Sunday 6/21/2020

Coffee, Sunday paper, crossword puzzle, water plants. Yup, it was Sunday. Then went for a walk. I decided to a different direction, North I guess it is, toward Menlo Park. Along El Camino, up the main shopping street of Menlo Park, and back on a quieter street on the other side of the railroad.

That was about it for the day. Oh, I grudgingly subscribed to HBO on the XFinity box. One of the nice things about leaving the Tasso Street house was closing the DirecTV account that was billing me nearly $130/month, and that with only one optional package, the enhanced sports group. My “digital select” XFinity subscription at CH started at $30/month for pretty much the same service. (Although they cranked it up another $6/month this month; apparently the first year was a reduced rate.)

When I skim the TV column in the Sunday paper there are always some shows I wish I could see, but they are on services I don’t get. There are so many of those: Netflix for a start; the optional HBO and SHO channels; and all the new ones from every corporation that can corral some content into a walled garden: Apple+, Disney+, NBC Peacock, CBS Max, Hulu. If I subscribed to all of them I’d be back to $130/month and more. Each of the services has maybe one show I’d like to see. Nope.

Apple+ is a peculiar one. As a streaming service, it comes over the intertubes. Now, my XFinity box is happy to host the “apps” for many streaming services. In particular that’s how I get my Amazon Prime Video. It also has apps for Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and 20 or so more, if I had subscriptions for them. But it doesn’t have an app for Apple+. Because I bought a new iPhone I could get a year of Apple+ free. But I could only access it on the phone or my laptop. Yes, I can and sometimes do connect the laptop to the TV with an HDMI cable. Yes, I could buy a Chromecast or Roku dongle and (I think?) feed Apple+ into the TV that way. But all those solutions mean getting out the TV remote and switching sources on both the TV and the sound box. I can’t be bothered. If it isn’t available by talking to my X1 voice remote, I don’t care.

But my hand was forced this time: I really want to see the rebooted Perry Mason because it features one of my favorite actors, Tatiana Maslany. Whatever she does is good. I hope. If it isn’t good, I’ll cancel the HBO next month.

Saturday 6/20/2020

Kind of a wasted day. Well, not quite. I did my laundry. And I finished submitting queries to all the agents on my list. One agent has already replied! That was unusually fast; typically it takes weeks for a reply, if there ever is one. It was a rejection, but with a short, polite, one might even say sympathetic, note. Anyway, all the queries are out there. I will wait until (probably) mid-August to get all the rejections. Then I’ll reconsider my options. Self-publish? It would mean finding a cover, among other things. Eh. I’ll worry about that no earlier than then.

I spent a couple of hours on the car kit. It’s quite amazing how much time you can spend on one of these, if you take enough care with it.

I didn’t leave the building, and in fact I only left the 6th floor once, to go down to the lobby and check my mail. Funny thing about mail. In the mail room there is a large plastic garbage can for recycled paper, and every day it is filled and overflowing. I am not the only one who finds that can convenient. Pull the mail out of the box, turn around, flip flip flip like a blackjack dealer, all the brochures and catalogs and ads go in the can. Most days I walk out of the mail room empty-handed.

In hindsight not going out for some kind of walk was a mistake. Felt very low in the evening.

Friday 6/19/2020

This was the second morning in the week where I’d ordered house breakfast, because it was pancakes. Next week’s menu, which I turned in yesterday evening, didn’t offer pancakes or french toast, so that’s the end of that experiment.

Instead of going for a run, I decided to do a long walk. I was curious to see the experiment of closing California ave. to be a pedestrian mall with outdoor restaurant seating. It made for a four-mile walk. Turns out, 10am is not the best time to judge this experiment. A few empty chairs is all.

Back at CH I filed another half-dozen agent queries. Another 8 to finish my list. Then I worked on the car model. I mentioned wishing I could do spark plug wires, and old friend Pat wrote suggesting that 30awg hookup wire would be about in scale. Last week I added a spool of that to an Amazon order and today I tried it and it worked pretty well. The modeling toolkit I bought way back had a set of twist drills and I used the smallest, 0.7mm, to drill holes in the head so I could seat the wires into the head.

