Day 44, SFMOMAdventure

Referring to yesterday, on consideration $30/day for food is not “generous”; given a restaurant meal for one in this area is always going to push $30, and I expect to eat out at least twice a week, $50/day would be a better average allowance. So that makes the default stay-at-home cost around $32K/year — still $20K less than a typical ILF and up to $50K less than the most expensive.

Monday, 1/14/2019

Over the weekend I’d seen some reference to SFMOMA, San Francisco’s modern art museum, and that reminded me that I hadn’t had a museum or urban experience since Day 11 when I used my brand new Clipper Card and Lyft to go to the deYoung Museum. This day I didn’t want to run because of a leg condition (long story, later), so why not go to MOMA? The weather was threatening but heck, I’ve got an umbrella.

I walked to the CalTrain station in a light sprinkle but it was dry the rest of the day. Took a Lyft the short distance to the museum. Actually got out a block early because traffic on 3rd street was not moving — riding in a Lyft in downtown SF is powerfully reminiscent of riding Lyft in Manhattan a year ago. (And not a pleasant reminiscence.)

I and Marian went to MOMA just once, ohhhh… at least ten years ago I imagine. I was surprised at how very large it is, 6 floors of stuff. I walked the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 4th floors this time. I’ll have to go back to see the rest. Two major galleries were of photography, which tempted me to start taking pictures with the phone. Here’s a wee gallery.

img_3577-xl — SFMOMA from Yerba Buena Center

Internal staircase — The interior is dramatic

"Student" by Wayne Thibeaud — There were many grade- and middle-school classes around

"Student" by Wayne Thiebaud — I like Wayne Thiebaud’s works. This is “Student”.

Spiders by Louise Bourgeois — MOMA in Manhattan has only one of Louise Bourgeois’s spiders. Here’s a whole family!

img_3563-x3 — Sorry, didn’t get the artist. I liked the way the words DEATH, MATTERS, PAIN, DOESNT, KNOWS, CARE flipped on and off at random.

img_3569-x2 — Vertical format selfie in front of a horizontal format painting. Oh well.

img_3576-x2 — Ran up the saturation here.

img_3583-x2 — David Attenborough whisper: “In the early spring, the cranes begin to gather, the younger blue ones respectfully following the mature orange ones…”

img_3588-xl — Why am I hearing the Macarena in my mind?

Day 43, Should I stay or should I go?

Welp, it was only slightly better than a hamburger. I started for Castro street (aka restaurant row) in Mountain View, thinking to go to Casa Lupe, a modest little Mexican café that we went to many times. Except approaching it, it occurs to me that I’ll likely be recognized by the waitress that served us many times over the years, and I don’t want to answer the inevitable question. And in fact I don’t want to go to where we went as a couple many times, including, I realized, the last or nearly last time Marian was able to go out to a restaurant.

So there I was wandering down Castro and more or less at random picked a modern Indian casual place where I ordered chicken curry and naan. The waiter wanted to know how spicy, and I said, oh, medium. Whoa. I do not want to know what that cook thought was really spicy, because the dish I got was barely edible, and I usually enjoy hot food. Anyway, back home, watched a little TV, got a serious case of the yawns about 9pm and went to bed, knowing it would mean being up early on Sunday morning.

Sunday, 1/13/2019

And was: up and dressed and had finished the NYT puzzle (38:40, not too far off my average) by 7:30. Out to the old coffee shop with the winter sun just up, shining through broken clouds. Walked along being very consciously aware, in the moment, apprehending the air and the light and my body, thinking, “this is me, this is mine,” deliberately claiming life as a solo person.

And of course I was home again with plenty of time on my hands before I was due to meet Dennis for a movie at 1pm. In the email was the info from Alan that I requested yesterday, on three additional independent living facilities (ILFs, henceforth).

I added their numbers to my document and then made up a little table of their monthly rentals on a 1BR unit, which range from a low of $3200 to a high of $8800.

