Day 225, realty, FOPAL, book

Monday, 7/15/2019

After a run this morning, I passed time easily until 11am. Then I drove to Tasso street to meet with Amy and Chuck. I was early, and looked around the house. Looking at it now I see lots of worn and messy bits. It looks old especially the kitchen, and could definitely use upgrading.

Amy and Chuck walked around and Amy chose colors and decided how much of the woodwork should be painted over with light colors, something she likes to do to make a house look larger, lighter, and more inviting. OK, I can see how it looks “dark” in certain aspects owing to dark wood paneling and trim. But that’s in daylight, with the only source of light the windows. At night, furnished and lit up inside, it looks cozy. But buyers won’t see it that way; they’ll see it in daytime. I said to them, I don’t live here any more; you are the professionals; do your job. They deferred to me on a couple of minor points, but mainly I stood back.

One decision was that I would not have the fireplace converted to a modern gas insert. Buyers won’t even notice it, or be impressed if it were pointed out.

However, my idea to have a tree maintenance company trim the oak was seconded; and indeed Amy asked to have the other trees over the back yard cut back to not touch the garage or house roofs and let in more light.

From there I went down to FOPAL, stopping at the grocery store to buy some bread. I’m going to keep a loaf of bread in my room for those occasions when I just want a sandwich for lunch.

Back at C.H. I had a bit of a nap, then went down for supper. Sat at an open table with Rosina, Joanne, and (I think) Mary?

After supper I rebuilt the cover image for the book. I’ve gotten some help from the Affinity forum and solved another issue for myself, so I could do that. Then I started the lengthy Kindle procedure to process the book while I watched Jeopardy. And the Kindle site was happy with my new cover and book body, so it is ready to be published on Kindle, and to order a sample print book.

Day 224, coffee, book, movie

Sunday, 7/14/2019

I had a date for coffee with Harriet this morning. We met at Mme. Collette at 8, and had a lengthy chat over coffee and pastries. I had imagined she might want to see Channing House, so I tidied my apartment before going out. During this I thought of a name for the decorating style I’ve achieved here: MCMM, Mid-Century Modern Monastic. Really, the open, spare feeling, with plain walls and carpet, is reminiscent (alright, very slightly reminiscent) of a monastic cell. A very comfortable cell. The plain walls aren’t an affectation; it’s just that I’ve not hung any of the prints I brought from Tasso street. When I move back from purgatory in January, I will hang them.

Anyway, Harriet expressed no interest in seeing the place. So we parted about 9am. I worked a bit on the book, regenerating the PDF of the text to correct one of the two problems that Kindle Direct found in my uploads. The other problem had to do with the cover image, and I decided to remake two of the three parts of that. But I quickly ran into small issues with Affinity, and decided to post a request for help on its user forum. Did that and set the project aside until Monday.

I didn’t fancy the lunch menu at C.H. — nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t like the formality of sitting down in the dining room as at dinner. Some days you just want a peanut butter sandwich, you know? So I walked up Homer street to Whole Foods and had a smoothie.

After lunch I paid a few bills and organized a couple of files. Later I decided to see a movie, and went out to a 5pm showing of Toy Story 4. It’s cute. I found it dragged a bit, and just too many events. Could have used cutting IMO. Anyway, I just made it back to C.H. in time for supper at 6:59.

Day 223, tour, book, concert

Saturday, 7/13/2019

In the morning I worked on creating a proper cover image for a print book. This involved a fair amount of frustration trying to use Affinity Pro, which has most of the features of PhotoShop but just enough interface differences that I frequently ran into roadblocks where I just didn’t understand what it had done, or did but couldn’t see why it did that. Joys of learning a new app.

At 11am I drove to the museum and led the noon tour. A group of 14 college students from Taiwan attached themselves to the tour, making quite a crowd. The leader told me he had brought a similar group through last year and I’d been the tour leader then. I don’t remember; but I wish this time he had booked a private tour instead of just joining the standard one. Anyway it went ok, the group as a whole gave me a nice applause round and the Taiwan students insisted on a group photo with me in the middle.

Back home I did a bit more on the book, including uploading my cover image and having Kindle Direct generate a preview version of the completed book. This process takes something like half an hour — the software warns you, “you might want to go have coffee, or perhaps make a sandwich” while it runs. At the end of the lengthy process it found two issues that I have to fix. One, the cover image is about 150 pixels too narrow; I don’t understand why as I built it on top of their template image. And it found one place in a 270pp book where the text bled past the margin, in effect, finding a small bug in the Leanpub PDF generation. I’ll work on fixing those another day. But print publication is a few hours’ work away.

