Day 185, FOPAL, furniture, volunteer dinner

Wednesday 6/5/2019

Went for a run. It seemed a little harder than usual, possibly because, for the first time this year, the air was already warm at 9am. About 11:30 I went down to FOPAL for the usual Wednesday sorting session.

Back home I found an email from Katie the tax accountant, giving a list of the documents they will need to proceed with the estate tax filing, the infamous Form 706. It looks like an hour or more finding documents. I decided to defer that to Friday.

Also in my in-box: email from IKEA giving the delivery time for my bed and mattress: sometime between 9am and 9pm Friday. That led me to refresh the page tracking the order of my remaining furniture items. Back in April I went to West Elm and ordered a bunch of things (Day 137). A couple of items I took home that day as flat packs; they are now in the big pile in the dining room. A couple more arrived last week. Two other items were delayed. Now, refreshing the tracking page, I see that the last of them has arrived at the local warehouse.

Let’s see, I had a piece of paper documenting my last conversation with the West Elm deliver center, where did I put it? Panic, panic. Not in any penda-flex. Oh, there’s a banker’s box where I put all the stuff from the top of the desk. Hah! inside it, along with pictures and desk items, is the piece of paper with the receipt and phone number.

So I call the delivery center and the nice person sets me up for delivery on Monday. That will complete my furniture; everything will be here by Monday night, ready for the movers to take to CH on Saturday. Wow.

On the day I move I will need to unbox and assemble: a bed, a settee, a table, two chairs, an arm chair, and a desk. The bed is the only essential one, but I arranged with Angela to schedule a Channing House Facilities Person to assist me for three hours, 2-5pm that day. She is supposed to get back to me if that won’t be possible, owing to it being a weekend, in which case I will have to hire a gig worker, probably from TaskRabbit.com, the outfit that IKEA suggests for assembly work.

At 4:40 I headed out, to the Museum for the annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner. A pretty low-key event, 50 or so gray-haired folks getting thanked by the Museum staff, free dinner and drinks. Some interesting news was mentioned by both Len Shustek (the board member and major donor, whose name is on the Shustek Center in Fremont where I spend alternate Thursdays), and by Dan’l Lewis, the CEO. When 20 years ago the Museum was able to buy its present building from the bankrupt Silicon Graphics (wow, has it been that long since SGI went under?), the $25M purchase included not just the big white building at Shoreline and 101, but 17.5 acres of land surrounding it. Most of that acreage is asphalt parking lots. Meanwhile Google has been buying up all the surrounding land, with future plans for a huge development, thousands of homes and retail.

Len reviewed some of the other computer museums, and talked about how difficult it was to create a museum that would last. The excellent Living Computer Museum in Seattle had only one major donor, Paul Allen, who died last year. Now its funding is in doubt. One I’d never heard of, the American Computer and Robotics Museum in (of all places) Bozeman, MT, is struggling. It was the work of a married couple, and now the husband has died and the widow is trying to carry on. So with these examples in mind, the Museum board is considering what they might do with some of their parking lots, possibly developing part of the space in a way that would increase the Museum’s endowment substantially and help ensure its longevity.

Day 184, AT&T, FOPAL, upgrade, SYTYCD

Tuesday, 5/4/2019

Exercise this morning was a brisk walk to the Y and a round of exercise. The exercises I do there, that I think have the most benefit, are not possible with the equipment in the CH gym, so I will likely keep my Y membership.

That’s not a large expense but it annoys me because I thought I would be dropping it. But that annoyance was assuaged this morning when I had an

email from AT&T

saying that “my bill” was past due. No indication of which bill. So here’s the thing: for nearly a decade I’ve had DirecTV with auto bill-pay. A year ago AT&T absorbed DirecTV and its website, and now anytime you try to look at your DirecTV account, you end up being shuttled willy-nilly into myAtt.com account management. There it kept showing me that my $60 monthly bill for internet is paid up all proper. There is no freakin’ way to get from that account page to my DirecTV account, to check up on my bill or payment method for the TV service.

Well, there must be, because after I switched browsers and went through the sequence a fourth time, suddenly and magically I was looking at my bill for the month’s TV, $153. And I supplied the credit card data they already had and paid it.

One of the pleasures of leaving this house will the fun of calling AT&T and terminating both the internet and TV services. Saving me just over $210 per month, which more than makes up for the much smaller YMCA membership bill.

