Day 96, second day in Vegas

Friday, 3/8/2019

Goodness but I do not like Vegas. Being in casinos is simply unpleasant owing to the visual overload, the constant noise, and the pervasive smell of tobacco. Outside is a bit better. I went for a walk this morning, to find The Park. It’s an outdoor plaza with plants behind New York New York. And it has music playing. Not as loud as inside a casino, but inescapable.

I rode the tram, surely the most useless mass-transit system ever. One way, it runs from Excalibur to Mandalay Bay. The return goes from Mandalay Bay to Luxor, to Excalibur. In other words, to get from Excalibur to Luxor, you ride to Mandalay Bay, get off, wait for the next train, get on, ride back to Luxor. Which I did, and walked around inside Luxor for a few minutes, then walked on sidewalks back to Excalibur.

Finally it came time for the first session. UCLA quickly took a 15-point lead over ASU so I left at half-time and came back to the room (9,457 steps so far) which had been made up. Following the notice about saving water, I had hung my used towels neatly on the rods. And of course they had been replaced with new ones anyway.

Now to plan the rest of the day. I expect the next game, Arizona-Oregon, to quickly turn into a rout because Oregon is just that good (but I’ve been wrong a lot so far). The game I really want to see, Stanford-Cal, doesn’t start until 6pm. I think I will hang here in the room, following the UA-UO game on the internet, until 4pm. Then go and have an early supper at (probably) Wolfgang Puck’s where I had supper last night, before the 6pm session. I will publish this now and finish the thrilling chronicle of events in tomorrow’s post.

Day 95, in Vegas

Thursday 3/7/2019

Slept badly as I always do before a flight. I know the alarm will go off at 5 (in this case) but I can’t help but keep waking up to check. No, it’s only 1:30, 3, 3:45, 4:10… Anyway up before 5 to dress, brush teeth, put two lights on timers, and re-check the contents of my bag. Yup, got everything. Get in the Lyft and as it gets a block away I suddenly realize that I did not in fact put the computer into the bag. It’s still beside my chair. Cue hilarious sequence as the Lyft driver makes U-turns to get back with me mis-directing him. Get computer, get back in car, carry on. A real senile moment, there. Seriously. Carefully checked that I had packed the power supply for the computer but omitted to go and fetch the actual computer and put it in the bag.

Anyway. No harm done. At the airport I greet and chat with three other long-time SWBB fans who are on the same flight.

The games are held in the MGM Grand Arena. To save a bit I opted to stay in the Excalibur, which is the silliest-looking of the casinos, with its faux-medieval towers. This economy is also getting me exercise. To get from my room to the arena, I have to cross the full width of Excalibur diagonally, take the bridge to New York New York, go through one corner of that casino, take the bridge to MGM Grand, and walk the full diagonal width of that huge casino to its furthest corner.

I just checked the Health app on the phone. It was 1,900 steps from my room to the arena. More than a quarter-mile. I went to the first session, at noon. Colorado against ASU. Colorado trailed most of the way. They had a flurry of hits and almost caught up in the third quarter but the magic went away and they lost.

Second game, Arizona against USC, I expected to be a runaway for USC, but it was quite the opposite, with UA ahead early and pulling away. At the half I decided to bail. I had left the ticket for the second, 6pm, session in the room so I had to go back anyway, and with this game decided I might as well get a head start. It was on this walk that I measured the 1,900 steps for the trip. Now for a bit of a nap, then return to the Grand to find some supper before 6pm.

Later: Cal won their game over WSU, although the Cougs did not go down easily, which is good because it means Cal will be tired when they play Stanford at 6pm tomorrow. I had dinner with fans Nancy and Rita, during which I confidently predicted that in the final game Utah (20-9) would easily beat UW (9-20). And of course the Huskies took a lead early and kept it to the end, so I was wrong on all my predictions.

According to the iPhone app, with two round-trips between my room and the arena, plus a long, long walk through the Vegas airport, I walked 14,005 steps today, or 5.3 miles.

Day 94, packing, real estate, FOPAL

I omitted to mention yesterday that when I was at the gym, I was accosted by a man about my own age who I kind of recognized. He identified himself as Mike F., an old IBM colleague who worked with Marian for many years. He very kindly expressed condolences and commented on how everyone knew Marian as “really, really smart” and “a programmer’s programmer”. That was nice.

