Day 275, many small doings

Tuesday, 9/3/2019

First thing, went for a run. All normal. On return I tidied up then sat down to organize the info about the Tasso street sale. Made a little spreadsheet showing the gross sale price and all the things that could be charged against it, commissions, taxes, and all the various contractors who were employed in preparing it for sale. Bottom line, it appears the net proceeds are just a shade under the appraised value as of December 2018. So there probably won’t be any capital gains charged; maybe a bit of a capital loss.

I put an hour into Zooniverse. Then Craig called; the tech squad had a request for help and he wanted me to come along. The caller, Grace, coincidentally lives in the apartment next door to where I’ll be moving at the end of the week. While Craig figured out why her Comcast email wasn’t coming up automatically like it used to, she told me how that next-door apartment was recently fitted with a new toilet, one of the high-efficiency kind that flushes with a great swooshing. Since that bathroom (soon to be my bathroom) backs up to hers, she hears the toilet whenever it is used. Knowing that is going to cramp my style a bit. Whenever I get up in the night to pee, I’ll be maybe waking Grace up. Well, it isn’t essential to flush then. It can wait to the morning.

After that I pursued a couple of items that have been in the back of my mind. One is to get a proper comfy reclining chaise for the deck. Early on I brought back a wicker chair from Cost Plus but it really isn’t comfortable for lounging. Several years back Marian obtained two very comfortable metal chairs for our back yard. Both of us napped in them often. They had deteriorated a bit and I let them go in the sale. Now I wanted one back, but what were they called? I looked at the outdoor furniture on the Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel sites, but their idea of a “chaise” didn’t look right. Browsing Amazon and finally spotted what looked right. Turns out the key phrase is “zero gravity” chair.

A bit more searching; it appears they are stocked at good old Walmart. Well, not at the Walmart in Mountain View. So back to Amazon and just order one already. It’s only $50 and will be here Thursday.

The other items related to the upcoming trip to Greece. I figure to pack light and do my own laundry, which means, quick drying clothes. I have quick-dry casual pants on the way, but I have in my drawer just two quick-dry briefs. Plus, I’d like to have a USB charger with the Euro style plug, and/or a Euro style adapter into which I could plug a USB charger with US prongs. So I went off to the travel store at Stanford Shopping Center. Success there on a couple of pairs of quick-dry briefs, but they didn’t have the ideal adapter/charger combo that I was sure must exist.

So back to Amazon again and of course, there it was: plugs into a Euro wall socket, offers two US style outlets and two USB ports. So I can charge the phone and plug in the adapter for the Macbook, and also the charger for the camera battery, if I decide to carry my Nikon. All in one small cheap device.

There’s a theme here. Both cases, I knew what I wanted, and went looking for it at local merchants, and didn’t find it, so back to Amazon Prime.

At 6 I went downstairs to join Lily and her sister Helen who had invited me to join them for supper. Also invited, Tammy, who moved in the same day I did, and Michael, the newer new guy who moved in a week later. Also Lynn. Turns out, Michael lost his wife last July, and in December Lynn lost her husband and Tammy, her older brother. So we were the bereavement table, for a while.

Day 274, FOPAL, lunch

Monday, 9/2/2019

Today, Labor Day, the kitchen staff is to get off early. At breakfast they offered a “sack dinner” service where they made a sandwich to order and bagged it with a container of fruit or potato salad, a cookie and chips. I got my bag and put it in the fridge.

I opted not to do a run today, as I still feel vestiges of vertigo especially when I lean over, and I didn’t want to risk a fall. Before I went down to breakfast I did a set of the exercises I collected off the internet a few days ago, focused on core strength. It’s a start, but I need to develop more.

About 9am I went to FOPAL and processed the waiting computer books, then did a couple of hours of sorting. From there I picked up some groceries, mostly my no-calorie drinks, and went to get the car washed. While there, Scott called wondering where I was, or rather, why I wasn’t at the restaurant we’d agreed to meet at. Well, because I messed up the time, and thought it was 1:30 not 1. No harm done. Had a pleasant lunch and chat.

Back at C.H. for a quiet afternoon, although I did spend an hour studying Bridge Defense out of a book I snagged last week from FOPAL. It’s amazing how much you can derive logically from the bidding and the first trick, if you actually count and think. But it’s hard. Thinking, that is.

Then to watch SYTYCD and to bed.