They don’t really connect to the distributor; I just formed them to reach to it, but gimme a break. Now, does anyone want a spool with 99.5 feet of hookup wire?

A disappointment was when I thought I’d do the spray of clear coat on the body. I applied “frisket” for masking. Then I looked more carefully at the gloss clear bottle and realized it was enamel, not acrylic. I can’t use enamel because I don’t have anything to thin it with or clean it up. I don’t want to mess with paint thinner in my apartment or on my desk; I insist on water-based colors. So I’d messed up and ordered the wrong thing.

---

I haven’t reported any grief experiences in months, because I hadn’t had any. Today I was reading about Stanford Women’s Basketball. Two assistant coaches have left; two new ones have been hired including Katy Steding, who was Tara’s first-ever Stanford recruit and, along with classmate Jennifer Azzi, founded the program’s reputation. That’s interesting in a gossipy way because current “associate head coach” is Kate Paye, another star alumna, who graduated in 94, just four years later than Steding and Azzi.

Anyway, part of that reading was a quick review of the prior four seasons of SWBB: the 2016, -17, -18, and 2019 seasons. Reading through the names of the players and mentions of key games: I watched all those with Marian, helped her document them for the website, and it just brought a rush of grief. It’s making my eyes prickle now. And yet–and fortunately–I was able to attend games last season and enjoyed them for their own sake.

---

Rhonda’s 4pm meeting had some news and changes. This week they did over 300 tests of residents and staff, and all came back negative, a major success. She mentioned that accomplishing the prior two weeks of tests took 318 hours of staff time, equivalent to 4 full-time people, but done by existing staff. The one resident who tested positive two weeks ago now tests negative, has left isolation and is doing fine.

They are creating outdoor visiting areas where residents may meet with family members. The requirements are still tight: a resident, or married couple, can meet with people from just one other household. The visitors have to first check in and have their temperatures taken. No children under 18. (Don’t understand that one.)

The NBC World of Dance was meh, but I guess I’ll keep watching it. It has J-lo anyway. She and Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef are alike in being drop-dead gorgeous, seemingly gracious and graceful, and almost the same age, 50 and 49 respectively.

Thursday 6/18/2020

Veronica seemed to crank it up a bit in this morning’s aerobics; I was sweating and panting by the end. I got all the housecleaning done by 11, which was good because at 11:30 I had to receive a delivery.

---

Two days ago one of my neighbors, Susan, fell and cracked her pelvis, so she was sequestered in the nursing facility. Not the COVID part, but still, isolated. One day ago she put out a call for help from the tech crew: she’d left the charger for her MacBook off-site (“the cottage” which is I suppose someplace she and her husband own). Did anyone have a charger to spare?

Everyone was immediately sympathetic to the plight of a Mac user, stuck in bed, watching the battery indicator drain away. Emails flew around, but nobody had one. So the next solution is to order one from Apple. At first we weren’t sure which type she needed. Some thought she had a new Air, which would be the 30W USB-C one. Eventually she pulled herself together and sent me the model and year, it was a three-year-old MacBook, so it needed the 60W USB-C charger, and as one of the tech crew pointed out, a charging cable as well. I ordered the parts to be delivered today (only $9 to have it “delivered by courier”). And in fact it came in the first minute of the 11:30-1:30 delivery window. So, Susan saved from a dead battery. Wonder can she charge her phone? Not my problem.

---

I sent another batch of agent queries. It is so annoying; no two of these are alike. Some use a web form. Some take email. On the email, each one has a different requirement for how the subject line should read. And every one of them has a different amount of sample text they want included: first three chapters, first 5 pages, first 10 pages, 2000 words. Several have used a consistent web form provided by the QueryTracker site. But they still ask for different amounts of text. One today had their own web form, but you didn’t paste your text into it. Oh no. You put your query and your sample text into a file of type .docx (not .doc, mind you, .docx, which is different) and uploaded that document into the form. Of course I’m using OpenDoc and/or Pages, neither of which knows how to make a docx file. But I found an online conversion tool.

You have to scrupulously follow each and every detail, because you just know that they (or the minion that initially vets the email) is looking for any reason to reject. So you got to get it right.

