Day 40, Back to Yosemite

Thursday 1/10/2019

Today I was scheduled to work for CHM at the warehouse where 98% of the collection is held, a big climate-controlled, secure box in Milpitas, off Yosemite avenue. For long months around 2008, and again in 2015, I spent a day a week working there helping to store and catalog hundreds of items. In 2008, it was a huge collection, two tractor-trailer loads, from Germany to process. In 2015 it was a campaign to catalog and photograph thousands of items that had been incompletely catalogued when the Museum moved from Boston to Mountain View. I hadn’t been in the Yosemite warehouse in three years. It hadn’t changed much, and the volunteers and staff who I worked with were all old friends from previous days.

The work was familiar but strenuous. We were moving a group of large chunks of a DEC KL-10 and a VAX, which were sitting on the ground floor, and putting them up on pallets so they could be fork-lifted to one of the upper levels. It was part of a game that Aurora, the site manager, called “museum tetris”, moving things from level to level to optimize space. Each heavy box had to be rolled on its casters up a ramp onto a pallet. Then its screw jacks could be lowered to stabilize it, and compression straps wrapped around it to lock it to the pallet. I worked on that with three others, while three more worked at moving dozens of storage boxes and placing restraint straps to ensure they wouldn’t fall in case of an earthquake.

About suppertime, my niece Denise returned a call and I finally got a chance to offer her our china service. She’ll consult with her partner and get back to me.

Day 39, Consultation

Wednesday, 1/9/2019

Had a good run, that is, one where I didn’t need to stop anywhere. Then headed out to

A meeting

as arranged, with Alan Brauner of Senior Seasons, a referral agency for senior living facilities. Alan turned out to genial, frank and seemed to be well-informed on all the local facilities. We went over my particular desires, and he promised to get back to me with details on several places he thought would suit me.

One thing I learned from this talk was the two classes of facility. One is the “buy-in” type, where you pay what he referred to as an “exorbitant” fee, effectively purchasing your unit, as you might a condo. The advantages of this arrangement are two. One, you have purchased some form of a real-estate property, and in theory you (or more likely your heirs) can sell that when you don’t need it. His experience with the buy-in home that his parents retired to, however, was that the contract was so written that the facility kept a good share of the capital gain on the sale. When his parents died, their estate realized only a few percent more than the initial purchase cost.

The other advantage of a buy-in is that you lock in a monthly rental — oh yes, despite buying in, you still pay a monthly fee in the thousands of dollars — which will not increase even if you need a higher level of care. Channing House, where my distant acquaintance Craig lives, is a buy-in facility. I mean to contact Craig and get a tour, and if it seems appropriate, I’ll grill him a bit on what he paid and what he gets for it.

The other style of facility is month-to-month. You make no commitment other than to give 30 days’ notice before moving out. (Well, I imagine there are longer leases available.) You are renting an apartment with full services (“like being on a cruise”, Alan said) for a monthly fee. You don’t own anything, so there’s nothing to come back to your estate; and while some are “continuing care”, that is, providing various levels of assistance, the monthly charge goes up with the level of service needed.

I headed home to

Kill the freezer

What? Well, for several nights I have been annoyed by the noise of my refrigerator, which is separated from the bed by one wall. The circulating fan in the freezer has developed a buzz. The fridge is old, in fact (referring to our Home Inventory spreadsheet) we bought it in 2000. (All of our appliances are of similar vintage. ISMISEP!) I had replaced the fan in the freezer several years back; now it was buzzing again.

When it was keeping me awake around 4am, it suddenly occurred to me: why am I keeping that freezer compartment going anyway? There’s nothing in it but ice. Previously we’d “cook for the freezer” a couple of times a year, filling it with containers of home-made soups and stews. Then we’d take an entrée from the freezer once a week or so. Well, those were all gone, and won’t be replaced. Marian kept a couple of gel-pads in the freezer to use on her back, but I tossed those old pads in my semi-hysterical clean-out on Day 1. The freezer compartment is empty except for a few odds and ends of leftovers that frankly, I don’t want to eat.

So, back home from my meeting, I put the the food items from the freezer in the green recycle and turned the freezer thermostat to off. I strongly suspect my electric bill will go down. I know I’ll sleep better.

Then it was off to FOPAL for a sorting shift. Wow that is a workout: on my feet and continually moving for 2+ hours, shifting heavy boxes of books around. This weekend is the first of the bi-weekly sales of the year. Most section managers have loaded their shelves and declared a “hold” on their subject, meaning that when a box of “History” of “Nature” books fills up, we can’t take it to the sale room as usual. It has to be stacked in the sorting area, the center of which is now dominated by a mountain of boxes, leaving less and less room to walk around. People showed up at the door with more books every few minutes. Three sorters could pretty much keep up with the flow.

