, writing
Friday 08/21/2026
Out the door at 7am to walk to PAMF for a 7:30 appointment with a new doctor, an orthopedic hand specialist. Talked about intermittent numbness in my left fingers, mostly when playing the guitar, sometimes driving, sometimes sleeping with my arm bent up. Yes it is probably carpal tunnel, even though in none of those situations am I putting any pressure on the heel of the hand. Prescribes wearing a particular kind of wrist brace at night, which I have ordered.
Also talked about “trigger finger“, a stupid problem with my right ring finger that came on a month ago. Here he had a fix, a quick shot of cortisone at the base of that finger. Hopefully it will get better in a day or so. He commented on my having the raised tendons of Dupuytren’s syndrome, but when I told him I had a relative who needed an operation for that, he said “if yours hasn’t gotten any worse than this at your age, you won’t need an operation.”
Out of there by 8. Walked across to Douce France, Joanne’s favorite coffee shop, and waited for her to show, which she did shortly, and we walked back together.
I should have gone to the AI interest group meeting at 11, but totally forgot. Well, I was busy writing. Rich had asked me to prepare a brief history of Silicon Valley to be part of a memorial for his friend and former employer. I had been putting it off, but yesterday asked Claude for some points and ideas, which had fueled my brain, and now I started writing. And by noon had finished it. It needs one more editing pass, but when I read it, it comes to 10:30 so just the length requested, and fairly interesting.
After lunch I met with DG and Stew to finalize the presentation sequence for the Beatles videos. And we deleted two from the list, and added one new one. So I have that to work on maybe Sunday.
At 5:30 I met with Joanne and we drove to a house concert in San Mateo. The music was by our friends The Rounder Circle, who have played twice at CH and who we listened to at Filoli a few weeks back (day 7.192). This wasn’t as fun as they have been. They are doing more original songs, fewer trad. ones. The new ones are not familiar, and tend to have a slower tempo and generally be less fun. Also the back-yard venue got kind of chilly by 8pm. Still, a nice outing.
Codgerville 