Wednesday 10/26/2022

Went for the walk. Then I needed to hang around my apartment because I’d told my crew of bold AV people I would be available to consult (more like, sympathize) until noon, if they wanted to try out the auditorium zoom stuff.

Nobody called on me, but I got some very satisfying writing done. I saw a post on the writer sub-Reddit suggesting, to get your story going, just have your characters talk to you and write down what they say. Let them tell about themselves, say what they want, even ask them what they think should happen next. What you write isn’t going in the book, except maybe snippets of it, but it fills out the back-story and lets your imagination run.

So I tried that with “Emma and Ethan meet the aliens” (WHICH IS NOT THE TITLE), just started writing what Ethan said as if he were being interviewed. And later, Emma, too. To help things along I found pictures of them. Stuff just poured out. Well it is all based in internet searching I’ve done over the past two days, but still. I’m going to append those “interviews”.

At noon I picked up my neighbor Edie and we went out for lunch to the Sand Hill Cafe, a place I’d heard was very nice. I had suggested a group lunch to the sixth floor, but Edie was the only one to respond to the idea, so. Actually I’m glad of that because, in the end, the food wasn’t that great after all.

At 3:30 I went down to the Green Room with my recovered key (see yesterday) and picked up the powered speaker and met with Susan on the 4th floor for the group meeting to read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. She had a phone app with various people reading the poem, she went with Viggo Mortenson (aka Aragorn from LOTR?). It worked, the group of 8 people plus me enjoyed the reading. I got some reading done. Well, everybody had their laptops open presumably following along in the poem. So mine was open, too. Just I wasn’t reading the poem

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I knew a lot of this, like Ethan was the son of state dept. employee and his mother was brazilian and he was good with languages, but all of the details, names of parents, anecdotes, childhood memories, where they lived? just came popping out of my imagination while I wrote. It’s kind of eerie, actually.

Chatting with Ethan

Yeah, Thomas Jefferson HS is my sixth school. No, seventh. Second high school, although in France they don’t call them high schools, whatever. Anyway my dad, Carl Brickton, is a diplomat; well, was a diplomat until he got this latest job, which is secretary to Ms. Coleman, she’s the Science Advisor to the President. Dad calls her She Who Must Be Obeyed, which I gather is a reference to an old TV series. Sorry, he was secretary to the Advisor. Now, after the whole Reethlin thing, I guess he has a new job, Official Liaison to the Alien Ambassadors. That’s me and Emma.

Me and mom and dad have been moving to follow his assignments as long as I’ve been around. He met my mom, Olivia, when he was serving in the US Embassy in Brasilia. She’s Brazilian, daughter of a diplomat that dad’s boss was negotiating with. They like to joke about how dad got notice of being transferred to Gambia by email the morning of their wedding, and couldn’t tell her until afterward, because the groom and bride aren’t supposed to talk on the wedding day. And she always says, “And serve you right for checking email on such a day.”

Anyway. So my 10th year of school was last year, in Paris, at the Lycée International. I had all American teachers, which was good because I could sand off the last bits of accent from my English so now I sound just like any US-born dude. But on the street my French was good enough that shopkeepers never took me for a tourist. I kind of have a knack for languages. French and English are my best, but mom and I sometimes talk the port-oo-gase just for fun. Although my vocabulary isn’t great, I mainly learned it from her lullabies and shit when I was like, a toddler. From the two years in Moscow when I was ten and eleven, I got an OK Russian accent. Again, not a huge vocabulary, but I could talk to people on the street and read a Russian newspaper.

For my dad’s new job we relocated from Paris to the D.C. area, specifically Alexandria, VA. They picked a pretty nice three-bedroom unit at The Curve, a big condo complex. It’s pretty convenient for TJHS, like 15 minutes by bike. Same down to the Van Doorn Street Metro station, if mom or I want to go to downtown DC. Dad doesn’t have to mess around with the metro, being a high-level bureaucrat type. A White House driver — not a real Secret Service agent, just a nice lady named Caroline in a snappy jacket — picks him up every day in a shiny black SUV. Caroline has a strong South Carolina accent, I call her “South Caroline”, and she has taught me some Gullah, which is just a mush-mouth Creole, but it’s fun to speak.

I am no way a computer expert. I’ve been using them since forever, of course, but for entertainment, and the sosh-meeds, and school research. I took a programming course two years ago and got a B. Along with a B+ in Art Appreciation, those are the low points on my transcript. So the stuff Emma does just boggles me, and what she tells me about bot-nets and ransom-ware and all, just sounds like bad science fiction, but she showed me it’s all real.

