Thursday 03/18/2021
Did the aerobics and then set myself to tidy the apartment. I had a week’s worth of recycling and trash collected in my little recycling-and-trash corner, which I toted down the hall to where the recycle bins were already pretty full. And as usual picked up a few out-of-place things, and closed all the closet doors and so forth, in general cleaning the house before the housecleaner comes, as one does.
I also came to a decision. My blood pressure has been sitting 10-15 points higher than it should be, and higher than it was a month ago. And I’ve been using a Keto (low carb) shake for my breakfasts for a while, and like it and its range of flavors. I know the Keto fanatics make all kinds of claims about reversing Type II diabetes and so on. So I wondered, suppose I went 100% for a couple of weeks, long enough to get into ketosis for a week, and see if the BP turns down in that time.
The complication here is that we turn in a marked-up menu with our food choices for the week, Sunday through Saturday, and my menu for next week is due today. So I have to decide, am I going to do this? If so, I have to mark the menu “no meals this week” right now. OK, going to do it. Marked up the menu “no thanks” for the next week. So that’ll be a new adventure, starting Sunday.
Next I went down to FOPAL and did an hour tidying the computer section. On return I had lunch, a short nap, and then it was time for Wanda to come in and clean, so I went to the 11th floor for an hour.
While there I figured out a constructive approach to a wee controversy that is brewing around here. Every floor has a spare room in the central core that can be used for some common purpose. It’s about 12 x 20, not huge, can be locked. On the 5th floor it’s a workshop for handcrafts, with a nice bench and lots of cabinets with donated tools and parts. On the 8th (I think) it’s a sewing room.
And on the 10th, it is a computer room, with two Macs, two PCs, 2 or 3 printers, all for the use of people who don’t have adequate computer resource in their own rooms. The computer room is managed and maintained by Bert, and last week Bert started an email chain saying, the room was getting less and less use because people moving in are more computer savvy and have their own systems. He’d like to either shut it down, or scale it down and move it to a corner of some other room, like the Library or the 5th floor shop.
Lots of comments on this thread, many opposed to any change, but in general the whole issue is headed for the Residents Association who are ultimately the managers for all these common spaces — not the paid staff, who don’t have anything to do with them. I have not contributed anything to this email thread. Keeping a low posture so far.
So I was thinking about this and anticipating a long and circular and repetitive and boring discussion in the next RA executive committee meeting. How can we make this more interesting. And the idea of co-working spaces crossed my mind. Suppose instead of computer room which we really don’t much need, we had a real co-working space with copier, and a table to spread things out on, and stuff like a three-hole punch and a scanner &etc. Here I was thinking of the marketing stuff I’ve been reading, and how this could be a lovely very modern and trendy marketing asset to help sell Channing House to retiring Boomers.
So I put that out as my contribution to Bert’s long email thread. Probably the most constructive thing I’ve done all week.
Codgerville 