Wednesday, 01/27/2021

First thing I drove to Sunnyvale to give blood for lab work.

I stopped on the way to fill the Prius gas tank. When I went to record the amount in my log book, I had to draw a line to mark the start of the year 2021. It was only five rows below the line for 2020. I filled up the tank five times in the plague year.

At the lab, the receptionist looked at my record and said, you have two sets of orders here, Doctor Marx and Doctor DiBiase. Well, I did the labs for Marx (see day 1.358, 11/24/20) except I had to skip the cholesterol test, so I guess that was still open. Then DiBiase had put in a blood panel, liver function, and another cholesterol.

The receptionist also said, you have a fecal test here, too. I said, yeah, I just mailed that in. He said, oh no, it will disappear, you need to bring those in by hand. What? said I; I followed the instructions on the package exactly, wrote the date, put it in the special return envelope, and mailed it. Yeah, he said, and they never arrive; I’ll make you up another one. And a few minutes later, while the tech was drawing my blood, he came through the lab and handed me a new FIT test kit. This is weird.

Back at the shop I did the laundry. I also tinkered a bit with brushing clear coat on the MG. Not sure about it but getting rather impatient with the whole process.

At 6:30 we had a SWBB game, Stanford at WSU. It looked like a runaway; Stanford just jammed the Cougar’s gears with defense while running the score from 13-9 up to 29-9, and at one point had more than a 30-point lead. But the Cougs worked their way back to only a 15-point deficit before the end. This game was a make-up of one that was Covid-delayed earlier. They play again on Sunday, and probably WSU will be harder to beat then.

Tuesday 01/26/2021

After morning aerobics it was time for the first monthly jazz lecture/concert by Stephanie and Paolo. After the series I’d enjoyed last month, I supported their patreon account and so now get a new concert every month. I would love to share the concert video here, but it is private to their paying supporters. Although I betcha some of their fans do share the URL (it’s just a YouTube link, not protected in any way), and you know? That’s fine. They’ll get more exposure. But it would be over the top to share the URL in a public blog like this, with my 3s of readers.

That took until well past 10 and I wanted to go to the meal delivery safety meeting at 11:45, so I didn’t zoom to the writers’ meeting. I video’d the safety meeting, all 6 minutes of it, with the iPhone, getting much better sound than with the Nikon. I also video’d the final one at 4:45pm, and probably Thursday I will edit the bits together to make a smooth piece.

In between I did some organizing. An Amazon order arrived yesterday with manila folders, so I could do some tidying of my tax files, and also my collection of papers related to Resident Association Treasurer. That took all of 10 minutes. I did some minor experiments with clear paints. I actually think applying the paint with a brush will work best and fastest for small parts. Larger parts and curved parts need the spray and I’m still working on that.

In the evening a proper storm has moved in and wind is swooshing around my corner windows and causing things elsewhere in the building to bang and clang at odd times. Oooh and my lamp just flickered very briefly…

Monday 01/25/2021

Today I had set up an appointment to have blood drawn at PAMF. I used to drive to the PAMF office in Los Altos and just walk in and stand in line at 7:30am. But now one has to get an appointment, and the nearest location they offer is Sunnyvale. So I eat my usual breakfast and drive most of the way to the lab in Sunnyvale and remember, oops, I am supposed to be fasting. Shall I proceed and lie, or shall I bail and reschedule.

Not knowing how sensitive the stupid cholesterol test is to recent food consumption, I decide to bail. I pull off El Camino and go to the MyHealth app on the phone. (The Sutter Health MyHealth app, not the MyHealth app provided by Stanford Hospitals.) It proves to be very easy to reschedule a lab appointment, which I do for Wednesday morning. And drive home.

Before lunch and supper are two of the four scheduled safety talks that staff wants as part of their response to a minor accident among the food delivery volunteers. I attend. Matt from Sodexo does a nice job, presenting reasonable advice on properly handling the heavy carts in five minutes or so. I take some video using my Nikon, but unfortunately the Nikon’s built-in mic is not up to the task. So tomorrow I shall take more video using the iPhone.

