Friday 05/10/2024

Update: picture by another resident:

So this was the day of the Spring Musicale, music by 7 different performing groups and soloists, as I sketched yesterday, two shows, 10am and 7pm, the latter followed by drinks and snacks in the lobby provided by the 6th floor. So I performed 6th of the 7 acts, and I did OK. Well, better than OK, to judge by all the people who complimented me during the lobby reception after. My ego got lots of strokes, very pleasant.

Also the events went off smoothly with no technical glitches and I remembered to press Record on both times–yes, I was doing the AV as well. Also being a stagehand in that I had to move a chair around and a mic on a stand, for two of the acts that wanted special audio treatment. So yeah, big success for me.

I will edit the video on Sunday or so, and post my 7 minute part of the show here, then.

05/09/2024

Tidied the apartment, then rehearsed my songs. After lunch I opened the auditorium for the official tech rehearsal of the Channing House Spring Musicale. Previously this would have been a performance by the Chorus but the Chorus has been retired, or rather, Mary who was the director retired from the job, and nobody has stepped up to re-form the Chorus. Instead, Mary has made herself director of a musical variety show, eight acts by resident musicians. Tomorrow we give two concerts; today we rehearsed.

I say “we” because I am the 7th act on the bill, doing 2 songs with the guitar. Preceding me there is the Channing House Harmonica Group, doing 3 patriotic songs. Then Frances and John performing a classical piece for clarinet and piano. Then the Baroque Trio, Alice on cello, Kay on flute, Lou on recorder. Next up, Craig Allen, solo harmonica improvisations. The Jazzy Trio is Stew on box drum, Kay on flute, Arlene on piano. Followed by me, and then the Nameless Trio which is John and Kay, accompanying Jerry singing the Toreador Song. Singing it very well, by the way; Jerry is a real singer with some training.

So we got through all that, and I only messed up a couple of chords which hardly anyone noticed.

I had done a video recording of all this, and at 4:15 pm I took the USB drive out of the recorder up to my room and edited the video down to just the performance, dropping out all the chat and talking in between, and put it on Dropbox and sent an email to all the performers with a link to download it — by 5:30. Not bad turnaround time if I do say so.

Down to dinner, finished by 6:15, into the auditorium again to set up for the San Francisco Shakespeare troupe. Five actors, semi-pro and very good. They have been touring this one-hour condensed version of As You Like It for three weeks now, performing almost daily in schools and libraries, and they do three more shows this weekend. They came in, set up a portable backdrop, each of the five played several parts, and the whole thing was pretty entertaining.

Wednesday 05/08/2024

Took the standard walk, very pleasant. Was supposed to meet up with Lynne to rehearse our number but she messaged she had a sore throat. Testing negative, but confined until tomorrow and another test. Practiced some guitar. Had the monthly 6th floor meeting. So really nothing to do today. Tomorrow is going to be a monster, and also Friday and Saturday, so just as well.

Tuesday 05/07/2024

The prompt for the writers group was “restaurant experience” and I didn’t plan to write anything, then had a little flashback and wrote a few paragraphs in the half hour before the meeting. I’ll stick it at the end.

Prior to the meeting, which is chaired by Connie, we talked about the lost recording of her talk, and she volunteered that she wouldn’t mind doing the talk again and recording it. In the few minutes at the start of the meeting we agreed to do that on Saturday. Which is a great relief to me as I felt really bad about fucking up the recording of the actual event. Connie is a saint.

I rehearsed my own songs, and met twice today with Lynne to practice our number for the upcoming Musicale. That is coming on fast now: tech rehearsal on Thursday, two shows on Friday.

I was in the auditorium for something else this afternoon and three of the other acts were there rehearsing, and Mary the producer, and so we talked about some of the tech, where to put mics etc.

OK here’s a little flashback to the 1960s.

Monday 05/06/2024

Took the standard walk. Back in plenty of time to open up the Auditorium for the First Monday book talk, this month by Connie, a friend and a writer that I admire. So the event went off fine, she read well from her book, the audience loved it (everybody loves Connie). One little problem. I was supposed to record it. I thought I had, I had her nicely framed and lit on the camera screen, audio just right — but when I went to download the recording, there wasn’t one. I’m not sure what I did; I’m pretty sure I pushed the Record button, but somehow — no recording. I feel like a real schmuck. I apologized sincerely to Connie who was nice about it, but… damn.