On the way home I stopped at Goodwill and handed in a bag with the last remnants of Marian’s stuff and a few items of my own I’d culled from my side of the closet.

By 5pm I’d received an email from Alan, listing seven facilities he thought might interest me, with details on their costs and amenities. Well, as I emphasized to him, I’m in no hurry. I’ll look at those maybe this weekend.

Day 38, Social Security

Tuesday 1/8/2019

I started the day with a brisk walk to the YMCA and my (short, perfunctory) round of strength exercises.

Today was the day for the long-anticipated appointment with the Social Security that I’d been given on Day 12. Then I’d been unable to complete the process because I hadn’t brought proof of marriage. I’d been worrying about whether the government shutdown would be affecting SS offices, but no, everything was operating normally. I only had to wait a few minutes, and in fact I think my name was called within a minute or so of 1pm, my scheduled appointment time.

I’d left early and stopped to pick up some kind of lunch at a Safeway store across from the SS office. When checking out there I had realized to my great chagrin, that I didn’t have my wallet with ID and credit cards. I had carried it on my exercise outing and neglected to transfer it from my shorts to my jeans when I dressed. Well, no biggie, I knew right where it was, on the dresser, and shouldn’t need it, right?

So what is the first thing the very nice and helpful SS clerk asked for when I sat down? My ID, of course! God damn I felt like a… like a forgetful old fart, is what. But he said smoothly, “No problem, I’ll just ask you some security questions,” and proceeded to grill me about where I was born, mother’s maiden name, and a few other things. After some more interrogation he told me that my Survivor Benefit would have the effect of raising my SS payment by about $400/month. Mentally I calculated that would mean I’d be getting about the same amount that Marian used to get, a bit over $1600/month.

In the end, the net effect of (a) the end of Marian’s IBM pension, (b) the end of her SS payment, offset by (c) the increase in my SS and (d) some reduction of monthly expenses (I’m paying way less for groceries than before, for example), is a drop of about $3500 in the monthly household income. In the past we lived comfortably off our combined pensions. Going forward, it is clear I will have to begin to dip into the nest egg on a regular basis. Fortunately the nest egg is pretty chunky and can survive many years of dipping. (Actually, now I think about it, just raising the “required minimum distribution” out of my IRA somewhat above the minimum will come close to covering the shortfall.)

Back home and with my wallet back in my pocket, I made out the check for the first quarter estimated tax payment and mailed that. When Marian did our taxes last spring, she had prepared the federal and state quarterly estimated tax vouchers, each with its mailing envelope and a big post-it note with the date by which it should be mailed. Today I mailed the federal one with the “1/15” post-it. One remains, the state one to mail before “2/1”. And that will be the end of Marian’s carefully prepared tax materials. I’ll have to step up for the next cycle. Me, the guy who walks out of the house without his wallet.

Suli, our cleaning lady, came today. I showed her the remaining items in Marian’s closet and she said she’d take them all, “for my mother”. OK, fine. And when I got back from the SS, that side of the closet was empty at last. I moved my collection of hats to the upper shelf on that side.

I spent some time inventorying our collection of basketball memorabilia. We had a number of items relating to the short-lived San Jose Lasers professional team: sweatshirts, signed team photos, etc. I emailed a friend, another Lasers fan, with the list. She’s very well-connected into that fan base and will forward the list. Hopefully somebody will want some of these things.

Day 37, mo’ bidness

Monday 1/7/2019

My run was not as easy as last week. Some days, including twice last week, I can go the whole 35-40 minutes without stopping except for a traffic light. Some days, like this one, there are “internal headwinds” — as I used to say when a bike ride got too long — and I end up pausing to breathe. No pattern to this that I can tell. Oh well.

Back home it was time to tackle the IBM Benefits package. I re-read the instructions for claiming the $5000 life-insurance benefit and carefully filled out the beneficiary form. Put it in the postage-paid envelope with the death certificate and sealed it — and noticed I’d left out the second page. Sigh. Tore open the postage paid envelope and made up a new one with stamps, and sealed it.

Then turned my attention to that peculiar $5/month settlement. I called the benefits office and spoke to a helpful gentleman. He said, well, it was a settlement for a lawsuit, and IBM had to pay some retirees extra. That was all he knew. Could I get it merged with my existing pension payment? Probably, but that would be up to the Pension group, and first I had to claim it. So, there was nothing for it but to return the necessary forms relating to that.

