Tuesday is notable for being my laundry day in alternate weeks, and the day of the writers meeting, and the day for line dance class. All of that happened today. I got going on the laundry before 8, and wrapped it up, or I should say, hung it up, at 10:30, just in time for the writers meeting.
Between loads I wrote a couple of paragraphs because I hadn’t written anything in two or three weeks. The cue was “betrayl” and I couldn’t think of any time I had been betrayed by someone else, but then I thought of the frequent and on-going self-betrayals when I don’t do what I know I should, or fall short of my goals out of laziness, so I wrote about that.
Line Dance was fine, and after I walked through the 85 degree heat (in October — tell me climate change ain’t real) to pick up a prescription at CVS.
Now it’s after supper, and soon I will go downstairs to watch a screening of Day of the Jackal. Does it hold up? Report tomorrow.
First thing today was to go work at FOPAL. It’s the week before the sale weekend, so I had to clean up, make my shelves look neat etc. Joanne needed the car for an early lunch date with some friends, so I took the #21 bus down.
A few months back I changed my way of working. Have I written about this? The big job of a section manager is to process the books that have been sorted to my section. I look up each book in bookfinder.org, decide if it is likely to sell. If not, put it in a box for the bargain room. If so, decide what price to set on it. (Typically, half of what is being asked for that used book on Amazon.)
To do this, I used to pile all the books on a cart, take them to the sorting room where there is a row of computers that we can use. Each computer has a barcode scanner, so it is easy to enter the ISBN off the back of the book for quick lookup.
A few months back when I started getting really big donations, 5-10 boxes of books a week, I started a different way. I would take my own computer down and set up right by the pile of boxes at my section. But I needed a barcode scanner. I bought a cheap on on Amazon. A couple weeks back, it crapped out. So today I took a close look at the ones in the sorting room, because they have been working for years, used daily by different people. Noted make and model. Went home and found one in new condition for $25 on eBay and ordered it.
Anyway, worked 9-11 and got everything set up. The #21 was half an hour away so I treated myself to a Lyft ride home instead. Did some reading, did some proofing for the next issue of Scribble and Sketch, for which I am an official proof-reader.
At 4pm it was time for Poetry Out Loud. I read a couple from a book I bought on impulse when we were at Kepler’s last month, by Lindsay Rush. Funny.
Then at 5:30 we met downstairs and drove off to a local restaurant, Naschmarkt, over by California ave, for Joanne’s third dinner out for her birthday. Friday night with Jerry and Betty, then she was out with old friends last night, and tonight I got to buy her dinner. Don’t get used to it, kid. we’re back to splitting the check next week.
Usual Sunday morning. Then spent a couple of hours just doing minor things, catching up on my reading. After lunch, a nap and then it was time to get on the bus. There are enough CH people who go to the Pear Theater for a Sunday Matinee that we hire a bus. In this case the bus company sent a humongous bus, really long with very cushy seats for at least 50 people. We were only 18 people.
Anyway the play was the Pear’s version of Noel Coward’s Private Lives. See the link for the plot. It recently fell out of copyright protection so they felt free to mess with it, and they changed the gender of one of the people, so it was a male-male couple and a male-female one. Other than a few pronouns they didn’t have to change any of the lines at all.
It was very well acted and produced. There was one awkward scene transition that I thought needed more explanation or setup but that may have been me not paying proper attention.
After supper I did my gym workout. And there we go.
Put on my red docent shirt and went to the Museum to lead the noon tour. Usual nice bunch of 20 or so people of mixed ages. Headed on home then for a quiet afternoon.
At 5pm joined Joanne, Jerry and Betty to go out for dinner, celebrating Joanne’s birthday. She is getting a total of three different dinners, I believe. This one was before her birthday which is tomorrow. We went to place called Urfa on main street in Los Altos. Turkish/Greek cuisine. We ended up eating mostly salads and appetizers and a dessert.