Now, true, at CH I will be what I have studiously avoided becoming for twenty years, a Comcast customer! Always avoided it because of Comcast’s horrible reputation for customer service. Hah! At CH, I’m not the customer; a medium-size business (Channing House) is the customer. I will be paying a small amount monthly for a Comcast, excuse me, XFinity, DVR, which costs extra. (I went over this in detail with Craig yesterday.) But that will be a pittance compared to what I’ve been paying DirecTV/AT&T all these years.

Anyway.

Yesterday when I spent time at

FOPAL

tidying the Computer section I was appalled at the flood of donations that came in and were piled up waiting to be sorted. Today another volunteer speculated that it was the result of the Palo Alto city-wide garage sale over the weekend — all the books that didn’t sell in garage sales, were boxed up and dumped at FOPAL. And some actually were “dumped”, about 8 boxes were just left outside the door, which is rather discourteous.

So I went down today again and spent another three hours sorting. Didn’t eliminate the backlog but took a serious bite out of it.

Then I bought a pound of coffee and some toilet paper (there wasn’t quite enough left to cover two more weeks) and headed home. From there I went over to CH to attend the

monthly Upgrade Update

meeting. This was to let all residents know the status and progress of the rolling floor-by-floor renovation. This meeting was particularly for the Seventh and Sixth floors.

The 7th floor people got their dates for when they would move back to their renovated apartments (August 12-23), and we 6th floors got the dates for when we would be moved out to temporary units (August 26 to September 9th). (Note to self: thoughts of taking some kind of cruise in the fall: book for mid-September.)

We also learned what our temporary units would be, and got floor plans for them. I will be moving to the 4th floor and the West side. The unit is almost the same size and layout as #621, so there won’t be any need to store any of my furniture, and most of it can go to the same relative position. The only problem I foresee is that my plants will have more light and heat from the Western exposure. Rather than hanging around an hour for supper I just went on home for a simple meal and to watch episode 1 of season 16 of

So You Think You Can Dance

Marian and I watched the previous fifteen seasons of this show and enjoyed them all. When I noticed the DVR had recorded SYTYCD I was a little worried, on two conflicting accounts. Would it be too hard to watch, being bothered by thoughts of “She would have enjoyed this so much”? And conversely, would I find out it wasn’t as good as I remembered, and wouldn’t be fun to watch when I didn’t share it with another fan?

Fortunately, neither. There were sniffly moments when I thought about how Marian would have enjoyed it, but they weren’t too frequent or intrusive. And the show was just as good as I remembered. Better than some years, in fact. In some past seasons they have tinkered with their format in various unfortunate ways. This year they seem to have gone back to the original format, augmented with a whizzy new stage — which incorporates a circle of cameras, so they can capture a dancer in the air and show them in full 3D — and new judges who aren’t embarrassing. So, yeah. Good watching.

Day 183, men’s group, FOPAL, tech, realty

Monday, 6/3/2019

The CH Men’s Group met at 10 and I was to introduce myself and “talk about anything you like”. So I gave a capsule autobiography with some pictures culled from my collection. Maybe I’ll write that into this blog at some point.

In order to get my usual exercise, I walked from Tasso street to Channing House and back again, net 10,900 steps for the day. Then I went to FOPAL to do the Computer section work. There were eight boxes of books waiting. I ended up keeping about 30 books, sending seven boxes to the bargain room. I ruthlessly discarded into the garbage can somebody’s donation of a bag of 50 or so, 3.5-inch floppies. Nobody cares and they aren’t recyclable. I also put in the recycling a complete FrameMaker product box, containing a set of manuals for that software. Nostalgia: there was a period around 1992-3 when I used FrameMaker 40 hours a week, writing manuals at Informix. It hasn’t been supported, or used, this century, and wouldn’t run on any existing hardware.

Pricing, as usual, turned up some “high value” (average online price greater than $25) books, including one boring looking little textbook whose prices ranged from $70 to over $200. Those went into the “high value” cart for those volunteers to sell.

From FOPAL I drove back to CH to attend a tech group meeting at 3pm. This was to introduce ClearPass, a system of access control for the CH internet provision, so that each apartment could have, in effect, its own little wi-fi network carved out of the big building network. In this way, your laptops, phone, desktop and wireless-connected printer can all see each other — you can print on your printer from anywhere, and your Macs can use Apple file sharing between them — but other users in the building can’t see them. It seems pretty slick, making a couple of hundred apparently unique wi-fi clusters out of one big system. They claim they use this solution for major universities so each student in a dorm has a unique “micro-net” for their devices. I took a bunch of notes on the phone.

