Saturday 04/03/2021

Spent an hour writing up the results of my 2-week experiment with a Keto diet. Did a little work on my modified spray booth, but got stuck figuring out how to glue some parts. Took a moderate walk. That was about it.

Friday 04/02/2021

Went for the usual walk. Then met Margaret one more time at the coffee bar to go over Mac problems. One was, she had the issue, which is apparently fairly common, that iTunes (or iCloud) repeatedly prompts for your Apple ID. If you enter it, or if you click Cancel, doesn’t matter, it comes right back again. I googled it and found several websites that had the solution, which is to sign out from iCloud, reboot, and sign in to iCloud again. They didn’t say, when you try that, iCloud has all sorts of things it wants you to do first. I got through that and did some of the things and canceled others (you don’t need to download 8000 photos from iCloud to this machine, etc.) and the problem was gone (ominous foreshadowing).

Middle of the day, I started to craft a paper pattern for the cloth front I want to put on my spray booth. Interrupted in that by a call from Margaret. Her signatures had disappeared from Mail. I don’t use Mail so hadn’t realized it lets you store little boilerplate things to put at the end of your emails, and her little boilerplates were gone. Undoubtedly because of the way I had signed out of iCloud abruptly.

But now it was time for the national semifinal game between Stanford and South Carolina. As to be expected with a game between two #1 seeds, it was close right to the final 3 seconds, when with Stanford ahead by 1, S. Carolina had the ball, put up a shot which bounced off the rim. Their center caught the rebound perfectly and went to put it back, which would have given the Gamecocks the win by one point. Unfortunately she put the ball up too hard and it bounced off the back of the rim. Buzzer. Stanford wins. Big girl kneels down on the court in tears.

In the second semifinal, Arizona, a three seed that Stanford beat twice in the regular season, soundly defeated UConn, leading every minute of the game, sometimes by 14, and holding on in the final minute.

Thursday 04/01/2021

Got around my zoom problem and managed to join Veronica’s aerobics at 8:15. After that I tidied the apartment anticipating Wanda coming to clean at 2pm. Also paid two bills.

Chores done, I drove down to FOPAL. Better to go twice a week than to find 6 boxes waiting on Tuesday like last time.

Back home, had lunch and a nap, and then it was getting close to time for Wanda to come in. I had decided to try out the 500mm mirror lens at the Baylands. Since on Sunday morning at 8am the tide had been super low, I figured that 6 hours later the water would be high.

Wrong. The water was almost as low as 5 days previous. Hardly any bird action. I shot a few but there is a problem. The 500mm has very shallow depth of field, which is to say the distance at which things are in focus is very specific, and anything closer or further is not sharp. Case in point, this egret, who I caught with an actual fish in its beak.

Well I think it’s a fish. Could be a rubber boot sole. Anyway, notice the egret is not in sharp focus? Five to ten feet beyond the egret, see the jagged stump on the left and the leaning granite rock behind the bird? Those things are crisp. That’s shallow depth of field, from the stump to the rock. A very minute rotation of the focus ring would have moved the zone back to include the egret and I’d’a had a good picture.

It’s been a lot of years since I’ve had to worry about manual focus. Our cameras have been auto-focus since… the 80s? But this lens does not allow for auto-focus; it is strictly manual. I shot maybe 10 exposures today of various things, and I don’t think the center of interest was in the focal zone on any of them.

I was using a monopod, basically a 5-foot stick with the camera on top. Maybe I have to use full tripod so I don’t have to simultaneously aim the camera with one hand and turn the focus ring by tiny little degrees with the other.

Wednesday 03/31/2021

Keepint this short because, A, little happened and B, went to bed without writing an entry, got up to do it.

Went for a walk, and seemingly spent the rest of the day with my laptop. Posted good info about how to change your Zoom name, several people thanked me. Read a lot, locked at several videos. Helped a neighbor with a Mac issue.

Glued three large pieces of clear plastic on the mini spray booth. Now if I can figure out how to do the fabric part so I can put my hands in without allowing dust in (like how you put your hands into a sand-blasting box) that will be nice. I don’t have any means to sew.

Went to bed early and read for a while.

Tuesday 03/30/2021

Would have done the aerobics but no zoom link was posted. Went for a modest walk instead, to Gamble Gardens.

I had not done any writing but attended the writers meeting anyway. As usual, others had taken the cue “Box” and thought of all sorts of clever variations on it. However one wrote a very lovely, very emotional memoire about when she was 15, and unexpectedly found the box of her mother’s ashes. It was brilliantly done.

Off to FOPAL where I processed three boxes of computer books and thought, there, job done — and then noticed three more boxes just off to the side. Instead of 90 minutes I was there over 3 hours.

Bought some coffee and headed home. At 6pm I joined Kent and Marcia to watch Stanford play their elite eight game against the Louisville Cardinals. The first half was not fun. Stanford had completely lost their three-point shot (1 of 9 went in) and their two-point tries were rimming out also. They were down by 12 at the half.

Now came a striking example of a coach “making adjustments” at half-time. During the third quarter Stanford attempted no threes, but focused on driving to the basket instead. They may have changed some defensive moves as well, but that was the noticeable change. From 12 down they were soon 12 up, while the Louisville coach called two timeouts to try to stop the bleeding.

In the fourth quarter they started shooting 3s again, and hitting them, and finally won by a healthy margin. The Final Four games are on Friday, and the Championship on Sunday.’

Monday 03/29/2021

Went for the usual walk (although for some reason the iPhone chose to call it 2.4 miles instead of the usual readout of 3.1 for the exact same route). Jogged two stretches of it, which felt fine.

