Thursday 05/30/2024

An uncommitted Thursday. I decided in order to feel useful I would go an sort books at FOPAL where there has been a large influx of donations. I spent an hour catching up a couple of boxes of computer books, then two hours sorting. Feeling generally healthy. Came home, did a little music practice. Had supper with Lou and Alice and Pru, all of whom are far more widely traveled than me. Lou and Alice worked for the World Bank for many years so traveled for work, while Pru thinks she has taken “about 47” Road Scholar trips. She’s off for another next month. Not bad for 90. So those three all talk about Paris and such places with great familiarity.

Wednesday 05/29/2024

Did my laundry, starting early so it was all wrapped up, well, hung up, by 10:30. Because at 11:15 I started out walking a mile to the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo, where FOPAL was having a pizza party. We had a short talk from the museum director, and some volunteers showed us some cute animals.

After eating a slice of pizza I walked around the zoo and took a couple more pictures. It’s really a nicely designed facility, rich with resources to keep kids interested. Walked home; two miles didn’t cause any pain, although the right leg still feels funny. Not painful, but just not quite working like it used to. Back home I practiced some music, “Margaritaville” is really coming together. That was about it.

Tuesday 05/28/2024

Took a short-ish walk in the morning. My hip is almost back to normal. 90% or so. Then the writers meeting. The prompt was “in another voice” — tell a story in first person, but as someone else’s first person “I”, not yourself. I had nothing, but some others wrote very powerful things. Nancy F. wrote as her 5th-great grandmother, a Cherokee woman named Nan-ye-hi who lived around 1800. She did a lovely job. Here’s a snippet,

My grandmother gave me the name Nanye’hi. 

My mother always said Nanye’hi at home. 

Around white people she called me Nancy. 

To them it sounded almost the same. 

My name means “one who goes about.” 

It was the right name for me.

I have gone to many places in my sixty-six years. 

Then off to FOPAL where there was a whole lotta stuff for the computer section. In particular there were two solid boxes of books about the Raspberry Pi and Arduino hobby computers. It was like somebody had really dived into that hobby and collected every book on the market, and all in prime condition. So I set up a special two-shelf section just for those books. In all I spent 3 hours there.

Practiced some music, and at 7pm there was a sing-along in the lobby and I went down and sang along for a while. The sing-alongs always end up annoying me, because it seems like they never pick the right key for me. So there’s always low notes I can’t sing, or high notes I can’t sing, some songs with both. I know I can sing — when I get to pick the song and transpose it to the right key. Which is why I never joined the chorus. I remember back in 2019, chorus director Mary tried to get me to join. I went to one rehearsal, and that’s what happened, first song, couldn’t sing the low notes. Or the high ones, whichever, for the part I was supposed to do. Said, sorry. Ironically I am going to sing a duet with that same Mary soon. We rehearse again this Friday.

Monday 05/27/2024

Didn’t do much but kept busy somehow. Practicing music and stuff. At lunch we had a big deal barbecue, cooked and served outside the dining room. Ribs were pretty decent.

In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours chatting with Google Gemini. I’m using it to bounce ideas off for my stalled novel. It’s a good listener, and it reads with comprehension. By which I mean, I fed it the first chapter and it commented in a very sensible way on the contents, the good and bad points, etc.

Like most big holidays, Dining Services gets the evening off, supplying picnic bags to those who want them. The 6th floor rebelled and voted to get in Thai food. I was commissioned to order from Indochine, the little Thai place in Midtown. Leon and I went down to pick up all the food at 5pm. About 15 of us crowded into our floor dining room for this. Everybody liked the food.

From left to right, Leon, Linda, Eva (side view), Margaret (back view) Gwen, Craig, Jeanne, Brian, Elizabeth (foreground), Edie, Diane, Jerry. Out of frame: Betty, Trish, me.

Sunday 05/26/2024

Drove, rather than walked, to a coffee shop, resting my hip (which was much better by evening). Changed to my red docent shirt and went down to CHM to lead the noon tour. At least 25 people for the tour, I guess because a holiday weekend?

Back home, I put in a solid hour of practice, polishing the songs I will perform in a couple of weeks. You know how a performer comes across as casual and unrehearsed? They practice the fuck out of their material.

Saturday 05/25/2024

Pretty much an uncommitted Saturday so I thought I would catch up with my museum going. There were CH buses organized to two different museum exhibits last week and I had to skip both of them, but I own a car so…

I headed first to the City, to the Legion of Honor museum to see their collection of Japanese block prints. Lots of prints from different eras from 1500 to 1950. Some of the modern ones were fun, like this one from 1984, the print artist commenting on the cultural invasion of Japan by Baskin-Robbins ice cream, using the styles and printing techniques of 200 years earlier.

It was a wet, foggy day in SF. I liked the color balance between the flowers outside the Legion building and the gum trees and the fog.

Those are not army tents on the lawn. Not sure what they are, probably art of some kind.