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Chatting with Emma

I do actually need glasses for distance, so I have to wear them if I was driving, which I’m not because I haven’t got a license yet. This year! I am definitely taking driver’s ed. I wear the glasses because I think they go with my look, well, such as it is. I don’t strictly need them for close work. Often you’ll see me with my laptop and my glasses are up on top of my head. Then I lose track of them and I’m looking all over for my glasses. It’s very amusing for my friends, ha ha Emma, you’re such a dork. You’re welcome, so glad I could entertain you.

I have always been fascinated with how things work. I was taking stuff apart as a kid. My mom has a load of embarrassing stories about cute little Emma taking the batteries out of the TV remote or whatever. And phones! I was just riveted by the phones. No phone was safe in the house once I was a toddler. My folks kept their phones, or my mom would put her purse with the phone, on the mantel or a high shelf. But sooner or later they would forget and leave a phone on the table or something. My dad says if I spotted it I would be like I was drawn by a magnet.

One of my earliest memories is of a toy iPhone that I got for Christmas when I was like, I don’t know, four? I think? I remember how excited I was when I opened the box and then how disappointed I was when I figured out it was a scam, just a toy with a screen that lit up when you pressed a button. I took it completely apart and played like I was fixing it. Yeah, they finally acknowledged the reality and gave me my own when I was nine. I remember I was the go-to phone maven of my class, any kid who couldn’t figure out how to download an app would come to me.

My dad teaches astronomy at George Mason U. in Fairfax, VA., and also runs the science program at the Rock Creek Park Planetarium, North of the Capitol. He doesn’t bring his work home, though. He’s actually a bit of a gamer in his spare time. He jokes about nearly flunking out of Notre Dame because he was so deep in WOW back in the day. When I was 12 and 13 I played some Fortnight, I could do an hour after I’d proved I’d finished homework, and sometimes dad would log in from his PC and we’d raid together. I didn’t play any of the space games like Eve Online because he dissed what he called their ridiculous physics and astronomy.

I mean to talk Ethan into playing Fortnight but that boy just doesn’t like to kill people, even virtually. I tried to show him Minecraft but he just didn’t see a point to it.

Anyway I hadn’t picked up much astronomy until we started figuring out the whole Reethlin thing. Then I had to really dig in to learn about the Solar System and how orbits work. But I gotta say, you can study orbits and satellite mechanics as much as you want, but nothing will prepare you for the feeling of a space launch. That is intense. Or zero G, either, but a rocket launch, oh, man.

Tuesday 10/25/2022

Did the gym round at 7:30. I had scheduled the auditorium at 9 for a practice session with the new Zoom Room setup. Before I went down, I got a note from Susan asking if I could help her get audio for a group, out of her iPhone. Sure, I thought. Just hook her iPhone to the little boombox speaker I used to present very impressive organ music at the “wedding” last Friday. That speaker is stowed away in the Green Room, a small room backstage of the auditorium. And I have a key, which is… where is it?

After I finished my practice session, which went very well, the new setup is much easier to use that what we’ve been doing for “hybrid” zoom events, I went back to my room to look for the green room key. I knew it had been in my left hip pocket on Monday, because when I was at FOPAL Monday, I had stuffed a couple other items into that pocket and noticed it.

It wasn’t there now, nor anywhere around. I searched the apartment. It’s about 9:45 now and I have the writers meeting at 10:45. I go down to the garage and carefully search the car. My best guess is the key fell out into the front seat, but nope. Digging around in and under the seat with a flashlight finds nothing but bits of lost food.

OK, maybe at FOPAL. I drive down to there, the Cubberly community center, and search the areas I was working in yesterday, and check everywhere that a found key might be posted. Nope. Back to CH. As I come up from the basement, I think, maybe I dropped it here, I think I will check the front desk. As I was describing it (three keys on a ring with a purple plastic tag) the front desk person said, “Oh yeah, that’s right here,” and picked it up off the desk in front of her.

The writers group topic of the week was, sins of your childhood, and several people had very amusing stories about being caught shoplifting candy, etc. I had nothing, but while listening I realized there was a period of near-criminality I could have written about. Maybe I will come in with that next week.

At 4pm the AV group met and portioned out the events for the next month. They are a good group. I was able to give them a report on the Zoom Room and specifically advise on how they should also practice with it.