Drove home via Safeway to pick up a few groceries. About six, Chuck called. He’d talked at length to the other agent. As was said before, the Lawyer Lady loves the house but is currently tasked with a huge responsibility for a “billion dollar contract” (probably an exaggeration) within her law firm and hasn’t had time to make any decisions. Her visit to the house on Friday was a success, she and her decorator friend love it even more.

I told Chuck I could sympathize with her having this huge crisis, and don’t mind her thinking about it longer; but on the other hand, I want to sell. We agreed he would re-run the ad in the Daily Post that he had suspended last week in respect of their offer. And we talked about how soon after I move out (in 12 days!) we can list the house. Sometime in July.

Day 182, mostly baseball

Sunday, 6/2/2019

This is the day the Lawyer Lady is supposed to respond to our counter-offer. At some time I expect a text from Chuck saying whether we have sold the house or not.

Off to breakfast at the usual place. Punched the last hole in the discount cappuccino card. Not quite perfect timing, I expect to come there one more time, and will have to pay full price for a cappuccino. Caught the cinnamon rolls just as they came out of the oven. Warm cinnamon roll, num.

Stanford baseball has lost one game in its regional, so has to play the other loser today at noon. If they win, they will be allowed to play Fresno State at 6pm, and if they win that they will be allowed to play Fresno State again on Monday to see which team advances to the final four in Oklahoma. Since I paid for a regional pass I had better go.

Between breakfast and noon, I assembled some pictures to accompany my self-introduction to the Men’s Group at Channing House, on Monday. Then off to the baseball game. Lovely weather for it. I spotted several Stanford WBB players in the stands. Stanford got off to a good start, and in the seventh inning they batted around, running the score to 11-1. I decided that was a “W” and left at that point, about 2pm.

At 6pm I was back to Sunken Diamond for the second game. I had my cell phone charged up and with ESPN open in the web browser I could follow the Warriors-Toronto NBA game between pitches. The baseball turned into a marathon. At 8:40pm they had only finished the fifth inning. The Warriors game was over (Warriors won) and Stanford was ahead 6-4, and it was dark and chilly. I decided I had had enough, and went home to listen to the rest of the game on the radio. It didn’t wrap up for another 90 minutes, but did end with a Stanford win.

Around 9:30 Chuck texted that the other agent had not gotten back to him. Expect something tomorrow morning. Are they playing games? Nominally they had only to Sunday to respond, then the counter would be automatically be dropped and the deal is off. Well, what do I know.

And so to bed.

Day 181, Docent, Jean

Saturday, 6/1/2019

Two weeks from now is moving day to Channing House. I could probably move now, it the apartment was ready. I only need to repot the wax plants. I have a couple of attractive small hanging pots from Amazon to put them in. I am waiting for them to finish their current bloom, then I’ll prune them and repot them and they will be ready to go. Pretty much everything else is ready as well.

I conducted the noon tour at the Museum today. Had a good crowd, 25 or so, and most hung with me to the end. Later I called Jean suggesting dinner. I want to talk F2F about this wedding trip. She didn’t pick up, so left a message.

I did get in touch with her and we went out to supper. She brought up the wedding trip and said it did seem like too much trouble for the benefit. Excellent.

Day 180, dining table exit, real estate

Friday, 5/31/2019

I went for the usual run in the morning. I don’t recollect now (24 hours later) what I did to pass the time until the scheduled feature of the day, the arrival of the people who’ve bought my dining table and chairs (day 164). They showed a bit ahead of time and we loaded the table, the two leaves, and the six chairs into their rather large SUV. It all fit well, and off they went.

I felt a bit emotional about seeing this furniture go, but not as much as I feared I might. It was one of the first things Marian and I bought together, but I cannot now remember the actual buying of it. I’m sure it came, like most of our furniture, from Danish Concepts or some similar Scandinavian-flavor place. The round table occupied the center of our octagonal dining room for about 40 years. At least 15 years ago the table top had accumulated some scratches, and we sent it out to be refinished.

The leaves got little use. For maybe 20 years, through the 90s, we hosted a party of five every other month when we would meet with the Kellehers and our mutual friend Randy. To set for five required putting in one of the leaves. I have a couple of pictures of times we hosted Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner for more people, and put in both leaves to seat eight or nine, but those were rare events, a dozen times at most.