Back to CH right at 7:30, which was good timing as there was a concert scheduled for that time. The performer was a guy who plays the accordion but “no polkas” as Kay, who booked him, said. He opened with three classical pieces, played a couple of Beaatles numbers (Michelle and Yesterday) and a couple of movie themes and some other things. His accordion was fitted with some kind of synthesizer because he could make the melody notes sound like pan-pipes or a real piano. Quite well done.
Only got 6 hours sleep but felt fine. Took a nice muffin walk with Joanne first thing. Kept remembering things I needed to do as we walked. When I got home I made a list. Well, only 7 items, but it took a long time to get them scratched off.
After lunch I ran AV for an event in the auditorium, a couple of nice ladies from the “Yes on J” campaign explaining why we should vote for Palo Alto sales tax measure J. Nobody outside Palo Alto cares so I won’t try to explain it here. However they got some pretty tough questions from the audience.
Then back to my list. One of which was to try to contact SFJazz to see if they found my hat. Last night, when we got out of the Waymo at Third and Townsend, I realized I didn’t have my hat. Not entirely sure where I left it, but maybe under my seat at the concert.
A job not on the list, was to pick an artist for the next CMX. I did quick auditions of several. My gosh contemporary singer-songwriters are a boring bunch. Their music just drones. After Ariana Grande I want something that moves. I finally picked Olivia Rodrigo as a popular artist with at least a little musicality.
Mystery! Last night, as we were riding home on the train, I was feeling the pockets of my black jacket. I’ve had it more than ten years, but I hadn’t worn it for months. I wore it last night because this was the first night since last winter that looked like San Francisco would be chilly. And it was.
So feeling in the jacket side pocket I find a piece of paper, mostly colored green. Here’s a scan.
It took a while to work out but it is a ticket for a boat ride from a place called Perros-Guirec, which is on the coast of Normandy, to a little group of rocky islands called Les Sept Iles (the seven isles). The date is the 25th of May, 2012.
The mystery is, how can it be that the receipt for the boat ride on that day fourteen years ago could still be in my jacket pocket now? Yes, I may have owned the jacket more than 14 years and I might even have had it along on that trip. In fact, yes! The first picture of the blog, shows me at SFO wearing that jacket. Here:
OK. this jacket was on that trip. But the jacket has been dry-cleaned at least once, probably twice since then. And worn often. How had I never noticed that folded piece of paper until last night?
A very quiet day at first: took a short walk in the morning, then spent most of the day in my apartment. Did a bit of this and that.
At 4pm I went down and joined the AV team meeting. Discussed what, if anything, we should ask for as a Heritage Circle grant for this cycle.
At 5, joined Joanne and we headed out to walk up to the Caltrain station. We caught the 5:25 train for the City. There took a Waymo to SFJazz for a concert by Hiromi. I see I have mentioned hearing Hiromi several times in this blog, days 3.270, (2022) 5.279, (2024) and 6.137 (2025). Well, here we are again. Just like that cute Japanese pianist. This time she teamed with a Japanese tap dancer, Kazunori Kumagai, and he danced to interpret her music, or vice versa. It was a really excellent concert, inventive and fun.
I wasn’t able to join the usual Wednesday hiking group because we docents were summoned to the Museum to be introduced to a new temporary exhibit.
Docents learning about glasses
The temporary exhibit is about Virtual Reality hardware, mainly fancy glasses but some other devices. There have been attempts at an immersive VR experience for a long time. The curators pulled about 100 examples from the collection and put them together for this.
After lunch I sat in the auditorium while Bert and IT guy Andrew experimented with the projector. Bert wanted to find a way to get our (very expensive top of the line) video projector to crop its image to half height. I stayed out of it. He’s welcome to screw around, as long as he puts things back the way they were. I left while they were trying to put things back but hadn’t quite. It better be right when I run an event.