---

In today’s COVID update email from staff, two important items. Of 139 IL residents tested yesterday they have results back for 136 — all negative. Here’s the second item:

Previously, the Channing House position has been that residents and staff would be permitted to attend a public demonstration/protest and not be subject to the 14-day isolation policy. However, given the frequent images in the news and on social media of protesters without masks and in large crowds, we are reversing this position for the protection of the Channing House community. Effective immediately, attendance at a public protest is subject to the same restrictions as other Gatherings. The resident or employee will be subject to 14-days isolation… we encourage you to support the Black Lives Matter movement in manners other than by attending public demonstrations/protests.

---

Worked on the car model, finishing up the front suspension and chassis rails.

Firestone tire. Eventually a chrome hubcap will cover up the carefully-painted lug nuts and bearing cap. But I’ll know they are there.

Front suspension. Rusty brake drum. The “rust” model paint isn’t quite dark enough. Slightly out of focus, note the detailed e-brake cable along the frame rail.

Wednesday 6/17/2020

First thing, a run. Second thing, fill the hummingbird feeder, and mix up five more meal replacement shakes for my breakfasts. All that was done before 9am. I always surprise myself by getting a lot done early. I do a bunch of stuff and feel accomplished, and look at the clock and it’s 8:55 and I think… crap, what am I going to do with the rest of the day?

I was invited down the hall for my ‘rona test about 10. Everyone knows what this is like by now. But I shared Scott’s zinger with the nurse: “I’m giving blood today and also getting tested, and a friend said, ‘Oh, so you’ve got a blood donation and a booger donation.'” It got a real laugh.

Thus at 11am I was free to get the car out and go donate blood. Well, not quite. At 11am I got to the garage door. At 11:10 I was back at the garage door, now with the car key which I had forgotten for the second damn time. I solved that problem for good now: I left the key in the car when I brought it back. Next time I may have a panic attack when I can’t find the key, but at least I won’t have to trek back up to the 6th floor to get it.

The flea bottom-ist at the blood center was most complementary about my left-arm vein. It’s big and prominent and easy to stab. Well, it ought to be; it’s been giving blood donations for a couple decades now.

In the afternoon I submitted several more queries, and did a little work on the model car. At 5 I ordered my Wahlburger, shake and tater-tots via Uber Eats. That was my gourmand meal. (Gourmand: “one who is excessively fond of eating and drinking”; vs. gourmet, “a connoisseur of food and drink”.)

For TV I’ve got NBC World of Dance. Will it be a watchable replacement for So You Think You Can Dance? The latter has been covid-delayed from its usual early-summer start. How did NBC get away with producing their show?

Oh, last night I watched, or rather tried to watch, the original Stargate movie and the first episode of the Stargate SG-1 series on Prime. The movie didn’t hold my interest, although I had to respect all the production effort that went into it. The series opener recapped the movie’s ending, so at least I was spared looking that up in wikipedia, but it also just didn’t convince me or intrigue me. Jut-jawed military dudes. Dudes with glowing eyes. Reptiles coming out of belly buttons. No.

Tuesday 6/16/2020

Did Veronica’s cardio. Sometimes I’m tempted to post the zoom meeting ID and say, y’all should join in. But no. Anyway there were 5 people this time, so it’s growing.

Rest of the day, meh. I did three more query submissions. You wouldn’t think composing an email or filling out a web form would be emotionally difficult but this is. How can I please this person based on the brief and ambiguous comments on the agency website? Have to keep working on “it’s not a judgement of me, it’s a judgement of my work…”

My mood was not improved by finding a small typo about 8 paragraphs into the sample text that I sent out with the first three queries yesterday.

Took care of a long-standing minor irritation. When cleaning the apartment on Thursdays I’ve been annoyed by a light coat of calcium water stains on the glass shower door. The otherwise useful spray cleaner they gave me doesn’t touch it. So today I finally did something, namely ordered some “Lime Kill” cleaner from Ace Hardware, and walked up to Ace and took curbside delivery of it. Brought it home, squirt squirt wipe wipe, wow! Shit works!

Today came word of the new garage hours: from now on the garage will be open for returning cars from 1:30-2pm, MWF. No longer just Wednesday mornings. Also, afternoon not morning.

