Day 51, coffee hissy fit, ILF drive-by

Sunday, 1/20/2019

Did the NYT big puzzle in record time, 26:19, yay me. I’m using a new approach to crosswords and it is working well.

Headed out at 8am for coffee. Drove to Baron Barista, because it’s close to The Avant on El Camino, which I want to eyeball. Alas, at 8:15 they were very apologetic that their pastry order hadn’t arrived. As an almond croissant was the whole purpose of my visit, I smiled and said “sorry, bye”. Just down the street was a Starbucks. It’s an odd one, squeezed into a building that’s the shape of a skinny wedge of cheese. For some reason they have tinted windows with shades pulled down. It was almost too dark to read the paper. But they displayed almond croissants so I ordered one and a, quote, “Grande Dry Cappuccino”. The dude leans down and gets the pastry from below the counter and it’s wrapped in cellophane. Sigh, ok, I don’t complain. I pay and find a table with a little light and put down my paper and my hat and my jacket. And wait. There’s two guys and neither doing any coffee-related activity. Finally the one guy brings out my coffee, which was nice of him, except when I pick it up, it weighs at least 8 ounces, it’s two-thirds full. I don’t say anything but I am fuming inside. If I wanted a fucking latte I would have ordered a fucking cup of hot milk with a dash of coffee, I think. And then, why am I here? To eat a stale pastry and have a coffee I don’t want? And I put on my coat and pick up my paper and start quietly out, quickly walk back and pick up my hat, and leave and drive to my usual P.A. Cafe in Midtown, thinking on the way what a gem of a place it is. The staff have been there forever; they bake all their pastries on site; they make your drinks as you request them. It gets noisy, true, but that’s because it’s a success and people love it.

After reading the paper I drive by

the Avant

It’s the place that charges $4000 more per month than several other ILFs including Channing House. I am not impressed with the exterior, other than a nice entry, the side exposures look like a motel. I don’t see the extra money on the outside, anyway. I wonder if they charge extra for off-street parking? Well, I’ll never find out, because I am verifying it is much too far from the nearest shopping street. It’s a good half-mile to California Avenue. So it fails at my first requirement. Which is a bit of a relief, frankly. I can finally stop wondering how they justify their rates.

I drive that half-mile to El Camino at Oregon, park, and walk around

Sunrise Palo Alto

an ILF that (I only now notice) also advertises “a special community for the memory impaired”. In fact, looking now at their web page, they really don’t bill themselves for IL, but rather for “personalized living options” and “continuing care”. Which I read as, more for the sick and the feeble, less for the independent.

Sunrise is a month-to-month place which — I only just now realized from Alan’s info sheet — also charges $8200/month for a 1BR unit. Oof! Well, to the eye it’s a decent looking building, fairly new. (Looks a little more like $8k than the Avant.) The ground-floor street corner is a large dining room. There are only a couple of people visible in it. The windows on the next corner reveal what is clearly the staff break room with several nurse-looking types chatting around a table. There appears to be an underground garage. Frankly, Channing House is looking better all the time. Well, time to head off to

Basketball

The Cardinal women dominated WSU behind a career performance from Alanna Smith. Back home I polished up three remaining loose ends in my game. Next time I work on it, it will be package it as a stand-alone app.

Day 50, CHM and Channing House

Saturday, 1/19/2019

I started the day by leading a tour at the Computer History Museum for 15 comp. sci. students from Santa Clara U. When talking to people all of whom were born after Amazon.com was, I keep catching myself. There’s a point where I explain about vacuum tubes and how unreliable they were in the early computers. I say they are like incandescent light bulbs, they have a filament that burns out. Well you know, these students may have seen an incandescent bulb at some point, but a bulbs’ unreliability isn’t part of their daily experience.

So I managed to keep their attention for my 50 minute tour, then handed them off to the live demo of the IBM 1401 that starts at 11am every Saturday. I hung around to watch that; the docents who run it do a great job.