Off to FOPAL for three hours of work to get my section ready for the sale this weekend. Back home to mess around, practice my songs for the upcoming performance — which was weeks away, it seemed, until somehow that became this week.

Sunday 05/05/2024

At 10, drove to CHM to lead a tour. This was a group from Temple Emanual-El, a dozen people of about my age which is nice, they knew right away what a punch card was.

After lunch I worked on Bob Schwaar’s printer issue and solved it, following a suggestion from Bert to just delete every file related to Canon and download new drivers. That worked.

At 3 joined Lou to figure out how to connect an Android phone to share its screen with Zoom.

Had dinner with Edie, Gwen and Craig, because Craig’s wife Diane is out of town.

Saturday 05/04/2024

Worked on music a bit and generally messed around until 1pm when I brought the car around front to drive in the three car pool going to the Pear theater. Thirteen of us went to see Love Letters, which is a simple play of two actors (Wikipedia). Kind of corny but well done today.

Had a nice nap and supper and then took the 15 minute walk to the Lucy Stern complex to see Palo Alto Players production of The Music Man. I had not really expected to enjoy this old chestnut much. The last production I saw was on TV, I think PBS? a couple years ago, and I found it kind of tired and disturbingly sexist. This production was much better. The direction and the acting by the two principle actors, Professor Hill and Marian the Librarian, made the romance more sincere and eased up on Hill’s aggressive assault on Marian. Most important, the ensemble, all the kids and the citizians of the town, were just superb. Whoever choreographed the dance routines did a great job and the players executed perfectly.

Friday 5/3/2024

Walked to Cafe Zoe in the morning (3.2 mi for the day). At 10:30 as planned stopped by Bob’s apartment to try to get his scanner to work with his new MacBook. I failed. I’m the third tech squad person to try and fail. Later in the day Bert called with a suggestion which I will try tomorrow.

Met with Mary and Arlene to practice “An Old Fashioned Wedding”. It will be alright as a comedy routine, probably.

At 1pm helped an outside group set up for a memorial on the 11th floor. This event was arranged by a resident, although the deceased honoree was not a resident. Still, the resident had arranged a nice spread of snacks and wine from Dining Services, which I know is not cheap at all, so… I guess it’s legit. Anyway I set up audio and video for them, and went back at 5pm when they had wrapped up, to take my gear away again.

Thursday 05/02/2024

Took the standard walk this morning, because I didn’t, yesterday. After lunch, put on my red docent shirt and went down to the museum to lead the 2pm tour, which was only 3 people at first, but a 4th joined on the way. Not much else doing.

Wednesday 05/01/2024

One third of the year gone. How about that?

First thing on the agenda today was laundry, which I finished entirely by 10:15, just in time to head down to the 2nd floor to see Leah the hairdresser. I have been letting my hair grow for about 9 or 10 weeks now. I had an appointment at the 6-week mark and canceled it. Just to see. Well, I saw: my thin hair gets long and bushy around the back of my skull, kind of like bozo the clown’s hair. So I made an appointment with Leah and today told her, buzz it all down, make my whole head the same length (i.e. 1/4 inch) as my beard. “Make me look like a coconut” is what I said. So now I have a round slightly fuzzy head. Which is fine.

Lois had called the tech squad line to report that she couldn’t do anything with her iMac, she couldn’t even enter the login password. I asked her about it when I saw her at lunch. Nope, she powers it off and on and it wants the login password but she can’t type the password. So I said I’ll stop by about 2:30. About 2pm I was thinking about it and realized, oho, it isn’t the computer, it’s the keyboard. The keyboard is dead. I was picturing a USB cable lying on the floor or such. But when I saw her machine, it has the little flat wireless keyboard, which connects by bluetooth. And which has an internal battery and you have to charge it up every so often. So I connected it to the wire she uses for charging the mouse, and after about 10 seconds, hey, you could type a password. I did not laugh at her. She said “well that makes me feel stupid” and I didn’t comment.

At 3:30 the Good Times committee met to finalize the list of songs for what decided would be called our Folk Festival — not Hootenanny as I wanted — in September. Also that we will tell the volunteers who like to decorate, the theme is 60s Coffee House. Nothing further to be done before July, now.