Wednesday 3/6/2019

Since Chuck and his contractor will be here at 10, there isn’t time for a run — I tell myself. That isn’t strictly true; if I got off my butt and out the door at 8 there’d be time. Or I can take a run after they leave; how’s that for a concept? I’ll consider it. Right now it’s 8:20, and I’m dressed and finished with one of the two “things” on my schedule for today,

packing,

which brought up a couple of emotional reactions. Tomorrow morning I will leave for a long weekend in Vegas (baby), to watch the PAC-12 WBB tournament. Eleven games in four days, whee! Probably won’t watch all, or at least will probably walk out early from ones that turn into a runaway. But today I wanted to make sure I had everything ready.

Packing for one is stupidly easy. Everything fits in a nice little carry-on bag that fits under the seat, so I don’t even have to worry about space in the overhead. Which is a good thing, because I’m flying SouthWest, and I didn’t check in until half an hour after the 24-hour check-in window opened, so I’m number A46, the 50th or 60th person (allowing for gold members, servicemen, women with babies, etc) to board the plane. Don’t care, it’s a 90-minute flight and my bag fits under the seat hahaha.

Inevitably I contrast this to prior trips, where the two of us used at least a roller bag, two for a longer trip, plus a computer bag for our two laptops. We’d check the bag, especially in recent years where we had to go to the desk to check in in order to get the wheelchair Marian needed to travel to the gate. Now, in a moment of release (similar to what I felt back in the first week when I realized I could again walk to Sunday coffee), I realized that I can just print my boarding pass at home, pick up my bag, and bop on over to the security line without a pause. That’s nice.

Prior to that realization I had another moment, not exactly of grief but of combined relief and pity. I went to the “travel drawer” (oh jeez, yet another drawer I need to clean out) to get one of the small mesh bags we used to pack toiletries. The one I picked up had something in it: oh, Marian’s first-aid supplies.

For most of this millennium, she suffered from fragile skin: her skin would split or tear seemingly under a hard look, or at least any small collision with a corner of anything. So she always had to be ready with bandaids, tape, gauze, to patch a split. She handled this as she did all her other maladies, with intelligence and calm practicality. Your skin breaks; you swear quietly, patch it, and carry on. So one of the toiletry bags had this double-handful of assorted patching materials. I was so pleased to be able to throw all that out on her behalf. At least that isn’t an issue any more. As I finished writing that I saw Chuck pulling up so time for

Real estate talk.

Chuck brought his favorite contractor, Vassily, and we looked long at the kitchen and talked about how one could — or mostly how one could not — upgrade it. It bugs Chuck and his designer Amy that there is a door between the kitchen and the refrigerator:

It hasn’t been a functional problem for 45 years. The annoyance of having to open that door to reach the fridge, and close it to reach the pantry that’s behind it, was so slight it never occurred to us to do anything about it. Turns out that was smart, because in Vassily’s opinion, it can’t be done. One, the wall in which that door sits is a bearing wall for the sloping roof above and it would be hard to remove it. Two, if you keep the wall but do other work, because there is a furnace beyond it, the city will make you upgrade that door to a “20-minute fire door” which would mean replacing the frame and the door. If you keep the wall and try to put the fridge in the kitchen it replaces some of the counter, and anyway the counters are 24″ or less deep, so the refrigerator sticks out and you have a problem opening it. You could maybe put the fridge next to the stove where the pantry is, but then you lose all the shelf space in the pantry, plus, having a fridge abutting a stove is kind of weird.

I really don’t care; as I said several times (as much to myself as to them) “I won’t be living here, so I don’t care what you do.” But the decision to do such work does impact me, as I went over with Chuck after Vassily left. If they do remodeling, it can’t start until I move out, and then it will take at least a month (probably more, because that’s how this shit always goes) to finish. And that delays the selling of the house by that much.

We talked about the implications of that. If I move into C.H. they will charge 10% on the unpaid balance of the entry fee, which would come to circa $4000/month until the house closes escrow and I can pay the balance off. But Chuck says, if the upgrade work adds $100K to your sale price, you come out ahead.

Another option that we talked about is that I could go ahead and move out and take a temporary spot in another ILF (one with a month-to-month contract and no entry fee). Again that would cost circa $4000/month until such time as C.H. has an opening, but the work on the house and its sale could proceed.