Home again and I put in about two solid hours adding some near-final touches to my program. It’s a game, and what I was doing at this point was adding sounds, bleeps and clicks and bonk noises. That entailed spending a lot of time prowling websites that offer free downloads of royalty-free sound effects, listening to various sounds and trying to pick out the right ones. But it all went together and now my game makes noises. There’s a couple more minor things to do and then I’ll let people play with it. When that’s done, I will turn to the two partially-completed books that have been simmering quietly on the back burner of my mind for months. However today at 4:40 I left for the short drive to

Channing House

and dinner with Craig and his wife Diane. They’ve been living at Channing House (click for official website) for six years, since they sold their home in Professorville. That’s the name for the residential part of Palo Alto on the North side of Embarcadero Road. I’m on the South side of it, and tonight I learned that because of that, my house will sell for more money than theirs. It seems that houses in that older part of town can’t easily be “scraped” and replaced with McMansions, like the place next door to our house was and like this house almost certainly will be shortly after I sell it. Fewer speculators are interested. But that’s by the way.

Financing and Governance

Unlike some other ILFs, Channing House is run by an independent, non-profit corporation. It isn’t part of a chain or owned by a for-profit corporation. A paid CEO runs the in-house staff under direction of a board of trustees. Two residents are nominated to the board, and also the president of the resident’s council — who is currently my hostess of the evening, Diane — sits in on board meetings to present resident concerns.

The organization is funded by people’s buy-ins and monthly rental. They have and are continuing to do extensive and expensive renovations; these are funded in part by contingency funds and in part by long-term bonds. Diane says the board includes a number of financial people who have worked out how to keep it solvent.

One of the renovations done just after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was a seismic retrofit. In the basement you can see massive flexible joints that were installed in the building’s support structure. It should be able to function after an earthquake.

Layout

The House is eleven stories high. The top floor is a glassed-in penthouse used for social events. The ground floor has a large lobby, dining room, a performance space, and other public spaces. There’s a pool and fitness facility in the basement (Craig led me on a tour of all these areas). The second through tenth floors are divided into 2- and 1-bedroom and studio units, each with a balcony, looking West or East over Palo Alto depending on which side it’s on. Every floor has a pleasant public living room, a laundry, and a dining room with kitchen so you can entertain a group (something I’d never do, but there you are).

Originally, the second floor was a medical facility for rehab and assisted living, but just a few years ago, they built a new, separate, two-story health care center. Current residents can and do move back and forth between the IL part and the assisted-living part as their health varies. Craig had a medical incident recently that needed rehab so he slept in the health care wing for some nights to have access to an on-call nurse, but returned to their apartment during the day.

There was an unintended consequence of splitting out the medical facility to a separate building. The main building, when it housed a medical operation, had been under the jurisdiction of the State of California. When it became 100% residential, it moved into the jurisdiction of the City of Palo Alto, and in particular, the Palo Alto Fire Department. They recently decreed that the building needs to have a sprinkler system for every unit. That meant tearing out the ceiling on every floor.

The board decided that, since ceilings had to be opened up, they might as well replace the HVAC ducting and the electrical, tv and internet wiring at the same time (much of which dated to the original 1961 structure). This renovation is being done floor by floor, from the top down. Currently it’s the 8th floor that is closed off. People on that floor had to move to other units for a few weeks. I had a quick look at the refurbished tenth floor; it doesn’t look a lot different except that lighting in the halls is better.

Food Service

The dining hall serves cafeteria-style. (Note that at the ILF that I visited for New Year’s eve on Day 31, the dinner service was restaurant-style. The staff came to the table to take your order and bring your food to you. I think actually cafeteria style is more to my taste.) The evening’s menu was interesting and seemed well-prepared.

There’s no opt-out of paying for meal service unless you are going to be away for a week or more; then you can apply for a refund for that period. On the other hand, Craig said the actual amount you pay is calculated on the assumption that the average resident eats only 1.8 meals a day.

Social

Both assured me that the other people living at Channing House were interesting, including many retired medical people and Stanford professors. There are active committees to organize musical performances and other entertainments. Craig is on a committee of resident nerds who help others with their computer, internet, and cable TV problems. “We take maybe two calls a day”.