I had asked Dr. Julia if I could take an FIT test as an alternative to the colonoscopy that I am a year overdue for. She agreed and sent me the kit, which arrived yesterday. This morning I used it, picking up a sample on the little plastic tool and mailing it off to the lab. Hopefully it will be negative and I can forget about colonoscopies.

Sunday 01/24/2021

Did my usual Sunday morning stuff. Decided to go for a short walk, and did. Then, thinking about how it is ten days yet until I allow myself to go into a grocery store (I have neighbors who routinely go to Trader Joe’s and such, and I have gone to a grocery store a few weeks ago, but February 2 is a magical mystical day now in my calendar, 2 weeks from 2nd shot, so that is the rule) and I am out of bread. Orowheat is commercial bread that just about never mildews. Yes it is probably loaded to the gills with chemicals that keep it pristine; I don’t care. The last time I ordered from Instacart, which is at least three weeks, I bought a loaf of Orowheat Whole Wheat and now it is down to 2 and a half slices and it has dried out. And ten days to go; and I would feel stupid using Instacart to order one loaf of bread.

So I got in the car and drove to the California Ave. farmers’ market, and stood in a spaced-out line for the bakery kiosk, and bought an almond croissant and a loaf of artisanal bread. Which when I got it home tastes very good indeed. I double-wrapped in a paper bag and a plastic bag. It might last a week and then will probably sprout a garden of inch-high fungus.

At 4pm it was time for Stanford Women’s Basketball. They are coming off consecutive losses. Can they bounce back? Yes they did. USC played them even for the first quarter. Then one of USC’s best players tweaked her ankle and sat down. And in the second quarter Stanford reeled off a 12-0 run and the game stopped being close.

Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.

Saturday 01/23/2021

In the morning I went for a moderate walk, circling back past the farmers’ market to pick up a nummy pastry. Shortly after I got back I had email from Marcia and Kim the HR. It seems that on Thursday, one of the meal delivery persons had somehow had an injury. Could we come talk to Kim about scheduling a safety class?

In the meeting it developed that whatever the injury was — Kim couldn’t say who or what — it wasn’t hugely serious as it wasn’t reported until Friday. But then, as usual in a care facility where any injury of a resident is a Big Deal With Reports Filed, Rhonda was involved. It somehow involved the tall aluminum wheeled carts that volunteers use to roll a load of 20-30 trays to a floor for distribution.

Facilities had been involved. They had straightened some of the horizontal rails that were bent and had tsk-tsk’d over the condition of all the casters, which are pretty wobbly. Casters have been ordered and will be replaced. In the meantime, Kim has arranged for Matt of Sodexo to give a short safety talk to the volunteers, but due to Covid, we can’t gather them all at once.

Marcia had made a mailing list of all the people who had volunteered for meal delivery, with 39 names. So 40 people. Kim opined we could gather 10 at a time, so four sessions, can you guys assign them to sessions and let them know? Sure, said Marcia, Dave you can make one of those signup sheets you do?

So by mid-morning I had made a sign-up sheet so up to ten people could sign up for each of four sessions, and composed a cheerful email to our volunteers about the what and why, and sent it out to the list of names Marcia forwarded to me. Also promised to video the presentation.

Later Marcia found out the who and the what. The woman had been wrestling with a tray that got stuck on those bent aluminum rails, and somehow the tray had smacked her across the knuckles, causing tendon pain that she didn’t notice until Friday but had to see a doctor about. It’s fortunate it was no more than that. Rhonda knows how much the meal delivery program means to the people who do it, and a worse injury might have forced her to cancel it and return the job to staff.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. I read, fiddled with my airbrush, and took a second walk.

Friday 02/22/2021

Went for the usual walk in the morning. Mid-morning I had an email saying the clear paint I had ordered had been delivered, so I went down and picked up the box from the foyer. Now maybe I could proceed with doing clear-coat using my airbrush. I moved the airbrush setup from the porch to the bathroom. I couldn’t do that with the spray cans, as the odor was too powerful. Airbrush paints are water-based acrylics.

