Day 69, Yosemite day

The play, American Night, the Ballad of Juan Jose, is a wild satirical farce, the fevered dream of a Mexican immigrant who’s been studying too hard for his U.S. citizenship exam. Toward the end I realized what it had been reminding me of: the old S.F. Mime Troupe (which to my surprise is still a going concern). It had the kind of wacky political farce I remember from watching the Mime Troupe in the 60s. It got a little weak in the final scenes, when Juan Jose and a couple of others are on stage, but other members of the ensemble are out in the audience shouting Trump/Tea Party slogans at him. “Send them back along with their anchor babies” and the like. The actors on stage did not have good responses to this kind of unfair but emotive heckling. Anyway, it was well done and fun to see.

Thursday, 2/7/2019

Not much to say. Drove to Yosemite warehouse for a day of work arranging and archiving old machines. Enjoyed eating lunch with a bunch of friendly people. Home again. Told myself to remember I had tickets for another play, at the Pear Theater, tonight.

And then forgot about it, and here it is 10pm and I didn’t go. Well, shit.

Day 68, a damn good day’s work

Couldn’t exercise this morning because the car-detailing crew showed up promptly at 8 to start on the Prius. So I settled in to gettin’ shit done in the APR. First up, a few financial details. Brokerage statements are in for the various accounts, so I could update the portfolio spreadsheet that I had created, following Marian’s design on Day 31. The news is good; the total is about 7% up from year-end 2018.

Next I tackled a heap of my personal memorabilia that had accumulated in a binder and a big plastic envelope for years. I really didn’t know what I would find. There were a few keepers.

IBM History

One was a letter I had written to my mother from San Francisco at the end of 1966. At the time I was working for the phone company, and I detailed how in the new year I was to start a “ten-week course” to become a full-fledged “inside wireman”. What I hadn’t known then was that the ten-week course would be the most boring, leaden, plodding thing imaginable, taught by a crusty old guy who was marking time to his retirement and who had no real insight into the complicated systems he was supposed to teach. Before two weeks had passed I was looking for new work, and stumbled hopefully into the local IBM branch office. Because IBM was just in transition from older systems to the new 360 line, they needed people, and hired me.

The sent me to Rochester, Minnesota to be trained on the older electro-mechanical systems. Another keeper was a hand-written letter by me to my sister, dated April 24, 1967. (Of course in the present era, this would have been an email and probably lost forever.) In it I wrote in part,

We took a quiz on the 514-519 machines today after closing up the local night club the night before. (Shame on us.) I got a 90, top grade in the class. Also showed expertise in lab sessions, so should get a B. … Tomorrow begins 6 days instruction on another machine (085) followed by an 18-day course in tab machines…

When I give tours at the CHM, I point out those machines, the 085 sorter and the 403 “tabulator”, as historic, and try to explain how they were the essence of “business data processing” for fifty years.

Niece stuff

Most of the rest of the pile I discarded. However, I gave each letter a cursory glance, and noticed in several of them between 1961 and 1963, my mother mentioned my niece Laurel. She was living with my parents, her grandparents, during that time. Some of the mentions touched on things that were probably significant to her. So I set those letters aside, and put them in an envelope to mail on to her. I figure I can trash things about me that I don’t care to remember, but I didn’t want to make that call on her behalf. Not sure it’s really doing her any favor, as some of the topics may be painful memories. Hope it was the right thing to do.

Anyway at the end I had reduced a large pile to a wispy handful which I distributed into the pages of a family album, and there: done. All the Cortesi family history reduced to one smallish box.

I was on such a roll I tried to tie up more loose ends. I emailed my sister-in-law suggesting we meet to go over the pile of Lacrampe family history that I hope she’ll take over from me.

I called IBM benefits, the ones who wouldn’t talk to me about Marian’s account, even to say if it was closed, until I proved I was her executor. This time the phone rep didn’t have anything to say about that; either she didn’t know that rule or else the account had been marked for me as executor. Anyway, all is well there. That was the last loose end of red tape needing to be tied up. Marian is quits with the world.