At 5pm I went up to 11 where we had a special Webster Street Grille for prospects. The Marketing dept paid for this. A Webster St. Grille as I’ve described before, is a fancy restaurant-style meal. Ordinarily it costs $50 for a resident to partake but this was a freebie. There were ten tables and they had invited ten respectable residents like myself to be table hosts. So I made nice conversation with Jay and Sally and Margie, who are on the Advantage list (have paid a small deposit) waiting for the right apartment to open up, and Tom and <forgot her name> who have actually signed and paid for an apartment at Arris, the new satellite campus. They expect to move in, in December they hope.
Just sixty-three days left in the Blog Year, burning down the wick on my eighth year of blogging. I shall write something profound for day 7.365. Sure.
Took an early-ish walk, 7:30, then sat down to write something for the group. And got completely side-tracked trying to sort out my own history. I often regret that I didn’t keep any sort of diary back in the 60s. There are isolated chunks of my life, associated with particular apartments and jobs, that I remember clearly, but this morning I went down a total rabbit-hole trying to establish when a particular memory, about which I wanted to write, occurred.
The one person who knew me during the period in question, John Snow, unfortunately has passed on. He would have been able to tell me exactly when I was anywhere in Seattle.
Writer’s meeting came and I had nothing. So I just listened and commented appreciatively.
After lunch I took a nap, and then, forgetting completely about the Line Dance class, decided to go and do my gym workout. Later on, Joanne texted “want to go for a walk?” and of course I did. So I racked up 5.1 miles for the day.
Out at 8:30 to drive first to PAMF for my fall flu shot. I could get a flu shot from my new Concierge PCP, but unfortunately he cannot bill my UHC Medicare Advantage plan. PAMF can do that. So can my local CVS pharmacy, but PAMF sent an email, time to get your flu shot, so I went with them.
And then on to FOPAL where there were 9 boxes of books waiting. I got through them about 12:15, and came on home. Thinking as I came, you know, I could not do a normal 8-hour workday any more. Lunchtime and I’m pooped. (Dude, you’re old. Accept it.)
In the afternoon I did various things. Responded thoughtfully to some email threads. Oh, used Claude to make a spreadsheet for our shared car expenses. Remains to be seen if J. will be willing to use it.
Flashback to the Moonlight Walk of a couple days ago. I look like an idiot, as usual. Joanne looks cute, also as usual.
Normal Sunday morning; so nice to have a routine. Off at 10:30 for the museum to lead a private tour.
Tour was sort of a fiasco. Apparently Google has a deal with the Museum, they get two docent-led tours per year. This was to be one. Someone at Google told our person that they would have 32 people. So word went out, we need two docents for Sunday morning 11:30.
I got there at 10:45 and waited around. Then Dave Hoyt, another very experienced docent showed up, and we waited together. 11:30 passed, no Googlers. Then a woman with two kids showed up, said she was from Google, and “a couple” of others were coming “soon”.
We talked it over and obviously they don’t need two docents. Since I had signed up first, Dave Hoyt got to leave early. I hung around talking to the nice woman and her two well-behaved kids, about 5 and 7 I would guess. I had expected a group of high-powered tech types. But she worked in HR. And the ONE other person who showed up to join her was also clerical. So my big tour of tech types turned into a stroll around the exhibits with two women and 4 small kids.
I edited my talk on the fly to toss out a lot of more technical points and shorten things up so as not to stress the kids. We had a nice time and wrapped up in 45 minutes. But this was not best use of docent time for sure, and I made sure that the people behind the desk would register that fact with our tour bookers.
Quiet afternoon back home, playing with my computer. In the middle of the night I had decided to do a thing and now I did it. Over the last couple of years we have put on several “Good Times” shows with different kinds of music, most recently the Beatles, but C&W, early 60s, show tunes. For each show I made an elaborate video with music videos and lyrics. Those were sitting around on the drive and I wanted the space back, so yesterday I had moved all that stuff to the trashcan. But didn’t empty it.
In the night I realized, I have a way to back them up. In a drawer I have a box of writeable DVD discs, and I have a DVD burner. I haven’t burned a DVD in 8 years, but I still could. So this afternoon I pulled those videos out of the trash, burned them to a DVD, and stowed it away safely. Then I trashed them again and emptied the trash.
