Sunday 05/30/2021

OK, today was the day I had agreed with Ann Armour to meet with her at a restaurant near her house.

Who?

Ann and I were close in the years of (about) 1965-66. This picture is from then.

The almost unbelievable arithmetic says that was 55 goddam years ago. I last spoke to her in about (without a diary, “about” is the best I can do) 1967. Although she says she invited me to lunch a year later. I don’t remember that. In fact it seemed like, “Really? I don’t remember that” was something we each said a lot today.

Ann contacted me by email in late 2019. We had a tentative exchange of email. I was initially upset and a bit dubious about her motives. That period of my life was an emotional turmoil and I wasn’t pleased to be made to remember it, even after 55 (goddam) years. But I settled down and we agreed to meet at a restaurant near her house in Kentfield (Marin county) around the middle of March 2020.

We all know what happened to that plan. Anyway, now that we are both vaccinated, we again agreed to meet. We had a very pleasant 2-hour brunch at a really nice restaurant, and brought each other up to date on what major events had passed in our lives. It was all very normal and comfortable, no strong emotions roused. Turns out we are both healthy considering our ages (she’s a few years older than me) and comfortably situated.

So that’s pretty much that. She’s a nice person, we had good conversation, we’ll probably meet up again some time.

Dennis, who would have been about 12? 13? at the time, is certain that I and Ann took him along with us to a show at “Coffee & Confusion”, a folk club in North Beach. If so that would have been really irresponsible of me. But I was an immature 20-something asshole, so irresponsibility would have been par for the course.

When I mentioned Dennis to her she didn’t remember meeting him, but when I mentioned Joyce, his mother, it reminded her of a strange event. She recalls that once, she showed me a new pair of shoes she had on, and pointed out that the maker’s name, Joyce, was imprinted on the soles, which made me burst out laughing saying “You’re walking on Joyce!”. Probably I was on the outs with Joyce. Did I mention being an immature 20-something asshole?

Drove home, took a nap, had dinner. That was the day.

Saturday 05/29/2021

About 7am I thought about what to do, and decided to do the Dish walk. I started by eating breakfast in the dining room for the first time ever. Took a Lyft to the trail head and did the entire 3.6 mile loop with its ups and downs.

I had a ticket to the last regular season game of Stanford Baseball. That was to start at 12:30. Believing there wouldn’t be any concessions, I took a ham sandwich from the grab-n-go section of the new dining room, but when I got to Sunken Diamond there was an open concession stand. And the ham sandwich was quite dry, with a mayonnaise packet that I couldn’t get open. So I dumped the sandwich and bought nachos.

Something else unusual about this game: I took my old scoring forms and clipboard. Back story. In the 1980s Marian and I were big Giants fans, attending many games and listening to games on the radio. During the 90s we went off them a bit, eventually taking up SWBB instead. No matter. Also in that time, it was the very early days of the internet, I got involved with an organization called Project Scoresheet. This was an attempt by amateur volunteers to build up the kind of detailed scoring statistics that Major League Baseball had, but which they kept for themselves. Amateur would score games in detail and … I don’t remember if we sent the paper forms in to be collated? I think so, there was no online form.

Project Scoresheet developed their own scoring forms and methods, quite different from the conventional scoring form you find in the back of your program if you go to a ballgame. I was using pro documentation software tools in my work (I think this was while I was working at Informix?) and was a pro tech writer, so I took it on myself to make really nice versions of the score sheet and to write a 25-page manual for how to use it. By the time I’d done it the Project had evaporated and nobody cared. (Story of my life…) But I still had those forms as PDFs — somewhere?

I got back from the Dish at 10:30 and had 90 minutes until I had to leave for the game. In that time I managed to find the old scoring docs (last modified in 2002) on a separate disk. Printed out the double-sided form, and spent ten minutes skimming my own manual to remember how to do it.

Well, the game wasn’t that good. The OSU Beavers, not normally a very competitive team, scored in every even-numbered inning, 2 in the second, 2 in the fourth, 3 in the sixth. When we finished the bottom of the sixth and Stanford had managed only one run, I took note that my bare arms were feeling sunburned and called it a day.