Against that idea is my reluctance to change my address twice. But then I had the thought that perhaps I could change my postal address to C.H. right now. I need to ask Kim Krebs about that. She said that as soon as I paid my application fee (last Monday) I would be a “member” in the sense that I would get their newsletter and could attend any of their events. Maybe I could start converting all my various accounts to that as my postal address now. In which case I would not have to change addresses twice — only move all my earthly goods twice.

With this possibility in mind I asked Chuck to get me a referral to his favorite estate sale manager. I’d like to get a handle on that situation. Anyway, it’s all very complicated. And so off to FOPAL with three boxes of books.

next day… forgot to hit “Publish” on this. Also, forgot to note that since the FOPAL book sale is coming up this weekend, the sorting room is really crowded, so the three boxes of books stayed in the back of the car for next time.

Day 93, paperwork, real estate

Tuesday, 3/5/2019

Because of light rain I drove to the Y instead of walking. Did a while on a treadmill and a couple of exercises but it was crowded and every apparatus I wanted was in use, so left.

Filled out the questionnaire the financial manager sends in preparation for my annual consultation, which is on the 19th. Added a list of questions we need to discuss. Put it all in the return mail envelope. Wrote a check for my annual membership in FOPAL. When the cleaning lady arrived I took both, and my computer, and went to the local coffee shop for lunch, mailing the two envelopes. Isn’t this interesting?

Back home I spent a couple of hours scanning slides, and lost track of time and forgot I was to meet with Chuck at 2pm. He called to remind me at 2:15, very embarrassing. He came down to the house. We went over some comparables he had collected. He wants to come back tomorrow with his staging contractor to talk about redoing the kitchen. He’s convinced it would make a big difference in selling to an owner-occupier. I remind him he was going to talk to a developer to get an idea of what a developer might pay. He sends a text to one he knows. Maybe we’ll have that tomorrow.

I’m conflicted on the marketing of the house. I would emotionally prefer to sell it to people who would live in it and remodel it. But I don’t like the idea of spending money and time (tens of thousands, and weeks if not months) on remodeling, on speculation that it will raise the price.

Do more slide scanning; I’m more than half done with that. Filled three boxes with books to take to tomorrow afternoon’s book-sorting session. There’s no more than three boxes’ worth left on the shelf.

Last night I deleted the SYTYCD episodes.

Day 92, C.H. application in

3/4/2019

Started with a run, usual length, felt good. Drove to the Los Altos clinic and picked up the paperwork Dr. Marx had prepared. Put it in an envelope with the other 8 pages of the C.H. application packet, and then decided I wanted to make a copy of the whole thing before turning it in.

Drove home via the grocery store, picking up a few items. My grocery shopping is very easy these days. Well, except for one thing. I’m getting about half my calories from a meal replacement that you mix partly with heavy cream. Most stores only carry heavy cream in 8oz units, but my Safeway has been carrying it in quart sizes. Only today they didn’t have it.

Copied the whole application packet, put it back in the envelope, and drove on over to C.H. to turn it in. I was going to ask Ms. Krebs a couple of trivial questions, but she was just sitting down with other clients, so I left the packet with the receptionist. So that deed is done. I hope to hear something back from them soon, but it could well be weeks.

Headed home for a session scanning old slides. While the scanner whined away I worked with the new laptop, Godot, downloading the apps that I use on the old laptop. Pretty soon I’ll be able to switch entirely to the new one.

Day 91.5 grief (again) (yawn)

In the afternoon I drove to a Best Buy store and walked through their wonderland of TV screens. Gosh, TVs are impressively good these days. Of course they program very contrasty, heavily sharpened material so the images jump out at you. Anyway, many of their demo TVs had sound bars attached. And there was even a setup with ten different sound bars and you could in theory switch from one to another to compare. Only in theory, because three or four of the ten didn’t make any sound, broken or unplugged, and as for the others, someone — customers? bored salesman? — had turned the volume up all the way so when you switched to one, it blasted you and made heads turn across the store. Main problem, the item I’d decided from trawling the internets was the most interesting, a Yamaha one, was not in the store anywhere. Apparently Best Buy doesn’t stock them. (Nor did Fry’s.)

So I made some food and burned off quite a bit of programming from the backup on the DVR. One glob of DVR space is the folder of saved episodes of the last season of So You Think You Can Dance. There have been 15 seasons of that show, and Marian and I watched all of them together. It was our favorite TV show, and sharing it was a pleasure. For several of seasons, I left the episodes on the DVR to watch again. We’d play them back and select a few of the very best routines, the ones that made us say “Wow!”. These I would record off the DVR onto the computer, and from there (with several hours of work) make a compilation DVD.

