I was done by 10.

Which was time to go and set up the auditorium for a book talk. Nice talk by a Ms. Jacobs, a Stanford professor who has written a biography of Jonas Salk. Interesting talk.

That wrapped at 12. I grabbed the lunch sandwich I had ordered to go, and my computer and barcode scanner, and hopped into Fred where Joanne had left him after her 9am appointment, and off to FOPAL. Processed six boxes of books and was back before 3. In time for a nap and then it was 4 and time for Poetry Out Load. Only 6 of us this time. I read my Browning thing. Best poem read was “Hope” by Lisel Mueller.

Dinner mixer at 5pm. Nice chat with two familiar people and one I hadn’t met before. Which is the point of the monthly mixer, where you pick a table number out of a jar as you come in.

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.