Thursday 04/10/2025
Spent an hour trying to learn “blues turnaround” for the acoustic guitar off youtube.
Drove to PAMF for a 10am appointment. This was to do an actual “refraction” test, “Which is better, 1 or 2?” “2” “OK, which is better, 2 or 3?” and so on. Conclusion, small change in my prescription, plus the addition of a 2 diopters of “prism” correction. That’s to reduce a tendency to double-vision that has been developing the last couple of years. So now I can go order new glasses. Do that tomorrow sometime.
Back home to change into my red docent shirt, and off to the museum to help lead a tour of “40 students from UC Berkeley” scheduled for 1pm. Whoever scheduled that on the UC side did a crap job of it. First, the bus with 40 nice young people — mostly grad students, well into their 20s, not kids — pulled up at quarter to 1. That’s fine, but then they let us know that their plan was to eat lunch. They had brought their own food service, but they spread out in our lobby and patio and had a nice lunch. So about 1:15 their leader started getting them back together. The other docent, Shmuel, took the first half and started his tour about 1:20.
I was to keep the other 19 occupied for at least 15 minutes to give Shmuel a start. That’s normal, and there’s plenty to look at and do for that length of time. In fact, one of the docents who does the live 1401 demos was there too, and opened up the 1401 lab so I took the group in there and they got to punch their names on a keypunch and get their names printed out on the line printer. Which is fun, but now it’s 1:40.
So I lead the group back to the lobby and head for the exhibit area, and the leader calls me over and reminds me, they have to get on the bus at 2:15. Oh, nice, now I get to do my usual 1-hour tour in 30 minutes. So I do a highly abbreviated tour, skipping a lot, and deliver them at 2:15. But on the students’ behalf, what a waste. They didn’t see half of what they could have seen. They should have had a relaxed 1-hour stroll with my lecture, and then time to explore on their own. But I guess they won’t know. They said “thank you” very sincerely.
Spent an hour and a half editing Alice’s video and still didn’t finish it. Finish it tomorrow.
Codgerville 