After a quick (solitary) supper (lamb curry, which was quite good) I headed out on a Lyft to Dinkelspiel for the first of the Stanford Jazz Festival concerts I signed up for weeks ago. This was led by Andrew Motis, with whom I was very impressed. Just a slip of a girl but she plays a mean trumpet and sings brilliantly. Maybe most impressive when she did an Ella Fitzgerald scat number and nailed it. She started with a small five-piece combo including Ken Peplowski, a great clarinetist whom I’ve heard in prior SJF seasons. For the second half they brought in another ten musicians, “Stanford All-Stars,” I think mostly faculty, and did big-band numbers. There are few sounds finer than a tight big band. A very nice concert.

Day 222, house, book, dinner

Friday, 7/12/2019

Started with a run; it was fine. Then I drove to the Tasso street house just to see it cleaned out. Sean was there, and I gave him permission to sleep there through Sunday. Everything is gone from the house except the dryer, and that is supposed to be picked up this afternoon. Some of the cabinets from the shop in the garage should also go today, according to Sean.

I drove to Summerwinds Nursery and picked up a bag of planting mix and a small pot. A week ago, walking down Lytton avenue at the end of my run, I was struck by a plant that was spilling out of a planter in front of an office building. Dark coppery-red leaves and small bright yellow flowers. I pulled a small cutting from it and stuck it in water when I got home. Now, after a week in water, it is showing roots, so I want to pot it.

I didn’t do that now, but instead worked on the book. I was trying to solve a formatting problem with a two-page appendix which was formatted using a table. The Leanpub code just couldn’t get it right. I kept changing one thing or another and re-generating the PDF over and over. Each generation took several minutes. Finally I realized that the software just wouldn’t do what I thought it did (spanning a cell across multiple columns) and I revised the data into nested lists instead. That worked so I now had a satisfactory print-ready PDF.

Then I downloaded the Kindle Direct cover template and turned to making cover PDFs. Problem: my lovely cover is not in the 6×9 ratio of the required book size. It’s a bit wider. As-is, bits of the title are cropped on the right, and there’s a gap top and bottom. If I drag it to the needed aspect ratio it looks wrong. I spent an hour trying to find a solution, then set it aside for tomorrow.

Dinner arranged by Patti with Craig, whose wife is off vacationing with their daughter in Cambridge, England, David, and Jean, neither of whom I’d met. Nice conversation.

Day 221, Shustek, book

Thursday, 7/11/2019

Woke early, and the paper didn’t arrive until 6:45. This kind of inverts my usual morning, with internet browsing first and newspaper after. Not now, but when I am permanently back to the sixth floor next year, I will try to work out an arrangement to get the paper by 6am. I wonder when delivery happens on the 4th floor, where I’ll be soon?

Anyway, I had some time to pass before leaving for a day at Shustek center. I passed it by starting to prepare the cover files for the print book. The first issue is, what to put on the back cover? I have a lovely illustration for the front, and the PhotoShop file for it (which Affinity Pro opens nicely, fortunately as I no longer have PhotoShop access).

ttbb_cover

So I opened that and considered. I had some notion I could make a back cover by copying the base image, clone out the hiker figure (I love how the hiker is androgynous, could be man or woman, but still projects confidence and courage), leaving only the mountains, darken them, and put them under a night sky. So the back cover would be the same scene, but hours later, at night and the hiker has moved on.

I started doing that, then decided to find my night sky image. Googled “royalty free night sky” and of course there are gazillions of them, among which the following caught my eye.

starry-night-small

It could be my hiker! Clearly this is my back cover. I’ll extend the sky upward into black to fill out a portrait-mode image, and put a block of text over the upper third with advertising copy. I’ll still have to work out a spine image, probably just a solid color with the title text.

So off to Shustek where Toni and I cataloged and arranged some of the multiple box donation of one Julia Wolf. (Not the mathematician in wikipedia, but a software security researcher.) Ms. Wolf has apparently attended every security conference and hacker conference held in the last 15 years, Black Hat, DefCon, ShmooCon and many others. At every conference she collected brochures and freebies like pens and backpacks, and bagged the schwag from each conference and labeled it. So now we were separating the artifacts (pens, badges, backpacks) from the texts (brochures, stickers, anything printed) because these classes are stored in different systems.

Sat alone at dinner; Patti (from my floor) came by and asked if I prefer to eat alone? Well, sometimes, yeah, not always. Tomorrow night, can you join me and some others? Of course! So dinner set for tomorrow night.