Costs

Channing House is a “buy-in” place, where to enter you pay a sizable fee (on the order of $1M). If you leave during the first 3 years, you can get back a prorated portion of that fee. After that, not. And unlike some buy-in places, you aren’t actually buying anything. When you die, none of the buy-in fee will be available to your estate.

The reason is that your use of the attached assisted living and skilled nursing facility, short- or long-term, is included in the standard rental. There is no extra fee for assisted living care, nor for help with the medications or other nursing visits. (That’s not the case with other ILFs.) Basically, this is where your buy-in has gone; in effect, you’ve paid up front for a long-term care insurance policy.

Summary

As I said to Craig, this evening certainly set a high bar for other ILFs to meet. I already had a requirement that an ILF be easy walking distance to a town center. Channing House certainly meets that requirement, being only a couple blocks off University Ave. Besides that I will now be looking for:

Access to “continuing care” both temporary and permanent, the convenience of it and the cost to use it.
Ownership vesting: whether local corporation, regional or chain corporation, whether for-profit or non-profit.
A seriously good story on seismic safety (can you imagine your ILF being red-tagged?)
Resident participation and influence in governance.
Active resident-run committees for entertainment and other activities (as opposed to everything run by paid staff).
(late edit) Parking! since I mean to keep my car.

Channing house has basement parking but it is charged-for separately. I didn’t ask how much it was; but I don’t like paying for parking, nor do I like the idea of parking on the streets of Palo Alto as some residents do.

Day 48, price of hot water

Friday, 1/18/2018

The Prius has been telling me it “needs maintenance soon” for a few weeks. It doesn’t, but earlier I scheduled it for an oil change today. Drove it to the Toyota place for its 8:30 am appointment, then walked the two miles back. Depending on what time they call that it’s ready, and on how I feel, I will either walk back to retrieve it or take a Lyft.

Meantime I put in an hour at my software project, adding another feature, which went in and functioned after only a few silly errors that took maybe 20 minutes to fix. Applied some time to another on-going project, starting a list of ILFs that I want to check out and scheduling time to go and do that. I’ll get a good inside look at Channing House on Saturday when I have dinner with Craig. But I want to take casual, outside looks at the some others, and make some notes, in order to decide which ones to request tours of. There are two on El Camino that I can easily eyeball on Sunday morning. I’ll be recording my reactions in this blog, of course.

About 1:30 the water heater guy arrived. After diagnosis, it’s the gas control unit. $415. OK, sure, do it.

Back on Day 38 I mentioned making an inventory of our basketball memorabilia, in particular items related to the San Jose Lasers professional team of 1996-98. Nobody I’ve talked to among the Stanford fans really wants any of it. I mentioned this to Greta, one of the CHM staff, and she suggested History San Jose. Great idea! So I took a few minutes to fill out their item-donation form with the particulars of the best items. Hope they want them.

I did walk back to Toyota, so with some other incidental walking later, I hoofed about 4.5 miles today. After a bit of supper I headed out to Maples to see the Stanford women play UW. It was a nice game, early lead, up by 30 in the third quarter, lots of minutes for the bench players.

Day 47, not in hot water

Thursday, 1/17/2019

Today I was scheduled to spend a full day (10-4) doing cataloging at the CHM Shustek Center in Fremont. Prior to leaving I took a shower and… noticed the hot water wasn’t, or at least was only warm. I immediately knew the water heater wasn’t heating. It was familiar because, I dimly recalled, we just recently had that same problem fixed. So once dressed, I pulled down the big red three-ring binder in which we have kept all receipts for household repair for the last oh gosh, since the 1980s? Earlier maybe. Flip flip flip to the tab for “plumbing”, wondering did I file that receipt last fall, or just scrap it? Yes! I had. On 10/18 we had a repair person from “Water Heaters Only” in to fix the temp sensor so the pilot would light.

