Saturday, 9/14/2019
A leisurely morning before departing at 11am to lead the noon docent tour at the Museum. That went ok, although in hindsight I omitted some of my best points. I have given this tour maybe 30, 40? times and I swear I’ve never done it the same, or remembered every point, once.
On the way back I stopped at FOPAL, where the monthly sale weekend was on. I tidied up my Computer section–people make such a mess of it, come on, look at the book and if you aren’t buying it, just put it back where you got it already. Of course they don’t. Anyway, quite a few books gone.
In the middle of the day I got some disappointing news. Back on Day 154 I had seen the painting “Eight Pelicans” and really liked it. Since, I’d arranged to visit the artist’s studio next Friday with Darlene and Jessea and fully planned to buy the painting then. Today I got an email from Carol the artist, saying apologetically that some people had come by her studio that morning and bought “Eight Pelicans”. Well, crap! I shoulda coulda woulda given a deposit or something earlier. I had this stupid emotional thing where I didn’t want to do it until the house escrow had closed, and then that I wouldn’t do it until I could look at it again and… now it’s gone.
At supper the table conversation was about the new Stanford Hospital wing. Several people had been on an organized tour to the open house for the new facility. Very impressive, looks very expensive. “Did you go, Dave?” Um no, I said; I had spent entirely too much time at Stanford Hospital last year while my wife was sick. She was in there almost three weeks in total, plus a couple of other visits to the Emergency room. While I have no complaint with any of the staff, who were every one highly professional and humane, the environment was not pleasant long term, and having a shiny new building wouldn’t improve it. It wouldn’t fix the stress, the uncertainty of never knowing when your doctor or some specialist might pop in on rounds, never knowing how long you’ll wait to be taken for a test of some kind; and the bureaucracy that stifled all the staff and made the simplest things tedious.
Sooner or later I’ll no doubt need hospitalization and if there’s any choice about it, I’ll go to Sequoia or El Camino in preference to Stanford. No doubt they have the same problems but at least I won’t have to fight memories.
Codgerville 