Day 220, moving, canceling, FOPAL

Wednesday, 7/10/2019

Today was the day scheduled for my relocation meeting. Angela, the boss of all the renovation logistics, and Gloria, the rep for Gentle Transitions, the moving company that executes the move-outs and move-backs, came and spent two hours going over my apartment and its contents in detail.

They had a floor plan of 621 and of 435, my temp location, on magnetic boards, and lots of little magnetic furniture tiles, and first built a detailed plan of my current arrangement. Then we went down to 435 and with my input, worked out where to put my furniture there. All recorded by arranging the pieces on the magnetic boards, and then photographing the final arrangements.

It was made easier because the two units are quite similar; 435 has one less closet than 621, but fortunately I don’t make much use of two of the three closets I have. So Gloria planned out which items from what closets and cupboards and drawers, would go to which others. Same for the bathroom, as the 621 bathroom has a few more drawers than 435 does. It took the full two hours, but is done. 435 is not as nice a place as 621 for sure, but it will do for six months.

Before they arrived I came to a decision and executed it, possibly to my cost. Before I knew the dates of the move, I had booked a tour with a departure date of 9/6. Then Angela told me that 9/6 was my move-out day, with no flexibility. I was anticipating moving out to a guest unit on 9/5, and returning 16 days later to my new apartment. That was barely acceptable but now I’m seriously worried about the house sale maybe not getting completed in August and running into September. It shouldn’t, but I don’t like the chance that I could be away and unable to sign stuff, and texting Chuck at all hours.

So I decided rather precipitously to change the date. I called Road Scholar and they agreed to change to the same tour but with a 9/25 departure date. Same price, but, sadly, since I am now less than 60 days from the original departure, they can only give me half credit for the fee. Fortunately I had bought all-reasons travel insurance as well, so I can get back the other half from the insurance company. So I was trying to arrange that while simultaneously talking to Angela and Gloria, and it was kind of stressful.

When the move conference was over I gobbled some lunch and headed out to FOPAL. This is the last day for arranging one’s section before the sale this weekend. I processed five boxes of computer books, sent four boxes to the bargain room (the bargain room guy, Frank, says there’s no room on the shelves there, either, but he’ll deal with it) and priced one box. But rather than shelve them, I set the box in the vast mound of boxes for all sections labeled “Hold”. Then I spent two hours sorting and boxing, and came home quite tired.

For supper I headed to the open table where Rosina usually sits. Ed and Colin joined me. During the conversation (much of it about Colin’s boyhood in South Africa before WWII, as Colin is rather chatty) it emerged that Rosina during her career in education traveled the world setting up links between classes in, she says, 104 countries, so that the classes can meet over Skype and converse.

Like I said, I’m surrounded by over-achievers. It’s quite shocking to me what an ageist I am. I just never expect an old person to be a distinguished anything. Old people don’t matter, as a matter of mental habit. It’s just like racism: automatically assuming less, or discounting the value, of a person based on physical appearance. Gray racism. I think it’s one factor in why I am having trouble remembering names to go with faces. Not the only factor; I’ve always been bad at remembering names. But to some extent, my brain doesn’t like to pay attention to old wrinkly faces, or distinguish between them. Of course the irony is, I’m one of them. Which I only remember when looking in the mirror.

Day 219, realty and book

Tuesday, 7/9/2019

Started the day with a run, which felt not just normal but actually good. For an hour I worked on the book. Then it was time to drive to Tasso street to meet with Chuck.

There I met Sean, a tall, gangly guy with a wild blond hair and a gentle manner straight out of the 1960s. He’s employed by Deborah to house-sit for security. He’s been sleeping on the used McCroskey mattress and really likes it, so I suggested he talk to Deborah and buy it. (If he doesn’t, I’d just have to pay somebody to haul it.) When not house-sitting, Sean lives in the warehouse of a music store. He’s got a ten year old son in Munich and would love to go back to Germany, but he’s only just managed to qualify for SSI (bad back) and would lose it if he lived outside the U.S.

Aside from the mattress, there is very little left from the sale. All furniture is gone. The refrigerator is gone, and that pleases me; I had come to hate that refrigerator over the past six months and I’m glad it’s gone. Apparently they had trouble getting it out, having to remove not only the back door, but the refrigerator doors as well. But there’s a dusty space where it was. There’s yet another possible buyer for the washer/dryer coming Wednesday.