Which meant that, after I carefully filled out the form for direct payment to my bank account, and the state and federal withholding forms saying, no, I don’t want taxes withheld from this $4.89 payment each month, I had to tear open my stamped envelope and add several more sheets. Now it was beyond the capacity of a normal envelope but fortunately I had bought 9×12 envelopes (on Day 14). So for the third time I inventoried the sheets I was mailing, sealed and stamped them and later mailed the package.

Later I filled out a contact form with a senior housing referral service, and in the afternoon got a reply. I’m scheduling a meeting with “Alan” and we’ll see what kind of advice he has to offer.

Day 36, Stanford Memorial

Sunday, 1/6/2019

Went to the nearby coffee shop to read the paper, but had to leave early because someone had brought in a very cute lad about 7 years old who, though full of energy, was coughing, hoarsely and continuously, hrrroorrkkk! He had been taught to cover his mouth but he was being perfunctory about it, barely swinging his forearm in front of his face as he hacked, so there was plenty of room for his germs to get out. I bundled up my paper and beat it away from the little germ-ball.

Around 11am Dennis arrived, then Jean, then Darlene and Jesse, and off we went to Maples Pavilion for the WBB game against UCLA. Coach Amy’s comps were in kind of a corner, but at least we were all together for what turned out to be a very exciting game, Stanford falling behind by 20 at one point before clawing back into the game and taking a firm lead only in the last 6 minutes to win.

Then we moved across the arena for the “Behind the Bench” talk, which opened with a very nice tribute to Marian. The pictures I’d supplied looked great on the Jumbotron, and announcer Betty Ann Boeving read a short, clear tribute. After the similar tribute to DeeDee Zahwaydah, Tara ad-libbed a couple more sentences about Marian. It was very nice, and nice for Jean and Darlene to see the regard she was held in there.

On return to the house I invited Darlene and Jesse to make free of the remaining items of Marian’s clothing, and they each took a top, more from politeness I think than real desire. Next week the remainder goes to the ACS shop.

Day 35, quiet Saturday

The Stanford Cardinal edged out the USC Trojans. The game was close with SC sometimes ahead until the fourth quarter, when Stanford took a decisive lead and held it.

Saturday 1/5/2019

Quiet start to the day, with a grief-spasm. Scott had urged me to contact Craig, another ex-IBMer who lives in one of the retirement communities I’m considering. So I did email him, and since he wouldn’t have known, I included the link to Marian’s obituary from the PostHope website, the one I wrote back on Day 1. Which meant re-reading it, which led to quite a bit of emotion for a while.

Went to the museum to lead the 12:00 tour. Talking to my dashboard on the way, to get myself settled down and ready to meet a group of people who know nothing (and want to know nothing) about my personal life, just want to have fun learning about computer history. Had a large crowd, more than 40, which is awkwardly big, but I managed to keep at least 30 of them with me to the end and got a nice round of applause.

Back home, in the mail I received the package I’ve been waiting for from

IBM Benefits

They say Marian had a life insurance policy with me as beneficiary in the amount of $5000. I have to return a form and a death certificate to claim it. Also it contained this rather peculiar note,

Marian was receiving a Settlement Benefit from IBM and designated you as his [sic] Joint Annuitant. Therefore, you will receive $4.58 monthly starting January 01, 2019 and continuing for your lifetime.

Huh? I don’t know what this “Settlement Benefit” could have been. Anyway, $4.58? Why bother? Doesn’t it cost at least as much just to process it?

I am going to call the representative whose name is on the letter and find out if I can possibly, (a) get a lump-sum settlement (it comes to $55/year; gimme $500 and I’ll call it quits), or (b) get it paid annually so I won’t see $4.58 showing up in my bank statement every month, or (c), can you combine this with the $300/month pension I get from IBM, or (d) you just want to forget about it, I promise not to sue.

Anyway that’s some paperwork I will handle on Monday.

Swallowdale

In other news, in October I was going over my bookshelves with an eye to throwing stuff out or selling it, and found my collection of books by and about Arthur Ransome, the British author of children’s classics such as Swallows and Amazons. I thought I had all his books in Penguin/Puffin paperback editions I’d bought while in England in the 1970s. I also have books about him and about the locations he used for his stories (the Lake District, the Norfolk Broads). Looking over the collection I was surprised to find I was missing Swallowdale, the second book of the series. I’m sure I owned it at some time, but now it was just not there. Which rather squelched the idea I had at the time, to sell the collection on eBay.

So on this quiet Saturday it crossed my mind to find out what it would cost to get that edition of Swallowdale. I opened abebooks.com, clicky clicky, boom: price $1 plus $5 shipping. Hey, one month of IBM Settlement money covers it! On that basis I ordered it. When it comes, I’ll try selling the collection; if it doesn’t move, I am sure the FOPAL children’s sale will appreciate it.