Day 273, Scottish games

Sunday, 9/1/2019

When I had supper with Dennis and Toni (Day 266), Dennis was enthusiastic about the Scottish Games held at the Alameda County Fairgrounds Labor Day weekend. He planned to spend all day there and suggested I join him. So this morning I left about 8am, driving first to the old coffee shop at Midtown. Had an almond croissant still warm from the oven, num! and read the paper. Then drove 35 miles in light Sunday morning traffic to the fairgrounds. Connected with Dennis by cellphone (what ever did we do back then…) and we walked about. Sat for part of one concert by a band that played “bare-knuckle pipe and drums” and part of another concert by a group that did Celtic derived music but with electric instruments and a drum kit. Walked through part of the merchandise areas. Boy if you need something plaid, this was the place.

Dennis likes that we have, through my mother, a sliver of Gaelic descent specifically from the MacNeil of Barra. (Barra is a lump of rock at the ass-end of the Hebrides chain. Note in that Wiki article that the MacNeils themselves emigrated to the New World along with all the evicted crofters.)

Anyway it was now time for events to start in front of the grandstand. Dennis had obtained very nicely placed seats in the stand. We went there to watch the opening ceremonies. Then Dennis went off to spend an hour tasting Scotch. I stayed and watched all the games, the caber tossing and other ways to fling heavy weights around. This went on pretty continuously until 4, when the closing ceremonies started. The main feature of this was to be the massed bands, about 700 musicians mostly bagpipers and drummers, but with a Marine Corps brass band mixed in. They strung it out for an hour of preliminaries before finally massing the bands. I took some cell-phone video but the light was very poor; the bands were partly in the deep shade of the stands and partly in brilliant sunlight.

Anyway after the massed bands played they announced a folk singer at which point I thanked Dennis and departed. Home before 7pm, fairly tired. Vertigo was better today, only present if I leaned over as to pick something up. Hopefully it will be gone soon.

Day 272, docent, vertigo

Saturday, 8/30/2019

When I got up this morning I had light, but definite, vertigo. A few years ago (well, sometime in this century) I had a severe spell of it, barely able to walk while keeping a hand on a wall, nauseated every time I changed posture — it was nasty. It took a week or so to wear off. I don’t welcome it back, even in this mild form. I really only feel it on major changes of posture, especially leaning over or sitting up. Walking is ok.

So I took it easy and was very mindful of my balance while taking a shower. (Some other resident, I saw on the house bulletin board, had fallen in the bathroom and broken a hip.)

The main activity of the day was to lead the noon tour at the Museum. I had a good crowd, 25 or so to start, and kept the attention of most of them to the end. One lady was really on my wavelength, she laughed out loud at every one of my little witticisms, the ones that usually get a smile or no reaction.

In the mail today, the final statement of the escrow. Also the refund from Amy and her staging company for part of the staging fee. Only part, because they did all the planning and loaded their truck before we called off the open house. So I only get back the installation and rental for all the furniture they were going to put in the empty house. I kinda sorta wish we had gone through with the open house because I’d like to have seen what Amy was going to do with it. But on the other hand… no.

Anyway, I have now all the data on the sale and the costs of the sale. Sometime next week I will put together a package on that to give to the tax people next spring. Meantime, the Tasso street house is definitively gone. I was thinking about that, early in the morning before I got up. What exactly is different, versus a month ago? Somehow, even when I had left, I had a mental vector, an internal compass pointing toward that house. Not surprising, having lived there 45 years, that no matter where I was, in the car, in a hotel in some other city, I had a sense of the house “over there”, accessible at need. Now it is unquestionably someone else’s house. I have the mental compass needle but where it points, I would not be welcome. Not a distressing feeling, exactly, but different.

Also in the mail, the final trip information for the upcoming Greek Islands tour, the one that I had to reschedule. And boy am I glad I did. It would have been horribly stressful to depart on that the same day as I’m moving to my temporary apartment. That trip starts with moderately stressful logistics. I’ll have to get a Lyft to SFO around 3am, and take two long flights to get to Athens the next day. Not really looking forward to that, but at least, I can approach it as a single problem, not layered with other concerns.

Day 271, getting stuff done

Friday, 8/29/2019

Wednesday I had found various things niggling at my mind as needing doing so made a to-do list that got longer and longer, so after a run this morning I sat down to-do. First off was the laundry. While that was running I paid two credit card bills, filed some odds and ends on the desk.