The only real surprise to me was that nobody wanted the Rorstrand dinner service. I really thought… well, what do I know. It was back on Day 6 that I started restoring it by ordering replacements for all the chipped plates. Then Denise didn’t want it. Just a surprise to me that nobody wants such a handsome, complete set. Well, I suppose it’s that anybody with a household, buys their dinner service early on, or gets it as a wedding present. And they don’t need another.

Chuck arrived and we went over the next steps. In order they are: To get Amy to take a quick look and decide what paint colors she wants; then to get the painting contractor scheduled. When the painting is done, or while it is done, get the area rugs removed. After the painting, to bring in a cleaner to polish the wood floors and clean everything. And then Amy does her staging. Last or nearly last will be to get Richard to apply a new layer of garden mulch, and maybe get someone in to power-wash the brick walks and porch.

Can all this get done in July? Doubtful, I think. Can it get done in August? It damn well better had, because on September 5 I am out of here for two weeks. I really, really want the house sale wrapped before September 1, and I need to push everyone for that.

After Chuck left, the guys from the fireplace contractor arrived, Jose and Noah. They opined that the only way to get electric ignition and a remote control, is to replace the burner and grate that is in place now. Their boss, Eric, is to send me a quote. They didn’t say how much it would be, but I’m predicting it will come in over $1200. Less than $2K I hope.

Back at C.H. I spent a couple more hours on the book. I resolved a nasty problem with cross-references. The publishing platform I’m using supports x-refs but I’m trying to use them within my end-notes file to do op.cit. references, that is, cross-references from inside one note, to another note. Their software wasn’t quite up to it, but I found a work-around and reported it on their user forum.

I am just about ready to generate a final, print-ready PDF, which I can then use to build a book on Kindle Direct or one of the other on-demand publishers, Lulu or Blurb. But I also need to prepare a separate PDF of the cover. To now, I’ve only needed a front cover because that’s all an e-text needs. But a print book needs also a graphic for the spine and the back cover. It will take a bit of creativity to generate those, working from the nice front-cover graphic I purchased way back when.

Ate supper alone at a table for one, reading, like a nerd. But dammit, by comparison, it is stressful to sit with other people and make conversation. Not difficult while I’m doing it, but in the moment of entering the seating area holding my plate of food, faced with the options of, A, going to one of the open tables and smiling and saying, mind if I sit here? and B, going to a small table on the side and sitting down alone and bringing out my phone and opening Kindle to read while I eat, well, A is more stressful and B, more relaxing. That’s being an introvert.

Day 218, intro, bills, FOPAL

Monday, 7/8/2019

Today at 9am was the monthly Residents’ Meeting in the auditorium, at which I along with two other new residents was introduced. There were lots of other items on the meeting agenda of course. I hadn’t realized that Tom, who with Nancy had invited me to sit with them at dinner on day 215, was the president of the Residents’ Association and so ran the meeting. Well, part of that was that their last name in the directory is Fiene, and I had no idea that was the person “Tom Feeny” who was the president.

Betsy had done a nice job of summarizing the reminiscences I’d given her on day 211. The other new residents were Sally (one-time Registrar and assistant Provost at Stanford) and Tammy, biologist.

Now I texted to Chuck to remind him that today was the last day of the sale, and to arrange a meeting for tomorrow to plan the next steps in the sale. That out of the way I paid a couple of bills and looked at a medical appointment. Months ago my cardiologist had put in an order for an echocardiogram to be done in July, with a checkup to follow. I finally got around to actually scheduling those two appointments, the echo for the end of July and the exam at the doctor’s first available, mid-August.

I needed a few things: laundry bleach, a toilet brush (so I can not insult my housekeeper with a foul toilet) and if possible, a small waste can for the bathroom. So I walked over to CVS on University avenue and was able to get the first two items.

One loose end in the Tasso house is the fireplace. When we replaced it in 1990, after the Loma Prieta earthquake broke the chimney, Marian despised the replacement because it wasn’t as big and comfortable-looking as the old one. True, it had a proper heat jacket so it was much more efficient at warming the room then the old brick one. True it had a gas flame on very realistic ceramic logs so it was easy to start and made no mess from wood chips or ashes. But it wasn’t the old one, it was unnatural. So the one thing it would not have was an electric igniter with a remote to raise and lower the flame. It has a manual gas valve and you light it by hand with a match or a lighter.

OK, well, that’s in my opinion a detraction for selling the house. It should have an electric igniter with a knob, if not a remote, to raise and lower the flame. Nobody now wants to lean in with a lighter and have the gas go FFWOOFF at you as it lights. You can lose eyebrows on that thing if you aren’t careful. So I looked at Yelp for gas fireplace installers, and got in touch with one. In a later phone call, Eric said he’d stop by tomorrow about noon. That’ll be convenient, I’ll be there meeting with Chuck anyway.