Called them. They could come today; sorry, I can’t be home today, tomorrow? Sure, 12-4pm; great, tx bye. Off to work. Cataloged some old stuff: parts of a Motorola EXORciser, a microcomputer development system from 1975. M6800-based box with a motherboard and a bunch of cards plugged into it, oh, a mighty 32KB memory card there. And a heavy (52 pounds, we weigh these things) dual 8-inch floppy drive box. This was a donation from the California Department of Transportation. What the heck was CalTrans doing with a Motorola development system in 1975? Perhaps developing some piece of embedded traffic control hardware based on the M6800. But why had they held on to it until now? Maybe because they only just retired the last of their whatever-it-was embedded traffic light controllers, who knows?

Back home, I just had time to snatch a bite and a quick nap and then had to head out to a house concert that started at 7pm in Santa Clara. Concert was OK, a trio of people doing bluegrass and old contra-dance tunes on fiddle, banjo and guitar. I’d expected more bluegrass, but the lead guy was big into work songs — he gives workshops teaching people to how to sing during manual labor, didn’t think there’d be a lot of demand but, well — and we the audience got coerced into singing some sailor rope-pulling songs a capella. A lot of the audience were into contra dancing, which is apparently quite a thing in this area, to judge by the long list of upcoming contra dance events that was circulated at the break. Come to First Methodist Church in Palo Alto Saturday evening and if you don’t know how to dance, we’ll teach you. Um, nunh-unh, thanks.

That was implementing part of my “being a bachelor” plan that I’d worked on last fall. One of the bullet points is, “attend at least one performance event per week”. Well, I’m over-achieving because, movie last Sunday, concert tonight, basketball game tomorrow. The unwatched TV is stacking up on the DVR. That is not a problem.

Day 46, taxes and books and a painting

After yesterday’s writing, I packed up two boxes of books to take to FOPAL on Wednesday. This consisted mostly of bird books and birding-related books. I had no idea we had so many books about birds and birding. Marian had accumulated them over the years; I recognized only a couple. I’ve no intention of ever spotting another bird; that was her hobby that I supported but didn’t really enjoy. So losing those books is another shard of the prior life, but not one that caused much emotion. Well, a little — when I riffled the page of her most-used birding guide and saw all the check marks and notes in her handwriting of what species we’d seen and where.

Another half-box was the books by and about Arthur Ransome that I mentioned back on Day 35. I received the two additional, $1 books that I ordered then. Now I arrayed them all on the table and sat down with eBay to see what prices such books were getting. And quickly realized that my collection was still incomplete, there was one more novel and at least two more popular biographies that I didn’t have. So much for selling a complete bookshelf. I put the books in the box for FOPAL.

Except for one. Most of the books are paperback, but one is cloth-bound, and on looking inside I realized it was a first edition, or at least a first American printing, dated 1942. Similar Ransome hardbacks are on eBay for $50 and up, so I took some pictures and put it up on eBay. We’ll see.

Got an email from Craig wondering if I wanted to visit Channing house or not. Very timely, given how I’d just put my ILF decision back on track, so in a quick exchange we agreed to meet Saturday afternoon.

The rest of the afternoon, I added yet another feature to my program, and to my delight, the new feature worked exactly right first try. So that wrapped day 45 nicely.

Wednesday, 1/16/2019

Went for a run, it was OK. Back home did some desk stuff. Paid a credit card bill. Created the folder to hold all the tax info for 2018, using the 2017 folder as a model. Key item here is to download the PDF copies of a total of eight form 1099-Rs, from all the various accounts we have that generate those (two Social Security, two pension, four brokerage). Made a checklist of all the tasks to do going forward with the taxes. That doesn’t really get busy until February.

Booked myself to attend the PAC-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament, in Las Vegas March 7-10. Bought one reserved seat, booked a hotel room, booked the flights. This will be the first time I’ve traveled anywhere as a bachelor, and indeed the first flight since… I think since October 2017 when we returned from NYC. Hopefully the gummint shutdown will be over by March?

In the mail: the official document from the Neptune Society, stating that Marian was “respectfully delivered to the sea” on January 10th. I have to say, the Neptune Society has been a class act the whole way, supportive, responsive, professional. I’m glad we signed with them all those years ago.