Finally I followed up on that painting I discussed on Day 46. On Day 54 I mentioned my impatience with the one gallery who wouldn’t return my calls or emails, and said I would contact another. Well, two emails to them had gone unanswered now. So this time I emailed the artist himself, reminding him of the painting, how he had toured Yosemite valley with us before making it, and asking if he had any idea how I should go about consigning one of his works. Hopefully he will be able to light a fire under one gallery or the other.

Afternoon

The detail guys didn’t finish until 12:30. I decided that, since I didn’t have any boxes, and since it was just before the biweekly sale so FOPAL would be jammed with stuff, I wouldn’t take any books down this time. I’ll take 3 boxes next week, maybe. Anyway so I will go to FOPAL on foot, a 40 minute walk, then take a Lyft home.

Evening

Which I did. Sorted. Appropriated a couple of New York Times crossword puzzle books that came in. Had an early supper, then out again at 7:15 to a play at the Bus Barn in Los Altos. Review tomorrow.

Day 67, dashcam, memorabilia

Tuesday, 2/5/2019

First thing this morning was to present the car at the Car Audio Specialties at 9am for installation of a dashcam. That’s the first of two things I’m lavishing on the Prius now I’m settled on keeping it. Tomorrow it gets a polish job.

The installation was smooth; the guy took great care to get the front and rear cameras installed where they were out of the way and had a good view. He took me through downloading the phone app and basic usage, but I still need to get on the company website and review the features, of which it has many.

At home I tackled more of the infamous APR closet. This has been our low-use storage area for decades. Periodically Marian, or sometimes I, would go in and organize some part of it. But basically it was the place where we kept stuff-to-not-throw-away-but-also-to-not-think-about-just-now. Assorted items of family history. Photos. Collected things.

I declared the shelf on the right wall was “things for the estate sale”, and the shelf on the left wall was “things I will keep”. Stuff to discard went on the floor until there was a mound, then I carried it to the garbage can or recycle bin.

To the right went the Kodak Carousel projector, a lamp shade, some stadium seats, other marginally valuable stuff. To the left, quite a pile of family memorabilia. Eventually I broke that down into three piles, “my/our history”, “Marian’s history”, and “Lacrampe Family” (Marian’s relatives and ancestors). The latter pile I will go over with my sister-in-law. Hopefully she’ll take at least some of it. (Mind you, she’s likely to have to do her own downsizing soon. Sorry, I’ve got my own problems.)

Some things were easy to throw away. There were several pillows that we’d used on the rare occasions we had guests. Old, used pillows: trash. There was a drawer where Marian had put all the medical braces, slings and wraps that either of us had needed, like my sling from when I dislocated my shoulder about 25 years ago, and her wrist brace from some RSI problem at least as far back. All trash. A folder of news items about the great Oakland Hills fire. A folder of news items about the ’89 earthquake. Recycle. One drawer held assorted exercise equipment. Some of that, small dumbells and so on, went on the right shelf; some like elastic exercise bands, to trash.

Then it got harder. One drawer was all kinds of stuff from our times in England: guides to various castles and stately homes, guidebooks, maps. All of no use to anyone. But we’d accumulated all those on the spot and saved them — why exactly? Not planning to go back; but neither of us ever went to that drawer to review places we’d been. Harder even was another drawer where Marian had saved a thick stack of SWBB memorabilia: programs from the last dozen end-of-year awards banquets; programs from Final Fours we had attended; newspaper and magazine clippings.

I got very emotional flipping through this stuff and carrying it to the recycle bin. I was both crying and raging, repeating what’s the point of fucking memorabilia if you never go back and fucking look at it? I did not want to deny, or to denigrate, the care and effort Marian had put into keeping this stuff, yet I cannot accept the alternative, to retain it all indefinitely, packing and moving and finding storage space it in whatever new home I get. I would feel stupid trying to carry these memorabilia onward when I know I’ll never look at them. I don’t want them; they have zero value to anybody else; so they have to go — but effecting that puts me in the position of being the executioner, in effect, killer of a part of her life and our lives together. Not a job I asked for, but here I am, doing it.