Then wrote to Katherine the Insurance Person telling her that (a) my house is gone, you can close out my homeowner’s and earthquake insurance and please how much do I get back? and (b) if it makes a difference on my car insurance, please note that the car is now garaged in a secure gated garage every day; and (c) yes I want renter’s insurance but I don’t think I need coverage for $100,000 of property value as shown in your quote, maybe half that?

Then as I had half-promised, I wrote a nice five-star Yelp review for Chuck the realtor. He really deserved five stars, for all the back-and-forth and planning and phoning and texting that went into this sale. Which, I remind myself, he did while managing other clients at the same time.

Then I sent an Amazon gift card thank-you note to Deborah the Estate Sale lady, thanking her for being alert and encouraging the couple during the estate sale, who eventually became the new buyers.

Then went through my last eight months of credit card payments to try to get a handle on how much I spend. The point of that exercise was that I have an appointment with the Bob the Finance Guy on the 9th, where we will decide how to allocate the proceeds of the home sale. Bob and his partner Marshall have a recommended procedure where one keeps five years living expenses in a rotating set of liquid investments, apart from the rest of one’s capital. Well, to set that up we need to know what a year’s expenses are. Adding up the average of my credit card payments over the last 8 months, plus my Channing House rent, suggests that to maintain my present life-style I need… well, I don’t want to put the number here. But suffice it to say that by Federal poverty standards I am living very well as a family of four. So I sent an email to Bob telling him this info as prep. material for the upcoming appointment.

What else? Oh, I have it in mind to buy the painting that I saw on Day 154, Eight Pelicans. I had emailed the artist, Carol Aust, a few days ago and gotten tentative times to visit her studio. As she’s in Oakland I thought it would be fun to get Darlene and Jessea to go along with me. So I called Darlene, but they are going off for a few days. We decided the 20th would work. So I emailed Carol asking if we could come on that day. Later she replied that would be fine, so that’s booked.

By now the laundry was dry so I folded that and then it was lunch time.

After lunch and a quick nap I decided on two events I’d clipped out of the Thursday entertainment insert in the paper. One was Eric Clapton at the new Chase Center in SF. I checked the google map and it is a doable thing, it’s less than a mile walk or Lyft from the Caltrain depot. There are tickets but they cost just… If Eric was the pitcher, a nosebleed-level seat outfield of third base is $90. First balcony at the coach’s box angle, which I’d consider acceptable, is $325. Nope for now. I might reconsider the cheap seat. I mean, it’s rock and roll, so no problem hearing him; and surely he’d turn to his left once or twice so you could see his face through your binoculars…

Second was Momix in San Jose. I have good memories of seeing Momix at, I think, Memorial Auditorium at Stanford, probably 20 years ago. And this was quite reasonable, a good seat on a Monday night, $50. So I booked that one.

And now my monster to-do list was almost to-done.

I had seen an ad for Skechers shoes mentioning “wide fit”. I am having some trouble with a corn on my right foot and both my feet are odd-shaped so, how about it? So I drove to Valley Fair shopping center and bought a pair of Skechers. That took a couple of hours, round trip. About 6pm I went down to supper and decided I didn’t like anything on the menu. So I got back in the car and on a whim, drove to Palo Alto Pizza on California Ave and had a delicious small pizza and a beer. Brought home a couple of pieces for breakfast.

Day 270, Yosemite and theater

Thursday, 8/28/2019

Drove to the east bay to the Yosemite ave warehouse for a day of “curatorial review”. Toni and I went through five boxes of artifacts, verifying the number, noting condition, adding notes to the database records. We found several items that hadn’t been photographed or had been photographed poorly, and passed those to Bud and Sherman who were doing photography.

This might sound boring but it had its moments. One came when we were looking at a large circuit board. Its database record description basically said “PCB board”, plus the usual dimensions and other details that we always note. But what was it, actually?

I knew from its appearance that it was an S-100 bus board, because I had owned and worked with many of them in the CP/M era, roughly 1976-1980. It had two ZIF (zero insertion force) sockets with handwritten labels in marker, 2708 and 2716, which I was pretty sure were EPROM chips. So, it’s an EPROM programming board. All I had to do was type the maker name and a couple of words more, “Solid state music s-100 programmer” into a search and there it was complete with a photograph of the identical board and even a link to the original manual! So we could enter a much more informative description and that URL into the database entry for that artifact.

