Wednesday 02/24/2021

Took the usual walk first thing. Got back in good time for the first scheduled event, a video meeting with a urologist. The CT scan of last week had shown large cysts (fluid-filled hollows) in both kidneys, the left one quite large at 15cm, so, grapefruit size I guess. The surgeon said it probably was not a problem, but she referred me to Dr. Chung to make sure. He quizzed me about any possible discomfort I might feel from it. What kind of discomfort? Well, unusual feelings of fullnes? GI issues? No and no. So, same advice as the last time anybody talked about this, years and years ago, leave it alone. Not a problem.

Before and after lunch I ran the laundry, and worked on polishing the parts of the MG. I have a kit of model polishing stuff, several grades of very fine abrasive (6000 grit to 12000), rubbing compound, wax. Brought up a nice shine on some parts. I did a dry fit of the chassis, floor pan, and body tub onto the fenders. The thing is going to look really good, eventually.

Second doctor appointment was with cardiologist Dibiase at 3pm. My morning BP is ok, but she wants my evening BP, which averages around 130, to come down. She considered a long time, saying “I don’t want to add a third med,” a sentiment in which I heartily concur. Finally she instructed me to take my evening pills before I eat supper instead of after. We’ll confer again in May.

Can’t believe tomorrow is Thursday already. Weeks are spinning around fast.

Tuesday 02/23/2021

Veronica had the day off, so no morning exercise (but I got plenty at FOPAL later).

At 9am it was time for a concert by Stephanie and Paolo (see 2.055 and 2.034). As usual they were delightful as well as showing amazing piano skills.

I had to put that on pause as 10am approached because it was time then for my annual review with the Financial Advisors. The finale to this is to update their model (sophisticated spreadsheet) based on what I had told them about expenses and future spending plans, to predict how the Nest Egg will look over the coming years, supposing I were to live to age 100. Good news; as usual, even with the most conservative estimates for inflation and stock performance, I can’t spend money as fast as the Nest Egg grows, so it keeps getting bigger, slowly, over time. Also I had gone in with a specific question, and I got a very good, helpful and enlightening answer.

I joined the writers’ group in progress. The cue had been to write about animals in your life, which had triggered nothing at all in my imagination so I didn’t write. However during the session, listening to other people’s accounts of psychotic pets and so on, I realized I could have done a pretty good thing about cows, based on boyhood experience. Nobody else wrote about farm animals. Oh, well.

Right after lunch I drove to FOPAL and processed several boxes of donations to the computer section. Unusually out of four boxes, I found more than a dozen “high-value” books (over $25, mostly well over). I carefully did not lift any full boxes of books. At least in the sense of what I used to do, dead-lift a full box from the floor to a cart, or carry one 50 feet to a table. I left the boxes on the floor and emptied them one at a time, filling boxes already on a cart. Then I rolled the cart to the edge of a table and lifting only one end of a box, moved the box horizontally onto the table.

Monday 02/22/2021

Took the walk. The weather is warming up. First time it is 60º or above at 8am, I am going out in shorts and trying to jog, at least a bit, on this route. As opposed to street clothes and just walking.

Around 10am, a facilities guy came around and painted the area around the edge of the closet where they patched the plaster Friday. That job is done, which has been pending (in my mind) since last June. For one reason or another I had put off requesting Facilities to do it, but now that is done and done.

There is one more job that has been hanging on my to-do list for months, and that is getting my eyes examined and prescription updated. The last time that was done was at PAMF’s eye clinic on Mathilda avenue more than 5 years, maybe more than 8 years, back. The PAMF medical history section in their website is somewhat confusing. But whatever, it has been too long. Problem is, PAMF closed the Mathilda eye clinic building some years ago. When I try to use their website to book an appointment for an exam, there’s no such option. Only “return visit with provider” and the names of a couple of eye doctors I have seen there. I’ve decided what I need to do is message my PCP about it, and it is just a matter of actually doing that.

At various times over the day, I sprayed the second clear coat on the MG body tub, and the first and then later the second, coat on the main body with its lovely swoopy fenders. So that job is finally done. What remains is to resume assembling. There are a bunch of parts yet to assemble. The first bit will be to assemble the hood, which has four parts and three metal hinges. You know, old style hood, when it is closed it’s like Π, but when open on both sides it’s like M.

At 6pm we had the Stanford Women hosting Arizona on ESPN. Arizona just lost to Cal, giving Cal its first win of the season, which would indicate that Arizona shouldn’t be a big deal, but Arizona played like champs in the first half, their defense keeping Stanford out of rhythm and causing frequent turnovers. In the second half, though, Stanford pulled out a 12-point lead and held it. Stanford now has the PAC-12 season championship, for whatever that’s worth, since there is a tournament as well.

