Thursday 09/03/2026

Took a standard walk in the morning. Then at 11am, met with Joanne and we hopped in Fred and drove down to Mountain View to have lunch with my sister-in-law Jean. Jean is 98, in good health, walks with a cane, still drives her car for local errands. We went to her favorite lunch spot, Eric’s DeliCafe. Had a nice chat for an hour.

Main excuse for the visit was to return a book. A younger relative, J.P. Lacrampe, published an SF novel recently. Jean had been given a copy, read it, sent it along to me. Now I had finished it so I was returning it. I had tried and failed to explain to Joanne how I was related to J.P., so it was good to work through the connections with Jean.

(Octavie and Leon Lacrampe had four children. The eldest, Henri, died young but had one son, Pierre. Pierre, now a retired oral surgeon living in Danville, had four children of whom J.P. is the youngest. He is now an instructor at SCU. So J.P. is my late wife’s nephew’s son. Makes him a cousin by marriage, I guess.)

I had said I really needed to buy a new pair of black loafers, my good old Mephisto pair were just really worn out. Joanne said I needed adult supervision for that, so, being out in the car and with time to kill, we drove to Los Altos to Footwear Etc. I bought a pair of Ecco shoes. Then another errand and home.

A part of the later afternoon I spent watching the oral history video of famous Apple programmer Andy Herzfeld on the ComputerHistory.org YouTube channel. Mainly I wanted to verify what I sometimes said in my tours, that when Steve Jobs saw the Xerox Alto and decided to emulate it as the Apple Lisa, he had some of the Apple programmers with him including Herzfeld. Well, Andy does not mention that in his interview. He says he was working at upgrading the OS for the Apple II when Jobs hired him to work on the Mac. The Mac came a year after the Lisa. So pretty clearly, he wasn’t along on that crucial visit where Jobs saw for the first time, an OS with windows and menus and a mouse and such. So I have to stop throwing in that factoid on my tours.

Wednesday 09/02/2026

Went for a hike with Joanne and Martha in Edgewood park. 3.6 miles there, 4.0 for the day. Came home for lunch and a nap. Then took care of a Beatles video issue: Lou had spotted a typo in one line of the lyrics I had added. Also took care of a couple of other minor issues. I think that is ready.

Spent some time playing guitar and singing. Days when my voice is working, I get enthusiastic again, maybe I could perform around here. But I know that every time I have, I’ve been disappointed in my performance. I should sell the guitar and forget about it.

Tuesday 09/01/2026

Went for my standard walk first thing. Back by 9 to tidy the apartment, Tuesday being housekeeping day. At 10 I joined the zoom meeting for the writers group, so that Betty could make me host and leave for a family outing. The writers were kind of slow in joining the meeting which is supposed to start at 10:45. At 10:50 we only had five. Eventually we got to a quorum and read our pieces. The cue was to write about some object that you have kept and value. I wrote about a chest of drawers, one of 3 pieces of furniture I retained from the old house.

After lunch I joined the Line Dance exercise class.

Leaving the Line Dance clase, Joanne said she felt like a walk, let’s go get iced chai latte’s. So we did, a nice walk up to Town and Country and back.

Later I looked at the Health app and found that between two walks and Line Dance, I had run up 14K steps and 6.4 miles.

Played a little guitar in there somewhere. Trying to get the right rhythm for “Angel from Montgomery”.

Monday 08/31/2026

Did my gym session at 7:30. Then drove to FOPAL and worked from 9 to noon, processing 10 boxes.

Back to CH, did some reading, watched some videos, napped. After supper, Joanne came around and we watched the next lecture in the Great Courses series we are watching, Music and Mathematics.

Sunday 08/30/2026

Somehow I spent the entire day alone. Almost. After watering the plants and doing the puzzles, I took a modest walk, and then did some writing. I looked over the notes that Prof. Deb’s daughter Anjuli had made on my talk for her father’s memorial. Good comments, and I used them to shorten the talk and add a point she wanted.