Left SF and drove back to the Stanford campus where I went into the Cantor museum and had lunch in their cafe, a very tasty pork sandwich. Then viewed the exhibit “Day Job” which shows works of art by artists who were working day jobs and doing art when they could, with comments from the artists about how that experience affected their art. It was nice but none of the art works particularly grabbed me.

Back home for a rest and then out to hear music from a high school jazz band performing in a nearby park. They were from Mountlake Terrace high school near Seattle. Why were they in a park in Palo Alto? I don’t know. They were… not bad. But I didn’t stay long.

Friday 05/24/2024

Took a moderate walk in the morning. The hip pain is back. It bothered me the rest of the day. This is not good. Makes me walk like an old person.

Had a rehearsal with Mary for our duet. We are sounding better. Not good, but I’ll never be that. Better.

Spent quite a bit of time getting a proper sheet music of “New Lovers’ Waltz” (mentioned on 5.172). I want to do it for the birthday dinner where I am supposed to sing, and I hope that Kay will play flute behind, but Kay doesn’t do anything by ear, she has to have proper sheet music with notes on it. So I created that. First using pencil and then I said fuck it and paid $59 for a music editor so I could make pretty notes and staffs and such. Well, it passed the afternoon.

Memorial Day coming up Monday, is another day when dining services will offer sack suppers, and again the 6th floor is going to rebel and have food in, this time Thai food. I was commissioned to go and order it, so I did, placing a $400 order for a variety of dishes to be picked up at 5:15 Monday. I’ll get paid back, at least mostly.

Thursday 05/23/2024

Another Thursday with no trip to the East Bay to do museum stuff. They are still replacing carpet and otherwise recovering the Shustek center.

I took a tech squad call to help Lynette with an email issue, after which she sprang another problem on me involving Audible and Amazon. She could get her audio books from her laptop but not from her phone. I actually gave up on that one after floundering for 45 minutes. She called later to say she had solved the problem herself, from watching the things I did and doing them again. OK, a fix is a fix, I’ll take it. I also did a personal favor for Grace, helping her get her Uber and Lyft payment methods straightened out.

And the Good Times committee met to finalize the list of songs for the September party or Folk Festival. And I practiced some songs. And here it is 8pm and I’m not sure where the day went.

Wednesday 05/22/2024

Took the standard walk, which went fine, except a couple hours later my hip was not exactly painful but just kind of sensitive and I noticed it made me walk in a slightly unnatural way. Ibuprofen is your friend — for now.

At 10:30 was a meeting called by Rhonda, with a presentation by Bert, on the response to the fire alarm of Saturday night (5.169). It wasn’t good. They went over at length the meaning of “shelter in place” and how a lot of what went on was unsafe and unproductive. For example, people (a) using the elevators at all (b) to go up to the 10th floor to see what was going on. People calling the front desk to ask why the fire alarm was sounding. At least I knew not to do that. But so many fools did, that the front desk person, who handled the incident in a highly professional way, actually missed an important incoming call because the phone system was jammed. And some dopes actually yelled at her and got angry.

I did two wrong things. One, I left my room, went to the lounge. Two, when I did leave the room, I did not actually check for fire. You’re supposed to touch the door to see if it’s hot. Well, you know? I think if there was fire in the hallway, I would have noticed when I touched the metal door handle. Things I did right? I put on pants, shoes, and a hoodie before I went out. There were people walking around in robes and slippers.

Nobody is happy about how loud the alarm is, even less happy about the flashing strobe light. The strobe is to wake up people who are hard of hearing. A few people had physical reactions to the strobe. But the worst part of it is, the alarm sound and light go on and on — 45 minutes this time. That’s because it can only be silenced by a Fire Department person, and that will only happen after the Fire Department person has determined there is no further risk, and goes down to the basement, using the stairs because they don’t trust elevators, to turn it off. 45 minutes of BLAAAAT (flash) BLAAAAT (flash) BLAAAAT (flash). Rhonda promises to take this up again with the PAFD however there are city, county and state regulations.

Anyway, at 3 we had our monthly AV team meeting, and quickly settled who would do what for the coming month.

Tuesday 05/21/2024

Messed around in the morning. Sat through the writers meeting, I had nothing to contribute. Worked on music. Specifically, spent some time trying to learn a song by — well I didn’t mention the most significant thing about my Cal. avenue farmers market visit of Sunday, did I?

As usual there were street musicians performing at various spots. One guy, solo, playing a 6-string acoustic guitar, caught my attention because he looked kinda like me, playing. Well he wore jeans and a fedora. Stopped to listen and put a buck in his cash bucket, but then kept listening because the songs he was singing were somehow right down my alley. I ended up buying his CD because he was giving away a xerox printout of the lyrics and guitar chords to go with it. His name is Michael Bechler; he’s a total unknown and likely to stay that way; he has a web page that is just embarrassingly amateurish. But he has written some really nice songs. One I’m practicing up and will probably play at my next appearance is “New Lover’s Waltz“. Sentimental, but easy to play and sing and kinda catchy. I’m also working on “Margaritaville“. Talk about a song that sounds simple but is really subtle. Nothing happens on the downbeat.