Monday 06/22/2026

Monday is my usual day to go to FOPAL. Friday, Frank had texted me a picture of 13 boxes of donations at my section, so I knew there was a lot to do. So I figured to go down there early and work past lunch time. I had gotten well into it about 10, when I checked my email and saw there was a re-scheduled meeting of the Transition committee at 11:30. I didn’t want to miss that (the committee trying to plan how to integrate the residents of the new satellite location into the Channing House social life) so I finished one more box and headed back. I shall have to return later in the week.

The Transition committee heard, among other things, some comments from people who have paid a deposit to have early chances to buy into Arris. Rhonda said the staff had completed their pet policy and had it vetted by the legal team. In the Tower where I live there have never been pets allowed, but Arris will allow them. Which raises all sorts of issues with a senior population. What to do about dogs that poop in the common spaces and the owner doesn’t pick up? In regard to that, Rhonda said that she understands that at The Forum, a large senior residence a few miles away, they actually do DNA tests to make sure which animal left which poop.

What to do when (not if) the pet owner has to move into assisted living, which is in our no-pets-allowed buildings? Or just dies? We didn’t see the actual policy, but Rhonda quoted one of the first prospects to review it, “That’s the most hostile pet policy I’ve ever seen!”

At 4pm we had another meeting about our problems with U.S. Immigration (see 7.177). A resident, Prue, had worked a connection and gotten a NYT reporter interested. The reporter was present for the meeting. So look for an op. ed. in the big newspaper soon. Rhonda updated the situation: one additional person had had to leave employment because their work permit had not been renewed, and ten were still in limbo, with permits running out and no response on extensions.

If a DACA person’s permit status is not renewed, they enter a gray zone in which they are not legal residents. So not only can they not work, they can’t drive, their Cal DLs are invalid. If they were caught driving, that would be a crime and they could be deported. So they basically can’t do anything. Channing House can’t keep them on the payroll. We do give them 60 days unpaid leave so if they get a renewal, they can come back to their former position and seniority, but after that, they would have to re-apply, losing seniority status. Three people described their work history and the emotional stress of waiting for a bureaucratic process to complete, if it ever does. These are skilled people with degrees and professional credentials and long work histories, waiting to see if their lives are about to be turned upside down.

Unfortunately for the “dreamers”, the Deferred Action people, Congress has never acted to create an actual path to citizenship. They are stuck in the DACA status with no way to get naturalized — but no family or work history in any country but this one.

Sunday 06/21/2026

Today, June 21, is the equinox, start of summer, whatever. For some weeks I have been telling myself that on 6/21 I would change my bedding. Back on 6.281, gosh, almost a year ago? I installed my beautiful Pendleton wool blanket. Time to change, I have been thinking, and picked this date.

So the morning I hauled all my blankets, duvets, hand-crocheted throws, off the top closet shelf. Checked for moth damage (none). Folded the Pendleton neatly in its plastic carrier, and made the bed again with the gray patterned wool blanket that I bought at a craft faire on University Ave the same summer I moved in here, 2019. Also changed the throw I had on the couch in the living room.

Watered the plants, did the puzzle, and then took off on a walk to the Cal. Ave. farmers market. A walk I hadn’t taken in quite some time. Bought only some Blenheim apricots and a small number of figs because Joanne had said she would like them. Me, I’m not a fig person. Don’t like the little seeds.

Ran an AV event, a lecture by CH resident Dennis, on whether there’s life on Mars. (“Maybe”) It included some info on the way that NASA handled the first Lunar samples that were brought back by the Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s. He was an NASA employee then and worked in the containment lab.

Saturday 06/20/2026

About 11 I got in Fred and drove to the Museum. The joint was jumpin’ with “techfest” a bunch of extra tables of people doing “maker” stuff, different 3D printers and little robots and what-not. I started right at 12 with a mob of 25 or so, and sped along so as to keep ahead of Jim doing the 12:15 tour. We kind of ran over a guy doing a private tour. I’ve seen him before, and been annoyed by him. He is probably doing a fine tour for a small group for a fee, but he damn well knows that we volunteer docents are coming through at 12 and 2pm, he could easily avoid us by just starting a half hour earlier or later, but no, he’s…. well bitch bitch. I gave a good tour, got a nice hand at the end, all was well.