One of the items I want to get rid of is this painting: 4337722_orig

We commissioned this; it was actually painted for us; we met with Dean Linsky (click the link to see his website) in Yosemite Valley in 2004 and walked around with him pointing out features we liked. A couple of months later the painting arrived, and it has been on our wall ever since.

Looking forward I don’t want to try to house it in a small apartment. Linsky’s work is marketed mostly through New Masters Gallery in Carmel. I’d like to consign it there for sale, but I’ve been having a hard time getting any info out of them by email. So today I called up and spoke directly to the gallery owner, Bill Hill. I have to say, Bill’s telephone manners are abrupt. Although his gallery has been in business for years, he’s clearly not a salesman type. I emphasized how I would have to depend on his expertise to know what the painting would go for, and at his request sent a cell-phone shot of it again by email. Maybe this time he’ll look at it.

Anyway, off to FOPAL, taking two boxes of books. And home for a quiet evening.

Day 45, the case for the prosecution

Tuesday, 1/15/2019

Rainy day. Drove to the Y, walked briskly on a treadmill for 20 minutes, did my strength exercises. It’s “Suli day”, that is, the day I expect our housecleaner to make her biweekly visit, so as customary I wrote her check, and stripped the bed and put the sheets to wash. On return from the Y, I made up the bed, then sat down to talk to myself about

Three AM thoughts

That’s what this blog that has almost no readers is: me talking things out to myself. Partly, I’m keeping a diary, so the days don’t dissolve into a blur. For instance I know what day I went to the City to visit the deYoung museum because it’s in here; without this record I’d have no clue. Partly, I’m writing for an imaginary audience; maybe someday there will be a real audience and I hope my experience will help somebody. But a key function is working out what I actually think about things, and as it were, fact-checking myself. That’s important, as I don’t have a sensible partner to call BS on my wilder ideas.

So at 3am I woke because the garden sprinkler system had kicked in. Water flow in the old cast-iron plumbing makes a quiet noise which is ample to keep one awake in a silent house, even if you pull the duvet over your ears. Lying there I began to recall all the things I don’t like about this house. Yes, Marian loved it. Yes, it looks adorable from the street. Yes the interior is tidy, comfortable and well-maintained. But there’s a dark side, or actually two: top and bottom. At 3am I began going over all the things that made me coin ISMISEP back on Day 4: “in six months it’s someone else’s problem”.

The bill of indictment starts with that watering system that was part of an expensive, complete overhaul of the landscaping in 2012. Well, the drip piping is ok, it’s the controller I dislike. Horrible user interface. I’ve asked Richard, our gardener, to suggest an alternative but he hasn’t found one. Besides the controller, some of the plants that went in then have died, or are struggling, as well as some that Marian ordered and planted since. There is a line of trumpet vines along the fence, plants that flourish in tropical luxuriance four doors down the street, that are barely clinging to life here. I don’t have any interest in diving into the Sunset Garden Book to try to figure out replacements, or in trudging through nurseries picking out plants. It pleases me to think that ISM the whole landscape will be SEP.

The garage! When the house was built in 1925 it was OK to put a detached garage up against the property line in the corner of the lot. This building is heavily eaten by termites, but its most striking feature is the floor. It’s a 6-inch cement slab that was laid directly on adobe clay. Adobe moves, it swells in winter and shrinks in summer. The garage floor has broken into tectonic plates that lift and tilt to make enormous cracks with one- to two-inch breaks in level. There’s no practical repair; if I tried to take out a permit for any work on it, the city would make me demolish it and build one properly set back from the line. So it’s a storage space for now, but come the earthquake (or if the termites ever stop holding hands) it will collapse in a heap.

That’s outside; then there’s underneath. This nearly-100-year-old building is on a low cement foundation. Under the floors is a pitch-black space with barely 18″ between the joists and the damp adobe. That’s where the cast-iron drains and plumbing run, that make interesting water-hammer noises while the sprinklers are on. I last poked my head under there last year, reaching in to set a rat-trap, smelling the dampness. Decades back I crawled the whole length, running speaker wires to the corners of the living room so I could have surround-sound. Not again! I hate that space.