There’s another hard part coming:

About thirty years of photographic slides, from 1973 when we first started serious shooting to circa 2003 when we went digital. Somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 probably. Now, (a) they are all organized and cataloged in detail, and (b) quite a few of them have already been scanned and digitized. My next big job is to inventory which of the catalog groups have not been scanned, and of those, which are actually worth my time now, to scan them and preserve them (if any are).

Marian and I had several conversations over the years about the value of the slides, debating why we took the trouble to catalog and keep them, when (here’s a familiar refrain!) “we never go back and look at them”. Yes, that was said, by both of us, more than once. She was sure that when we were gone, nobody would give a shit (her words), they’d just be thrown out. So why keep them now? And we never had a good answer, really; yet we didn’t toss them — then. I’m pretty sure they’ll be tossed soon, but I need to review the un-scanned groups first.

Day 66, various mishaps

Monday, 2/4/2019

It rained a lot through the night. But at 8am there was sunshine outside, and looking at the weather radar online, there were only a few green pixels and they seemed to be vanishing. So I went for a run. Just halfway through I noticed a charcoal-colored cloud looming over me, and rain started to fall. I kept jogging along getting wet but after a few blocks I decided to get a Lyft the rest of the way. I sheltered at Philz Coffee and started calling a Lyft. The selected car was several minutes away and not approaching fast, when I noticed the rain was tapering off. So I canceled the Lyft and resumed my run, arriving home wet but fine.

I had scheduled a mobile auto-detailing service to polish the Prius today, but yesterday evening they called to reschedule, citing the weather. So now my morning was open, and I decided to go and give blood. I’d had an email over the weekend saying my type was in short supply, and I was just coming eligible (I gave blood on day 6, so just over 8 weeks). I drove to Menlo Park and went through the very familiar check-in process, but there was a hitch. The last step is to take a drop of blood from a finger and check the red-cell count with a little machine. The machine said 11.9, and the lower limit for donation is 13.9.

This has happened before, several years ago. My doctor wasn’t concerned. I took iron supplements for a few months until at my next checkup, my labs showed normal hematocrit. She advised me to discontinue the iron then, as too much can be a problem.

Well, so I can’t donate blood today, or for the near future. I picked up some iron tabs on the way home. I’ll take one a day until mid-year, when I’ll get a routine physical. Probably my labs will be up then and I can try the donation again.

Back home, I launched into a different programming project and made good progress until late in the afternoon I decided to upgrade one of the libraries I depend on. Bad move. The installation process changed something and the library stopped working at all; and in trying to fix it, I did something else that messed up my whole development setup. Trying to fix that, I keep running into messages about “Your MacOS system is too old and is no longer supported.” I had been avoiding installing the latest OS on this laptop for at least two years (long story), although I had upgraded the other machines around the house. Now the lack of upgrades bites me. Well, I don’t want to go through an OS installation on this machine now, when the replacement laptop arrives Friday. I’ll want to spend time installing things on it, including the very latest OS level. I’ll rebuild my development environment there and proceed on that machine. Or maybe just move to the big iMac which is very up-to-date.

I went out to a restaurant for supper. I’ve got plenty of food at home; I just felt like going out (so there).

Day 65, laundry, mulling, and Superb Owl

Azalea Grief

I was so busy involved in getting my notes on Webster House straight that I forgot to mention a major grief spasm, the first after several days of calm. As I left the house to head for my meeting, my eye was caught by the azalea under the front window, which is covered in pink blossoms. This was Marian’s favorite plant, selected by her and carefully nurtured for many years, and its blooming — which always seems to come unexpectedly, one day bare and the next day blazing with pink — delighted her every year. I was just swept with a wave of pity and regret that she couldn’t enjoy its blooming now. I tried to talk it out to my steering wheel as I drove to my meeting, and couldn’t keep my voice from breaking. Still feel it, as I write.

