Saturday 08/30/2025

I needed to confer with three different people about various items of the Broadway show, so I had just sent them all an email saying I would have open house 10-12, stop by any time. Before 10 I finished some editing tasks. Right on the dot Lynne and John arrived, then Sandy, and minutes later Susan. So I got all that conferring out of the way by 10:30. Did some more organizing of videos and stuff.

After lunch I got out for a walk, but was still exchanging emails about the show all afternoon.

Friday 08/29/2025

Started the day with the usual Friday morning walk and coffee stop with Joanne. We lamented how little time we get to spend together, and decided to go out for dinner. Back at CH I did a little bit of fast video editing, then hit the line dance class at 10:30. This was the last such class for at least some time. The instructor, Will, is tired of the long commute up from below San Jose, and says he wants to spend time home-schooling his daughters. The small class, 7 or 8 people at the max, are very sad and thanked him a lot.

Then a quick lunch and then met with Stew to talk about the videos for the upcoming Broadway show. We straightened out some mutual misunderstandings, and each took a bunch of notes on things to do.

After that I took a tech squad call, Nancy couldn’t get any email, ho hum. Stopped by for a short visit with Pam, who seems concerned that she’s in hospice care but not getting worse. “Nobody’s going to complain if you stay around,” I and her friend Judy assured her. Actually I would say she is declining.

At 5:30 I met with Joanne and we walked to her favorite restaurant, Vino Locale. It’s a very nice place with an inventive menu of good small plates. I fake-complain that I have to compete for her attention with the owner, who knows her from way back and always greets her with a big hug. “Hands off my date, dude” — I do not say, because he’s bigger than me and has a lot of tattoos. What did we have? An appetizer, sour cherry brie, which is slices of brie melted in a little fry pan with sour cherries stirred in, and a pile of french bread slices to spread with the melted cheese. Brussels sprouts, which they cut in half and sauté with almond slices and cranberries and bacon bits. And thai-style chicken skewers served with a delicious peanut sauce. Split a tiramisu for dessert.

It’s a very folksy place. Joanne forgot her colorful jacket on the back of her chair. Half way home she remembered so we went back. Coming toward the restaurant, the couple who had been sitting next to us were coming out, and said, “hey, you left your jacket.” Approaching the door the four women sitting at a table in the front garden said, “oh, hi, they’re looking for you, they have your jacket.” And the waiter, and the owner. Everybody knew about Joanne’s jacket.

Thursday 08/28/2025

I spent much of the day, several hours, at my desktop computer, getting the videos for the 17 songs in the Broadway show collected and in order. Jerry had already processed the six that need sing-along lyrics on the screen, and did a great job of it, better than I could have. Anyway I got all the videos ready to put together into single movie. But I didn’t start that, because Stew our producer wants a last look at them, tomorrow.

That aside I did a little music and set aside some time for reading, trying to reduce the backlog of books that I “should” read.

Wednesday 08/27/2025

Well, that was a day. I shall attempt to list it all. To start with, Joanne had organized a hike. I brought Fred up at 8:45 and I, Joanne, Martha, Joanne the other and her partner Erika piled in and drove off to Wunderlich park. Three mile hike with a lot of elevation gain. Moderate temps and mostly shaded, but got good and sweaty.

Back and went to my room to wipe down and change shirts, then to lunch. After lunch had a break before a 2pm appointment. Craig called and asked for help assembling his new TV. At 2pm went to Tom’s apartment where we practiced me singing “Try to Remember” to his piano accompaniment.

At 2:30 went to Craig’s apartment and helped assemble his TV. Then at 3 went down to the dining room where, Wednesdays at 3, they serve coffee and pastries. Caught up with Lennie who has just received her Captify glasses. I got to try them on, they really work. What your phone can hear, is transcribed and the transcription is shown as glowing green letters hanging in space in front of your eyes.

Then over to Skilled to visit a few minutes with Pam. Back to my room to relax. But about 5, neighbor Eva called, her Mac wouldn’t show her emails, would I help. Sigh, sure. So spent an intense half hour trying to get the Mac to connect to Google Gmail. Why did it ever forget? Why didn’t she know her Google password? Good questions. But eventually got the damn thing working again.

Just in time to go down and join Joanne, Jerry and Betty for dinner. Except as we were sitting down, David M, in charge of AV for the lecture tonight, accosted us. Did we have any idea where the podium had gone? What? The podium that is always always sitting on the stage in the auditorium? So the great podium hunt began. Green room? No. Various conference rooms, music practice room, exercise room? No. After 20 minutes running around the ground floor we thought to look on the second floor where there was a photo shoot today. There was the podium, neatly parked in the fitness center. DM took it back to the auditorium and Jerry and I rejoined the ladies in the dining room.

I attended the evening’s lecture remotely via Zoom. And that was a day.

Tuesday 08/26/2025

Wow, a day with no nap. At 10 I sat down with Jerry to decide who’s doing what with the videos for the broadway show. He had done a lot and will do some more, then I will take over.

10:45, the writers group. I had nothing to contribute. The topic was “back to school” and there were some amusing entries. One retired teacher recounted the kinds of nightmares she regularly had the night before school resumed.