That out of the way (Lordy but my mornings are productive) I headed off to FOPAL. We are coming up to sale weekend, the place is overflowing with books. But my computer section is just comfortably full of I think some really interesting stuff that I think will sell.

On the way back to C.H. I stopped at the hardware store and found a nice little brushed-steel trash container to sit behind the toilet, so that’s crossed off.

By coincidence I ran into Craig Diane and Patti on the way to supper so sat with that group. Pleasant chat, and I learned things about C.H. internal politics and policies.

Day 217, half-busy Sunday

Sunday, 7/7/2019

As usual I wasn’t able to sleep past 6:15, but happily the Sunday paper was already under the door, half an hour ahead of the usual time. I made a cuppa and did the big crossword. Then I put the old subwoofer on the seat of the desk chair, and rolled the chair down the hall, into the elevator, through the maze to the garage and into the car.

I dropped the two items off at the Tasso street house, then went on to the old coffee shop in Midtown. I got there just as the cinnamon rolls were coming out of the oven.

There’s a nice Sunday morning, coffee and a cinnamon roll warm from the oven.

My plan was to go to Target to buy the stool mentioned yesterday, but I expected Target wouldn’t be open until, what, ten or so? But I got out Maps and checked and, hey! Target had just opened, at 8am! So off I went to Target in Mountain View, and by 9am I was back to C.H. with the stool in its flat box.

Now I started my laundry going, and then assembled the new stool and tried it out.

It is the correct height, and later in the day I spent about 3 hours all told sitting at the computer, and it was comfortable.

So by lunch time I had delivered items to Tasso, bought a stool, assembled it, and finished my laundry. I was going to the elevator in a happy glow of accomplishment and fell in with Craig and Diane on their way to lunch, and they invited me to sit with them. Nancy and Tom joined us later.

In the afternoon I finished editing chapter 8 and then edited chapter 9 of the book. One more chapter and I can generate a new PDF. After a few quality checks, I will be able to start the print-ready process through Kindle Direct, so that might happen next week.

I spent some time watching tutorial videos for my new favorite photo software, Affinity, and spent a little time with a game before retiring to the living room to watch TV.

Day 216, Museum, FOPAL, stool

Saturday, 7/6/2019

Breakfasted in the dining room. Began editing a chapter of the book, which happened to be the chapter on death and bereavement. Since I last worked on it I have some personal experience in that line, and while the advice I’d written before has held up pretty well in the light of new experience, it needs a little tweaking.

I put on my fire-engine red Museum Docent shirt and headed out about 10, stopping first at FOPAL to clean up the computer section. I ran out of time for that, left it, and continued on to the Museum to lead the 12pm tour. About 20 people, it went well.

I changed shirts then, I’d brought another so as to preserve my red one and not have to wash it again before the next use, and returned to FOPAL to price the books I’d selected earlier. Then back home.

During all this the Estate Sale was happening at Tasso street. I’d emailed a neighbor and now he sent me a couple of pictures of people coming out of the house carrying things they’d bought.

I chilled in my recliner for part of the afternoon, and happened on a thread in a forum about choosing the best chair for long sessions in front of a computer. This is a subject I’ve been thinking about. The old chair I’ve used for years is still functional but unfortunately my new L-shaped desk is a bit higher than the old one. I sat on a pile of books to verify that I need something around 23-24 inches high, but the old chair doesn’t get to 20.

target_stool The internet thread pointed to a lot of different chairs, but then somebody pointed out that a simple bar-stool with a swiveling top is as good as anything. Hmmm. They actually linked to one sold at Target, and a little poking around there turned up this one. Not only is it just the height I want, it is a lovely match to all my other new furniture. I am determined to go and buy this at Target tomorrow.

I texted Deborah about 6pm, she said the sale was going well, most of the furniture gone. I said I’d decided not to keep my subwoofer and my desk chair, could I drop them by in the morning? She said, sure.

In the evening cleaned out my collection of DVDs; there are quite a few movies I don’t expect to watch again and I will give them either to the C.H. library or to FOPAL. Finishing up watching on Amazon Prime, a 1980 BBC production of The Taming of the Shrew with John Cleese as Petruchio. It’s the Shakespeare play I know best, having acted in a production of it at USF in the dark ages around 1968. In retrospect it’s a horrible play, wrong in so many ways. Cleese is perfect in the role; I do not like the Kate, one Sarah Badel. Anyway, that’s the evening.