Home Court

At the game, Stanford rolled over Cal, winning by 25. This seemed to me like a great demonstration of the power of the home court advantage. Based on the record this season up until this week, Stanford should be about a 10-point winner over Cal every time. Cal has lost to several teams Stanford has beaten. However, playing at Cal, the teams played virtually even, were tied several times, with Cal finally winning by a single point on a buzzer-beater. Cal shouldn’t be that good, nor Stanford that bad! Then, at Stanford, Cal conceded a 10-point lead to Stanford in the first two minutes and lost by 25. Cal shouldn’t look that bad, nor Stanford that good! Location and crowd support would appear to provide a 10-15 point swing in favor of the home team.

That said, following the game Tara talked to the crowd and, asked about the difference, said approximately this: “We watched a lot of film of the last two games [both were losses] with the team, and pointed out all the places where a little more effort would have made a difference, and I think everybody stepped up today.” So, you know, maybe coaching has something to do with it…

Sunday, 2/3/2019

Stripped the bed and sorted and started the laundry before heading out to coffee. Tried a new coffee shop, Mademoiselle Collette, which had been pointed out to me by Joan, as a feature of living at Webster House. Meh, not impressed. Well, impressed to this extent: they actually know what a macchiato is, and a cappuccino. Pastries ok. But the place is too small. All the four(?) small tables were in use when I arrived at 8:15. I had to sit at a narrow counter in the window, not very comfortable for reading the Sunday paper.

Back home I did a lot of inconclusive thinking and shopping. This will be boring for anybody but me.

Thinking about TV

First shopped for a TV. Looking ahead at The Transition (see yesterday), how much of my aging home theater setup should I carry over? Practically none. I’ll be dropping DirecTV for whatever the chosen ILF has (probably Comcast), so, different DVR. I’ll probably drop the receiver at the center of the system because, (A), I only use it to switch between the DVR, the Blu-Ray player, and the laptop; and new TVs all have at least three HDMI inputs, so can do that. And (B), its other purpose is 4-channel sound from various devices, which I don’t really need; a modern sound-bar unit driven by the TV will do just fine. So a new TV can do all the useful functions of the receiver. Good, one less box. The TV itself? It’s ok but there is better new tech. However, the really good new TV tech, OLED, is only available in sizes 49in and up, about 5in wider and 2in higher than the present TV.

Suddenly I realize that very likely, I want to take the TV stand/room divider piece along to the new location.

Thinking about a laptop

Second, shopped for a replacement laptop. My 2013-era Macbook Pro (MBP) is aging; there’s an annoying little split in the cover of the screen and the keyboard is acting wonky, and so on. The house is full of macs, two iMacs and two Airs and this laptop to which I often seem to be joined at the hip. (How many of them go to new location? Just one iMac, the “big” (27in) one, and one laptop. The others can go back to Apple for credit.)

Anyway, in 2017 Apple screwed up the design of the MBP with a redesigned keyboard that is pretty universally reviled; by replacing the row of function keys with an illuminated “touch bar” that nobody likes; by dropping the USB, HDMI, and SD-card ports; and by dropping the “magsafe” magnetic power connector. New ones have only USB-C, aka “Thunderbolt” ports for power and connectivity, which means you need a “dongle” to connect to an HDMI cable, another for your old USB devices, another to plug in an SD card to get photos off your camera.

But wait: I have adequate USB and SD card connectivity on the big iMac. All I really need from the laptop is to connect via HDMI to the TV screen, which I used to do fairly often. But wait, I only did that so Marian and I could both watch a streamed basketball game. If I am not sharing the experience with anyone else, I can watch a video stream on my personal lap. The laptop screen, on my lap, is the same size as the TV at eight feet. Doh, maybe I don’t even need one dongle!

Still, I hate the touch bar and am suspicious of the latest keyboard. So option one is to buy a refurbished 2015/16 MBP off eBay; ones in “mint” condition are about $900. Or, two, to buy a new Macbook Air, the latest redesign of that model; it doesn’t have the touchbar. $1400 for a new one. It comes down to the latest keyboard; can I tolerate its feel? If so, I think I’d rather have the newest machine. I need to go and put my hands on one at the Apple store.

Well, the laundry is finishing up. I’ll wrap that up then drive to the Apple store; then it will be time to watch the superb owl.