Given those numbers, it appears that a ballpark estimate of the annual cost of living in an ILF is $60,000, give or take. $45,000 minimum. And when I think about that, I hear The Clash in my mind,

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I sat at the desk going through the check register and the online bill-pay record for the past 12 months, making an estimate of what it costs to live for a year in this fully-paid-for suburban home. In very round numbers: utilities $4K, insurance $4K (earthquake insurance is a bitch), maintenance including gardener, another $4K, taxes $2K (thank you Prop. 13!). Allowing a very generous $30/day for food adds $11K. So a ballpark estimate to merely stay put is $25,000 per annum, or about one-half the annual cost of an ILF.

Hmmmm…

The decision to “not be a home-owner” was one of the first conclusions I came to when I began thinking about my future as a widower, months before the event. I felt tired of having the responsibility of worrying about building and appliance maintenance and taxes and insurance.

Wanting a fresh start, too; to force a break with the past and to begin a new form of life with minimum baggage.

Is it worth $25K a year for a fresh start?

Or, here’s another way to think about it: apparently I’m willing to consider spending $60K/year for a residence and food. What could I have, if I stayed put and spent the other $35,000 right here? That much money would buy all-new appliances and an upgraded car — and that’s in just the first year.

Hmmmmm…. This indecision’s bugging me… don’t know whom I’m sposed to be…

To be continued.

Day 42, simple Saturday

Saturday, 1/12/2019

After breakfast I sat down to review the info on senior residences that Alan Brauner had sent. The info was in the form of PDF which looked like a printout from a database selection. Well, here’s the top row,

senseasons

Lots of good info, actually more than I need since I’m pretty sure I don’t want a Studio and certainly don’t want a 2-bedroom unit. To make sure I’d digested it I made my own document for each the places, and added entries for three others I knew of that I was curious about. I sent him an email asking for his info on those three. His data includes actual prices. You can’t get that from anybody’s website. The websites, like this one for The Avant for example, are all about healthy carefree seniors enjoying luxurious amenities, and avoid any mention of actual dollars. So the fact that Alan’s data includes what I suppose are current prices makes it valuable. (Although one has to wonder what those plus-signs really mean. I suppose if a 1BR starts at $8800/month, then the “$8000+” for a Studio can’t go much over $8799.) (Well, on second thought, maybe there are super deluxe studios that actually cost more than the cheapest 1-bedroom units.)

Prices are kind of all over the place. Among the seven facilities in his data, the monthly price for a 1BR ranges from $3200 to the $8800 at the Avant. What does a 1BR at the Avant have that is worth four thousand dollars a month more than a 1BR at Chateau Cupertino? You couldn’t tell from their websites. So — lots of research and shopping yet to do.

That done I went out, first to the Post Office to mail a packet of historical family data that turned up while I was cleaning out bookshelves. This was a folder of miscellaneous history and type-written biography about my mother’s family back in Pennsylvania that had been sitting between her autobiography and my father’s autobiography. Oh yes we are a writin’ family; the two of them went to a lot of trouble, each writing up their personal history and having it typed and copies made and distributed to junior relatives. (Sorry, posterity, from me this blog is all you get.) At some point I’d acquired this other material about my mother’s family, and stuck it in the same shelf. Now I sent off the fat packet (11.1 oz said the postal scale) to my niece who does all the family genealogy.

Thence to the market to buy some groceries. This grocery is next door to FOPAL, and today was the start of the book sale weekend. I’d never seen one of these, so after I put my grocery bags in the car I walked around to have a look. People queue up to enter, and are allowed in in small groups as similar numbers of people exit from the opposite door. Inside it’s quite crowded. I’d only seen the sale room when it was quiet, as I went in to stack a sorted box of books in front of its appropriate shelf area. Now it was full of people blocking the narrow aisles to stoop down and look at titles on the lower shelves. Lots of people were walking around with big armloads of books.

I had not meant to buy anything, but… In the science fiction section there was a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide omnibus, with all the novels of that series in one fat volume. For two bucks, how could I resist?

Back home I had a nap, added a feature to my program, and thought about what to do for dinner. I believe I’ll go out; hopefully for something nicer than a hamburger.