Later in the afternoon Joanne and I went for a nice short walk. We were to meet again at 7 to walk to the Lucy Stern theater for a play at 7:30. But Joanne says, why don’t we leave earlier and try that new restaurant, Urban Momo? So we met again at 5:30 and walked the opposite way from the theater to the restaurant on University. It does Nepalese/Indian food. We had a starter and a Nepalese grilled chicken thing. The food was good, but the restaurant gets a big negative on account of noise. There were only like 3 other parties there and already it was hard to have a conversation. Too many hard surfaces. So for dessert we walked a couple of blocks to Ton Sui, a place that serves these little coconut puddings in half-pint mason jars. We shared a mango one.

Then as I had 3.3 miles on my health app and Joanne, 4, we called a Lyft to ride the mile to the theater where we saw The Cottage, a kind of pseudo-Noel-Coward comedy about three couples who discover they’ve been being unfaithful with each other’s spouses. It was fairly amusing.

And walked home in the dark, and it was a little chilly but not bad. Got my 10,000 steps in anyway.

Friday 06/19/2026

Took the usual Friday muffin ramble with Joanne. Then at 11 I joined the AI interest group meeting. At this meeting, Rob presented what he’d learned at a seminar on Math and AI at Stanford. I didn’t absorb much of it apparently or I’d say more here.

In the afternoon I worked on my new Advanced Health Care Directive. I need to clarify the sequence of people who have my medical PofA. I have looked at a bunch of AHCD (prounounced, “ah, crud”) forms online. Search for “Advanced Directive California Form” and you’ll see. They’re all similar but have slight differences. Joanne just had her lawyer write her a new one so I looked at that and it has stuff that other forms leave out. So I did a lot of thinking and editing.

One final issue, does it need to be notarized, or witnessed by two people, or both? My old one was signed by two of my neighbors as witnesses. Joanne’s lawyer’s version has a block for a notary to sign and stamp but no witnesses. Need to resolve this. If only I knew an attorney…

When I got tired of that, I downloaded a video of the song that Sandy and I might sing as a duet, Johnny Cash and June Carter singing “Jackson”, and stripped the audio file out of it, and ran that through an online AI magical thing to remove the voices leaving only the accompaniment. I sent that file to Sandy so she can see if the key is right for her voice. It’s just a little too low for me, I need to raise it from C to D. But I’ll wait until she’s tried it.

Thursday 06/18/2026

Today was a long-planned “Monet get-away”. We hopped in the car at 9 and drove to the De Young Museum in the City to view the “Monet in Venice” exhibit. This was a very well-organized museum show. The point was to show the 25-plus paintings that Claude Monet had made of the city of Venice on his one visit there in 1908. However, the curators had set up a learning experience: they had works by other artists who had been inspired by Venice before Monet, with explanations of the different techniques each had used. Canaletto, Whistler, Sargent, famous artists’ vacation snaps, well, no, elaborate paintings, of the famous city. Then finally you get to a hall with the Monet paintings.

On the way home I was thinking about when Marian and I spent a week in Venice in May, 1999. I’ve got pictures of Venice, I’m thinking. So in the afternoon I looked them up. Here’s one Monet would have liked, because he really dug reflections in water:

For lunch last November (6.351) on a similar outing, we had eaten at the Foghorn Taproom, 7th and Irving. Today for fun we walked to Um.Ma, a Korean BBQ place on 9th near Irving. Pretty good, although we had never heard of a lot of things on the menu.

Came on home for a quiet afternoon. We met again at 5:30 for a planned dinner with Karen and David. They had just had a long trip through Spain and southern France and we, well I mostly, wanted to hear about it. Pleasant meal with nice people.

Wednesday 06/17/2026

First thing this morning, when I went to clean my glasses, the right-side nose piece dropped off. It was basically a curved wire welded to the cross-bar and it just snapped. I had bought the glasses and frame at Costco a year ago April. I looked up the purchase info on the Costco website. Then after a short morning walk with Joanne I drove over to Costco. The guy behind the optics counter had no good news. They didn’t carry that frame any more, so no chance of replacing the frame. No, there were no other frames that would hold these lenses, they were custom-cut to the frame. But, he was able to say, we don’t fix them but there is a guy who does. And he referred me to SpecTech Eyeware just a couple miles away on Veterans Blvd.

I bopped on over there. It’s a one-man shop up a steep flight of stairs in an obscure industrial building, but the shop was clean and well-organized and the proprietor was super friendly and helpful. And he micro-welded my nose-piece back on in about ten minutes while I waited. For a very reasonable $65 fee.