Sound like a nerdy thing? Something one of Sheldon’s flatmates might do? Yeah. Let me check: in my file of recorded DVDs I have highlight discs of SYTYCD seasons 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Don’t know what happened to 7, 9, and 14. It is season 15 sitting on my DVR now.

This sounds like the slides all over again. DVDs take up a lot less space! But the issue is the same: I carefully curated imagery, stored it, only to never view it again. Before I resolve that, I want to think about about

Grief (good grief, again?)

So I played back an episode of Season 15 and got the strongest wave of grief I’ve had in days. Why? Part of the answer is a couple of paragraphs back: watching SYTYCD was a shared experience, and I’ll never share it again. But there’s another aspect. The words going through my mind were, “She loved this so much…” and it’s that which triggers the emotion. The same thing happens when I stop to look at her favorite azalea in bloom — a few days back, when I was showing Chuck around the house and was going to mention the azalea I couldn’t make my voice work. Something about realizing that here was something Marian loved, and that she can’t enjoy again, is just a very powerful inducer of grief.

Well, what about those DVDs of past seasons? Would I watch any of them again? Could I watch them — remembering that they were specifically the highlights she most enjoyed? And what about the current folder of season 15? Is there any point to re-watching those shows, or making a compilation from them? I think “no” to all. I’ll mull it a day or so then probably throw everything out.

Day 93, forms, desk cleanout

Sunday 3/3/2019

Sunday morning. Up and out to the coffee shop by 7. Pleasant sit reading the paper and doing the puzzle. I’ve only patronized this place for 30 years or so, usually coming in wearing a hat, and they never seem to recognize me.

Home theater dreams

I walked home and then drove up to Fry’s to shop TV sound bars. I designed my present TV setup years ago. Every audio and video source (TV, Blu-Ray, VHS deck, laptop) feeds into a receiver by HDMI cables; the receiver drives five speakers around the room and a woofer. It worked, but it is over-complex. Looking ahead at an ILF unit, I figure to dump the receiver, connect the Blu-ray and computer into the TV itself, and generate audio with a nice subtle sound bar in front of the TV. I’d already confused myself mightily by looking for “best tv sound bars” online and thought I’d get some clarity looking at actual hardware at Fry’s. But no, they only had a couple of brands and no real info.

Paperwork

Last night I realized that I forgot to go by the PAMF office in Los Altos and pick up the medical forms that the doctor was going to prepare for me. She was to have them ready for pickup Friday and, I thought, was going to message me when I could pick them up. In which case I’d have had an email. But I should have checked Saturday. The office isn’t open Sunday.

OK then, so let’s get the rest of the Channing House (C.H.) questionnaire ready. I sat down at the desk and spent an hour carefully filling out about 10 pages of questions. I was pleased to find, checking my Schwab online accounts, that Marian’s IRA has finally been combined into my IRA. For a while there was a little matter of $360K that I couldn’t access, but it’s back now. I was pleased to see that I have more than enough assets to pass the C.H. requirements. So all the paperwork is done, except for adding the doctor’s statements. Tomorrow I will pick those up, put the whole thing in an envelope, and drop it off at C.H.

Office supplies

Since I was at the desk I started cleaning out its drawers. If we hoarded anything, it was pens. We each had our favorite type of pen, and to avoid the annoyance of one running dry or not being to hand, we tended to order them in boxes of 12 from Amazon. Plus years’ accumulation of paper clips and post-its and… It took a good 90 minutes to inventory all office supplies and neatly bag up the excess by category.

I emptied the shallow desk drawers, wiped them out with Pledge, and restocked them with a small selection of tools (stapler, staple remover, eraser…) and a modest supply of paperclips, rubber bands, and post-its. Put a lot of stuff in the trash. Set aside a box of neatly sorted surplus items for the eventual estate sale. Anyone want a bag containing 39 roller-ball pens in assorted colors? Or a bag containing about 15 Sharpies of various sizes and colors? Or one with a dozen highlighters?

So now the desk drawers are organized, and ten of the eleven drawers of the tall cabinet beside the desk are empty. One has a tidy assortment of other office stuff: mailing labels, a small paper cutter, scissors, rulers, etc.

Basketball

Stanford is at UW at 2pm. I streamed the audio as I edited this post. Stanford had another easy win by 20+ points. That ends the regular season. I will be attending the PAC-12 tournament next week in Las Vegas.