I prepared a piece of plastic primed with a gray primer. When it had dried, I mixed up the new clear paint with just a bit of acrylic thinner to get the texture right and tried spraying it, and was shocked at what happened in the areas where it was thick.

The paint pulled back as if the primer was waxed, piled up in globs. Above and below the globby area you can see how the first couple of passes laid down ok; it is where on a third pass it got wet. Well, I would expect a wet coat to, at worst, run. Their website says put it on in “light, wet coats”. Ignoring the contradiction of “light” versus “wet”, you can’t work with something that at some critical point, is going to start crawling around like an amoeba. I’ll never let that near anything I care about. Later I realized I had a little drib of gloss clear acrylic from another company, and tried that. It was OK, at least it went down on the same primer and stayed put.

Rhonda’s 4pm weekly zoom meeting had 142 participants at the peak, but no real news. Well, 92% of residents, and 65% of staff, have been vaccinated. She reported that she attended a webinar with a number of other care homes nationwide, and the report there was 35-45% staff vaccinations, so our 65% was pretty good. But don’t expect any relaxation of restrictions soon. Nothing will be relaxed until we get “guidance” from health departments. (So the people who have been predicting we’d be back in the dining room for meals in March are likely wrong.)

At 7pm was a SWBB game. They had lost to Colorado last week, and now faced UCLA as #5 vs. #6. UCLA played them even for the first half, took a small lead at the half. In the third quarter the Bruins pulled ahead by 11 and things didn’t look good. Stanford came back to tie at 63-63 with 3 minutes left, and tied at 66-66 with a minute and a half left. But UCLA played smart, got a 2 point lead in the final seconds, Stanford had to foul and UCLA made their free throws. Loss, 66-70.

Thursday 01/21/2021 note: 21st day, of the 21st year, of the 21st Century.

Dropped out of the aerobics class when it hadn’t started five minutes late. Kind of crochety reaction, I wish I’d waited a few minutes longer.

Anyway at 10:15 I set out to walk to my appointment with Dr. Dibiase (dee bee ah say) at PAMF. Which of course only took about 15 minutes so I was half an hour early. Anyway we talked about medications and how my BP wasn’t as low as it should be. She made a change, and also ordered some labs. I’m to see her by video next time, in a month.

After lunch I put in the request for the video appointment (later granted, although not in the time interval I requested, but a week later), and made a firm appointment for the lab work. I have to be fasting, and will drive to Sunnyvale for that on Monday morning.

Oh, and the Palo Alto Dental office called to offer a hygiene appointment. I had thought from their site that they weren’t doing hygiene until June, but apparently not so. Anyway, got that scheduled.

With nothing to do, I decided to haul out the novel again. See if I can make the opening more grabby. Or I might possibly just self-publish it this time. Spent an hour going over the file of notes and back-story, and tidying up the folders where all the related stuff has accumulated.

At the doctor’s office I studied some posters about taking your own BP, and asked her about it, and found out I’ve been doing it wrong. I have been doing it sitting on my bed, with the test arm relaxed on my lap. Turns out it makes a difference, you are supposed to have the arm elevated on a table. (But the nurse doesn’t actually do that when she takes your vitals at the office.) Also, the first one in the morning? Immediately on arising. Get up, urinate, take BP. I’d been waiting until after I’d been up an hour and took my shower and all. Also wait 30 minutes after eating — I’d been taking it right after lunch and supper.

So I start a new regime of taking BP, with arm supported on the kitchen table, after arising and 30 minutes after meals. The first two I did that way are significantly lower than I was getting. Maybe I will hold up the meds tweak she suggested, until I have a few days of data.

Wednesday 01/20/2021

In the morning, instead of going for my walk first thing, I stayed in my seat and supervised the presidential inauguration. I was really worried that Trump wouldn’t go — but he did, quietly — or that something ugly would happen during the ceremony — but nothing did. So after all the drama, just government as usual after all.