Later: bought a MBP

Went to the Apple store, tried the current Air, didn’t like it. I could use one if I had to, but the keyboard has very little travel, half the travel of the one I’m typing on. The trackpad also has extremely small travel on a click. In both cases the machine provides a “haptic” click or tap feeling to reinforce the feeling you’ve typed or tapped. But the impression is of being very stiff, yet highly sensitive. There’s no play in the keys; the tiniest random pressure from a fingertip and you’ve typed a letter. So I came home and ordered a refurb 2015 era model.

Day 64, Webster House and a game

Saturday 2/2/2019

At 10am I met with (basketball fan buddy) Harriet outside Webster House, an ILF on the symmetrically opposite side of downtown Palo Alto from Channing House, which I toured on Day 50. Just in the door we were met by Harriet’s friend Joan, who recently moved in to Webster House. She showed us all the public spaces and her own very charming 1BR unit on the fifth, topmost, floor. Afterward we sat down in a meeting room with Kirt Pruyn, the marketing manager, to learn more; then he showed us two more 1BR units. Here I will summarize what I learned.

Webster House ILF

Webster House is fairly small as ILFs go, with 37 units and about 45 people in residence. It is a fairly modern building, put up in the 1980s as luxury condos, then later converted to a senior residence. The top floor has a small glassed-in penthouse for functions and a roof deck with a view over Palo Alto (Channing House’s top floor is similar but larger). Joan said she enjoyed exercise classes held here.

The facility owner is Covia, a non-profit that started as Episcopal Residences, set up by the Episcopalian church, or some part of it. I’m not clear as to whether it was an effort of the entire church, or perhaps only the California wing of it; because Covia now owns six properties, all located in the Bay Area. Governance is by a board, which has some kind of representation from the residents of each of the six facilities (Kirt wasn’t sure about the details, but almost certainly non-voting, as with Channing House). There is also a Webster House residents’ organization that meets quarterly and has input to the staff, as well as a food committee that interacts with the food service.

Speaking of food service, it is dinner-only. The dining room is rather small, with perhaps 10 small tables; so one would be sharing a table with others. That’s not to my taste. Joan mentioned that one reason she moved to an ILF was that she “was tired of eating dinner alone.” Fair enough, but I have no problem with eating dinner alone. I’ve been doing it for many of these 64 days, and in fact I think I prefer it. Well, be that as it may.

Weekends, dinner is served as a buffet; weekdays it is full-service, restaurant style. (Recall Channing House offers all three meals, but all are served buffet-style, in a large dining room.) Breakfast and lunch are up to each resident, either to prepare in one’s own small kitchen, or by going out. Or one can order ala-carte from the house kitchen for a fee.

Next door to the ILF building is a “health center” containing a skilled nursing facility (SNF) as well as long-term and memory-impaired care. I was assured that one can go into the SNF, e.g. after an operation, and return to one’s ILF unit. One’s monthly fee does not change in this event; however the SNF has its own separate fees. Kirt made the interesting point that typically skilled nursing fees after an operation are picked up by Medicare, in which case, time in the SNF is effectively no-charge to the resident; but he cautioned that Medicare only does so provided you are admitted to hospital for at least 72 hours. Spend less time, or don’t be admitted, and Medicare won’t help with SN fees.

Webster House’s approach to Assisted Living is “assist in place”, that is, for those who need help with meds, bathing, dressing, etc, they will arrange a caregiver to assist you to live in your unit. Such care is provided at $40/hour, I see by the rate sheet I was given. (I think such charges are at least partly covered by Medicare. By the time Marian needed such aid she was in hospice and it was included in that service, so the issue never arose for us.)

There is parking in an underground garage; it costs an additional $45/month. Every unit has its own washer/dryer (at Channing House, there is a shared laundry room on each floor). There is a small “fitness room” which I didn’t see.

Financials

For all this, the monthly cost is $5300 for a 1BR unit. But there is a buy-in fee, for which they give two options.

Option 1, you pay $500K-$700K up front (it is not clear to me why the wide range; perhaps it depends on the unit, as some are larger or have better views?). If you leave within 50 months, you get your entry fee back, prorated at 2% per month. Stay only two years and you get half back.