I had an email conversation with Harriet Benson, another fan, about traveling to the tournament in Las Vegas, and/or to the NCAA championship in San Antonio. I checked with Angela, our Covid Safety Officer. Her opinion was that either trip would probably involve “large gathering” and necessitate a 14-day quarantine on return. Having to spend two weeks locked up in my room, plus the exposure of a commercial airline round trip, set the price too high for either trip.

Later Harriet reported that Eileen, the Stanford Basketball Operations director, had told her, sorry, we will allow only immediate families of players in Las Vegas. As for San Antonio, the NCAA intends to run the entire field of 64 inside a giant “bubble” with attendance at venues limited to 10% capacity. So very likely it wouldn’t be possible to get a ticket anyway.

Sunday 02/21/2021

I’d read the paper, had my coffee, showered and dressed and watered the plants, and it was still a bit shy of 8am. I looked out at a sparkling clear day, Mount Diablo crisp on the horizon. Well, heck, I thought, let’s get a jump on the parking at the Baylands. Times past, I’ve only thought of going down there later and arrived at 10 and it was full. But 8am, pshaw, no problem.

It is to laugh. At 8:15 there was no space at the Bixbee end. I drove the two miles down the 101 frontage road to the San Antonio end where there was still space. Went for a nice 3-mile walk (1.5 out and back). I was wishing I had brought the Nikon with my new telephoto lens. Shots like this one just don’t work on the iPhone.

With the 500mm lens, that would have been a winner.

From there I decided to drive back via some back streets that I used to bicycle–Moody road, Elena, Page Mill. Quietly scenic. I had to stop and wait a couple of minutes for these guys to get the heck out of my way.

Later I sprayed some clear coat including onto the second largest piece of the MG. It went on nice except for one bit where I moved too slow and the paint sagged. But I can smooth that out and it will disappear under the second coat. This shows the difference between the cowling, which has been clear-coated, and the main body, which hasn’t. That will be tomorrow’s job.

Saturday 02/20/2021

Went for a moderate walk in the morning. Meant to stop at Mme. Collette’s for a pastry as a change from the farmer’s market. However, they had a sign on the door, “sorry no pastries – power out at bakery”. Well, so continue walking to the farmer’s market and force myself to make do with a chocolate hazelnut swirl, darn it.

At some point I sprayed clear on four parts. Tomorrow I’ll put the second coat on them, and then it will be time to take a deep breath and spray clear on the two large pieces that comprise the body of the MG. Big pieces with lots of curves and multiple sides, and opportunities to screw up. But when they are done, final assembly will take only a couple of days. How long have I been working on… well, not so much working on, as keeping it around waiting for parts, or experimenting with paint, and fussing over — this model? Months at least.

At 2:30 was a lecture on a play. The production is Fairfield by the Pear Theater. It was recorded to video and available to subscribers for a limited time ending this weekend. The lecture was by Aldo Billingsley, one of the co-directors of the piece. So at 10am I sat down to watch the play. It was pretty funny and a pointed social satire about race relations. Billingsley is also a professor of theater arts at Santa Clara, and has a very good teaching style, warm and humorous but with lots of clever insights. He had a couple of the attendees read scenes from the play, and got the other attendees to answer questions about motivations and subtle meanings in the script.

I was not one of the people asked to read, but I’d have enjoyed it. The people who did read, enjoyed it and did very well at finding the characters and intent of the script. Which made me think, I bet reading a play would be a fun zoom activity. I wonder who to suggest that to.

Friday 02/19/2021

Went for the standard walk. After that there wasn’t much to do before I was to meet with Marcia at 10am. Turned out, what was on Marcia’s mind was to invite me to be one of two residents on the Strategic Planning committee. I agreed, and later she sent me a flurry of PDFs of various background documents: the previous (2015-2019) Strategic Plan, a 2019 Technical Strategic Plan, and a couple of other things to consider. I skimmed them and made a bunch of notes.

A Facilities guy came and finished the plaster work in my closet. He’ll come back Monday and paint it.

I painted too. I put a second clear coat on the pieces I was working on earlier. I used my new favorite abrasive, 2500-grit sandpaper, to wet sand a couple of other pieces, which revealed that on those pieces, more red color was needed, So I sprayed them with the red. Tomorrow I will put clear on them.

In Rhonda’s 4pm open meeting, she had announcements of reduced restrictions. Taking into account the declining cases in Santa Clara County (she thinks we will be out of the Purple Tier into the Red with a week) and our vaccinations, they have decided we can have up to 15 people in the penthouse, and they may now gather four to a table to play games or do puzzles. We can visit other people’s apartments, and so on. Always masked of course and 6 feet apart when practical, with four people at a card table as an exception.

