Sunday 02/12/2023

Did the usual Sunday morning thing, watering the plants and such. I’m not watering the begonias, it is almost time to cut them back and I want them to start dropping leaves.

I ran down to FOPAL to tidy my shelves after the first day of the sale. Somebody bought a couple of very old books I had out on display, which I didn’t think would ever move. Old like 1956 and 1968.

Then I finished printing up my set of pictures of New Zealand mountains and arranged them on my hall gallery shelf.

At 1pm I joined Lois, Mildred and Carol to car-pool in Lois’s Prius down to the Pear theater. The play was Frankenstein Unbound, written or workshopped by its cast and Sinjin Jones, the artistic director. Not a success, in the car pool’s opinion. Frankenstein’s monster pursues him across multiple generations and centuries, ending in intergalactic space.

Back home watched the Stanford women demolish ASU. It used to be, the trip to Tempe was always a challenge, but that was in the day of long-time coach Charli Turner-Thorne, now retired. This was the second game in a row where Stanford was able to romp, winning by 30 or more. Maybe they are that good after all.

Saturday 02/11/2023

First up, I decide to once more walk to Zoe’s coffee in Menlo Park. It’s an ok place, not stunning. Anyway, 3+ miles for the day. I went there particularly because it had rained in the night, and I knew it had inside seating. In the end, though, I didn’t care for the dark and crowded interior and their outside tables were all dry, so I sat outside.

I printed some pictures for my hall gallery. I’ve decided to print up pictures of two of the mountains of New Zealand, Taranaki and Aoraki. We have some nice shots of both.

That brought me to 1pm, time to head down to the auditorium. Another resident, Chuck, wants to show a series of operas, every 2nd Saturday. I don’t want to have yet another A/V event to run so I convinced him that he could run the equipment. Today I was training him.

I had worked up a very detailed checklist of everything he needed to do, and I walked him through it. Of course “there’s always something” is our motto, and today “something” was that when we tried to connect the Blu-Ray player to the big projector, the image flickered. OK, plan B. That was to use the old DVD player. Fortunately all his operas are on DVD.

The opera came off just fine for an audience of maybe 30 people? I bailed out for the middle two hours of it. Really don’t like opera.

Had dinner with Patty and the Allens.

Friday 02/10/2023

Took a shorter than usual walk, wearing the new shoes. They definitely cause some change in my walking mechanics which I feel in my left hip. I think it will eventually be alright, but it just goes to show how a small change in footwear can affect things.

At 10 I drove to the Stanford Medicine clinic on Sherman ave. for a “gated CT with contrast”. “Gated” means, they put heart sensors on your chest, so that the computer can time the pictures to your heart rate, presumably so it can get a proper exposure without blur. “Contrast” means, they put an IV in your arm, and at a certain point they squirt in a shot of a liquid that shows up on the scan so they get a good image of your arteries. You know exactly when they push that button because you feel a wave of heat in certain places and a metallic taste on the back of your tongue.

When they let me go, I had a couple hours to kill before my appointment with Dr. Watkins, my thoracic surgeon from back then. Back then was fall 2020, by the way. That appointment was at the main Stanford hospital. While walking through the halls there, I noticed there was an office for the Stanford Credit Union. Oh hey, I have been meaning to talk to them. I’ve been carrying around this stupid debit card sent out by the State with some free money. And no real place to spend it. I meant to go to SFCU and have them cash it out, but they closed the office I normally go to, for remodeling. But, here was another

So I went in and the charming lass behind the counter said, sure, they could cash that card out, except they had to know what the balance was first. I had no idea. She advised calling the customer service number on the back. So I did that and yes, it was worth $250.

Then it was time to talk to the surgeon, which I was looking forward to, I like her, but in fact she’s working from home due to illness (they didn’t say Covid but I bet it is). So I got her report second-hand from a nursing assistant. Everything looks great, the part of my aorta that was expanding on prior images has stabilized. One-year call-back. Go in peace.

On the way down from their office I stopped at the SFCU office and charming lass now could take the card and charge it for $250 and deposit that in my checking account.

Late in the day I prepared a detailed check-list for showing a DVD in the auditorium. I will use this while training Chuck who wants to show operas every second Saturday.

I listened to a nice Friday Live concert from SFJazz. This was the first time I used the screen-sharing ability of my new TV. No need for a cable. Just pull down the little screen share icon in the menu bar of the MacBook and select the TV. Boom, the laptop screen and sound are on the TV.

Thursday 02/09/2023

Sometime in the last 48 hours, all the hummingbirds have vanished. I was refilling the feeders twice a day, and then for the last month, once a day, and suddenly, no birds. I guess they’ve all headed out to Arizona.

Felt less than 100% this morning but after tidying the apartment, went across the bay to Shustek as scheduled. I was assigned to the fun activity of packing. There are four shelves of artifacts that have been cataloged and photographed, and now need to be packed into storage boxes for shipping to the Yosemite warehouse. It’s fun, and I packed three boxes, making little custom trays and stuff.

However it was standing on my feet the whole time, and about 2 I felt distinctly under the weather, plus back pain. So I bailed early at 2pm. Back home, after a nap, I felt pretty much normal.

