Friday 10/2/2026
Only got 6 hours sleep but felt fine. Took a nice muffin walk with Joanne first thing. Kept remembering things I needed to do as we walked. When I got home I made a list. Well, only 7 items, but it took a long time to get them scratched off.
After lunch I ran AV for an event in the auditorium, a couple of nice ladies from the “Yes on J” campaign explaining why we should vote for Palo Alto sales tax measure J. Nobody outside Palo Alto cares so I won’t try to explain it here. However they got some pretty tough questions from the audience.
Then back to my list. One of which was to try to contact SFJazz to see if they found my hat. Last night, when we got out of the Waymo at Third and Townsend, I realized I didn’t have my hat. Not entirely sure where I left it, but maybe under my seat at the concert.
A job not on the list, was to pick an artist for the next CMX. I did quick auditions of several. My gosh contemporary singer-songwriters are a boring bunch. Their music just drones. After Ariana Grande I want something that moves. I finally picked Olivia Rodrigo as a popular artist with at least a little musicality.
Mystery! Last night, as we were riding home on the train, I was feeling the pockets of my black jacket. I’ve had it more than ten years, but I hadn’t worn it for months. I wore it last night because this was the first night since last winter that looked like San Francisco would be chilly. And it was.
So feeling in the jacket side pocket I find a piece of paper, mostly colored green. Here’s a scan.
It took a while to work out but it is a ticket for a boat ride from a place called Perros-Guirec, which is on the coast of Normandy, to a little group of rocky islands called Les Sept Iles (the seven isles). The date is the 25th of May, 2012.
I was pretty sure that was about when Marian and I spent a couple months in Paris and then Normandy. And later I found the blog post about that day. Here it is: https://dandmdofr.blogspot.com/2012/05/birds-of-seven-isles-and-douaniers-path.html
The mystery is, how can it be that the receipt for the boat ride on that day fourteen years ago could still be in my jacket pocket now? Yes, I may have owned the jacket more than 14 years and I might even have had it along on that trip. In fact, yes! The first picture of the blog, shows me at SFO wearing that jacket. Here:
OK. this jacket was on that trip. But the jacket has been dry-cleaned at least once, probably twice since then. And worn often. How had I never noticed that folded piece of paper until last night?