Day 92, Women of the IEEE and others

So last night I had misunderstood the Stanford baseball schedule; they were playing away this weekend. So I didn’t have to brave a cool and possibly rainy night outdoors. I stayed home and streamed the SWBB game. Stanford — as the audio announcer kept pointing out — has never lost to WSU, ever, they are something like 39-0. He had to keep saying that and I’m thinking, “shut up shut up, just shut up about it” but it didn’t matter. They romped over the Cougars, winning by 30 points at the end. And so to bed.

Saturday, 3/2/2019

Today I was scheduled to lead a custom tour for the Women of the IEEE, Women In Engineering, or #WIELEAD (“we lead”, get it?). It was supposed to get underway at 11am. I asked the guys doing the 1401 demo if they would mind staying around after their 11am run to do another demo for my group at 12:30, and they generously agreed to.

Then I found out the WIE had also asked for a brunch table. Now, if they are going to eat brunch in the lobby starting at 11, when can we start the tour? There’s the scheduled Family Tour supposed to go at 11:30, will we be stepping on their toes? \Sadik, the young woman leading that tour, tells me her first stop was the IBM 360, so they would be ahead of us all the way. Fine.

Then Susan, the WIE organizer, was disappointed that I was not one of the docents trained in the Women in Computing tour. This was their fourth year doing this and they’d always had one of those. There’d been a miscommunication in the scheduling app or an error by the event scheduler. I said I’d do the best I could, and quickly opened Wikipedia to bone up on Margaret Hamilton and Grace Hopper. (Later I hooked Susan up with my boss, Katherina, who placated her with free tickets to the scheduled Women in Computing tour days.)

I managed to get the dozen women started about 11:40, but now instead of doing a leisurely tour, inviting questions, I had to cut my usual stuff short in order to get done before 12:30. Plus adding a stop so I could talk about Hamilton, and ad-libbing a reference to Hopper later. Half-way around we caught up to the Family tour who were being video’d by a professional crew. So I took my tour past them. Then there was another big private tour that we passed, but they caught up with us again, so I had to rush another stop to get out of their way… it was just a zoo. But the 1401 demo was a hit, and they all thanked me and made me stand with them for a group photo. So they didn’t notice what a zoo it was.

Back home, I sat down to begin adapting Godot, the new laptop, to my preferences. Go through all the system preferences and check them. When I start up Safari … it seems to know what sites I visit often; they are all lined up on the blank page. How did it know? One clue, I had connected to iCloud when setting up preferences. But still spooky!

Install Dropbox and get it started syncing all the stuff from there. Install Firefox. Install LastPass in both Firefox and Safari browsers. Open Gmail and Google Calendar — looks ok! Ordinarily I’ve been using Firefox for mail and calendars, and Chrome for everything else. I decide to see if I can use Firefox and Safari only, and not install Chrome. So I start opening all the URLs that I normally have tabbed in Chrome. They look OK. (I’m posting this from Godot.)

On Day 79 I told about trying to recover the contents of a drive out of an old Mac for Diane, but couldn’t because it was an IDE drive and I had only SATA enclosures. Since then I’ve acquired a gizmo that should let me connect an IDE drive to a USB port. Tonight I will meet Diane and Jean and try again.

Later: well, it worked. I was able to read the two volumes on the old drive and copy them to another drive. The three of us went out for Chinese food on Castro street.

Day 91 getting stuff done

Friday 3/1/2019

Started the day with a run, which went well. Usual distance, felt good. Then began doin’ stuff. Started the laundry. Paid a couple of bills. Sorted the tax folder and made up a spreadsheet (based on last year’s spreadsheet) of charitable contributions.

Cleared out another shelf of things. One thing in particular is a large brown-glazed earthenware pitcher in what I believe is called “piecrust” style, a supposed family heirloom. I can just make out words on the bottom, “THE BUCKEYE POTTERY MACOMB ILL”. I will look this up and see if it has any value. Then see if either a nephew or a niece wants it. What it certainly was, was dirty, from sitting for years on a shelf beyond the reach of the cleaning lady who’s rather short. So I washed it. Also on that shelf, two brass-colored (pot metal) candlesticks of no value, threw them out. And two large pine-scented candles in tins which were last lit for Christmas… 2000? I think?

