Saturday 10/31/2026

Took my standard walk, ending at a different coffee shop for a change. Then I spent a couple of hours with our AV team’s Dell laptop. I had a use for it, but first — it had been in a closet for a year and it was way behind on Windows updates. Apply updates, restart. Now apply some more updates, restart again. But finally it was ready to use.

Neighbor Rob wanted to put the state and local election results on the screen in the auditorium, Tuesday night, so we could have a watch party. He got Claude to write him a website to his specifications. It’s quite the production; it pulls election results from city, county and state websites and displays the results nicely organized on a single page.

Then Rob’s sister went into hospice and he is afraid he may have to be away on Tuesday. Could I do it? Sure. So he had put all the stuff on a USB stick and now I copied it into the AV laptop and tested it. Claude had done a nice job packaging the code with separate test scripts to run to verify it was installed correctly. Nice. So it all works.

My neighbor Sophia had this um, inspiration, that we needed to see the 1991 movie Election with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick because, she said, it was said to be a parody of national elections or something. She got the DVD from the public library and talked me into running it. So that’s what I did from 2 to 4, run that movie. It is a “dark comedy”. I did hear some chuckles from the audience of maybe 30 seniors.

Personally I hated the movie. I despised everybody in it except the retarded kid who ran for school vice president. And it has only the thinnest relevance to real elections at any level above high school. If I wasn’t responsible for putting the equipment away after, I would have left early.

After supper Joanne and I walked around to see the crowd at Marissa’s place. Marissa Mayer has a home on Addison avenue, a block from us. You can see the roof of it from our 11th floor deck. So she’s on Addison between Webster and Cowper.

Each year Marissa has her house decorated lavishly for every season, especially for Halloween. And at Halloween someone (not her) dispenses candy to all comers through a chute by the front door. We didn’t want candy but we wanted to see how this went.

So out our door and start walking on Webster, and the sidewalk was solid with people who were lined up for the free candy. The other sidewalk was also crowded with people walking various directions. Mostly adults with one or more costumed kids beside them. All the way down the block. At Addison, the city had blocked off that block of Addison so the whole street was just people with kids in costumes wandering around. There was another sidewalk full of people coming in from Cowper street. I snapped a couple of pics.

We walked to Cowper and back toward our place, again in the street because the sidewalks were full. Crazy.

Friday 10/30/2026

We took the now-habitual Friday morning walk up Homer and on to Town & Country for coffee, and shopping at Trader Joe’s, and Joanne stopped at PAMF to check on an appointment she wanted to make.

Later in the morning I proofread the LAST contributed piece for Scribble & Sketch.– 24 pieces have been inspected by my eagle eye. This one I changed “bi-lingual” to “bilingual” and corrected a couple of punctuation errors. Yay me.

At 2pm we had the annual fall festival, where the staff dress up in halloween costumes and perform for residents. The staff enjoys the heck out of this. It’s fun for us too.

At 7pm there will be a singalong, to which I am going to go now.

Thursday 10/29/2026

Took a moderate walk in the morning over to Zoe’s. Then at 10am Joanne and I had a phone call with our travel agent, in which we actually booked the flights for our travel next June. Afterward I wrote a couple of emails giving him more info and asking about trip insurance details.

At 2pm I joined a cheerful group in the auditorium for a marketing event. I had been asked to be one of about 10 “resident hosts”. There were that many tables set up with nice tablecloths and such, and there were 4 prospects interested in CH and one resident host at each. So I made nice conversation with the prospects, and our marketing people showed slides and talked about us.

That ended at 3:55 and at 4pm I was due in the Music Practice Room for the first rehearsal of a Christmas skit that Jerry plans for the holiday concert. It’s cute. I have a very small part, which suits me.

Wednesday 10/28/2026

There were only three on the Wednesday hike that Joanne organizes, me, her, and Erika. We drove a few miles north and hiked the Sawyer Camp Trail. That runs alongside Crystal Springs Reservoir, the lake that stores San Francisco’s water.

Water from the Sierra snow pack is piped across California and stored here. It should properly be named San Andreas Fault reservoir because that’s what made this valley. But Crystal Springs is a nicer name for drinking water.

Anyway the trail runs alongside for over 5 miles. We only walked 1.5 in and return, total a bit over 3 miles. In the afternoon I went out for another short walk and ended up with 4.9 for the day.

Evening, Joanne and I had dinner with my next door neighbor Carolyne. It was a pleasant dinner party.

At 7:30 we attended a lecture by Hal Mickelson, who was for some years he announcer for he Stanford Band. I didn’t know the Band had their own announcer, but then, I never attended a Stanford football game. He told a lot of amusing tales about college mascots and such.

Tuesday 10/27/2026

In the morning as usual on a Tuesday I tidied my apartment for the cleaner, then took care of some bills and paperwork. I did not write anything for the writers group, just participated as a listener.

In the afternoon Joanne and I conferred over some questions about bookings for our upcoming travel. It’s next June for pity’s sake but you need to book now. I need to make PDFs of our passports for the travel agent we are working with.