Had dinner with Dr. Margaret and a couple of others. Yesterday evening, dining with Patty and the Allens, I had asked, what’s a good city to go and be a tourist in for a week or two? Diane immediately said, “Vienna”, which she thought was a wonderful place to spend time. Tonight, same question, Dr. Margaret immediately said “Montreal”. That’s where she went to med. school, I know. Joy said, “Seattle” which I immediately dismissed.

Monday 10/24/2022

Took the standard walk. Stopping at CVS on the way back to pick up a prescription. As usual CVS had texted me that my prescription SPI (spironolactone) was ready for renewal.

The prescription is for 90 tablets, a 90-day supply. CVS auto-refill occurs while there are still 34 pills in the previous bottle. OK, the prior bottle was filled on 7/23/22 (middle of the white label). Plus 90 days brings us about to 10/23, which would be now. But how come I have 34 tablets remaining? I have not skipped that many doses (not skipped any, as a matter of fact). So presumably I had 30-odd tablets already in hand on 7/23. At some point they got ahead by a month, but I don’t know when. (Paranoid much?)

Spent some time transcribing upcoming November events from the event committee’s draft calendar, into my A/V event spreadsheet. And began a trial experiment with the new “zoom room” facility staff has installed in the auditorium. According to what Gerald (IT staff) told us we should be able to send a normal Zoom invitation to a scheduled meeting, to a special email address, and it would automatically appear in the zoom room special control iPad. I created a meeting, sent the email.

Then off to FOPAL to process four boxes of books. And back for a lazy afternoon. At 3:30 I went down to the Auditorium and found Gerald setting up for Rhonda’s Open Meeting at 4. Had him check: no, the zoom room didn’t know about the meeting I invited it to. He found my email (the special email account is one he controls) and verified it had all the usual Zoom invitation stuff, but it hadn’t been recognized. I went upstairs and sent it again, this time with an Outlook Calendar Item (something.isc) attached.

Rhonda’s meeting was ok, she went over all the hot items from the Food & Dining resident survey, and what the Dining staff plan to do to address things. Hire more staff, is one. Fix the broken dish warmer is another.

After the meeting I checked with Gerald again. The magic address had received my second email but it still hadn’t recognized it for automatic booking. He put it in manually so I can experiment tomorrow.

Sent an email to the AV team reminding them of our meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Sunday 10/23/2022

Futzed around the apartment till 10. Put on my red docent shirt. Drove to Safeway to pick up 10 pounds of sugar for the hummingbirds, then down to the musem. Led a tour of 15 or so. Came home. Read a lot, and printed a couple more bridge pictures. That was about it.

Oh, finished my ballot. After eating a light supper in my room, I walked out to City Hall and dropped the ballot in the box.

Saturday 10/22/2022

For fun today I drove up to Hunter’s Point former shipyard to the Shipyard Artists Fall Open Studio day. I went to the Spring open day this March (3.149), and also way back in May 2019 (day 154, or 0.154 as it ought properly to be numbered).

(Parenthetically that day 154 post has one of my better musings on widower status ((double-paren, there really ought to be a single word for the state of having lost a life partner. There’s no reason any more to gender it. Once there were economic consequences, the situation of a widow was different, usually more pathetic, than that of a widower. But that’s not relevant now; and anyway, lots of people have life partners of their same gender. OK, there’s “bereavement” but I don’t like it. It’s a long, awkward word that sounds like you are avoiding the subject. Anyway, how would you call a bereaved person, a “bereaver”?)) and also that post recounted the first time I saw Carol Aust’s painting, “Eight Pelicans”, which I still regret not buying. I would have bought it but I dithered too long and lost it.)

ANYway, I took some pictures while I was there and put them in a smugmug gallery.

Friday 10/21/2022

Went for a walk. Back in plenty of time for another meeting with Gerald from IT in the auditorium to once again try to understand the Zoom Room setup they have created. It does appear to package all the complicated setup we have been doing, to create a hybrid event. Jerry, David M., David G., and I practiced with it.

At 3pm I went up to 11 and set up for my small part in the “wedding” of Prunella and Brewski, the 4th floor’s special edition of a monthly TGIF. A lot of people were really into it, and dressed up as for a wedding, several bringing their own stuffed animals as guests to the wedding of two stuffed animals. Here are a few pics.

Rhonda, CH CEO, officiated. The couple swore to stick together “until our stuffing falls out”.

Thursday 10/20/2022

Oh, only a couple of days until the date is 10/22/2022. That’ll be exciting. Went down to the gym first thing. Later I went out shopping.