Wednesday 02/08/2023

Started out for a walk while my first load of laundry ran. Got a little pain in my left hip. Could that be due to the new walking shoes? I cut the walk back a bit. We’ll see on Friday.

Ran the laundry. Selected pictures for my next hall display. After re-reading the New Zealand travel blog I decided to print pictures of the big dramatic mountain peaks, Taranaki, Aoraki (aka Mt. Cook), Mt. Tasman.

Floor meeting at 5pm, then dinner as a group.

Tuesday 02/07/2023

First thing to do this morning was an appointment with a podiatrist at PAMF. Both my big toes have “bunions” which just means the first joint wants to angle inward. The left foot is worse, and has been slowly getting more so over the last couple of years. So I thought I’d get a consult.

Podiatrist was not a lot of help. Certainly as far as surgery goes, not indicated now or soon. Only consider that when you have real symptoms, serious pain, or can’t walk for exercise. That’s not my situation now. His best advice was to get better shoes for walking than my Mephisto loafers. He recommended a brand and model, and suggested getting an additional liner for more arch support to prop up my very flat feet.

So from PAMF I walked back down University Ave to Footwear Etc. and bought just what he’d recommended and walked home in them.

Later I was thinking about model cars, and remembered I have some kits I haven’t built. Looked in the closet and what do you know. I had at some point bought a 67 Corvette kit. Not the 63 Corvette split-window, but still. I took the sealed box over to my desk and looked at the pile of tax-related papers there. OK, I promised myself, when you finish doing your taxes, you can start on this kit. Set the still-sealed box on the back of the desk as a reminder.

Monday 02/06/2023

Not much today. I went for the standard walk in the morning, which was fine. Then I went down to FOPAL and prepared by section for the upcoming sale weekend. Sat around the rest of the afternoon. Went to dinner at 5 for the monthly “mixer” where you are assigned to a random table when entering the dining room. Sat with a couple of people I’ve not shared a meal with before, Carol and Erica.

Sunday 02/05/2023

What a slug I am. I only left my room once today, to eat lunch.

In the morning I remembered that when I was talking to the financial guys, Bob, who is semi-retired but was our main advisor since we started with them a couple decades ago, was reminiscing about the travel blogs that Marian and I did, and Patrick, the younger dude, asked, purely out of politeness I suppose, to see some of them. Well I hadn’t looked at our blogs of New Zealand, Germany, France, and Scandinavia in some time. Did they even still exist? Turns out they do, and I found those four and sent the links to Bob to share as he wishes.

But that led to looking at the blogs, and then starting to read them… end result, I spent at least 4 hours today reading those old travelogues, from 2005, 2009, 2012 and 2014. Three of them. I got sick of it before I could read the fourth.

The other thing was to watch SWBB as the Cardinal took on the Huskies in Seattle and — got beat. It was close, the game was tied with 2 minutes to go; but they couldn’t close the deal and lost by 5. My personal opinion on this team is, despite them having a few superb talents, they aren’t the complete machine they need to be and should be by this point in the season. They are definitely over-rated at #2 nationally, and I predict they won’t make it past the Elite Eight in the post-season. And it is not a sure bet they can win the PAC12 tournament.

That’s it. Sitting around like a slug, reading my own writing.

(Oh, why “soggy”? It was raining this morning, but that isn’t it. Somehow Marian and I used “sog” as a verb for just unstructured and undisciplined time. “We just sogged around all afternoon.”)

Saturday 02/04/2023

At noon I led a tour at the museum. Odd one. I started with a few people, but picked up people as I went along until I had over 20, then they mostly fell away and I ended with five. Well, that’s five that were really interested.

Had supper with Patty and Sue and Edie. Then at 7:15, off to a play at the Bus Barn. This was Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a surreal comedy by Steve Martin. It’s an impressionistic, eclectic, fantasy about what might go on if Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso happened into the same café in Paris one night in 1904, when both were about age 26 and just coming into their best years. It had some jokes, there were some people in the rows behind me who laughed a lot although I didn’t. The actors worked hard but there was some mis-casting, Picasso especially didn’t have the strength of personality needed for his lines.

Friday 02/03/2023

It was raining so I didn’t want to go for a walk outside, so I went down to the gym and walked 2 miles on the treadmill (at 3mph, 40 minutes).

At 11 I had scheduled three of my AV team to meet me in the Training Room to practice sharing a screen with the Zoom Room. I had worked this out on prior days, but three other people managed to find glitches in the process, of course. One surprise was, that Peter particularly wanted to show a Netflix video to a group in the Conference room. But it turns out, the Netflix app on a Mac, knows when you are sharing its window with Zoom, and shows only a black screen.

At 12 I went to set up for the 1pm rehearsal of the Sock Hop. This went very well, I had my MacBook putting sound out to the room, and simultaneously video to a big TV 30 feet away (using the magic of Zoom Room again). The music comprises 23 songs, some with video, some with just lyrics on a black screen. Because I had set “chapter” markers at each song, I could use the keyboard to jump ahead to the next song, or back to repeat a number. All the singers sang. The organizers thought the whole thing ran too long, and may cut a couple of songs. But generally it all went well. Which was a big relief.