Joined Margaret at the coffee hour at 9:30 and spent an hour consulting again on how she can arrange the illustrations for her pelvis talk (see 2.109). I had been directing her to use Pages, but she hates Pages and just doesn’t have a feel for arranging text and images in a word processor. Then she mentioned Keynote and I realized I’d been directing her completely wrongly. She wanted to make a series of slides not a document. Switched to using Keynote and things went better.

Spent time working out how to convert the open spray booth to a closed one. This is going to need sewing skills which I don’t have. Anyway I marked off two pieces of plastic. Took them to the small hobby shop on the 5th floor to find a box cutter, and cut them out. Next I need to attach them, but how? Finally decide, epoxy. Walk to Ace Hardware and buy some.

Got a call from Susan and Harry, would I like to come have a drink around 5pm? Sure. Do that. Tom and Nancy also there. Pleasant talk with nice people.

Sunday 03/28/2021

Dennis and I had arranged to meet at the Baylands parking at 7:30 am. I needed to leave by 7:10. So of course this morning I slept until 6:40. Well, time for coffee and to dress, and that was about it.

Had a pleasant walk seeing all the birbs hanging out doing nothing. I had thought I would bring the Nikon with the 500mm lens but at the last minute decided it was too clumsy to walk with the camera on a monopod (five-foot stick). And I didn’t see anything to make me regret that decision. The tide was out further than I’ve ever seen it, and there was nothing but mud as far as you could see.

Talked blood pressure, as both of us have an issue with it. I had to report that one week of Keto diet had not changed my BP at all. I am going to continue for the second week, although mainly because I canceled in-house meals for the coming week so whatever, I would have to feed myself. Might as well feed myself no-carb food. I will write up a report a week from now.

Back home I puttered around until noon when it was time for the Stanford Women to play their “sweet-sixteen” game against Missouri State. They had no trouble at all and won by nearly 30 points. Next up, Tuesday, is the “elite eight” game against a much stronger team, Georgia.

Saturday 03/27/2021

Felt low in the morning so was sedentary until lunchtime. Then I went out to a place I haven’t been in years, TAP Plastics. I have this notion about making my little model spray booth dustproof and that will need a piece of clear polycarbonate. So I went to TAP plastics with my dimensions, and they made it in ten minutes.

Stopped also at Safeway for some odds and ends, and Ace Hardware for some velcro. And that was about it, spent the rest of the afternoon reading and watching a couple of games of the NCAA Women’s tournament. Arizona did a terrific job to beat Texas A&M by ten points. Tomorrow it will be the turn of Stanford (at noon) and Oregon to try to advance.

Friday 03/26/2021

First thing I went for my usual MWF walk, except this time, for the first time since October, I wore my sneakers. Not shorts, but the running shoes, and for two quarter-mile stretches of the walk, I jogged. And I felt fine. Better than I did on Monday or Wednesday as a matter of fact.

This might indicate my metabolism has shifted gears fully into ketosis. It definitely indicates that I’m adapting to a diet of Keto Chow shakes, with sides of protein-rich stuff like sausage, boiled eggs, roasted cashews, safeway chicken and canned tuna. Also peanut butter. Although when I googled “peanut butter keto diet” I was advised that most commercial PBs have a couple grams of added sugars (OMG carbs!) per serving. PB is compatible with a keto diet when it is only PB, and the “calories from carbohydrates” on the label are mostly “dietary fiber” and no “added sugars”.

Unfortunately my blood pressure, the factor this diet shift might, hopefully, address, hasn’t changed, at least not significantly. But I turned in next week’s menu with “no thanks” all over it, so I’m committed for another week at least.

I was back just in time to join Dr. Margaret on the 11th floor coffee serving. She is preparing to give a zoom talk on the pelvis (she gave another talk a few weeks back) and was having trouble working out how to collect clip art from the network and assemble it into a document. So we spent an hour doing that.

After lunch and a nap I decided to stroll the half-mile to Whole Foods and buy a jar of natural PB-that-consists-only-of-peanuts. That brought my mileage for the day to 4.2. And now I know why Skippy and Jif add those grams of sugar to their products. Because they taste a whole lot better that way.

At the weekly 4pm meeting, all the news was basically good: reduced restrictions on visitors, promises that in a few days the pool will open, and so on.

Thursday 03/25/2021

Today I had planned with sister-in-law Jean to go for a drive hoping to see wildflowers. It is California spring, the hills are green, flowers should be out.

Jean suggested I bring somebody from CH so I invited neighbor Patty, figuring she would get along with Jean. She and I drove to Mountain View and picked up Jean, and off we went down 101 past Gilroy to San Juan Bautista. We walked around the mission exterior. The church and mission garden were closed.

We walked around SJ Bautista’s tiny down-town. A couple of its restaurants were actually doing ok, selling sandwiches to go.

From there we debated whether to go west toward the coast, or east toward Hollister and drive some of state route 25. The latter was the choice so we did that, going south on 25 almost to the entrance to Pinnacles National Monument. Stopped at a county historical park to eat our sandwiches, and the drove home, arriving back at CH at nearly 3pm.

I did not set a trip odometer but it was probably close to 200 miles for the day, certainly the longest I’ve driven in two years. And it generally felt fine. I can still drive; my passengers agreed I was driving safely.

Only thing was, while there was lots of green grass on the hills, the only flowers were mustard plants, which grow as a weed in cultivated fields. A couple of patches of California Poppies, probably planted by the highway department. But there was nice mountain scenery.