At last night’s presentation, Dr. Margaret would have no truck with powerpoint or such. Instead she stood at a whiteboard and drew little sketches. In setting up for this event, we had a nice whiteboard but it turned out that (of course) all the dry-erase markers on it were failing. I scrounged around in the last 15 minutes before she started and found two adequate pens in the training room on the second floor. But I determined we would not be caught with dry pens again. She has another talk scheduled in November, and we have another frequent speaker who like to use the whiteboard.

So task 1 today was to stock up on dry-erase pens for the AV team’s exclusive use. I went over to Staples and found a nice set of what should be fairly bold markers. I also stopped at Ace Hardware and got two more rolls of wide blue masking tape, which we use to tape down extension cords and such.

If anyone wants to hear the talk, it’s here: https://vimeo.com/762443388

In the afternoon we had the rehearsal for the “wedding” on Friday. I can’t believe how elaborate a charade Stew is organizing. Anyway, I set up the mic and provided the recorded music on cue.

Wednesday 10/19/2022

Went for a walk while my first load of laundry ran. Finished the laundry and had lunch. Was impolite at lunch, sitting at the “open table” with others, but spent the entire time on my phone.

Why? Because remember I have these music pieces on the phone, for playing during Stew’s “wedding”. And one of them, the famous Canon in D, has about 3 seconds of silence at the start and I would like to trim that. So: you have your supercomputer in hour hand, it has a small audio file, you would like to edit this file, on your phone you also have your free copy of Apple’s Garageband app, which is an audio editor. Can you get a piece of music out of the Music app into the Garageband app? Well, there is an Apple support page that claims to show how, but in fact nothing it shows about Garageband matches what the Garageband app on the phone offers. So that was lunch.

Out of boredom I drove down to FOPAL. There were no computer books to price, so I did an hour of sorting.

At 7:30 we had an excellent talk by my 6th floor neighbor, Dr. Margaret. When the recording of the meeting is up I will link it here. She spoke about the physical effects of aging on the body, and she was both informative and very funny.

Tuesday 10/18/2022

Went to the gym in the morning. Veronica was training another resident on the machines so I only got one round. Did a couple of miles on the cyber cycle instead.

For the writers group I read a piece of the novel in progress, the piece I really wrote two weeks ago. But by exposing this work in progress, I hope to keep myself motivated.

Next job was to get the music for Stew’s pretend wedding under control. There are three pieces of music he wants played on cue, and possibly two others, depending on whether the person who is supposed to play those pieces on an actual organ, is able to.

Stew had found the music he wanted as Youtube videos, and his idea was to have them cued up on a web browser on a laptop connected to this little speaker. But that’s kind of a clunky interface, especially if YT decides to make you watch 5 seconds of a commercial when it is your cue to play the music. So I decided to download this music and if possible, put it on my phone.

Which I was able to do with quite a lot of video. There are dozens of “video download” apps and extensions for Firefox and Chrome. Unfortunately none of them work with YT. Google changed YT in the recent past to make downloading impossible, or more difficult. I was able to get around this to capture just the audio. Then moved it to the Music app on the laptop, and from there to the Music app on the phone. Then I went up to 11 and plugged the phone into the little speaker and it worked.

I also helped Grace with her iPhone.

For dinner, I had a table with Joanne, Patty, and Jerry. Nice group.

Monday 10/17/2022

Went for the standard walk. At ten, met with Jerry, Bert, David G and Ian in the auditorium, to have Gerald of the IT staff explain the new Zoom Room setup the staff have created, for running zoom meetings. I didn’t absorb some of the details. David G., who will be running a meeting tonight, stayed after and practiced, to good effect it turned out.

I headed down to FOPAL to process books, only four boxes but quite a few saleable books, including one textbook that is currently going for $300 on amazon and ebay. That’s always a fun find. I also fielded a phone call — whoever is nearest the phone and willing, answers it — and helped a guy who is downsizing and has, he guessed, about 50 boxes of books to donate.

Back to CH and at 2:30, met with Bert and Stew on the 11th floor to help plan how to do the AV for Stew’s pretend “wedding” this coming Friday. For their TGIF, the Fourth Floor is doing a pretend wedding between two stuffed animals. Gag me with a spoon. However, Stew has talked CEO Rhonda into “officiating” at the mock wedding and he is very concerned about getting the microphones and the recorded music (and the live music) to work right.

I ordered a B.L.A.T. sandwich and chef’s salad from the kitchen and ate in my room. At 6:30 I went down to assist David G with his event: two people from the League of Women Voters going over all the propositions on the ballot. The presentation of the props was ok. Technically the new setup worked very smoothly, all credit to David G. for absorbing Gerald’s talk and putting it to work.