Thursday 02/18/2021

After Veronica’s cardio, I had not much to do. I tidied the apartment so it would be neat for Wanda’s housekeeping round in the afternoon. While watering the plants I noticed that one of the two fuscias was budding out nicely, and also was developing a nice crop of those nasty little white flies.

At 1:30pm I took the car out and got it washed for the first time in weeks. Amazing how dirty a car can still get, sitting in an underground garage. Then to the nursery to by a spray bottle of insecticidal soap. Back home, apartment all tidy. I sprayed the leaves of the fuscia.

The facilities guy had been in and had done most of what I wanted. The biggest job was where there were some gouges in the plaster where the old closet fixtures had been demo’d. He had plastered them nicely and put up blue tape saying “still wet”. So what did I do? Without a second thought I reached out and touched the plaster, making two nice fingerprints in the soft stuff. I leveled it out as best I could but I will need to sand it when it dries. Before the guy comes back to paint it.

Wednesday 02/17/2021

Early the facilities shop called, could they send someone to evaluate the work I wanted done? Of course, I’ll be back from my walk by 9:30. Then, to make sure that was true, I cut my walk some short. Later on Fernando came by and we talked about the simple fixes I want done. Basically, clean up some raw edged that were left when the closets were remodeled.

I sprayed some clear coat on some parts, with pretty good results.

Two things I’ve had to learn this past few days. One, dust control. I wiped down the little spray booth with a wet rag, run the fan and spritz it with my plant atomizer a few minutes before painting. Two, thinning the paint. From the internet I learned that a major cause of orange peel is simply that the droplets in the atomized spray are tiny, and their thinner evaporates during the 4-inch trip from airbrush to surface. The cure is to add more thinner, so the droplets arrive at the surface wet, and have time to self-level before they dry. That means moving the spray more slowly or holding it closer. There is a complex function between speed of moving the spray, amount of thinner, and distance from the surface.

After painting these parts I had to pack up the spray stuff, compressor, booth, gloves, mask, and move it from the bathroom to the porch. I don’t want Wanda being confused by all this stuff in the bathroom when she’s cleaning.

There was a lecture at 3pm, but it didn’t hold my interest. So that was about it for the day.

Tuesday 02/16/2021

After aerobics I called Facilities again. I am trying to get some old maintenance taken care of, since Facilities is supposedly back up to full staff and no longer dealing with relocating the 3rd and 4th floor campers. Not a satisfactory call. Not sure when, or if, anyone is coming.

At 11 it was the writers’ group. Connie had asked us to write about our meal practices, eating alone in our rooms. I was surprised how many of my neighbors go to the trouble of taking the food out of the green plastic clamshell serving containers and putting it on plates. And warming the plates in the microwave, and setting a table. Pffft. I just put the green plastic compartmented tray (kind of like an airline meal tray, but larger) on the table and dig in. I wrote about my meal-time entertainment, that is, my favorite YouTube creators.

Right after lunch I headed out to FOPAL, where I processed several boxes of books, pricing a dozen or so, finding a couple of high-value ones, and moving three or four boxes to the reject table.

From there I drove to Safeway in Menlo Park, that one instead of the one on Middlefield which would be more on my way, because I know the big one has Coke in the mini size cans.

That was about the day. Evening our in house movie savant, Rob, had sponsored a showing of The Awful Truth, a “screwball comedy”. I dropped in, watched five minutes, was not amused, and dropped out.

Monday 02/15/2021

Went for the usual walk in the morning. Met briefly with Eva to answer a question about her Mac. Some questions about Mail, which I don’t use or understand, but I have a book about it, which I sent to her later. If she reads it she might be more of an expert than I.

At 1pm I took my pre-med for my dental appointment, and an hour later I walked to the dentist office, a whole five minutes away. I had expected this to be a fairly lengthy and perhaps painful hygiene, since it was my first since, I think, late 2019. However, the hygienist was quite pleased, not much plaque and done in twenty minutes.

I put a second coat of color on those four MG parts which came out quite smooth. Next up, clear coat.

Today there was supposed to be a Stanford Women’s game against Oregon on ESPN2 at 4pm. But around 2pm I got an email from Stanford saying there was a change of time. In fact the game was now on ESPN (not ESPN2) at 6pm, not 4. Stanford appeared to have the game in hand, running out a 15-point lead early in the 2nd quarter. And then Oregon tightened up their defense, ran off a 10-0 run, and made it a close game. It stayed close all through the second half, with Oregon taking a small lead with 2 minutes to go. Stanford was ahead by 2 with seconds left and Oregon with the ball. The Oregon point guard made an unforced error and turn the ball over, and Stanford escaped with the win.