Which means, my plan to donate blood tomorrow is back on. I’ll get my ‘rona test sometime between 9 and 11am. Then I’ll get the car out, go give blood, return the car at 1:30, and be back to my apartment in time for lunch delivery at 1:45.

Did some detail painting of the chassis of the model car. The suspension is very detailed teeny little tie-rods, roll bar, springs.

Monday 6/15/2020

Woke up feeling good. Went for a run and felt energetic. I was just back and showered by 8:15am when the doorbell rang for my breakfast. This week, for the first time since March, I ordered official breakfast on two days of the week, namely, the day with french toast and the day with pancakes. (The other days I continue breakfasting with a meal replacement shake.) So: french toast and bacon. The day is starting very well!

---

It was exactly a year ago, Sunday June 15 2019, when the movers came to take my stuff out of 2340 Tasso and I took up residence in Channing House. It’s been a pretty good year, all told. I am a little surprised when I do the math and realize that a full quarter of it I’ve been locked down in ‘rona-ville. I feel fairly confident that by my second anniversary, life will be back to something like normal. “God willin’ and the creeks don’t rise,” as my parents used to joke about any plan.

---

During the day I submitted my query letter to the first three of the 31 agents in my list. These three take submissions using a web form in which you fill in your query letter, synopsis, sample of the first few pages. It was nerve-wracking, meticulously verifying every field was filled out exactly as they wanted.

I also spent a little time clipping the parts of the model car front suspension, sanding off the flashing, thinking about how to paint them.These parts will take a lot of careful detail painting. I need a better “dirty bottom of a car” color.

---

In the evening the expected email about in-house testing arrived. The sixth floor will be tested Wednesday between 9 and 11am. They will knock on your door to tell you when to come to the lounge and be tested. That kind of upsets my plan to go out and donate blood that morning. If they call me early, there would be time to go down to the garage, get the car, drive to the blood center, and get back for the 11:30 garage closing. However, with so much of the staff involved in operating the tests that morning (on floors 2-6 during that 9-11 period, 7-10 in the afternoon), will there be anyone free to open the garage anyway? So, probably just forget it for this week.

Sunday 3/14/2020

After the usual quiet Sunday morning, read the paper, do the crossword, water the plants, I headed out for a walk. I decided to walk to a place on campus I hadn’t been to since Marian and I visited it in, oh, several years. Could have been as far back as 2010. Anyway: the Papua New Guinea sculptures.

In 1994 some Papuans were invited to Stanford to carve some sculptures. Here’s the whole story. The garden is in the middle of campus, just shy of 2 miles from me, so it made a nice almost-4-mile walk.

In the afternoon I expanded the climactic sequence in the novel to incorporate a suggestion of Dennis’s. Well, not what he actually had in mind, but he said something that gave me an idea and I added it. Making the book 1000 words longer, and giving one of my characters something to actually do and experience which he hadn’t, previously.

Saturday 6/13/2020

Took it pretty easy today. For a while I worked on the car model. As I mentioned a day or so ago, I’m not happy with the gloss coat. I’ve ordered a clear high-gloss acrylic, which should arrive Wednesday. But before I put that on, I need to amend the color coat.

In hindsight I did a crap job with that. There’s a fair amount of orange peel, a small run. Also there were a some small flashings that should have been sanded off before I painted. So I spent some time experimenting with different treatments. Wet-sanding with 1200-grit sandpaper worked well on the flatter panels. Then I went to the residents’ workshop and found some 0000-grade steel wool, and used that in the narrow and curvy bits. Got it all pretty smooth, at the cost of sanding through the color in a few points, and where the flashings were.

So next step will be to spray a light color coat. When that is dry and hard, spray the gloss clear coat. However, that means masking again. You can see where I masked the parts around the windows that will be chrome. I did that with green masking tape, and did it pretty well. You can see one place just under the passenger side vent window where the tape was too far down.

But it just seemed like too much to try to mask the chrome blob at the front edge of the rear fender, or the chrome spear on the side, or the door handles or hood badge. Just impossible to make that small a bit of green tape and make it stick. I don’t plan to try to take the color off, but I’d hate to put any more color over those bits.