Topside is no better. Above the middle third of the house is an attic space that can be reached with difficulty by bringing a ladder into a closet. It’s hot in summer, cold in winter, and in the past has been invaded by roof rats, attested by fossilized droppings. A long time ago the City of Palo Alto subsidized anyone who’d get insulation blown into their attic space, and we did, so the space has what looks like a six-inch fall of gray snow. It’s quite effective as insulation, but it makes me nervous because it drifted over several runs of the original knob-and-tube electrical wiring. Just the antique wiring makes me nervous (and would cost a ton to replace), but having it covered in processed newsprint is not an improvement.

The stuff also makes cozy nesting for rats. I was last up there early last year, because we were hearing in the night the telltale chomping and scuttling sounds of rats settling in above us. I set out a bunch of traps, and renewed the steel wool chinking in the couple of holes in the foundation through which I think they gain entry. And it worked; I’ve not heard any rodent noises in months. But I hate that attic space. If I hear rats again, I’d have to go up there and retrieve the traps with (probably) mummified rat corpses in them, and clean and bait them and set them out again.

It pleases me to think that ISM the crawl space, the attic, the ancient wiring, and the rats could be SEP. Or more likely, bulldozed to make way for a new house. I’ve mentioned the appliances: the refrigerator, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and the A/C are all approaching the end of their expected life-spans. ISM they too can be SEP.

In years past, I gave serious thought to replacing this house myself: moving out to a rental and hiring an architect and a contractor to demolish the building and put up a new one that would recall the modest charm of the original but with modern construction and a bit more space. OK, that is not going to happen now. I have no interest in embarking on an 18- to 24-month home building project, let alone spending half or more of the old Nest Egg on it.

At the end of day 43 I asked myself, “Is it worth $25K a year for a fresh start?” or, what if I just stayed put and spent that much money here?

The answer is, no amount of piecemeal spending could relieve my 3am worries about the fabric of this place; and frankly I am not up for any amount of remodeling, which in my experience is always a vast amount of trouble and frustration.

So, yeah, if a fresh start in a pleasant place where I have zero worries about building maintenance, appliance repair, or landscaping — if that costs $25K extra a year, it’s probably worth it.

Day 44, SFMOMAdventure

Referring to yesterday, on consideration $30/day for food is not “generous”; given a restaurant meal for one in this area is always going to push $30, and I expect to eat out at least twice a week, $50/day would be a better average allowance. So that makes the default stay-at-home cost around $32K/year — still $20K less than a typical ILF and up to $50K less than the most expensive.

Monday, 1/14/2019

Over the weekend I’d seen some reference to SFMOMA, San Francisco’s modern art museum, and that reminded me that I hadn’t had a museum or urban experience since Day 11 when I used my brand new Clipper Card and Lyft to go to the deYoung Museum. This day I didn’t want to run because of a leg condition (long story, later), so why not go to MOMA? The weather was threatening but heck, I’ve got an umbrella.

I walked to the CalTrain station in a light sprinkle but it was dry the rest of the day. Took a Lyft the short distance to the museum. Actually got out a block early because traffic on 3rd street was not moving — riding in a Lyft in downtown SF is powerfully reminiscent of riding Lyft in Manhattan a year ago. (And not a pleasant reminiscence.)

I and Marian went to MOMA just once, ohhhh… at least ten years ago I imagine. I was surprised at how very large it is, 6 floors of stuff. I walked the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 4th floors this time. I’ll have to go back to see the rest. Two major galleries were of photography, which tempted me to start taking pictures with the phone. Here’s a wee gallery.

img_3577-xl — SFMOMA from Yerba Buena Center

Internal staircase — The interior is dramatic

"Student" by Wayne Thibeaud — There were many grade- and middle-school classes around

"Student" by Wayne Thiebaud — I like Wayne Thiebaud’s works. This is “Student”.

