Wednesday 09/10/2025

First thing, met with Joanne and we drove to the Baylands and had a very pleasant walk, just the two of us. Tomorrow a friend, Jane, flies in to join her and Saturday they two will fly off for a week in Port Townsend.

Then I spent several hours taking care of the various changes to the Broadway video needed from the rehearsal issues. Then I dropped in on Pam in the nursing center, and found she is on the final slope. Her friends Judy and Florence were with her and told me she hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, and although more or less conscious, she isn’t responding or talking.

Then I worked on the video from the book talk last Monday. And completely forgot there was a 6th floor, floor meeting today. And once again nobody bothered to come down to my room and say “yo, bro, meeting time.” I feel like an idiot for zoning out like that, but I also feel rather hurt.

Ordered dinner for takeout and it wasn’t edible — just a lousy piece of meat. What a waste. I’m going to write a complaint email next.

Then I did remember there was a talk at 7:30, this time by a guy representing the Final Exit Network, a volunteer organization that provides guidance to people wanting to end their lives. California, along with 11 other states, allows Medical Assistance in Dying. This is a multi-step process, requiring two MDs to state that you have a terminal illness that will kill you in 6 months of less, a very specific prognosis that doctors are often unwilling to sign. Plus other paperwork and delay. That can be a high bar.

However, our speaker said, suicide is not illegal, although assisting a suicide can be. The F.E.N. councils people on ending their lives other ways. The simplest way, if you decide it’s time, is to stop eating and drinking. That has its own acronym, VSED, voluntary stoppage of eating and drinking. It’s a common exit route, especially for people in hospice, who can get morphine for any discomfort. A little more elaborate, but much quicker, is to inhale nitrogen. Fun fact: people used to end their lives inhaling helium, easily available for filling party balloons. No more; for several years it has been common for helium containers to have oxygen mixed in exactly to avoid suffocation, accidental or purposeful. But canisters of nitrogen are also readily available–sometimes used to fill auto tires, or for welding, etc.

I don’t feel any desire to end my life but it was kind of morbidly interesting.

Tuesday 09/09/2025

Cleaned the apartment for the cleaning lady. Adopting a new program, shamed into it actually by a certain fit and athletic old lady, I climbed the stairs to the 6th floor 3 times today instead of taking the elevator.

Maryanne, another writer, asked me to read her contribution. Her eyesight is failing so badly she has trouble reading her compositions smoothly. They are written in a nice schoolteacher cursive hand, but large, in pencil on notebook paper. The prompt was, a historical incident that had an effect on your life. She wrote a summary of the four years of WWII, as seen by her as a schoolgirl from 11 to 15. Lots of detailed memories of wartime problems, like rationing. It was about 14 pages. I didn’t have time pre-read the whole thing so I stumbled over a couple of words near the end, but I think I read it well for her.

After lunch I set up the auditorium for the rehearsal of the Good Times Broadway show. It all went pretty smoothly for a first rehearsal. I learned something new about the use of monitor speakers that will make the next rehearsal better.

Barely got everything put away and it was time for supper with Patty, just back from a week in NYC, Betty Jerry and Joanne. Then at 7 the bi-monthly sing-along evening in the lobby. Such a whirlwind of activity we seniors live in.

Monday 09/08/2025

First up, the monthly Resident Association meeting. Usual 15-item agenda, nothing worth reporting here. Then off to FOPAL to process 7 boxes of stuff and then prepare my section for the monthly sale next weekend. Three hours.

Back to CH where I started my laundry. Ordinarily I would do it on Tuesday but tomorrow’s schedule is heavy so I thought, do it now. Left a big load drying and small load washing and went to dinner. At the end of dinner, about 7pm, the lights blinked out. They were blinking the lights exactly at 7, to remind people to get a move on, but this was later and the lights stayed off, emergency lights coming on. We had a power outage.

I walked up 6 flights and found both my loads had completed. So by the dim emergency light in the laundry room I folded my dry laundry and by flashlight in my dark apartment, put it away.

Power came back about 9. I need to finish drying the last load and ironing two red docent shirts, then I can go to bed.

Sunday 09/07/2025

Sunday morning stuff. Then spent a couple hours remaking the broadway video to account for a couple of change requests. Had lunch, then remembered another change request so did it over again. While waiting for the computer to compile the video I got in some guitar practice. Went to the music room to practice my two songs.

Around 3, Joanne suggested a walk, so we went out and strolled around and talked.

Had an early supper so as to meet tomorrow’s presenter at 7 for a rehearsal. That all went smoothly so now can kick back.

Saturday 09/06/2025

Spent the morning preparing the performance video for the broadway show. Sent links to people to review it. One reply so far, Stew wants a song done differently. OK, later, Mary comes back with info that will mean another small change. Well, I expected that.

Went to the music room and practiced my two songs. Then in the auditorium set up a test of a monitor speaker placement. Stew and Susan met me there by arrangement to test the “karaoke screen”, a 30inch TV that will show lyrics to the performers. It will be driven from Susan’s laptop where she has prepared the lyrics as a slide show. That all worked.

Helped Lou take a passport photo. Had dinner with Stew, Kathy, Susan.

Didn’t leave the building all day.

Friday 09/05/2025

Took the usual Friday morning amble with Joanne. This will be the last one for a while; next Friday she flies off to the great pacific northwest for a couple of weeks.

Met with Tom in the auditorium to practice “Try to Remember” and for him to get used to the grand piano down there. I recorded a video of myself, which is still sitting on the hard drive down there, I need to take my laptop down and copy it and actually look at it.

I started assembling the video for the Broadway show and immediately ran into problems and sent emails and made calls to find out what to do.

Took my guitar down to the music practice room and practiced music for an hour.