The final was 9-1. This will do Stanford no good whatever in the eyes of the NCAA Selection Committee. I set up to record the Selection show on Monday, but I expect that Stanford will not be one of the top 16 seeds who get to host a regional. In which case the tickets I reserved (Day 2.171) will evaporate.

But it was fun scoring, and as usual the act of scoring helped keep me involved in the game.

Tomorrow morning a whole different adventure awaits.

Friday 05/28/2021

Not much going on today. I spent a couple of hours working on my software project, which is proving to be just hard enough to be challenging and interesting. It sucks up time, though.

Rhonda’s weekly zoom ended in a record 30 minutes. No news is not necessarily good news. She doesn’t expect any change of guidance from the State or County departments of health until after June 15, so the next two Friday meetings are canceled. So at a minimum two more weeks of wearing masks when outside our apartments, washing hands before entering the building, no condiments on the dining tables, etc.

Thursday 05/26/2021

Did Veronica’s aerobics for I think the last time. From now on it will be led by AJ and not on zoom but locally on the 11th floor.

Tidied the apartment. Did a bit of desk work. Then noticed that 23andMe had sent its usual monthly email, “You have new DNA relatives”. At this point I have a couple of hundred “DNA relatives” with whom I share 2%, 5%, similar small bits of DNA. “Third to fifth cousin”. Except for about 3 people who are second cousins or such, and whose names I recognize as distant relatives.

Today was something new, a first cousin, that is, technically the child of a sibling of one of my parents. My parents don’t have siblings. But this guy, born in 1949, has an almost identical X chromosome to mine. Males inherit the X from their mothers only; and indeed, when I used 23andMe’s DNA comparison tool, he has zero percent common DNA with my second cousin Gino, who descended only from my father. So this guy is not at all related on my father’s side, but strongly related on my mother’s.

I passed this info to Laurel who has made a serious hobby, or part-time paying job, from tracing ancestors and family trees. I also cc’d Dennis who responded with what was complete news to me — although apparently he and Laurel had discussed it — that his mother, my half sister, had borne another child at some point. If the dude on 23andMe is that person, it perfectly accounts for the DNA match.

In the end what does it matter? Probably nothing in practical terms. I would have no interest in meeting the guy. Dennis might, but that would be his decision. But it is an interesting example of how the DNA tracing websites can sometimes upset family histories.

After lunch spent two hours at FOPAL sorting books, while Wanda cleaned my unit.

In other news, I bought a four-person “pod” ticket for Stanford Baseball’s post-season games. It is not certain Stanford will host post-season, that will be announced Monday. If they do I and three of my neighbors can attend a total of 7 games weekend after next.

I have an even more exciting outing planned for this Sunday. I’ll let that hang for now.

Wednesday 05/26/2021

Got up at 4am, dressed and stepped out into the fire escape. The moon was just visible from there, around the edge of the building, but partly blocked by a tree. So I took the camera up to the roof and got a couple of pics.

Later in the day I put the final touches on the Golf GTI model. The following pictures show its best angles. The paint job is a disgrace, I really hacked it up in several ways. Not my best work, by a long way.

Tuesday 05/25/2021

After aerobics class I had to hurry to shower and dress and it was time to head out for the 1-mile walk to PAMF for a scheduled echo-cardiogram. Routine and all. From there walked to Peet’s coffee, and thence back.

After lunch I met up with Sandy who runs the library to pick up a box of books for FOPAL. They used to collect donated books and FOPAL volunteers, the “pick-up crew” because they used an actual pickup to pick up donations from people’s houses, would stop by. That ended with the pandemic of course. So our library stopped accepting donations but they still had some. So I took a box down with me.

Feast or famine; after 3 weeks of no computer book donations, today there were 5 boxes. I spent 2 and a half hours getting them all processed.

Lots going on tonight. One, from 9pm to 5am, they are shutting off the water to replace a bunch of old plumbing valves. So I set an alarm on the phone for 8:30, to remind me to use the toilet then.