Day 41, flashback sad

Friday, 1/11/2019

Here’s a new syndrome: while I was filling my pill-cases and dressing this morning I had a mild feeling somewhere between disassociation and imposter syndrome: a vague sense that I was faking this independent adult life, that I was somehow putting on an act, a pretense, of being competent and capable. I hadn’t had that before, and it passed off quickly as I thought about it.

Later in the morning I set about doing a task I’d been putting off: taking a picture of my car registration and proof-of-insurance card. This because I’d seen the advice to do this, and to remove the printed cards from the car, multiple times. It seems that the registration slip and the insurance card provide good info for an identity thief; and police will accept a photo of registration on your phone.

So I got the two cards out of the car and was about to take the pictures when I realized that the photos app had over 1400 images. “That’s stupid,” I said, and started deleting pictures. Scroll scroll scroll to the top and start selecting groups and deleting them. Of course this takes me back to 2014 and on and pretty soon I am hitting blocks of pictures taken on various trips and outings. Italy, two years ago; New York City, 18 months ago; the WBB post-season trips only 9 months ago. Things I had done with Marian just last spring. A wave of grief just washed over me. So much intelligence, so much talent, so much good humor and courage and competence, ground down and extinguished by sickness. That it was all gone and over with seemed unutterably sad.

Yes, I know: Marian was just one of 154,000 people who died on that day of December. Probably most of them left survivors who feel as I do. It doesn’t help.

I did a couple of other things of a practical nature, then walked to the Stanford campus to meet up with Scott to see an exhibit and have lunch. The exhibit was We shot the war, photos from the archive of Overseas Weekly, an unauthorized alternative newspaper for servicemen. Lots of photos and stories of military life, fighting in ‘Nam. Scott has read a lot more than I of that war and filled in background. Afterward we had lunch at the Cantor museum café.

Home for a nap and a quiet evening.

Day 40, Back to Yosemite

Thursday 1/10/2019

Today I was scheduled to work for CHM at the warehouse where 98% of the collection is held, a big climate-controlled, secure box in Milpitas, off Yosemite avenue. For long months around 2008, and again in 2015, I spent a day a week working there helping to store and catalog hundreds of items. In 2008, it was a huge collection, two tractor-trailer loads, from Germany to process. In 2015 it was a campaign to catalog and photograph thousands of items that had been incompletely catalogued when the Museum moved from Boston to Mountain View. I hadn’t been in the Yosemite warehouse in three years. It hadn’t changed much, and the volunteers and staff who I worked with were all old friends from previous days.

The work was familiar but strenuous. We were moving a group of large chunks of a DEC KL-10 and a VAX, which were sitting on the ground floor, and putting them up on pallets so they could be fork-lifted to one of the upper levels. It was part of a game that Aurora, the site manager, called “museum tetris”, moving things from level to level to optimize space. Each heavy box had to be rolled on its casters up a ramp onto a pallet. Then its screw jacks could be lowered to stabilize it, and compression straps wrapped around it to lock it to the pallet. I worked on that with three others, while three more worked at moving dozens of storage boxes and placing restraint straps to ensure they wouldn’t fall in case of an earthquake.

About suppertime, my niece Denise returned a call and I finally got a chance to offer her our china service. She’ll consult with her partner and get back to me.

Day 39, Consultation

Wednesday, 1/9/2019

Had a good run, that is, one where I didn’t need to stop anywhere. Then headed out to

A meeting

as arranged, with Alan Brauner of Senior Seasons, a referral agency for senior living facilities. Alan turned out to genial, frank and seemed to be well-informed on all the local facilities. We went over my particular desires, and he promised to get back to me with details on several places he thought would suit me.

One thing I learned from this talk was the two classes of facility. One is the “buy-in” type, where you pay what he referred to as an “exorbitant” fee, effectively purchasing your unit, as you might a condo. The advantages of this arrangement are two. One, you have purchased some form of a real-estate property, and in theory you (or more likely your heirs) can sell that when you don’t need it. His experience with the buy-in home that his parents retired to, however, was that the contract was so written that the facility kept a good share of the capital gain on the sale. When his parents died, their estate realized only a few percent more than the initial purchase cost.