So that was a win. At four I went downstairs and set up to entertain the bimonthly birthday dinner. I shot video of this performance on my phone but the sound quality is not great. Neither is the performance. Oddly enough, the camera doesn’t seem to record the wonderful music and stage presence that happen in my own mind. Here is a bit of one frame, showing me playing, Joanne looking on dubiously.

Anyway, that’s over. Reviewing the video I am sure that I shouldn’t, and won’t, perform any more. I really suck.

Tuesday 06/16/2026

Took a standard walk early, back by 8:30. Tidied the apartment, sorted and started my laundry. Put out the signup sheet for CMX and put the announcement on CHBB.

Writers meeting, topic was “passports” and there were several nice reminiscences of people’s passports from way back. Finished the laundry. Went to Line Dance; this is the last one of those for a month or so as the instructor is having a knee replaced. She hopes to be back to dancing in a month. I bet it will be sooner. One of my neighbors, Leon, had a knee replaced and was walking without a walker just a couple days later.

Practiced my set for tomorrow night twice.

Joanne and I went for a little walk to CVS for a prescription and for iced chai latte’s. Quiet evening after.

Monday 06/15/2026

Went for an early morning walk and had to abort it after half a mile. Some time last year, I bought some “barefoot” style walking shoes off an internet source. These were very light-weight walking shoes, flexible fabric uppers. I wore them sometimes for walking on pavement and they had been fine.

This morning the right show suddenly decided it didn’t want to cup my heel any more. The back of the shoe kept sliding down and tucking under my heel. Which made the right shoe loose and kind of dangling off my toes. Pulled it back up, a block later it would be loose again. I came on home and dropped the shoes in the landfill box at the door.

At 10:30, time for the monthly Event Coordinators meeting. The EVCO is a fun meeting; we go over the calendar of events planned for the next month, and then talk about issues in various committees that sponsor events. My only role now that I’ve passed the AV chair to John, is to report on the CMX.

As soon as that was over, I picked up my bag of stuff and headed off to FOPAL. The monthly post-sale triage takes over an hour: looking at every book left on the shelf; sending ones that have seen 3 sales off to the bargain room; lowering prices as appropriate. Then I processed three boxes of donations, and headed back. I was pleased to get home around 3:15, thinking I had time for a nap before Rhonda’s open meeting at 4. Come to find out, Rhonda was out sick and that meeting had been canceled. So I got an extra long nap.

After supper I printed out the lyric sheet for the Ed Sheeran album and duplicated 22 copies on the big copier downstairs.

Sunday 06/14/2026

Usual Sunday morning stuff. Before lunch I started preparing the material for a CMX on Bruno Mars, which meant getting the lyrics to the songs on his latest album (The Romantic) into printable form. And I found I did not like the lyrics. Not stuff I want to share with my neighbors. Picky picky. So as I went down the stairs to lunch I was deciding, Bruno is out. Ed Sheeran is in.

So after lunch and after dinner I edited all the lyrics for Sheeran’s latest album (Play) into printable form. Tomorrow I will put out the sign-up sheet for the event on the 23rd.

At 3, I picked up Sandy (Joanne was hosting her book club this afternoon and couldn’t go) and we drove a mile to “Dala’s Nest”, a house in Menlo Park, to hear a concert by the Keller Sisters. They were good as always, and they recognized me and remembered my name. From when I did the sound for them in their CH appearances.

In the evening exchanged a flurry of emails with Joanne trying to organize our so-active lives for next week.

Saturday 06/13/2026

The Bus Barn’s Toxic Avenger: the Musical was silly fun. The plot is comic-book simple, in fact, now that I think of it, it was probably deliberately designed to remind us of comic books of our youths. The hero is close to uncovering environmental crimes by the mayor of his New Jersey town, so the mayor has him dropped into a giant vat of glowing green toxic waste, from which he emerges as a monster in very well-done rubber makeup. Hijinks ensue. The entire cast was five actors, playing about 9 roles, with frequent costume changes. Part of the fun was seeing people enter in a different costume as a different character, and thinking, wait a minute, wasn’t that folk singer a policeman a minute ago?

Our adventure this morning was for me and Joanne to drive down to FOPAL to shop the monthly book sale. Although I have been volunteering there for going on seven years, I had never actually gone in on a sale day and shopped for books. So we went down and got our entry tickets at 9am, then walked over to a nearby coffee place and chatted until the entry time at 10. I found a poetry anthology I can use to find poems for Poetry Out Loud, and a book of music for 50 Lennon-McCartney songs.

Passed a quiet afternoon reading and doing nothing productive.