Option 2, you pay a higher entry of $800K-$1300K (again, don’t know the basis of the range), but now you are assured that 75% of that money will come back to you, on moving, or to your estate on your death.

One final important item. I asked Kirt about how people handle the financial gap, from when they decide to move in and need to pay circa $1M, and the time their house sells. I pointed out that I’d have to sell a bunch of assets on which I’d pay capital gains tax, just to front the money that would shortly be recovered from sale of the house. He had an answer: they will let you sign a promissory note for the entry fee. It’s a no-interest loan for 90 days, which normally covers the gap to a home sale. That’s nifty; I will ask about this when I talk to the Channing House marketing rep, which I mean to do shortly.

Joan’s apartment was very nicely furnished and decorated with things she’d brought from her former home. Which brought to my mind the issue of

Transitioning

which I hadn’t given much thought to, but now suddenly looms as a major issue. All ILF units come unfurnished. You need to move in with furniture from your former home, or new furniture, in some combination. That opens a whole new set of decisions: which of my current furnishings do I want to carry forward to a new, 1BR home? O.M.G. the decisions! Which pieces are suitable? Which are useful? How hard would it be to buy new, and where, and the shopping!

The only thought I’d given to any of this was that I want a new bed, a single or at any rate not the big old king-sized mattress that I now sleep on the right one-half of. I’d keep my comfy Ekornes recliner. The desk (“Marian’s desk” that she bought in Hawaii in the 60s, I think). At least one of the dressers in the bedroom.

But what about the green leather living room set I’ve been putting leather conditioner on. Do I really want to keep it? I had sort of lumped it and many other items into the ISMISEP/giant-garage-sale category. But if I don’t keep it, what do I do? Probably go to IKEA and buy something tasteless? Oh, wurra wurra.

Game

Anyway, off to cheer Stanford WBB on against Cal.

Day 63, tour and errands

Friday, 2/1/2019

Started the day with my third run of the week. I did a run rather than just a long walk because I didn’t exercise Thursday. Well, apart from four hours of pushing heavy machinery around, and stooping and standing, at Yosemite. Did yesterday’s blog post, then off to the museum to lead the 12pm tour group. Only five people initially, although three more joined on as we went along.

Drove to the credit union and deposited Marian’s life insurance check. Then to the cleaners, and the grocery store. At home, I found I’d received the Vite Ramen that I’d backed on Kickstarter months ago. Should I do a review for my youtube channel? Sure, why not? and I got out the camera and tripod and shot the material, and spent an hour with iMovie to edit it, and there we are.

I’ve been watching a lot of Adam Savage, both online and on his new Mythbusters series, and I’m afraid his hyperkinetic style is rubbing off on me.

Tomorrow is a big day, two ways. Mainly in the morning I get a tour of Webster House, the competition to Channing house. In the afternoon, a Stanford-Cal basketball game at Maples. Whee.

Day 62, “Yosemite”, Insurance

Thursday, 1/30/2019

I spent the bulk of the day at “Yosemite”, the CHM’s big storage space on Yosemite avenue in Milpitas. With six other regular volunteers I worked on “palletizing” a number of machines. These are smaller units that were stored at floor level. Aurora, the curator, wants to move them to one of the higher racks with the fork-lift. To do that, each unit has to be gotten onto a pallet and strapped down with “cordlash”, a high-strength fabric strap.

Allen, Steve, and Dave Bennet move a piece of a PDP-11/70 onto a pallet

Palletizing is heavy work, especially when you consider the volunteers are as old or older than the historic machines they’re moving.

One persistent problem is plastic foam. Designers liked to incorporate foam into these machines for sound deadening or air filtration. Unfortunately after 40+ years, the foam degrades to a crispy, dusty texture that fragments at a touch into a sticky snow that coats the inside of the machine and encourages corrosion. Foul stuff! I spotted black snow in one machine and traced it to air filters that had not been removed when the machine was initially archived several years earlier.

At lunch I mentioned having visited the Hiller aviation museum and it turned out four of the eight people at the table had been there, some several times.