I started my laundry going as soon as that was over, so it could run while my room was cleaned and I ate lunch. About 1 I was accosted by Kass who wanted help with keeping the minutes of the Appreciation Fund committee. Margaret, the committee secretary, will be traveling, and Kass had heard that we could use AI to format a raw transcript. Why yes I have done this. So I attended her meeting at 2. Put my phone on the table, recording in Voice Memo. After the meeting I used “Copy Transcript”, pasted it into an email to myself, mailed it from the phone.

Went to my laptop, opened the email, copied the transcript text, which looks like this,

All right, so we recording Appreciation Fund Committee Meeting. Chit chat while we wait for the cast. Did you get my email when I forwarded the letter the email from Beth Shirley yesterday. Oh Is that the one where you’re not going to be here to the 17th? Well, that’s that was the next one. The previous one was about how to respond to Beth. And I said, “Could you reply? Because you have more information….

and on and on for an hour. I went to claude.ai and told Claude, I was going to paste a meeting transcript, please analyze and summarize. I pasted the transcript and Claude gave back a very sensible summary, picking out all the decisions and action items. That took 20 minutes and I sent the result on to Kass and Margaret to proofread.

Then it was time for the AV meeting. John has been taking over a lot of the little stuff which is great. But we had a nice meeting, almost everything is set for next month.

Came out of that to find Joanne alone in the lobby, shoving furniture around to set up for the sing-along that happens at 7pm. Went to supper, then to the sing-along, then I think early to bed.

Monday 08/25/2025

Went for the standard walk starting early, out the door by 7:30. Joanne had the car until noon so to kill time I started thinking about something from a recent podcast. Joanne had me listen to it, an interview with David Brooks, NYT columnist, in which he said this,

I would like to see Americans who oppose Donald Trump create a mass movement in the way Israelis created a mass movement against Netanyahu’s judicial reform, in the way Filipinos created a mass movement against Marcos. I think that would have an enormously positive effect on the body politics. For those of us who oppose Donald Trump to have to articulate our principles, to organize, to create a civic structure across class, a civic structure to come up with an alternative vision that’s better than the elites who betrayed you.

I think that would lead to American renewal. That does not seem to be happening because the leaders of our major institutions, whether it’s corporations, universities, and so on, are basically laying low.

I wasn’t familiar at all with the Israeli incident, and could barely remember the Philipine “People Power” rebellion of 1986, so I started reading about both. Interesting stuff. Bears more thought. In both cases, the population rose up in a non-violent way when an asshole dictator over-reached.

Joanne texted that she was back about 11:30, so I came down and got Fred and went off to FOPAL. Only 3 boxes of donations, a nice change, and three “high-value” books. One was A Programming Language by Kenneth Iverson, used copies of which are currently going for over $120 on Amazon. Funny thing, I used to work on APL (Iverson’s computer language) back in the stone ages.

Afterward I put gas in Fred, and then I didn’t like how dusty he was so I got him washed. Then, Joanne had picked up new floor mats from the Subaru dealer, they were lying in the back, so I installed them and disposed of the old ones.

Worked on some very frustrating and confusing stuff related to the upcoming Broadway concert. I meet with Jerry tomorrow to try to make sense of the videos, and who’s doing what.

Sunday 08/24/2025

I was going to do some music things this morning but turns out, someone had booked the music room. So instead I walked to the Cal ave market. First I stopped off in skilled nursing to visit my dying friend Pam. Asked if she wanted any fruit and she mentioned liking a peach. So I tasted all the peaches and got a couple nice ones.

At 3 we had a good times meeting, finalizing the sequence of songs. In the process my solo of “Try to Remember” got shuffled to the pre-show, 7:15 while the audience is coming in. That’s ok.

After the meeting I cut up one of the peaches, put it in a cup, and took it to Pam. That’s my good deed for the day.

Saturday 08/23/2025

Not sure what I did in the morning. Really. Don’t remember what I was doing between 8 and 12. By arrangement, I met with Joanne in the lobby at 12:30 and we walked to the annual Arts and Crafts Faire on University avenue. It was huge, stretching a couple of blocks longer than I remember, and in the end we didn’t see it all. Looked at — well, glanced at — a lot of art, pottery, clothes, photographs on aluminum panels, bad painting, ok a little bit of good painting. We split a barbecue sausage sandwich for lunch.

Then walked to the Museum of American Heritage, a small but fun local museum, just 2 blocks from Channing House, where they were having an open house. And walked home.

I, along with Judith, had been invited to dinner by Helen and Tom, who wanted to talk about AI, which we did. Nice little party.

Friday 08/22/2025

In the morning had a pleasant walk with Joanne. She referred me to a very cogent column by David Brooks on “Republican nihilism” (paywall). Talked about how this chimed with other things we’d read and heard lately.

We drove down to the Mills’ house and had a chat with Dennis and with Toni, and loaded ink in his printer — which Joanne knew how to do better than I did.

Spent a bit more time trying to get AI image generators to act like real artists, and finally wrote a rant about them.

Thursday 08/21/2025

Spent a good part of the day struggling with block-headed AI image generators. Went out for a nice lunch with Joanne. Practiced some music. That was about it.