The other advantage of a buy-in is that you lock in a monthly rental — oh yes, despite buying in, you still pay a monthly fee in the thousands of dollars — which will not increase even if you need a higher level of care. Channing House, where my distant acquaintance Craig lives, is a buy-in facility. I mean to contact Craig and get a tour, and if it seems appropriate, I’ll grill him a bit on what he paid and what he gets for it.

The other style of facility is month-to-month. You make no commitment other than to give 30 days’ notice before moving out. (Well, I imagine there are longer leases available.) You are renting an apartment with full services (“like being on a cruise”, Alan said) for a monthly fee. You don’t own anything, so there’s nothing to come back to your estate; and while some are “continuing care”, that is, providing various levels of assistance, the monthly charge goes up with the level of service needed.

I headed home to

Kill the freezer

What? Well, for several nights I have been annoyed by the noise of my refrigerator, which is separated from the bed by one wall. The circulating fan in the freezer has developed a buzz. The fridge is old, in fact (referring to our Home Inventory spreadsheet) we bought it in 2000. (All of our appliances are of similar vintage. ISMISEP!) I had replaced the fan in the freezer several years back; now it was buzzing again.

When it was keeping me awake around 4am, it suddenly occurred to me: why am I keeping that freezer compartment going anyway? There’s nothing in it but ice. Previously we’d “cook for the freezer” a couple of times a year, filling it with containers of home-made soups and stews. Then we’d take an entrée from the freezer once a week or so. Well, those were all gone, and won’t be replaced. Marian kept a couple of gel-pads in the freezer to use on her back, but I tossed those old pads in my semi-hysterical clean-out on Day 1. The freezer compartment is empty except for a few odds and ends of leftovers that frankly, I don’t want to eat.

So, back home from my meeting, I put the the food items from the freezer in the green recycle and turned the freezer thermostat to off. I strongly suspect my electric bill will go down. I know I’ll sleep better.

Then it was off to FOPAL for a sorting shift. Wow that is a workout: on my feet and continually moving for 2+ hours, shifting heavy boxes of books around. This weekend is the first of the bi-weekly sales of the year. Most section managers have loaded their shelves and declared a “hold” on their subject, meaning that when a box of “History” of “Nature” books fills up, we can’t take it to the sale room as usual. It has to be stacked in the sorting area, the center of which is now dominated by a mountain of boxes, leaving less and less room to walk around. People showed up at the door with more books every few minutes. Three sorters could pretty much keep up with the flow.

On the way home I stopped at Goodwill and handed in a bag with the last remnants of Marian’s stuff and a few items of my own I’d culled from my side of the closet.

By 5pm I’d received an email from Alan, listing seven facilities he thought might interest me, with details on their costs and amenities. Well, as I emphasized to him, I’m in no hurry. I’ll look at those maybe this weekend.

Day 38, Social Security

Tuesday 1/8/2019

I started the day with a brisk walk to the YMCA and my (short, perfunctory) round of strength exercises.

Today was the day for the long-anticipated appointment with the Social Security that I’d been given on Day 12. Then I’d been unable to complete the process because I hadn’t brought proof of marriage. I’d been worrying about whether the government shutdown would be affecting SS offices, but no, everything was operating normally. I only had to wait a few minutes, and in fact I think my name was called within a minute or so of 1pm, my scheduled appointment time.

I’d left early and stopped to pick up some kind of lunch at a Safeway store across from the SS office. When checking out there I had realized to my great chagrin, that I didn’t have my wallet with ID and credit cards. I had carried it on my exercise outing and neglected to transfer it from my shorts to my jeans when I dressed. Well, no biggie, I knew right where it was, on the dresser, and shouldn’t need it, right?

So what is the first thing the very nice and helpful SS clerk asked for when I sat down? My ID, of course! God damn I felt like a… like a forgetful old fart, is what. But he said smoothly, “No problem, I’ll just ask you some security questions,” and proceeded to grill me about where I was born, mother’s maiden name, and a few other things. After some more interrogation he told me that my Survivor Benefit would have the effect of raising my SS payment by about $400/month. Mentally I calculated that would mean I’d be getting about the same amount that Marian used to get, a bit over $1600/month.