Funny thing, I went down to the dining room for the brunch service at noon. Filled my plate, sat at an empty table for 5, ate my lunch, nobody joined me. Still alone at the table when I finished up. I do not think this was personal, just chance.

Played some guitar, read a little, wasted time on the internet, served myself a sandwich for supper and that was the day. Joanne texted about 7pm asking if I was alright, so I called her and assured her it was fine.

Saturday 08/29/2026

At 11, drove to the Museum to lead a tour. Joanne tagged along as we were planning lunch and a movie after. She waited outside while I led the noon tour. Big bunch, 20+ people. Appreciative.

Then we got lunch. Would have gone to Cucina Vente across the street, but it turned out they didn’t open until 4. So we went to the Sports Page bar near the theater.

Then around to the Century 16 to see Coyote v. Acme. It’s a cute movie. I agree with Joanne that it dragged a bit in the middle, but it was fun. I had gotten “premiere” seats and it turns out, the “premiere” seats have built in effects, they bounce and jiggle with explosions and such effects. Frantically pushing buttons in the dark to figure out how to turn the effects OFF. But did it.

Friday 08/28/2026

Took a Friday morning walk with Joanne. Then went to work finishing up the beatles video. After lunch I had a meeting with Stew and Lou. Got there approval of some things I did with the video, how I closed it out. Evening, watched some TV: the CNN series “Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever”.

Thursday 08/27/2026

Went for the standard walk in the morning, not alone but with Joanne. We had things to gossip about. Having 190 elderly neighbors means you never lack for gossip.

Spent several hours assembling the beatles video. When I added the 9-minute long video of Hey Jude it totaled just 45 minutes. But there will be 12 short intros, one per song, so it will go over an hour. But my goodness it will be a happy hour. Such good songs.

At 4 was the semi-annual resident/trustee meeting. The summer meeting is for covering the wrap-up of our fiscal year (ended 2/28) and our financial status going forward. We are fine, basically. Not going broke.

At 5:30 I was expecting to join my next-door neighbor Carolyn, to drive in her car down to the CH Museum, for a lecture event on the chip industry and AI. I had specifically invited Carolyn because she was a marketing manager for Applied Materials, a chip maker, and would probably meet people she knew.

However when I knocked on her door, she apologized, said she couldn’t go out. Because she had just gotten back from the hospital where she got a cancer diagnosis. She’ll be starting a course of chemo soon, feels optimistic, but doesn’t have the energy to go out.

The museum had made a point this was a sold-out event, please let us know if you can’t attend, so I emailed them immediately. Hope they can reuse those 2 seats.

Anyway I am now home for the evening with nothing to do and feeling depressed. Called Joanne to share the news about Carolyn; Joanne knows her and works with her on a couple of committees. So now there’s two of us depressed. Oh well. You just never know.

Wednesday 08/26/2026

In the morning I joined Joanne, Joanne the other one, Erika and Martha for a hike in the Arastradero preserve. It’s a 3.8 mile loop and today, although the air temperature was something like 78, the sun was very bright and we were all pretty hot and tired at the end.

In the afternoon I started putting the Beatles movie together and immediately ran into something I needed to fix, but by then it was time to join the AV team meeting.

After supper we had a lecture by Sarah Dean, the artistic director of the Pear Theater, on what it takes to stage a play in a local theater. Bottom line, a lot; they have to start planning 18 months out.

Tuesday 08/25/2026

Such a busy morning. I had the apartment tidied and my laundry completely finished by 10am. Amazing. Writers meeting: I read my piece. The cue was, the most unusual or interesting job you ever held. I wrote about being a “frame man” at the phone company (Pacific Telephone & Telegraph, as it was in 1966), stringing wires in the office at 430 Bush street in SF.

After lunch it was time for the line dance class. Then I walked to Trader Joe’s because I was out of bread. So got my 10K steps in.

In the evening we had a movie, Fairyland. The director of the movie, Andrew Durham, went to school with the children of CH residents Susan and Harry and considers them family. So he was here to introduce the movie and talk about it afterward. Very well made film, excellent visuals and acting. Not easy to watch for its emotional content.