Tuesday 06/30/2026

A full and satisfying day. The first hours, up to 10am, were super productive. In that time I did all my laundry, and paid a couple of bills, and updated my financial status spreadsheet, and some emails.

Then it was time for the writers group. I didn’t contribute any writing but there was good stuff. Off to lunch; then after lunch the line dance class. There was no line dance the prior two weeks because the instructor was having a knee replaced. Well, she was back today, ten days after the operation, leading a class in dancing steps. Joint replacements seem are like outpatient surgery these days.

Met with Sandy to talk about the details of our upcoming duet. Then just for the heck of it, I rode along with Joanne as she ran a couple of errands in Fred.

After supper I set up in the 1st floor conference room with computer, to show a talk originating from the CH Museum. The talk was by Dr. Robert Wachter on his book A Giant Leap: How AI is transforming healthcare. I had got a free remote-access ticket to this talk and announced on our ResTech list that I would put it on the screen. Several people expressed interest. In the end there were 7 or 8 people in the room. It was a good talk.

Monday 06/29/2026

Early on, I went for my standard walk (3.8mi for the day). Then straight down to FOPAL. Processed four boxes and left my area nice and tidy.

A couple of people requested help in showing the US soccer match on Wednesday in the auditorium. I wanted to check that out because I recalled something about issues with shoing Comcast video on the big projection screen. So I went and checked it out and indeed there was an issue, it wasn’t working. I reported that in an email. Later Andrew the IT guy said the Comcast box had been powered off and it was now working. So I went and checked again, and yes, it will be possible to show the futbol but there were other issues. So I wrote some pleasant, detailed trouble report emails.

I was going to edit another lecture video but got sidetracked on another project. For this duet with Sandy I have the original accompaniment for “Jackson” but it doesn’t have a melody line, just guitar chords. So I spent like 3 hours getting a melody line played on a piano, changing the pitch and speed of that to match the original accompaniment, and merging the two sound tracks into a single one. And getting that off to Sandy.

Sunday 06/28/2026

Usual Sunday morning stuff. Except for the first time in many moons, I wasn’t able to complete the NYT big crossword. Very obscure and tricky clues. Or maybe I am losing it at last. Time will tell.

After lunch hopped on the bus to attend a play at the Pear theater. Twenty-one CH residents have season tickets at the Pear. The play this time was God of Carnage, Per Wikipedia, “It is about two sets of parents; the son of one couple has hurt the son of the other couple at a public park. The parents meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish and the meeting devolves into chaos.” The actors handled it very well. Felt like it should be funnier, but there were some laughs.

Ssturday 06/27/2026

Set out to get shit done. One thing was to finalize the new Advanced Health Care Directive. I did one more edit pass over it, then printed it out high quality, took it to the UPS store on University and had it notarized. Made copies. Distributed a couple of them, others later.

Made up a helpful lyric sheet for “Jackson”. At 2pm met with Sandy and Mary to practice it. Came away with an action item to get some melody notes into the accompaniment video.

Walked with Joanne across to the Stanford campus, to the Cantor art center to see the exhibit of woven baskets by Jeremy Frey. Amazing. Redefines that a basket can be in your mind. Took a lyft back because why not.

Friday 06/26/2026

Got it wrong yesterday. That was day 206, yes, but not 6/26/26. That’s today, duh. Oh well. Walked with Joanne up to PAMF where she had a brief appointment, then did a little shopping at Trader Joe’s. In the waiting room at PAMF: another CH resident, hi Carol! And then after coffee, at TJ’s: another CH resident, hi Sandy! Us old folks are all over the town.

After lunch I actually sat in front of my desktop machine and coded some Python. I finally found a good, step by step tutorial for writing an AI “agent”. Which is simply a script (program) that invokes an AI via its API (programming interface) and does something with the output. Well, that’s the start of it. I wrote some code, following directions, debugged, it tested it, and Claude Haiku responded to my program’s call. I will pursue this further but my goodness that felt good.

Joanne texted, “going to Costco, want to come along” and sure, why not. So we did a little shopping. I have to admire the Costco method of marketing. They just stack the aisles with these little mountains of stuff which just beg you to reach out and take one. Maybe two. Stick it in your cart, why not. It’ll be handy some day…

After supper, the twice-monthly SongAlong (so called because of a typo made in a poster once). Jerry and Kaye do a great job organizing these.

Thursday 06/26/2026

06 – 26 – 2026 and it is Day 206. Numerology!

Met briefly with Leah Lin in the morning, our semi-annual check-in. She’s my health rep on my Advanced Directive, a function she performs for some other people including Joanne, and she likes to keep in touch.

Then I drove to FOPAL and put in 4 hours getting my section properly tidied up, catching up with what I couldn’t finish on Monday.

Back home for a nap, then out at 4:30 to drive to the Museum for the annual Volunteer Appreciation party. Had a nice chat with Scott. Snacks, speeches. Yay I’ve been appreciated. Oh don’t be such a grinch; it was a nice event.

Wednesday 06/24/2026

Took an early walk for coffee. The at 9am met with Sandy in the music room to try singing a duet on the Carter-Cash song “Jackson”. It went ok, so later we told John, who is organizing the talent show for the end of next month, that we would do the bit. Later in the day after email negotiations I booked 2pm Saturday for another rehearsal with Mary along as a vocal coach.

At 1pm I joined Bert and two other Davids to talk to a reporter from the Palo Alto Weekly. She wants to do a story on how us old geeks use AI. We pontificated and opined for the nice young lady for an hour. Maybe in a month there will be a story on us.

Joanne and I went for a walk later, so I ended the day with almost 13K steps and 5.3 miles. At 7:30 there was a lecture by an amateur biologist (retired physician and medical researcher) on how animals use sound. He had some good videos of birds vocalizing different ways, and slo-mo infrared shots of bats doing aerobatics to catch moths. Coyotes and Pumas and so on. Nice talk.

Tuesday 06/23/2026

Early morning walk; by early I mean, out the door at 7:30, back by 9. Cleaned the apartment. Then, as Betty who usually runs the writers meeting zoom had to go to the hospital unexpectedly yesterday, she asked me to be the zoom host. Of course I did.

I signed in to zoom using her and Jerry’s zoom id, and found the scheduled meeting, and clicked “start” and up it came. But she had sent out a zoom link to everyone earlier, so I used my other macbook to test that link. And of course it didn’t work. I don’t know why (very quietly, “she screwed up” but not going to say that out loud). So I had to get the correct link and email it to everybody with a subject line of NEW ZOOM LINK USE THIS ONE. Some got the message, some didn’t, and it was 11am before we managed to get everyone into the 10:45 meeting. Sigh. Anyway that all worked ok in the end.

After lunch I finished up preparing for the Contemporary Music Exposure meeting on Ed Sheeran. Which involved writing each attendee’s name on their lyrics packet (because having the printed lyrics is essential to understanding a song you are hearing for the first time) and getting a bunch of pictures of him off the web and putting them in folder so I could show them as a slide show on the big TV while the music played. Only somehow I messed that up, too. But it went well and the 25 people who attended all thanked me for setting it up.

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.