This is the kind of thing that us old-fart museum volunteers can do almost without thinking, but would be hard for anyone else.

Back to C.H. to clear my email and get a quick supper, and then off to the Pear Theater to see a production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. The cast did it quite well and it was fairly enjoyable.

Day 269, docent disappointment, FOPAL, escrow closes

Wednesday, 8/28/2019

Went for a run in the morning. Initially told myself, “listen to your body”, bearing in mind I was not 100% yesterday. However when I got up, my temperature was 97.7, i.e. the Shingrex Fever is gone. Started easy and thought of cutting off one loop, but finally did the whole usual course and felt ok.

Around 10 I got a call from a lady at Chicago Title; she couldn’t figure out how to do a wire transfer to my Schwab account. I quickly gave her the number of Cindy, the knows-all does-all person at my financial advisor’s office. Shortly after I got copied on an email from Cindy, and soon after that, my Schwab account showed that my “personal value” (sum of all accounts) had increased by 112%. Not a bad gain for one day.

So I definitively am no longer a homeowner. That was one of the first firm decisions I made when, a bit more than a year ago, I started thinking about how I would order my life in the likely event that Marian did not survive. I formally started the process about seven months ago. Now it is finally achieved. I felt a brief flutter of uncertainty, almost a panic, realizing that now I have no other place than this one. The Tasso street house had not been my residence since I drove away from it June 15th. From the end of July, when the estate sale cleared everything out and emptied the place, returning was no longer even an unlikely fallback option. But now, it’s irrevocably gone.

The feeling didn’t last. Thinking about it several hours later, I don’t feel panic or uncertainty; just a bit of the familiar grief at having shed another piece of the old life.

I was scheduled to lead a tour at 11:30, a private tour of 30 Apple employees. Looking forward to talking to techies. And I had been told that semi-famous Apple guy Bud Tribble would be in the group. So I went to the Museum and waited, and waited, and they didn’t show. The desk guy called the contact number; someone answered and said, “I’ll check and call you back,” and didn’t call back. Huh. I left at 12.

I had not intended to go to FOPAL today, thinking a full tour would be enough exertion, but since there was no tour, I went back to CH, changed out of my red docent shirt and went to FOPAL. There I put up new shelf labels in the Computer section that I had made last weekend, using a bigger font so they are easier to read. Went through three boxes of books and kept almost half of them. Then did sorting for three hours. My steps for the day: 12,061, 5.4mi.

After supper there was a jazz concert in the auditorium, a local group, the leader and I think the pianist both friends of C.H. residents. They were ok but I didn’t stay for the whole show.

Day 268, fever, lunch, tech squad, financials

Tuesday 8/27/2019

I had a tossy-turny night, awake for a couple hours from 1am to 3 or so. But then slept right up to 6:10 and really didn’t feel much like getting out of bed. My arm is mildly sore around the vaccine site, nothing serious, but I just didn’t feel 100%. Took my temp: 99.1º, or a full degree above my usual 98.0. So, shingles-shot fever? I decide to take it easy for the day.

In case I had something contagious I got a banana and a bagel from the to-go refrigerator and ate in my room. I canceled my lunch date with Scott. I generally puttered around, although I put in an hour at the main computer starting to organize my notes for the rewrite of my YA novel. Feeling somewhat better around 12, I went to the dining room for soup and bread — they have been setting out really good, dark-brown bread at lunch times, and two slices of that and a bowl of the day’s soup is a good lunch.

At 2:30 there was a meeting of the Tech Squad. The main topic was a presentation from the two principal founders of a startup, park.com. (Website clearly not finished as of now.) They have an app that will supposedly allow re-use of the numbered parking spaces here, for staff and visitors. If I’m going out for the day, I would use the app to say my space is available. I could charge for it, or not. Someone needing to park, staff or visitor, could reserve the use of my spot. Bert pushed them pretty hard on the fact that there are many, many parking-space air-b&b-like apps. But it appears the facilities team is willing to give it a trial.