After Randy died we continued to alternate months between our house and the Kelleher’s but with only four diners, no leaf was needed. For the last few years, since the Kellehers moved into a retirement home, we didn’t do any hosting, and only used the table as a convenient place to set things. We ate our own meals in the living room, watching TV.

Once the table was gone, I proceeded with the plan I’d had in mind for a week, since Deb texted to say the table was sold and would go on this day. Namely, I moved all the boxes of furniture I’ve bought for the new apartment, into the dining room, and stacked the other things I’ve already packed for my move on them. It makes one compact cubical heap about 4 foot on a side. That cleared out the spare room, and there I have collected all the things that are also going with me but which need professional packing by the movers, art work and such.

During this Chuck texted to say that Lawyer Lady’s agent had been in touch. Her client has apparently been working 20 hours a day on a major project at her law firm and hasn’t had time to ponder our counter-offer; could they have through Sunday? Sure, no problem. And also, she would like to visit the house one more time with her friend the decorator. Could they do that today at 4? Yeah no prob.

So I tidied up a bit, and left the house at 3:30. I sat for a while in the car near Peers Park, then drove over to CH and sat reading in the lobby until the dining room opened at 5:30. After supper I came on home.

In the evening Jean emailed to ask if I would be willing to drive her to the wedding of Robert Lacrampe. Robert is probably late 20s, early 30s? He is the youngest child of Pierre Lacrampe, Marian’s and Jean’s cousin. I last really interacted with him when he was a teenager. I remember him as a cheerful and intelligent kid who liked to pronounce his name the French way, hhhrrro-BEAR.

Anyway he is getting married on July 20 in Calistoga. Ceremony at 5, then “cocktails (formal)”, then dinner. Google maps says 2:30 to 3:00 hours drive time on a Saturday. That means a 1pm departure for me, pick up Jean, drive to Calistoga, and even if we skip the dinner and leave after an hour of schmoozing, probably a twelve hour round trip, 5-6 hours of driving. Plus, I no longer have a suit; and if I have a necktie I probably don’t have a good shirt to wear it on. Nearest I can get to “formal” is a brown sport coat with gray slacks and a black turtleneck.

Well, I spelled this out to Jean in an email, not saying “no”, just saying here’s the deal. We’ll see.

Day 179, Yosemite

Thursday, 5/30/2019

At 10:30 last night Chuck texted that he had confirmation our counter-offer had been received, but no response to it. He didn’t text anything today, so presumably the buyer is thinking and running their own numbers. I’m determined not to go any lower. My counter was a significant drop from the original asking price, and adjusted to get what I want out of the deal, and it’s my bottom line. If they turn it down, we’ll be on the route to multiple-listing the property, probably in early July.

I drove to Yosemite where I spent the day photographing objects. Aurora, the curator who rides herd on this group of volunteers, has embarked on a monumental task, examining every box on the shelves at Yosemite. There must be several hundred boxes. Each is a “banker’s box” made of archival (acid-free) cardboard. In each are cardboard trays, and in the trays are artifacts nestled in archival plastic foam. Several years ago I helped to pack some of these boxes when the collection was moving from the museum building to the Yosemite warehouse.

Each box is opened, the artifacts lifted out and their numbers looked up in the database. Various errors can turn up, for example objects having the wrong location code, or battery-powered objects with batteries still in place. For some boxes, or some trays, there are no photographs in the database, and these are being set aside for photography. Today I and another volunteer worked through two boxes, maybe 50 objects. Including a box of slide-rule type artifacts, a Jeppsen flight calculator, another big circular computer used to calculate radio-frequency reflectances, and… a Micky Mouse Math rule that did addition.

Day 178, FOPAL, Luskin

Wednesday, 5/29/2019

After a run in the morning I went to FOPAL about noon and worked through 4:30.

In the morning and again in the afternoon, a chap at CH was asking if anyone had a slide projector; he’d recently been handed a collection of 50-year-old slides and wanted to look at them. I did, so I told him I’d bring mine over.

I wanted to attend a lecture by Fred Luskin scheduled for 7pm, so I drove over about 6:15. I set the projector by my chair as I ate, and shortly Harry introduced himself and took the projector.

