Sunday 01/25/2026
Ah, Sunday ritual. Water the plants on the balcony. I am very pleased by the progress of a little cutting I was given by my across-the-hall neighbor Linda. It is a Plectranthus v. “Mona Lavender” (here is an online image of one). It started as a single stem about 6″ high. I stuck it in a pot and it is now a very healthy looking plant with dark green leaves with purple underneath. I am eager to see it blossom.
Then do the NYT big crossword. And then off buy fruit. On Thursday I am invited to a pot-luck dinner. This is a “Let’s Talk About Death over Dinner” party, based on a popular book. Since I wrote rather a complete and thoughtful chapter on death and bereavement in my book (available on Amazon, ahem), I don’t think I will have any surprising discoveries from this exercise, but ya nevah know. ANYway, my contribution to the pot luck is supposed to be a fruit compote and I wanted to get some good fruit that will hopefully be ripe when I do the prep on Thursday. I particularly want to get a pineapple that at least won’t make your tongue pucker up. Because I have tasted genuinely ripe pineapple (in Hawaii, of course) and it is just light years beyond what is usually served here.
So I went to Sigona’s in the Stanford shopping center and they did have some pineapples that were at least not solid green, some color change, maybe a hint of aroma. It’s sitting in a bag in my closet and maybe it will taste ripe by Thursday.
That brought me to lunch time, and I was sitting with Carol, who was talking about the drama group, which reminded me that the drama group is having their tech rehearsal on–OMG is it the 25th ALREADY? –tomorrow! And I remembered that I had promised their director that I would try to work out some custom stage light settings for her and had not done jack-shit about it. So into the auditorium to glare at our lighting panel which is capable of far more than we ever ask it to do. I know it can store combinations of lights as “scenes” you can call it by hitting buttons, but I had never done it. Fortunately Bert had printed out the manual long ago and stored it in a binder under the desk. So I spent half an hour with the manual learning how to program scenes. And then programmed in the lighting scenes that they will need I hope.
Which brought me to 2pm and time to get ready to go out on a date. Met Joanne at 2:30 and we drove to the 1st Cong. church to hear a chamber concert by the Ives Collective. I didn’t keep the program so can’t say what works we heard (three pieces, by Mozart and I forget who else) but they were expertly played.
Then we went to dinner a The Wild Seed, a vegan restaurant in Town&Country. Very nice supper, really excellent celery soup and a hawaiian-style pizza. And it wasn’t even 6pm so we wandered downtown and had dessert at Tong Sui, a new dessert place on Bryant. They serve a yummy coconut pudding with fruit in it,
So back home and settling down before 7:30 like a sensible old fart should do.
Codgerville 