At 10 I could relax and go for my walk. After lunch I did some desk work. Yesterday I received my printed tax workbook from the tax accountant. So I opened that, and also logged in to their site. Prior years we have filled in the workbook electronically, on the accountant’s site, as well as uploading all the 1099s and other docs through their system. No mention of that in the package that came by mail, so I wrote an email to Katie, the person I’ve dealt with the last couple of years, asking about that. I have never met Katie except through email. So I was pleased to see that she was “employee of the quarter” or such and had her picture on the site. She’s a cute 30-something blonde, which is nice to know.

Another thing was to reply to a note from Chris Johnson, who had cut my and Marian’s hair since the late 1970s. (Yes, really, we started with her while our IBM group was located on Sand Hill Road. Scott would know what year that was; I’m just going to guess 1978.) I got a postcard from her yesterday announcing her retirement. She lives in Grass Valley, and for the last several years has driven down to a shop in Ladera Center to practice 2 or 3 days a week. Marian really liked Chris, loved to trade stories and recipes with her. Marian and I went to her for haircuts a month or so before Marian died. I went to her alone throughout 2019 and maybe twice in 2020 before the lockdown. But that will be it; I’ll probably never see her again. I wrote her a nice note, while sniffling and wiping my eyes.

A package arrived today, looking as if somebody had been playing soccer with it.

As I believe I have mentioned my breakfasts are meal replacement shakes. This is a hang-over from 2015-2018 when I played a meal replacement expert online and posted review videos on YT. I’ve been having mostly KetoChow because of their wide selection of flavors. But since about 2016 I have been aware of another small company (except for Soylent, all meal replacement companies are small) based in England, Genesis foods. I’ve exchanged a few emails with the founder, Joe Barrow.

In December, Genesis announced they were now able to ship anywhere in the world. Well, heck, I’m curious; I ordered two sampler packs from them. And that was what was in the rather distressed box. It took 14 days in transit. The contents were in fine shape.

So now I have 24 meals in 12 flavors. Unfortunately earlier in the day I mixed up five breakfast shakes in KetoChow. I only have 5 blender bottles, so I can’t try any of these until at least Friday.

Joe makes a big deal out of the fact that all their packaging is not recyclable but compostable. Degrades in 60 days, they claim. But how does it taste? What’s the texture like? We will see.

Tuesday 01/19/2021

Got my shot. After the cardio class, I sat around sanding the clear coat on the three MG parts that I sprayed with the Tamiya can, reducing the wrinkles and craters. And of course managed to sand through the clear and the color on a couple of edges, so there’ll be touch-up to do.

At 11:15 I was called to go downstairs. Got the shot. Decided not to go late into the writers’ group zoom. After lunch I took a nap, and a moderate walk. Filled out my menu for next week and dropped it off. That was about it for excitement.

I was very impressed by the first real public action by Biden/Harris,

Simple, effective, touching. I wonder who actually planned that? Nice design. Okay, totally meaningless in any practical sense, but the presidency is not always about practicality. Symbols mean something. A serene, quiet, symbolic action is the exact opposite of the preceding administration.

Monday 01/18/2021

Started my usual walk more promptly than usual, at 8am, so as to be sure to be back in good time. At 10am, we who volunteered to help with the vaccine clinic met for orientation. I and my neighbor Steve were given radios and dispatched to the 2nd floor at 11am. Periodically over the next hour a person in the lobby would radio us and say, send down three more. We knocked on people’s doors and sent them down to the lobby to get vaccinated. Reminded them to carry the vaccination card they got with the first dose.

By 12 our parts were done and we handed off the radios to other volunteers to do the fifth floor. I believe the clinic went very smoothly this time, not the drama and delay of the first one.

That was the excitement for the day, I didn’t do much else. Burned through some TV off the DVR. On Masterpiece, Miss Scarlet & the Duke series. Tried it; got bored. Too obvious and melodramatic. Nature, on the Alps. The voice-over was just such heavy, over-dramatic, purple prose I couldn’t stand it. Another delete. Back to Netflix tomorrow.