While I was sanding, though, it popped into my mind that there is, I think, such a thing as a liquid masking fluid. Only a minute on the computer confirmed there was. Technically, a liquid latex that you apply to block color from parts of an art work is called: frisket. I’ve ordered two kinds and as they were Prime-eligible, they too will arrive Wednesday. So as of Wednesday I’ll have all the bits and will probably spend Thursday trying to get this body right.

Wednesday is going to be a major day, in fact. That’ll be the day for COVID testing, probably. It’s car freedom day and I plan to use that to go and donate blood. And when I put in my menu request for the week, I chose that day to cancel my dinner order, planning to get take-out for myself. Hope I can stand all that excitement.

I spent another couple of hours finalizing the list of agents. I started this back in March (Day 1.114 is the last mention), using a site called QueryTracker. Then set it aside for a couple months while trying to get beta readers. Anyway, with a bit more prep work I will start sending agent queries next week.

Friday 6/12/2020

Went for a run as usual; all good. Next up, I spent over two hours going over my collection of potential agents. I have in mind one more change to make to the novel and then I am going to start submitting it. I made up the list of agents back in early March; I wanted to re-verify that those agents were still appropriate (based on what their websites say they are looking for) and still open to submissions. There’s at least another couple of hours work to do there, but I think I’ll start submitting next week.

A 6th floor neighbor, Phil, wants to use Zoom to attend meetings, but had some kind of problem with it. Jerry, our elected floor rep, suggested I give him some help. Just a couple of days ago the Tech Squad got approval to do tech help one-on-one in the main lobby, wearing masks blah blah. So by prearrangement Phil and I met in the lobby. He uses a desktop Mac, but I brought my laptop, and we walked through the process of downloading Zoom (which he had probably already done, but no harm doing it again) and joining a meeting. We joined a fitness class in progress, and left it and re-joined it, and I pointed out the various features he could use. Hopefully he will be able to do it on his system.

Four o’clock brought Rhonda’s weekly meeting. I’ve previously attended by phone, but this time used Zoom on the laptop so I could see faces. Some items:

• Of the 160 tests given last weekend (administered by 4 SCC DPH nurses), just the two previously mentioned, came back positive. Two asymptomatic staff members, as I wrote then.
• SCC and Cal. requirements are that all should now be tested every 7 days, until there are zero positives. The plan was to do this, including IL residents, on the 14th, but the SCC DPH declined to provide nurses, they are over-stretched.
• CH has contracted with a private lab to do the tests; however that lab insists on having insurance info for all subjects so they can bill each test to that subject’s insurance. So “we went into fire alarm mode again,” and obtained all insurance data for 100+ staff persons so their tests can go ahead on 6/14.
• Residents will get instructions on how to upload our insurance info soon; then our tests will hopefully be on 6/17. (I wonder: will my Anthem Part B drug plan cover it? Need to check.)
• Still working on more garage open days, but owing to above unplanned work, there wasn’t time to finalize that this week.
• The “phone a friend” program, for staff to call residents, has been completed with 174 calls made (none to me). Staff enjoyed these contacts. Of the 170, 47 residents declined further calls. (I expect to decline further calls, when I get one.)
• There have been incidents of residents “lashing out” at staff over restrictions. Rhonda said we all, staff and residents alike, are sick and tired and want to get back to our pre-Covid lives, but if you are angry, please call her directly. “I’m happy to be your sounding board or punching bag if necessary, but staff don’t deserve anyone’s anger.” Amen to that.
• The 5th floor renovation is now scheduled for completion 10/30, possibly earlier. That will be a relief to the “campers” who will have been displaced since January (I was a D.P. only five months during the 6th floor work).

Let’s see… Stanford Blood Center had emailed me saying my O+ type is needed, come on down. I emailed Kim (the marketing director, who is also serving as Rhonda’s communications point) and today got a response: yes, officially, blood donation is on a par with a medical appointment, it would not be a “gathering” and no isolation needed. So I will do that on Wednesday, take the car out early and donate blood.

Last night I paid Amazon Prime $3 to watch The Emperor’s New Groove. Nice silly animation. I would have liked it a lot if it were free; at $3 it is just passable.