At 4pm it was the semi-annual Board of Directors Financial Committee update. The auditorium was set up for max capacity, where they open the folding doors into the dining room, and probably 120 or so residents turned up to hear a presentation on the financials for the 2018-19 fiscal year and the status of the current year. Bottom line, CH has plenty of funds, but the operating budget is losing around $1M a year (on a $20M budget) mostly owing to the fact that 20 units have been taken “off-line” to use for temporary locations during the Upgrade. When that finishes in two more years, a return to profitability is expected.

This was followed by a soiree in the courtyard. I sampled a couple of the foods on offer, did not take a glass of wine even though it was free, and went on back to my room where I dined simply on cherries and a PBJ. However by 9pm my temperature was back to normal (for me) of 98.1. So hopefully tomorrow will be ok.

Day 267, run, relief, bridge, shot, FOPAL, realty, dinner, outage

Monday, 8/26/2019

First thing in the day I went for a run. A bit over 30 minutes of jogging, and it felt good. Not just ok, actually good.

I was scheduled to play bridge starting at 10. I was showered and dressed by 9am so I sat down to face my fears, or at least, my discomfort: dealing with the rejection of that

Road Scholar (RS) insurance claim.

To recap, I had scheduled a tour starting September 6. Later I realized that was the day I had to transition to my temporary apartment for the upgrade, and also that the house sale might push toward that date. So I re-booked the tour for 9/28, but unfortunately did this just too late for it to be free. Instead, RS gave me half credit for the later tour and I had to pay the additional half, about $3200. So I filed a claim with the trip insurance I’d bought, and a couple days ago, got the rejection of that claim — even though I thought I had been covered by the RS “for any reason” cancellation policy.

Now I went deeper into the RS website and found that the “for any reason” clause is not part of the insurance policy, so the insurer is not required to approve the claim on that basis, only on the allowed reasons in the policy. The clause is a Road Scholar policy that applies to clients when they have bought a trip insurance policy at the time of booking the trip. The policy is, if you cancel a trip “for any reason” and the insurance doesn’t apply, they give you the value of the unpaid claim as a credit, under the small restriction it can only be used to book a different trip.

When I understood this, I called RS and a cheerful customer service rep looked up my account and confirmed that, yes, they did show a $3200 credit that I could use against any other RS trip in the next 15 months. OK. Done. I’m pretty sure I will want another RS trip sometime in 2020, so… ok.

This was a big emotional relief for me. I had been dreading trying to protest the insurance claim via email, finding documents to bolster my case, etc. That’s all off the table, I won’t lose the money and I don’t have to do any more to save it. So I went off

to play Bridge

with a light heart. Craig is a serious bridge player and, since we were bottom pair last time I partnered him, he wanted to meet before the scheduled 10:30 start so we could go over our convention card. There have been a number of small changes and tweaks since Marian and I studied bridge techniques.

Craig’s group plays tournament style bridge, with pre-made hands in “boards” that are played by all tables, with your standing at the end depending on whether on at least a few hands you did better (e.g. an overtrick) or worse (e.g. going down on a game contract) than the people at the other table. Table singular since we only had eight players, two tables.

Almost to lunch time one of the other players announced he didn’t feel well, and went off to the Wellness Wing to get looked at. So we went early to lunch and Craig scared up another player, Ruth. She was glad to join us because it was her move-out day, and she had been looking at a boring day sitting in a guest unit while the contents of her unit were moved.

We finished the last board about 2:40. (That evening I got Craig’s results email; he and I were once again bottom pair of the four. I am just not that good a bridge player to do the tournament game. I wouldn’t mind playing casual bridge, but there are currently no casual games being organized, although I understand there are couples who meet to play regularly in their private units. I can do one of two things: play a lot in some of the many online bridge games and try to get better; or perhaps organize my own casual game. Or forget bridge. TBS.) So now off to

my Shingles shot.

Multiple people have independently recommended that I get a Shingles booster. The previous Herpes Zoster vaccine has proved ineffective, and there’s a new one. I got an email from PAMF telling me that a limited supply of the new vaccine was available and recommending I book for one, which I did last weekend, for 3:15pm today. Then Craig asked me to play bridge; but I was pretty sure I could get to the Los Altos location by 3:15 after bridge, and so it turned out.

The list of possible side-effects for the new vaccine that I had to sign is pretty long and has some really dire symptoms. Most common is arm pain and possibly a slight fever.

