1.265 coordinating, grief, model

Saturday 8/22/2020

The air is heavy with smoke from the fires to the West and South. Because of uncertainty about power (although there have been no interruptions), we are supposed to use the freight elevator. However this is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, on each floor the freight elevator opens into a large vestibule at the South end of the building. Between that vestibule and the hallway that runs the length of the floor, is a heavy door. It’s probably a 2-hour fire rating, anyway a heavy door 36 inches wide. Under it is a, um, what do you call the plate you put under a door to bridge the transition from one floor surface to the next? A transom? Whatever, it’s an aluminum plate that amounts to a 1/4-inch speed bump for a cart or a wheelchair. Never mind that a wheelchair user could not possibly operate that door. It isn’t easy for a mobile person to open the door, hold it against its automatic closer, and roll a tall cart with 25 dinner trays over the transom plate. Which is what we have to do, because meal deliveries are to use the freight elevator.

So I went down to the lobby at 7 to meet with Marcia and discuss the fallout from Rhonda’s meeting yesterday. Are we going to turn the meal delivery back to the dining staff now they are released from quarantine? That would be kind of a shame, since we have 30 or so volunteers signed up to delivery meals over the next two weeks, and they all find it very satisfying to do. What did she mean by some other things she said, like, volunteers doing something about the excess of signage in the elevators (and why would that matter just now, when we aren’t supposed to use the elevators)? Kim of HR came by just then and we engaged her on this. Nothing conclusive from this except that she would talk to the kitchen management and come back to us.

Well, on signage, somehow I got tasked with replacing the signs advising people to wear masks and go only one to an elevator. I went back to my room and came up with some, I thought, rather cool signs, which I circulated and got approval on and eventually hung about near the freight elevator on each floor, later. Plus I printed up a fresh batch of the tally sheet we use to record packages in the volunteer package receipt task, and put them on the clipboard I provided for that. And that was the morning.

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Later I had another volunteer task to do. Tom the Resident Association head had gotten the Gift Shop to generate a check to pump up the R.A. treasury. I had to deposit this to our Wells Fargo account. Among the things I inherited with the Treasurer job was a folder labeled “Wells Fargo”, attached to which by a bear clip is an ATM card with the PIN conveniently recorded on a post-it. So I took that and the check and went off to Wells Fargo and deposited the check.

From there it was a block to the Farmers’ Market. I walked around, picked up some seedless grapes, and had me a good old sniffle-fest. Visiting the Farmers’ Market was a consistent part of our week for, oh, probably 20 years, maybe 30. By the mid-1980s we had established the pattern that, walking back from our Sunday coffee’n’paper, we would hash out what dinner entrees we would cook in that week. “You do that stir-fry, I’ll do mac and cheese…” At home we would write up the menu for the week, and make out a grocery list, and head out to shop. For a long time the first stop was the California Avenue Farmers’ Market. In the last five years or so, Marian decided it was more convenient to go to DiMartini’s farm stand in Los Altos.

So walking through the Farmers’ Market is a continual reminder of the things we used to look for, anticipate, and enjoy buying. Today, just into the market, there was a booth with stacks of nice looking sweet corn in the husk. How Marian would have jumped on that, “Oh, let’s have that two nights.” Flavor King Pluots. Nectarines. So I’m walking through the market sniffling inside my mask and not wiping my eyes because we don’t touch our face.

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For the afternoon I worked on the Ford model. I made up a two-page “punch list” of tasks to finish it and killed a lot of them. If it wasn’t that I have two meetings tomorrow I’d be sure of finishing it then.

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Nobody had signed up for the 5pm package processing task, so I did it. On the weekend we don’t have our doorman, Paul, who marks apartment numbers on the packages. So I had the fun of slinging a big sharpie. And calling about 8 people to say they had packages.

While downstairs Marcia came by to supervise the evening meal deliveries, and said that she had heard from Kim of HR that she, Kim, needed to discuss the volunteer meal delivery with Rhonda, but it should continue for the next week, anyway.