Luskin is the director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. I was aware of this, having written about it in the first version of my book. His main point on this night was how easy it is to demonize the other, to “see all the bad on that side”, and how important it is, for personal contentment as well as for the good of society, to change your attitudes.

What I was thinking during the talk was how difficult that change can be. To demonize, to “see all the bad in the other” is a tempting posture. It relieves stress, because it removes ambiguity. Ambiguity is stressful and upsetting, and we all like to avoid it. But forgiveness means allowing the possibility of good will, and even good arguments, to the other side, whatever the other side might be for you. It means embracing ambiguity, not resolving it. In addition, a point Luskin didn’t make, there are people and powerful organizations who benefit from persuading you to demonize. That’s how you get people to contribute, to vote, to volunteer, and to fight. I’m not criticizing him for not making that point, because his intent was to teach personal practices that make forgiveness easier.

Day 177, unstructured

Cannabis report: 18mg CBD/4.5mg THC taken between 7:30 and 9pm had little effect. Perhaps a bit of dizziness when settling into bed. No other noticeable effects. Well, perhaps I had fewer wakings in the night. I think I’m done with these experiments.

Tuesday, 5/28/2019

Started the day with a walk to the YMCA. Then was faced with a blank calendar, for which I’m not well prepared. Put in an hour on Zooniverse, which is my #3 volunteer activity after CHM and FOPAL. Put in a couple of hours playing my space game. Did some reading.

Chuck sent the estimate for the appraisal, which I OK’d; and also a the counter-offer document for my e-signature. So that’s been presented. Tomorrow, or anyway this week, we will know if the house is sold. I don’t plan to go any lower than the counter.

Walked down to Philz Coffee out of boredom. Now looking at whether to go over to CH for supper, or just veg. out here. I don’t like blank calendar days.

Then Chuck called; he needs a couple of signatures to complete the counter-offer. I drive to his office and sign several bits of paper. Then, since I’m out in the car and it’s 5:30, I drive on over to CH for supper.

Day 176, FOPAL, realty

Cannabis report: 15mg/15mg did give me a slight buzz, a little hint of vertigo when moving or turning over, and that persisted until the small hours. I did not sleep any better. The only real effect of the THC was to increase the effect that I remarked on three days back: on the edge of sleep, I was treated to a wild show of abstract art on the inside of my closed eyelids. For several minutes — maybe? maybe only a minute or two, but long enough to think, “very pretty, but I’m not sleeping, go to sleep”) — was looking at fields of intricate patterns, or figures like claymation animation, in rich colors. The one definite difference that THC makes.

In the morning I had a dull headache and felt foggy for a while. A hangover? Or just coincidence, I can’t say. But definitely, THC intoxication is not worth pursuing for its own sake.

Monday, 5/27/2019

A day with no scheduled activities on the google calendar. I’ll have to meet with Chuck at some point and make up my mind as to whether to counter-offer the Lawyer Lady. I start the day by jogging a different route, down Oregon Expressway and over the pedestrian bridge to the SFCU office by the golf course, where I can deposit a benefits check. Yes, Via benefits is still sending paper checks even after multiple attempts to set up direct deposit on their website, and a call to customer support which got me a paper form to return, which I did. For some things they do electronic transfer, for others they don’t. I’m giving up on them.

Then I went to FOPAL where there were seven boxes of books piled up by the Computer section. I culled them and priced the better ones. This turned up three that were “high value”, books that have online prices of more than $25. That’s always fun. They go in a special cart to be dealt with by the volunteers who sell the high-value ones on eBay. I ended up with about 35 books worth reselling, and priced and shelved them. Then I spent another 90 minutes doing sorting.

I picked up a few food items at the grocery store nearby and brought them home. Chuck stopped by a bit after three and we discussed what to do next. He’d had no new calls despite the ad running over the weekend. He says that a year ago, such an ad would have produced several calls. I want to get the sale done with, so we agreed he would present the counter-offer we discussed on Friday, tomorrow. Hopefully they will react favorably and we will be on the way.

I’m not quite sure what experiment to make next with cannabis. Two gel-caps, 20mg CBD, didn’t have a soporific effect. I am not interested in upping the THC. The only thing that might have made me sleep better was the time I took two of the gummies. That was 12mg CBD and 3mg THC. I think tonight I’ll take three gummies, 18mg/4.5mg. That should be comparable to the two gel-cap dose, and do nothing, but maybe there is something about the gummy formulation that is different.