Spiders by Louise Bourgeois — MOMA in Manhattan has only one of Louise Bourgeois’s spiders. Here’s a whole family!

img_3563-x3 — Sorry, didn’t get the artist. I liked the way the words DEATH, MATTERS, PAIN, DOESNT, KNOWS, CARE flipped on and off at random.

img_3569-x2 — Vertical format selfie in front of a horizontal format painting. Oh well.

img_3576-x2 — Ran up the saturation here.

img_3583-x2 — David Attenborough whisper: “In the early spring, the cranes begin to gather, the younger blue ones respectfully following the mature orange ones…”

img_3588-xl — Why am I hearing the Macarena in my mind?

Day 43, Should I stay or should I go?

Welp, it was only slightly better than a hamburger. I started for Castro street (aka restaurant row) in Mountain View, thinking to go to Casa Lupe, a modest little Mexican café that we went to many times. Except approaching it, it occurs to me that I’ll likely be recognized by the waitress that served us many times over the years, and I don’t want to answer the inevitable question. And in fact I don’t want to go to where we went as a couple many times, including, I realized, the last or nearly last time Marian was able to go out to a restaurant.

So there I was wandering down Castro and more or less at random picked a modern Indian casual place where I ordered chicken curry and naan. The waiter wanted to know how spicy, and I said, oh, medium. Whoa. I do not want to know what that cook thought was really spicy, because the dish I got was barely edible, and I usually enjoy hot food. Anyway, back home, watched a little TV, got a serious case of the yawns about 9pm and went to bed, knowing it would mean being up early on Sunday morning.

Sunday, 1/13/2019

And was: up and dressed and had finished the NYT puzzle (38:40, not too far off my average) by 7:30. Out to the old coffee shop with the winter sun just up, shining through broken clouds. Walked along being very consciously aware, in the moment, apprehending the air and the light and my body, thinking, “this is me, this is mine,” deliberately claiming life as a solo person.

And of course I was home again with plenty of time on my hands before I was due to meet Dennis for a movie at 1pm. In the email was the info from Alan that I requested yesterday, on three additional independent living facilities (ILFs, henceforth).

I added their numbers to my document and then made up a little table of their monthly rentals on a 1BR unit, which range from a low of $3200 to a high of $8800.

Given those numbers, it appears that a ballpark estimate of the annual cost of living in an ILF is $60,000, give or take. $45,000 minimum. And when I think about that, I hear The Clash in my mind,

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I sat at the desk going through the check register and the online bill-pay record for the past 12 months, making an estimate of what it costs to live for a year in this fully-paid-for suburban home. In very round numbers: utilities $4K, insurance $4K (earthquake insurance is a bitch), maintenance including gardener, another $4K, taxes $2K (thank you Prop. 13!). Allowing a very generous $30/day for food adds $11K. So a ballpark estimate to merely stay put is $25,000 per annum, or about one-half the annual cost of an ILF.

Hmmmm…

The decision to “not be a home-owner” was one of the first conclusions I came to when I began thinking about my future as a widower, months before the event. I felt tired of having the responsibility of worrying about building and appliance maintenance and taxes and insurance.

Wanting a fresh start, too; to force a break with the past and to begin a new form of life with minimum baggage.

Is it worth $25K a year for a fresh start?

Or, here’s another way to think about it: apparently I’m willing to consider spending $60K/year for a residence and food. What could I have, if I stayed put and spent the other $35,000 right here? That much money would buy all-new appliances and an upgraded car — and that’s in just the first year.

Hmmmmm…. This indecision’s bugging me… don’t know whom I’m sposed to be…

To be continued.

Day 42, simple Saturday

Saturday, 1/12/2019

After breakfast I sat down to review the info on senior residences that Alan Brauner had sent. The info was in the form of PDF which looked like a printout from a database selection. Well, here’s the top row,

senseasons

Lots of good info, actually more than I need since I’m pretty sure I don’t want a Studio and certainly don’t want a 2-bedroom unit. To make sure I’d digested it I made my own document for each the places, and added entries for three others I knew of that I was curious about. I sent him an email asking for his info on those three. His data includes actual prices. You can’t get that from anybody’s website. The websites, like this one for The Avant for example, are all about healthy carefree seniors enjoying luxurious amenities, and avoid any mention of actual dollars. So the fact that Alan’s data includes what I suppose are current prices makes it valuable. (Although one has to wonder what those plus-signs really mean. I suppose if a 1BR starts at $8800/month, then the “$8000+” for a Studio can’t go much over $8799.) (Well, on second thought, maybe there are super deluxe studios that actually cost more than the cheapest 1-bedroom units.)