After an early supper I set up the auditorium for Conemporary Music Exposure, in which a room full of old fogies listen to a current pop star. In this case, Olivia Rodrigo, who is 23 and thus is younger than some grandchildren of people listening. What we usually do is listen to an album, talking about each cut. In this case, I had her recent Austin City Limits show so we could watch her perform.

People had varied reactions. Talking about Olivia’s enthusiastic audience of young women singing along, one woman said, “She’s singing about feeling we probably had then, but we didn’t have the words then.”

Monday 10/26/2026

I went for an abbreviated walk early, back by 8:30. (Still got 3.7 miles for the day.) Then into the car and off to FOPAL. There I worked through 5 boxes. Back in time for lunch.

While there, Joanne texted to ask, was I going to the memorial for the Fienes at 2pm? I had not meant to, but called her to discuss. We both had the feeling that we should go, there would be a bunch of our neighbors there. So we agreed to do that together.

Tom and Nancy Fiene (pronounced “feeney”) were prominent residents of Channing House from well before I moved there. Tom was a well-known and well-liked pediatrician and family doc at PAMF for many years. Nancy was a music teacher, member of a bunch of local clubs and organizations. I didn’t really know them except that I was on a committee with Nancy for a while. They were both born in 1934, so both 92 or so when they passed this year. During the service, the minister remarked that in the last week of his life, Tom had said he was holding on for Nancy’s sake. They died on the same day, so I guess he succeeded.

Joanne had her first HIIT session today, so she was still sweating when we headed out at 1:30. Short drive to First Congregational, a church that we have been in quite often the last couple of years, mostly for concerts (including just last Friday). It was jammed. Parking lot was full of course, we ended up parking 4 blocks away. Sat toward the back. There must have been over 300 people. There were music by the daughters, two of whom play cello (Nancy’s instrument), and speeches by various relatives. The only non-relative to speak was Joan Baez, who had Tom as her family doctor for many years.

We ended up in a pew next to fellow residents Lou and Alice, who invited us to share dinner, so we joined them in the dining room for dinner this evening.

Joan Baez read the famous poem Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep by Clare Harner,

Do not stand by my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.

Sunday 10/25/2026

Yes, for the sixth afternoon in a row, we attended some kind of entertainment, a movie or a concert. This time it was at the Bing concert hall on campus at 2:30. We walked there and back, starting at 1:30. Thus 3.5 miles for the day. For me; I believe Joanne said she had been out for a walk in the morning as well. Not me, I just loafed around all morning.

The concert was Rob Kapilow: What Makes It Great: Music of Lerner and Lowe. Kapilow’s thing is these lecture/concert presentations on various kinds of music. He is a musicologist who likes to explain stuff. He teams up with professional musicians. He talks about the music, his partners perform it. This talk, about the musicals of Lerner and Lowe, covered five songs, two from Brigadoon, one from Camelot, two from My Fair Lady. The performers, a soprano and a baritone, were of very professional calibre, terrific singers. Kapilow’s lecture style is entertaining. So it was a nice two hours.

There’s a full moon rising outside my balcony. Everybody go take a look.

Saturday 10/24/2026

Lazy morning. At 1pm I drove to the Museum and led the 2pm public tour. Got a nice hand at the end.

Helped Dr. Margaret with her backup drive, and had tea and a chat with her and Caroline.

At 7:30 I will attend a concert downstairs, local group Trio de Garth who have played here often before, doing “Jazz Standards of the 60s”. Should be good.

Friday 10/23/2026

We took our traditional Friday morning walk, for Joanne to obtain a bran muffin from the pop-up stall so she could share it with her breakfast buddies on Saturday. On to Town & Country to visit Trader Joe’s. And back home. On the way back she remembered that we had meant to consult with Rickie, the manager of the garage where she gets Fred serviced, about the problem with Fred’s control panel. And I remembered that I had meant to visit Ace hardware to get some super glue.

So we agreed to go for a second walk in the afternoon. Which we did, after lunch. Back all the way to TJ’s, with a stop at the garage on the way up and Ace on the way back.So 3.8 miles for the day.

At 6:30 we will meet again and drive a mile to First Cong church for a concert. Second concert, and third entertainment thing, in three days. Such a social whirlwind we live.

Thursday 10/22/2026

Spent the whole day indoors, mostly in my apartment. Reading, doing a little computer stuff.

At 3:30 I went downstairs and met with Joanne and Peter, and we drove to the Aquarius theater to watch You Can See Everything. Since it is a 3-hour movie, we didn’t get back until 6:59 and the dining room was closed. Fortunately I had made up some protein shakes for breakfast and so I had a nice supper of a protein shake and some crackers and peanut butter.

I’m not going to try to explain that movie; it is extremely complex. It starts out as a simple documentary but then gets into multiple layers of re-created scenes, as the director, and the audience, try to figure out if Ms. Holmes is honest and self-deluded, or a master manipulator.