Then cleared off the spice racks. Back on Day 2 or 3 I realized, I’m never going to cook again. In fact I do cook but in a very casual way: fry up a couple strips of bacon and two eggs in the grease. Chop up some fruit for a compote. Height of sophistication: the other night I sliced up an apple and cooked it in a dish in the microwave, and sprinkled cinnamon on it.

But nothing that needs spices beyond salt, pepper, butter and, ok, the cinnamon was nice. But we had many many other spices. Here’s all the jars after I finished emptying them.

Note that one in the middle with a date on it? We would acquire spices for some particular recipe, and put the jar on the shelf until it was needed again. Every once in a while I’d get suspicious about the age of some spice and I’d mark the date it was refreshed. Here’s a couple I noticed. You can see how in 2016 I said, this allspice doesn’t smell of anything! (And no wonder, since it was then almost old enough to vote!) So we got some fresh and I updated the label. Anyway, that felt kind of good, to get all those aging spices out of there. I also dumped the canisters of flour and cornmeal and put them in the dishwasher. Only one full canister left, granulated sugar. I don’t eat it myself but I need it to keep filling the hummingbird feeders.

With the laundry all dried and folded I took a short nap, then went to work scanning old slides. I believe I said, somewhere back in the several days of nattering about slides, that I was only keeping the ones that were emotionally significant, or were excellent photographs on their own. Here’s one of the latter. g802p001 looking at faberge eggs in Gumps window christmas 1979

The story here is that around Christmas 1979 Marian remembered how when she was a child the family sometimes went into the City to look at the store window displays. So we did that, walked the streets of downtown SF in winter darkness, and saw a display of Fabergé eggs in the window of Gump’s. I looked down and saw this girl and grabbed this shot. I don’t claim any skill here, but that is one of those fortuitous compositions that just works, every angle is just right, the line of shadow, the angle of her gaze, the line of the hair ribbon — it just all fits. And it has been sitting unnoticed in the slide box in the closet since… 1980?

I got a bit sidetracked at that point, spending the better part of an hour trying to get my printer to produce something like the color tones of the digital image, on some quality paper I have. (Shit, I wonder when I bought that box of quality photo paper? This millenium, I’m sure.)

Now, coming up on 5pm, I have the option of staying home to stream the SWBB game at WSU, or going to a Stanford baseball game. Well, I can keep in touch with the progress of the basketball on my phone, at the baseball game. But what’s the weather going to do? Answer tomorrow.

Day 90, Shustek and old movies

Thursday, 2/28/2019

Toddled off to the Shustek center for a day of archival work. I and Toni worked together to photograph items that had been cataloged. Three years ago when we were doing this work the photo setup was a couple of (in my opinion) lousy little HP pocket cameras, and the day’s pictures had to be uploaded for later processing. Now we have a fairly decent Canon connected to a laptop so the pictures go directly into the database.

We caught up, clearing the shelves of a backlog of “To Photo” items. Like the FOPAL work this is good exercise: I was on my feet, moving items on and off the table and composing the images, for about five hours all told, and when I got home I could feel it. But before I ate I sat down and scanned old slides for an hour. Got to keep that project moving.

I’ve accumulated a bunch of famous movies on the DVR which is getting under 40% available. So tonight I swore to get rid of some. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World lasted only ten minutes. I stuck with Casino Royale for nearly an hour but finally lost interest. Two down.

Got an email from SouthWest reminding me of my reservation for a flight to Vegas for the PAC-12 women’s basketball tournament. This will be my first solo travel in, practically, ever(*). I’m nervous! Which is nuts; traveling by myself has to be easier than the last half-dozen flights I’ve taken, when Marian’s mobility and stamina were greatly limited, having to book wheelchair assistance, always checking the location of the elevators so as to avoid stairs, always looking to minimize walking distance between gates. And I booked those flights, and we executed all those travel plans, with confidence and panache.

So here’s another difference in my new bachelor life. Planning and carrying out travel as a couple, was easier (at least in anticipation) than it is solo. I need to think about what the difference really is.

At least partly it’s that I had the confidence of knowing Marian agreed in the plans. It’s like what I wrote about on Day 83: having made plans as a couple, the plans feel solid. When I make the plan by myself, for myself, I get the feeling I’m over my head and probably messing it up. I don’t know any cure for this but experience: go out and do it and verify that I haven’t screwed it up.

(*) The last solo trip I can think of is when in 1980 I drove to Seattle to attend the Clarion West writer’s workshop. After the ten(?) day workshop Marian flew up to join me and we drove back together.