Day 34, game day

Before the diary, a thought on the topic of

Not Screwing Up

The anxiety I’ve been having spells of this month? I’ve mentioned it several times. The best description would be the sinking feeling you get when you realize there was something you were supposed to do and you now realize you forgot to do it. Well, I had a bit of an insight on its source: I’m afraid of screwing up.

Here’s the thing: I, probably very much like most people, am prone to forgetting things or overlooking things. But for several decades I’ve been able to rely on Marian’s good memory and practicality to catch my mistakes or oversights before I make them. “Are you forgetting that…” or “You do remember we have to…” were common sentence openings for her, to me. Not so much the reverse, although once in a while I would think of some consideration she’d missed.

Now I don’t have that steady oversight. I lost my co-pilot; I’m flying solo. And apparently, it scares me. To a degree the fear is legitimate. I will screw up, forget things, drop balls. People do.

I find myself compensating, making lots of lists, checking my online calendar often, reviewing the upcoming hours to reassure myself that I have all my obligations under control. The extra efforts in home maintenance (treating the leather cushions, refinishing the table tops) are ways of asserting my ability to maintain in a general sense. Hopefully with time I will regain some confidence in my own wits.

Friday 1/4/2019

Started with a run. Exchanged emails with Scott about where to have lunch. Put in 90 minutes on one of my programming projects. Met Scott for lunch. Chilled out for the afternoon. In the evening, went to the Stanford WBB game against USC. Will tell the results tomorrow.

Day 33, a full day

Yesterday evening, coach Amy Tucker came through in spades, saying comp tix for my party for the Sunday game would be at the player window. I’m sure my relatives will be impressed with their seats. But somehow this exchange got into my brain and kept me wakeful much of the night. Anticipating this party, completely inane and unreal worry that I’d offended Amy, who knows? Worry worry and toss and turn.

Thursday 1/3/2019

The middle of the day is filled with my first cataloging shift at CHM in over two years. I’ve spent many hours over the last decade cataloging objects, but stopped doing that activity in favor of leading tours. A few weeks ago I was invited to schedule myself for cataloging sessions again. So today I was to show up at the museum’s Shustek Center at ten. One little problem: I’d been to the Shustek Center only once before, for a tour when it first opened a couple of years ago. I knew it was near Milpitas, but couldn’t remember exactly where.

Well, no problem, I’ll just get it off the CHM website. Um, no, I won’t; the site absolutely does not give that info. I’m pretty good at using search engines, and I could not find the address of this building. After an hour I did turn it up, using the online equivalent of brute force. I opened the online PDF of the Museum’s glossy annual magazine for the year the Center opened. There was an article about the creation of the new site, and buried in it was the address. Apparently that PDF wasn’t being indexed by Google.

Everyone at the site was very welcoming. I did some good work cataloging a rack of 1950s-era plugboards for IBM unit-record machines, and enjoyed lunch with a cheerful group of 8.

Back home by 3pm, just time for a little rest before heading out for the day’s second activity. One of the Stanford WBB fans, Harriet, had organized a group to go to Pinewood high school and watch a Stanford recruit, Hannah Jump, play. Five of us met at Harriet’s house for a good, simple meal at 5, and then off to the Pinewood campus in Los Altos Hills. I rode in Arlene’s Tesla, the first time I’ve ridden in a Tesla. We were all impressed by the quality of play in the game between the Pinewood Pumas and Sacred Heart Prep: the girls are fast, athletic, and intense. Pinewood won, and Hannah looked like a college-ready player.

Back home at 8:30 to find lots of watchable TV programs on the DVR. Quite a nice day.

Day 32, the year actually starts

Yesterday afternoon I did something that wasn’t on any of my to-do lists except the vague one in the back of my head, the looming little thundercloud of “shit that gotta be done pretty soon but not yet.”

Specifically, I started to sort all our little decorative tchotchkes and identify the ones for which we saved some kind of provenance record. The source was a big envelope labeled “art and decorative”, into which we’d tossed receipts and artists’ cards and brochures over the years. I was able to pair up a lot of objects with their receipts or other info. I was left with a dozen bits of paper that I couldn’t match to an object. I’m particularly intrigued by a receipt for an Inuit “Raven Fetish” in “dyed walrus ivory”. I don’t remember any such object.

