Wednesday 04/23/2025

Well, the most exciting thing was doing the laundry. In between loads I edited Patty and my document on how the 11th floor TV lounge should be renovated. Later in the day sent it off to Rhonda’s PA Alejandra.

The other night something Joanne said reminded me of flight simulators. I had a good flight sim app once, didn’t I? I little poking around. Oh, right, I was playing around with X-Plane on my old desktop machine. Do I still have it? Yes, it had been transferred like everything else to the new mini. Last used in 2023? I had it update itself and it runs fine. The new machine has a better screen and better sound even than the old one. And I still don’t know how to fly.

At lunch neighbor Phil asked if I could help him dispose of a bunch of books. After getting a guesstimate of how mnay books he was talking about, I estimated 4-5 boxes. So I left early at 4pm and stopped at FOPAL and got 5 boxes. Flattened boxes, I’ll assemble them later.

Where I was headed was the CHM Volunteer Appreciation party. This was coincidentally a big day for the museum: it was the subject of an article in the New York Times. Whoopee, but ok.

When I arrived there were maybe 30 people milling around the open bar talking to each other. Almost nobody I recognized. There were tables set up in the hall, and a stage with a mic on it. Food service setting up. So I was standing there with a coke in my hand thinking, this is everything I hate about parties. I don’t feel like making conversation with strangers. Which table shall I sit at? Nobody would notice if I just crept away. And I actually did go back out as far as my car. Then thought about it some more, and went back in. Scott showed up and Steve and a couple of other people I actually knew, so it was alright finally. But boy, for a while there I was in full introvert panic.

Tuesday 04/22/2025

Tidied up for the cleaning lady. Attended the writers meeting at 10:30, and read my little piece on a memorable relative. Practiced my musical set twice during the day. At 5, joined Joanne to walk to Tacolicious, where I’d never eaten before. That was about it for that day.

Monday 04/21/2025

Took the good old standard walk in the morning. Later attended the Event Coordinator’s meeting. Now I need to update the AV spreadsheet and schedule an AV meeting.

Down to FOPAL to process computer books for a couple hours. Later practiced my set of songs for Thursday. I sounded terrible, I don’t know what was wrong with my voice.

The writers group prompt for tomorrow is, “a memorable relative”. I wrote something like that about my sister Joyce, back in 2023. So I dug that out and edited a bit.

Sunday 04/20/2025

Usual Sunday morning stuff. Also practiced music.

At 11:30, joined a lunch party organized by Betty and Jerry. As usual on big holidays, the lunch service was special. A table at the entry to the dining room offered salad plates and a puff pastry and glasses of wine. Our party of 6 was Betty and Jerry, Dean and Ellen, and me and Joanne. Very pleasant group. I had not interacted much with Dean or Ellen before; they are nice people.

Then a quiet afternoon until 5pm when Joanne and I met in the lobby and started our outing, walking to the train and off to the City. Waymo driverless cab to SFJazz for a concert by Hiromi. This was in part a disappointment. I’ve heard Hiromi multiple times before and enjoyed her extravagant crazy piano skills. But this time she had a trio of other musicians and they played very long complex pieces that had a lot of trumpet and drum sounds. They were extremely well rehearsed and played very complex music with great precision. But the trumpet seemed harsh and the drum too intrusive and there wasn’t enough Hiromi piano. Still it was OK, and we had a nice long chat on the train home.

Saturday 04/19/2025

A mostly-unscheduled Saturday. By 10am I was bored and thinking, I should go for a drive. Where? Then I thought, how bout go visit Dennis, who is dealing with some bad medical news. So I did, and we went out for a walk and a coffee. I was back to CH in time for a late lunch.

In the afternoon I practiced my set for this coming Thursday. Then at 4:30, by arrangement, I went down and set up a microphone in Quad IV of the dining room. This was to support a big birthday dinner for Andrew. His wife Mary (I’ve performed with her and she is the producer of the annual music shows) had arranged this and managed to keep it a surprise to him. There were eight tables, so something like 35 guests. Several of their children and grandchildren and lots of residents. The entertainment was, believe it or not, a couple of opera singers. I didn’t get their names but they were very good, singing arias from a couple of Puccini operas. And the food service was special, not the usual menu.

Dinner started at 5:15. It was after 7 when I put the microphone away and 7:30 when most people were leaving.

Point being, this kind of party is organized by the residents themselves, in this case, Mary with the help of a couple of friends. And of course they paid extra to dining services for the special menu for 40 people, I wouldn’t care to guess how much.

Friday 04/18/2025

An action-packed day. In the morning, a nice long walk with Joanne. Then at 10:30, the Friday line-dancing class. Between those I racked up nearly 4 miles on the phone today. Then to the AI interest group meeting, nothing discussed that is simple enough to write up here.

I was practicing my music that I am going to perform for the assisted living people next Thursday, when I got a text: Costco, saying my new glasses are ready. So off to Costco to collect them.

And they are good. Fit well, definitely sharper resolution near and far, and the extra “prism” adjustment does seem to have reduced a slight tendency to double-vision.

At 7:30 Joanne and I went to the Bus Barn to see their new “re-imagined” version of Cyrano. It was very well-performed, the lead characters all well done, and the staging was inventive. There were some confusing and inconsistent bits in the second act and it went on a bit longer than necessary, but we enjoyed it even so.