Insurance

Back home there was one piece of mail on the doormat: an envelope from The Prudential. Thinking it would be an ad, I almost tossed it, but when I opened it found a check for $5000 — the payment for Marian’s IBM life insurance. I’m not sure how it came about that she had this policy. Maybe it was a perk they offered in the years before I was hired; or maybe it was an optional payroll deduction thing. I certainly wasn’t offered life insurance, that I recall.

At any rate, this check is one of the last pieces of bureaucracy related to her death. The books aren’t quite closed; I had an email from the financial advisors, saying they are preparing the paperwork to merge her IRA accounts into mine, and would get it to me soon.

This was a bit of a surprise. I had assumed that on her death, her IRA would have to be closed and the long-deferred federal tax on it paid. If I understand the email, though (and I’ve asked for a clarification) it looks as if her IRA will simply be merged with mine, and the money will continue to be tax-deferred. That’ll be a nice perk for a widower! Possibly with more net value than the old life insurance.

Basketball

Stanford women played at Cal. I lost track of the time and didn’t start the audio stream of the game until just into the fourth quarter, when the score was tied 69-all. (Which reminds me of the old joke about the couple who arrive late at a baseball game, to find the score 0-0 in the ninth. “Oh good,” says the wife, “we didn’t miss anything!”)

In the next few minutes Stanford got down by 5, then came back to lead by 1 point. With seven seconds left, Cal’s Aja Jones drove the lane and made a layup on the buzzer; Cal wins by one point. The announcer on the Stanford audio stream was going nuts, talking about the best basketball game he’d seen all season. Cal plays at Stanford Saturday afternoon; I’m looking forward to attending that game.

Day 61, book sorting etc

Wednesday, 1/30/2019

Went for a run and it felt good. It’s amazing how different these runs feel, when there is no obvious difference in any other factor. Same amount of sleep, same time of day, same air temperature, feeling just as healthy — but today I felt comfortable and confident and just cruised along. Monday it was a slog, effortful, not painful but felt right at the limit of my oxygen intake.

Back home I spent an hour going over my program to make sure all the copious comments — I wrote it in “literate” programming style so it reads like an article with code interspersed — were readable and accurate. Then I posted it to the learnPython subreddit and awaited the awed and admiring comments. Yeah. At the end of the day I had exactly one, and no up-votes. Pbtbtbtbtb…

Went to FOPAL with two more boxes of books, including a complete run of the “Miss Read” books. Well, maybe not a complete run, looking at that wiki page, but more than 25 of them. Two and a half hours with four people sorting and we could just about keep up with the stream of donors coming through the door. Made barely a dent in the 5-box high wall of boxes with books donated from previous days.

Day 60, programming, museum, cleanout

Overnight I thought of some ways my living cost estimate could have gone so wrong. One, I had the taxes at 1/2, forgetting there’s another $1K payment to make (tomorrow!). I had not included TV and internet in the utilities, another $2K+ per year. Also it had not occurred to me to think about how our monthly bill on the main credit card is always over $1K, so we pay out at least $12K-$15K per year just via that route. Of course that includes almost all food, but it does not include the gardener, taxes, or utilities, which are paid directly via the bank bill-pay app. But the simplest approach was just to realize that our expenses had matched our income for years and years, so our income was a very good ballpark estimate of our cost of living. And that number is in the same ballpark as the monthly fee at many ILFs.

Tuesday, 1/29/2019

Walked to the Y, did my round, walked back. Did computer work: running virtual Windows and Linux machines to package my game for Windows 7, Ubuntu, and Mac. Here are the executables. The source is here. Tomorrow I’ll think of where to post to invite people to try it.

Decided to go visit the Hiller Aviation Museum. Spent a couple of hours there. I was nearly the only visitor so could play with a couple of simulators freely. In one, you are supposed to land a Boeing 737 at SFO. I was disappointed to find if I increased throttle and raised the nose, I couldn’t just fly around the Bay Area ad lib; the simulator got funny and stopped.

Two days ago on impulse I stopped at an “estate sale” sign on my way home. Browsed around a house where, I learned, nine siblings were trying to clear out the house their late mother had lived in and they’d all grown up in. There was stuff, stuff, stuff. Someday in the not too distant future I will have to clear this house out, and I won’t have the help of any siblings.