In the picture, the seagull statue is by Ken Shutt, a sculptor who worked most of his career in Hawaii. Marian bought that sculpture when she was working for IBM in Honolulu in the 1960s. A nearly identical statue can be seen on EBay priced at $395. That one differs in two ways: one, the upper bird was broken off and re-glued; and two, its birds are bright white, where mine are about the color of my teeth. Say “cream” to be polite. I assume the yellow color is the result of the birds living with first one, then two cigarette smokers for thirty years. I’ve made a couple of tentative efforts to lighten this color, first with warm water and dish soap, then with warm water and a little ammonia. No result.

Anyway, at the end I have a dozen items I could price fairly accurately, from $40 to $500, and maybe 30 more objects that I can’t — but which are probably worth $1 to $10 or so. When I started the project I had the vague notion that I’d sell the items singly on EBay myself.

Then I got real: do I really want the job of creating 20 or 30 EBay listings, and then packing and shipping 20 or 30 packages, plus re-listing the ones that didn’t sell with lower reserves, etc. etc.? Seriously? How many hours would I spend on that and, if I paid myself $15/hour, would those sales even cover my time plus the packing materials?Nunh-uhn, nope. So I left this project frustrated.

Wednesday 1/2/2019

Started the day with a run. Well, actually, started the morning with a few minutes of anxiety, the “something undone” thing that’s been coming and going occasionally. It’s not bad; when I recognize it I can deal with it by taking deep breaths and thinking through my schedule for the day. But it’s annoying. (No, I am not interested in any chemical treatments.) So then the run. And spent some time looking up comparables for my tchotchke collection, then looking up listings for estate appraisers on Yelp. I think I will consult with my friend the realtor for a reference on that.

And then off to do stuff. First off, drive over to Stanford hoping to buy good seats for the now four relatives who want to attend the UCLA game on Sunday. I swung by the ticket office at the stadium Monday, saw it was closed, and went away without looking closer. Today also it was closed; grumping, I walked close up to read the notice in the window: closed for winter break, back on the 7th, buy tickets on gostanford.com. Oh, sigh.

So I went back home and used gostanford to buy very ordinary seats in the upper sections because that was all the computer could sell. I am pretty sure that if I talked to a ticket agent directly, they’d have courtside and such that don’t show on the computer. So later in the day I sent an email to Amy Tucker, politely asking if she has any comps. Bet she comes through.

With the ticket issue tabled, I drove down to the Mountain View Community Center and found where they accept donated food. Left off my two bags of canned stuff from the pantry. Then on to FOPAL for 2-1/2 hours of sorting, and so home for a quiet evening.

Day 31, New Year’s

Last night’s dinner with Bob and Lolly was a mild pleasure. My connection to them is rather weak; I always felt like they were more Marian’s friends than mine. I thought they might have some questions about her death or final days, and was braced to tell them how it went. But no, they expressed no curiosity about that at all, nor did they want to reminisce about her. I don’t know if they were being nice to me or just didn’t care. Anyway, I left after the meal and was home by 8pm.

Tuesday 1/1/2019

Filled out a check for the cleaning lady and got the year right in the date, so there. New Year’s day, the day you are all set to start out with many projects and activities, but absolutely nothing is open anywhere so you can’t do any of it.

Began with a long walk. Ordinarily when I walk for exercise, I walk to the center of Palo Alto where I can get a food reward for my efforts at a coffee shop. But of course nothing would be open. So instead, how about a scenic walk? I decided to walk the Palo Alto Baylands. It’s a linear walk, not a loop, so I took a Lyft to the South end, walked for an hour and a quarter (about three miles?), and took a Lyft home from the North end. It was a sparkling clear day; this and the prior two days have been the rare, ultra-clear days that usually only come in January, when every distant hill is visible, even Mount Diablo 50 miles away.

This was a walk that Marian liked to take ten years ago, before her walking range diminished. But today I very consciously thought “I am doing this for my own pleasure, not out of nostalgia.”

Back home I spent a couple of hours re-creating the big spreadsheet that Marian made to track our various investment accounts. The final numbers for 2018 were available on the Schwab web page, so I could close out the 2018 sheet (bottom line, our wealth is down about 7% from year-end 2017) and transfer the totals into the “Prior Year” column of the new sheet. Marian had created the first of these annual sheets beginning in 1997(!), using AppleWorks(!). Then each year she’d copied it, zeroed the data, and started a new one. At some point a decade ago she converted to Numbers, Apple’s current spreadsheet, which caused some oddities in the formulae and formatting. Rather than try to copy the sheet and zero the values for the new year, I elected to make a completely new spreadsheet, following her design but from scratch with no legacy code.

That was another item scratched off the to-do list on the desk. I do like crossing off to-do items. Maybe I’ll go do another one.