8pm curtain, 2-1/2 hour show, means late bedtime for me.

Thursday 04/17/2025

A low-pressure day with not much scheduled. In the morning I went out for a short walk and a coffee. Then settled down to finishing up printing new pictures for my gallery. In my closet I have a 2-inch thick stack of pictures that I have printed out at various times to fill my gallery. But I wanted fresh new prints. I have software that lets me improve images. There’s always something I can do to make an image better. Here’s the gallery now.

The one on the upper right is really my favorite. I call it “Shadow Salad”. I was eating at a restaurant on University Avenue about two months ago. Sitting at a table outdoors. Afternoon sun cast a shadow of a plant on the table, onto my salad plate. Didn’t have to rearrange or pose anything, just pick up the phone and shoot.

DIdn’t do much else, played a little guitar, read. Got a call from Dennis; he has had some bad news about his health. Later I talked to his son Bill.

At 5pm I joined Joanne, Edie, and Sherri for a trip to a local restaurant. Joanne had arranged it and invited me, which I thought was nice, to include me in her girls’ night out party. It was a nice meal and fun conversation.

Wednesday 04/16/2025

Regarding that podium lamp I talked about yesterday, here are some pics.

You can see how it is designed to grip the top edge of a music stand, but the way the podium is built, it has to grip a bottom edge instead. So the neck has to be bent 180º around from normal. It wouldn’t stay that way naturally, but it stays that way when it is held in with a couple of turns of steel wire looped under screws.

Early on today I spent a couple hours making more prints of flowers. Tomorrow I’ll finish that and change over my hallway gallery to dramatic closeups of blossoms.

At 10 I started walking to PAMF where at 11 I had an appointment for a routine dermatology inspection. My hide is ok. He froze off a couple little spots on my cheeks and scalp. He recommended I always wear a hat when outside, I happily said that I always did. That was nice, because I think of it as just personal style, but now I have a medical reason too.

I should have joined the monthly FOPAL volunteer zoom at 1pm, but about 12, zoom went down nationally. So no meeting. I had signed up to join Joanne on a walk she likes to lead on Wednesdays, and today the other 5 people on her mailing list had all flaked out on her, so it was just her and me, walking around the Baylands for an hour. Imagine my distress.

At 7:30 we had a talk from Bill Johnson, the creator of the Palo Alto Weekly, and now the head of a nonprofit publishing company that puts out local papers in half a dozen nearby towns. He reviewed the top stories they had run over the last 45 years and some reminiscences. Good talk.

Tuesday 04/15/2025

No reaction whatever to the covid shot of yesterday.

Some months ago I bought a battery-powered, clip-on, gooseneck music light with the idea of using it as a desk lamp for the podium in our auditorium. Unfortunately because of the shape of the podium, and the way you have to clip the light on, the gooseneck wasn’t long enough and didn’t want to stay in position if you forced it. So it went unused for months. The other day I spotted it in the auditorium and brought it up to my room and glared at it for a while. I opened it up because I could hear something loose. Yes, the battery had been held in by glue and had come free. So I fixed that and thought for a while, and realized a way to make it work. I should have taken a picture. Anyway, never mind. I walked to Ace Hardware and bought a couple of screws and some wire, and modified the lamp, and clipped it on the podium, and it worked.

At 11am we had a lecture about online scams by a lieutenant Kan of the Palo Alto PD. He deals with scam complaints regularly. He gave a well-organized talk with helpful slides. I didn’t learn anything new, but it was a nice presentation.

In the afternoon I started working on the next collection of images for my hallway gallery. It’s going to be flowers. I’d printed a lot of our best flower pics before, but I will probably reprocess them and make new prints with the whizzy apps I have now.

Monday 04/14/2025

First thing was the monthly Resident Association meeting. One of several topics was the introduction of the car-free-trial program. The idea is to encourage people who are thinking about maybe someday giving up their car. If you promise to not use your car for two months, they’ll pay you $300 to defray the cost of your Uber rides, and for your report at the end. When I heard about this (Day 6.104) they were going to offer $200, and I urged that it be more. Glad to see they stepped it up to $300. We’ll see what kind of response it gets.

Then I zipped to my car and across town to CVS for my scheduled 11:30 appointment for a Covid shot. Got there at 10:40. The CVS website said I could wait to check in at 11:15, or I could reschedule. Hmmm. I tapped “reschedule” and found I could change to 11am. OK, do that. So now I wasn’t early and could check in, and in fact the nurse shot me and I was out about 10:50.

Then down to FOPAL for the post-sale tidy of my section. Back to CH to do an errand for a friend, Pam. She had an operation and emailed via her phone, she would be going from the hospital to another location for rehab, could I get her computer and bring it to her. Except she didn’t know where she would be transferred yet. So I stopped by her apartment and found her friend Judy bagging up clothes for her. We agreed to take her stuff together, when we knew where she would be. So that’s pending.

There was a concert by Steve Gill and friends this evening. He comes around 2 or 3 times a year. Tonight they were doing songs of Johnny Mercer. It was OK. Joanne showed up and sat beside me so that elevated the experience a bit.