Prices are kind of all over the place. Among the seven facilities in his data, the monthly price for a 1BR ranges from $3200 to the $8800 at the Avant. What does a 1BR at the Avant have that is worth four thousand dollars a month more than a 1BR at Chateau Cupertino? You couldn’t tell from their websites. So — lots of research and shopping yet to do.

That done I went out, first to the Post Office to mail a packet of historical family data that turned up while I was cleaning out bookshelves. This was a folder of miscellaneous history and type-written biography about my mother’s family back in Pennsylvania that had been sitting between her autobiography and my father’s autobiography. Oh yes we are a writin’ family; the two of them went to a lot of trouble, each writing up their personal history and having it typed and copies made and distributed to junior relatives. (Sorry, posterity, from me this blog is all you get.) At some point I’d acquired this other material about my mother’s family, and stuck it in the same shelf. Now I sent off the fat packet (11.1 oz said the postal scale) to my niece who does all the family genealogy.

Thence to the market to buy some groceries. This grocery is next door to FOPAL, and today was the start of the book sale weekend. I’d never seen one of these, so after I put my grocery bags in the car I walked around to have a look. People queue up to enter, and are allowed in in small groups as similar numbers of people exit from the opposite door. Inside it’s quite crowded. I’d only seen the sale room when it was quiet, as I went in to stack a sorted box of books in front of its appropriate shelf area. Now it was full of people blocking the narrow aisles to stoop down and look at titles on the lower shelves. Lots of people were walking around with big armloads of books.

I had not meant to buy anything, but… In the science fiction section there was a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide omnibus, with all the novels of that series in one fat volume. For two bucks, how could I resist?

Back home I had a nap, added a feature to my program, and thought about what to do for dinner. I believe I’ll go out; hopefully for something nicer than a hamburger.

Day 41, flashback sad

Friday, 1/11/2019

Here’s a new syndrome: while I was filling my pill-cases and dressing this morning I had a mild feeling somewhere between disassociation and imposter syndrome: a vague sense that I was faking this independent adult life, that I was somehow putting on an act, a pretense, of being competent and capable. I hadn’t had that before, and it passed off quickly as I thought about it.

Later in the morning I set about doing a task I’d been putting off: taking a picture of my car registration and proof-of-insurance card. This because I’d seen the advice to do this, and to remove the printed cards from the car, multiple times. It seems that the registration slip and the insurance card provide good info for an identity thief; and police will accept a photo of registration on your phone.

So I got the two cards out of the car and was about to take the pictures when I realized that the photos app had over 1400 images. “That’s stupid,” I said, and started deleting pictures. Scroll scroll scroll to the top and start selecting groups and deleting them. Of course this takes me back to 2014 and on and pretty soon I am hitting blocks of pictures taken on various trips and outings. Italy, two years ago; New York City, 18 months ago; the WBB post-season trips only 9 months ago. Things I had done with Marian just last spring. A wave of grief just washed over me. So much intelligence, so much talent, so much good humor and courage and competence, ground down and extinguished by sickness. That it was all gone and over with seemed unutterably sad.

Yes, I know: Marian was just one of 154,000 people who died on that day of December. Probably most of them left survivors who feel as I do. It doesn’t help.

I did a couple of other things of a practical nature, then walked to the Stanford campus to meet up with Scott to see an exhibit and have lunch. The exhibit was We shot the war, photos from the archive of Overseas Weekly, an unauthorized alternative newspaper for servicemen. Lots of photos and stories of military life, fighting in ‘Nam. Scott has read a lot more than I of that war and filled in background. Afterward we had lunch at the Cantor museum café.

Home for a nap and a quiet evening.