From there I went to FOPAL to clean up the Computer section. It was a typical haul, four boxes sent to the bargain room, about 30 books priced and shelved. While I was there I got a call from Chuck. The escrow will pretty surely be closing tomorrow, and he wanted to request a favor. He’s had a good year, and would like to defer the receipt of his commission on my sale to 2020, when possibly conditions won’t be as good and his taxes would be lower.

I guess this is OK, although it does mean that I would receive the amount of his commission as part of my receipts out of escrow, and would sign a no-interest promissory note to him — I think? It’s a tax dodge, but as long as my hands will be clean, I don’t mind doing him this favor. I called my financial people, and everybody was in meetings or out of the office, so I left a voice mail for Howard. Who unfortunately didn’t call me back. So I headed back to CH for

Patti’s Farewell Dinner

Patti had invited me, Craig and Diane, Jerry and Betty, and Gwen, to join her to celebrate the eve of her move-out to a different floor. People have various reactions to moving. Me, I’ve only been here 2 months. I don’t mind the move. I really like my unit with its Eastern view and floods of light all day, and will be very happy to get back to it next January. But I’ve got no big emotional investment in it. Others, like Patti, feel like it’s an exile; she’s concerned about her plants and other items, and feels like she’s being separated from her friends.

So after I’d returned to my room and was browsing Reddit about 8pm, a goose (as I learned next morning) flew into some power lines nearby and blacked out the middle of downtown Palo Alto. People took this pretty easily. No running and shouting. There was, I think, someone trapped in an elevator; at least, I heard the elevator alarm bell being rung. Don’t know how that was resolved.

I went to bed at 8:30, and woke up at 9:30 when the lights came on again. Turned them off, went back to bed.

Day 266, coffee, art fest, supper

Sunday, 8/25/2019

Coffee this morning at Mlle. Collette, who definitely have the best pastries. Walking across to there I was reminded that University avenue is closed off for the Palo Alto arts and crafts fair. I returned to that about 11am and walked the whole thing.

The first couple of blocks of this were somewhat emotional. Practically the only other times I’ve walked an arts festival I’d done it with Marian. And this time, of course, I was seeing things that she would have stopped for. A purple blouse, she’d have checked that out; every jewelry stand she’d have stopped to look over the earrings. So it was a bit sniffly walking along. But in a nice way, I guess.

I was taken with some hand-woven wool blankets. My one and only blanket is very utilitarian. I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond and basically picked one that was the right size and not ugly; but it’s plain and the fabric isn’t friendly to the hand. So at the end of my circuit I looped back to that stall and bought one. Back home I remade the bed with it and it looks very nice.

I also found a cheap broom and dustpan combo at Walgreen’s. I needed that mostly to sweep up the debris from repotting the wax plant yesterday, and in general to keep the balcony tidy.

I’ve been thinking about the tour I’m going on in just a month from now, and thinking how and what to pack. I think it is likely I can get everything I need into a single carry-on bag, not even my roller bag but a smaller one that fits under the seat. I also thought about what I wanted in my pockets, and the answer was: nothing. I don’t want to lose my phone, passport, and/or credit card to a pickpocket. Then I remembered that I still own a “man purse”, a nice leather cross-body bag about 6×9. I will carry passport, credit card and phone in that, clamped under my elbow; nothing in my pockets.

But what about clothes? The Road Scholar pamphlet actually advises having a few quick-dry garments and hand-washing them in hotel sinks. If I do that, I only need, besides what’s on my body, maybe three pairs of shorts, three of socks, two shirts, and a second pair of pants. Plus a jacket. Which all fits in that small bag.

But I don’t have any quick-dry pants. Mostly I have jeans. I don’t want to put my new slacks to this kind of rough treatment. So I sat down and poked around internet retailers and ordered a couple of easy-care chinos from Eddie Bauer.

About 4pm I drove to San Jose to meet with Dennis and Toni for supper at their favorite weekend restaurant, the Black Sheep in the Willow Glen area. Nice supper and conversation. Dennis is a great fan of the Celtic Games which are next weekend, and I’ll probably join him there on the Sunday.

They also reminded me of the upcoming wedding of daughter Denise, which reminded me I need to make some kind of wedding gift. So when I got home I looked up their registry; a very practical couple, they are registered with Crate and Barrel and Target. I bought one item off their list, a camping tent.

So between the packing and the pants and the wedding gift that was a bunch of niggling frets off my mind, with not even the satisfaction of a to-do list to check off.