Visited Pam. She’s alert but very weak. We’ll hear about her passing any morning now.

Thursday 09/04/2025

I started the day in the gym, doing (for the first time in forever) two full rounds of the HUR machines, which felt like a solid workout. I went a little later, 8:15 when I had been going at like 7:30. The earlier time seems to clash with 3 or 4 other people who like an early start. If they came today, they were gone by 8:15, so, good.

Then I sat down to edit the video of a talk last Monday by a resident, Dean Forbes, about his life-long avocation of Biblical Linguistics. (His professional career was manager of medical instrumentation development for HP.) This was a talk I couldn’t go to, as I was leading a tour at the museum. Bert ran the AV and got the video recording, but he screwed up. Well, not entirely; plus Dean didn’t help him by wandering all over the front of the room, mostly out of range of the camera. So what I had to work with was a video of the stage, with the projection screen in the center showing Dean’s slides, and Dean’s voice on the sound track giving his lecture. Once in a while Dean’s head would appear in the bottom of the frame.

So it was work editing the video (here it is). What I did to keep it at least a bit interesting, was to crop the image to show the key part of each slide as he talked about it. At least it was interesting to me doing it. The talk, not so much. It’s a very dense topic and he did not (IMHO) do a good job of introducing it, just jumped into some details.

Anyway that passed the time to 12 when I drove Fred to Chef Chu’s for lunch with the IBM survivors, organized by Scott. Tom Daniel, and I was happy to hear that his wife, who was very ill last time I talked to him, was much better. Denny Sargent, always the happy-go-lucky bachelor. Diana Bloch, whom I last saw in about 2002? and who has changed so much I would never have recognized her. And Zoe Leptourgos. She, like Scott and Denny, does still look enough like my memories that I would recognize her. Anyway, nice conversation, not totally about nostalgic memories.

Back to CH for a quick nap and then down to the auditorium for the annual Resident/Board meeting, where the audited financials for FY 25 (our fiscal year ends in February, so March 24-Feb 25) are presented, and put in context with prior years, and compared to the numbers for the first half of FY 26. Bottom line, we have finally juuussst squeaked over the line to have a tiny surplus of operating income over operating expense, for the first time in several years. We’re handling our depts and look like staying at break-even or better next year. Then they went over projections for if/when we go through with the purchase of a new building, a “satellite” campus. Which is in progress, but still secret, they still can’t tell us where this building is, for fear of upsetting the seller. Anyway, if or when that goes through, we will add another 10-15 life plan contracts, greatly raising our capital assets while still, they assume and hope, bringing in more monthly operating revenue than it costs. So we are sound for the time being.

Afterward there was a nice reception on the patio with lots of cute little nibbles, with a couple of nibbles and my big lunch, I’m skipping supper. I might regret that decision around 9pm, we’ll see.

Wednesday 09/03/2025

Headed out at 9am to lead a 10am tour at the museum. This was a large group of elders from one of the local YMCAs. Nice folks, who remembered some things, like slide rules.

This afternoon I met with Jerry who has had a lot of singing lessons, so he’s like a semi-pro vocalist. He heard me complaining about not being able to hit some lower notes and he wanted to share some exercises that would help. Which they might.

I spent an hour helping Leon, another tech squad member. He has a real tangle of problems with his Microsoft email accounts. Multiple accounts, none of which he can his iMac to sign in to, so he can’t read email on it, even though he can, on his iPad. Man, what a mess. I gave up, told him try Leah Lin. I don’t know if she’ll thank me for the referral.

Tuesday 09/02/2025

Between 8 and 9 I wrote something. The writers group prompt for the week was, “What do Bonnie and Clyde (the robots that deliver our meals in the dining room) do in their time off?” And I wrote a little story about that.

Then I created, or re-created a video for one of the performers in the Broadway show who wanted their video to sound different.

Writers meeting, read my piece, there were several other amusing contributions. After, I headed right out for FOPAL where I found about 10 boxes waiting and spent a solid three hours on them.

I had been asked by the movie committee to help with the movie tonight, the Astaire-Rogers Top Hat, so I ate supper early, but when I got to the auditorium I found that David M was in charge already and I wasn’t needed. Oh well. The movie was fun although very very silly, the plot and the sets both. Still, how can you complain about dancing like that.

Monday 09/01/2025

There was a lot going on in Palo Alto today. There was a big demonstration along El Camino. Quite a few people from CH walked to that. There was a First Monday Book Talk in the auditorium, which ordinarily I would do the AV for, but this time it was Bert doing it. The speaker was a resident, Dean Forbes, who had a long career in tech management but a sideline or avocation studying biblical history and archaeology. He gave a very erudite survey of some highly arcane hebrew linguistic controversies, or so I hear from people who attended.

I didn’t attend either event because I had signed up to lead the 12pm tour at the Museum. They had asked for extra docents because they expected a large holiday crowd. That didn’t happen, I led a tour for a nice group of 15 or so, and the second docent who signed up for 12pm, went home early.

I got back to CH at 1:30, just in time to take part in the Labor Day barbecue lunch. Nice ribs and beans and such. Then did a couple of other things and had a nap and then it was 5:30, which is when the Sixth Floor was to meet for supper. On holidays as I have mentioned, Dining Services goes home early. For supper you can pick up a brown bag picnic at 10am. Or, as we did this time, your floor can order pizza. I had put in the pizza order, and it was due at 5:45. They were just a couple minutes late this time but no harm done. Jerry and I carried the 5 boxes of pizza up to the 11th floor where we had a long table. I had meant to order 5 large pizzas to feed the 15 who had signed up. I had accidentally ordered two of them as Mediums, but no harm done, there was still leftovers. Note for next time, 3L + 2M feeds 15 or even 16 of our group.