So on arrival back home, with this in mind I stepped into what we called the APR closet. (Because it is the closet that opens off the APR, i.e. the room whose purpose we could never settle on, so it was the all-purpose room or APR.) This is a closet I’ve been dreading because there is so much stuff there I need to decide what to do with. There are family memorabilia that I’m sure other relatives would want (heck, things I want: high school annual?) (On the other hand, Seriously? What is the possible point of keeping a high school annual that is fifty-fucking-nine years old? A good fraction of the Bethel High School graduating class of 1960 are dead, and the rest wouldn’t remember my name, nor I theirs without a program.) Memorabilia aside, there is a lot of stuff that is trash and needs to go.

Nerds that we were, we kept reference material — maps, brochures, guides — from every trip we took. After the trip, we’d used the material to organize the 35mm slide show for a trip. Then Marian would neatly (of course) organize it in folders by region. Here’s about 2/3 of them:

The only justification for this was that we might go back there someday, and we wouldn’t have to scrounge for maps and info. The only folders that ever got used that way were the first four. We often went back to Washington or Oregon, and could go into the APR closet and dig out a useful map before each trip.

Of course all of this is just so 1990s. Paper maps? Really? Beyond that, most of them are literally from the 1990s or earlier, and hence out of date. It took half an hour to sort all this out, pull the bear clips and paper clips out and put the paper in the recycling bin, and the plastic folders ditto. In a few of the folders I found real nostalgia-inducers. The Germany folder, for instance (about five folders off the right edge of the picture) had my complete trip plan, 20+ pages of detailed info on the stops we would make, with notes. The New Zealand folder had Marian’s trip plan, ditto. But we documented those trips with pictures and with blogs and I have all the images stored on the bigger Mac. None of this paper had been looked at since a week after the relevant trip ended, at least ten years ago and in some cases, twenty. Out! Just the same, it hurt.

I was astounded by one find: two fat binders in which Marian had collected a ton of memorabilia about the San Jose Lasers, the professional women’s basketball team that lasted only two years. I had no idea she’d done this: game programs, media guides, and pages and pages of news clippings, all organized by date. I don’t think she ever referred to the material after 1998; she certainly never mentioned it or shared it with me. It’s a potentially valuable historical collection and I set it with the other Lasers memorabilia that I already knew about. Which reminds me, that I’d submitted a donation form to History San Jose offering that material a week ago, and have had no reply. I need to follow up on that, even more now.

Also in the APR closet were some garments of mine I rarely wear. (The APR closet was to us what an attic might be to others.) Two pairs of Expedition-brand trousers, light, no-iron, can be washed out in a hotel sink and be dry the next morning. Last worn on the trip to Italy in 1999. I tried them on. They fit, but frankly look as unstylish as shit. I’m embarrassed I toured Italy in them. Put them in a pile for Goodwill.

Next up, my one sport coat. It’s OK, it fits, but it’s kind of tweedy and bulky. Probably a real fashionista could identify the decade I bought it. (I wouldn’t doubt it was the 80s.) Anyway, I am not throwing it out but have made a mental note to replace it.

Finally, my one suit. Quite a nice one, a Borcelino, but… it doesn’t fit me! I currently find a 38 waist a little bit loose, and I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t fit in 36 jeans. But this suit: no way, I could not possibly fasten that waistband. The jacket has a rather nipped waist and although I could button it, it was clear in the mirror that it wasn’t happy being buttoned. I’ve been my present weight and heavier for a long time. When did I buy this suit, that I fit a 36 or 34 waist? When might I possibly have worn it last? It’s a mystery. Well, it is possible that my body has changed shape, thickening at the waist with age. Maybe I could have worn it twenty years ago, weighing as much as I do now or more, but having younger, springier abs to hold it in?

I looked carefully at the pants and jacket, wondering if a seamstress could let it out. Looking at the pants seam, it might yield another half-inch maybe, no more. As for the jacket, you’d have to open up the lining and fiddle with curved seams. So, never mind; the suit has to go.