Then there is the lunar eclipse happening at 4am to 4:15 about. I have the camera all set on the tripod and an alarm set for 4am. I think possibly I will be able to get a view and pictures from the fire stair at my end of the building. If not I will have to go up to the roof.

Monday 05/24/2021

Went for a walk, felt fine. Polished two pairs of shoes. Otherwise basically fiddled the day away. Hoped to put the final touches on the Golf model but didn’t quite. Maybe tomorrow or more likely Wednesday.

My new kettle arrived. Three years ago or so, when Marian stopped wanting morning coffee, I had purchased a small electric kettle, just held about 12oz of water when full, which I have used every morning since to make my one cup of pour-over coffee. Last week I got irritated that the translucent strip up the side, which shows how much water you have in it, had gotten cloudy so I couldn’t judge the water level well. I took the top off the kettle to investigate, and made the accidental discovery that the metal plate in the inside bottom, which gets hot and heats the water, was about half covered in little rust pits. Another few months maybe and it would have a pinhole leak into the heating element. So I ordered an exact replacement off Amazon. It arrived yesterday and today I picked up the package and put the new kettle to work. Big milestone.

DInner had been arranged by Patty, she hosted me and the Plocks, a couple who will be moving into the 4th floor in August. Stew had been in IT management for among other companies, Tandem, back in the day. Didn’t get around to what Kathy did, other than that her volunteer work in recent years has been in schools, helping grade school teachers in the classroom, and that all ended with the pandemic and she doesn’t know when it will restart, if ever.

Sunday 05/23/2021

Watered the plants. The dragon-wing begonias that I cut back to a little cluster of brown sticks 2 months ago have grown up a thick 2-foot cluster of big leaves already.

It was 7:30 and I felt like getting out so I took a Lyft down to Byxbee park. Walked the full Baylands trail down to San Antonio road, which turns out to be just 2.5 miles. Took a Lyft back and was home again by 10am.

Played around with various hobbies the rest of the day. Wasn’t thrilled with the supper menu so had a cheese and baloney sandwich in my room.

Fiddled around. Went for a medium walk, ending with picking up the usual nummy pastry. Worked on some hobby projects. For lunch, passed on the daily entree (pepper steak) and had Avocado Toast instead, a really nice light meal on the backup menu.

More fiddling around. For supper decided I didn’t want the evening entree either (baked chicken) and decided to walk out up University Ave. Downtown PA was jumping, with lots of people out, many with masks but not all.

The Apple store was fully open, so I went in and got fingers-on with the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Apple has kind of shot themselves in the foot with the latest machines. Both the Air and the Pro use the identical silicon, the new M1 chip. Possibly they have lowered the clock rate in the Air? But there are very few differences between the two. The Air costs $200 less, has 2 hours less claimed battery life, the screen has 400 nits of brightness versus 600 nits for the Pro. They both come with exactly two USB-C ports, incompatible with anything. That’s it. Well, the Pro has the “touch bar” in place of the top row of function keys. I need to go back and try the keyboards, but I think they are the same. So why get the Pro?

The new iMac is pretty but only has a 24-inch screen where my 5-year-old one is 27″. I’ll wait for the follow-on there.

Friday 05/21/2021

It is getting easier and easier to go to bed (usually around 10pm) completely forgetting to do a blog entry. I really don’t want to admit defeat and give up doing this diary, or to let it become intermittent with ever-longer gaps. Dunno. Maybe shorter entries.

This day was the first meeting of a small critiquing group, different from the CH writers who meet weekly on Tuesdays. That group expects a new, short piece each time, on a given topic, and you read it aloud, and get generally nice strokes for it.

This one is for people working on longer stuff of their own choosing. We are supposed to read the material and mark it up with comments beforehand, and say what did or didn’t “work”. I tried this out on the first 1000 words of Pelajis as I am rewriting it. Of the others, Prudence also presented the opening of a middle-grade work. It was quite good. I can imagine collaborating with Pru sometime.