In the end, the net effect of (a) the end of Marian’s IBM pension, (b) the end of her SS payment, offset by (c) the increase in my SS and (d) some reduction of monthly expenses (I’m paying way less for groceries than before, for example), is a drop of about $3500 in the monthly household income. In the past we lived comfortably off our combined pensions. Going forward, it is clear I will have to begin to dip into the nest egg on a regular basis. Fortunately the nest egg is pretty chunky and can survive many years of dipping. (Actually, now I think about it, just raising the “required minimum distribution” out of my IRA somewhat above the minimum will come close to covering the shortfall.)

Back home and with my wallet back in my pocket, I made out the check for the first quarter estimated tax payment and mailed that. When Marian did our taxes last spring, she had prepared the federal and state quarterly estimated tax vouchers, each with its mailing envelope and a big post-it note with the date by which it should be mailed. Today I mailed the federal one with the “1/15” post-it. One remains, the state one to mail before “2/1”. And that will be the end of Marian’s carefully prepared tax materials. I’ll have to step up for the next cycle. Me, the guy who walks out of the house without his wallet.

Suli, our cleaning lady, came today. I showed her the remaining items in Marian’s closet and she said she’d take them all, “for my mother”. OK, fine. And when I got back from the SS, that side of the closet was empty at last. I moved my collection of hats to the upper shelf on that side.

I spent some time inventorying our collection of basketball memorabilia. We had a number of items relating to the short-lived San Jose Lasers professional team: sweatshirts, signed team photos, etc. I emailed a friend, another Lasers fan, with the list. She’s very well-connected into that fan base and will forward the list. Hopefully somebody will want some of these things.

Day 37, mo’ bidness

Monday 1/7/2019

My run was not as easy as last week. Some days, including twice last week, I can go the whole 35-40 minutes without stopping except for a traffic light. Some days, like this one, there are “internal headwinds” — as I used to say when a bike ride got too long — and I end up pausing to breathe. No pattern to this that I can tell. Oh well.

Back home it was time to tackle the IBM Benefits package. I re-read the instructions for claiming the $5000 life-insurance benefit and carefully filled out the beneficiary form. Put it in the postage-paid envelope with the death certificate and sealed it — and noticed I’d left out the second page. Sigh. Tore open the postage paid envelope and made up a new one with stamps, and sealed it.

Then turned my attention to that peculiar $5/month settlement. I called the benefits office and spoke to a helpful gentleman. He said, well, it was a settlement for a lawsuit, and IBM had to pay some retirees extra. That was all he knew. Could I get it merged with my existing pension payment? Probably, but that would be up to the Pension group, and first I had to claim it. So, there was nothing for it but to return the necessary forms relating to that.

Which meant that, after I carefully filled out the form for direct payment to my bank account, and the state and federal withholding forms saying, no, I don’t want taxes withheld from this $4.89 payment each month, I had to tear open my stamped envelope and add several more sheets. Now it was beyond the capacity of a normal envelope but fortunately I had bought 9×12 envelopes (on Day 14). So for the third time I inventoried the sheets I was mailing, sealed and stamped them and later mailed the package.

Later I filled out a contact form with a senior housing referral service, and in the afternoon got a reply. I’m scheduling a meeting with “Alan” and we’ll see what kind of advice he has to offer.

Day 36, Stanford Memorial

Sunday, 1/6/2019

Went to the nearby coffee shop to read the paper, but had to leave early because someone had brought in a very cute lad about 7 years old who, though full of energy, was coughing, hoarsely and continuously, hrrroorrkkk! He had been taught to cover his mouth but he was being perfunctory about it, barely swinging his forearm in front of his face as he hacked, so there was plenty of room for his germs to get out. I bundled up my paper and beat it away from the little germ-ball.

Around 11am Dennis arrived, then Jean, then Darlene and Jesse, and off we went to Maples Pavilion for the WBB game against UCLA. Coach Amy’s comps were in kind of a corner, but at least we were all together for what turned out to be a very exciting game, Stanford falling behind by 20 at one point before clawing back into the game and taking a firm lead only in the last 6 minutes to win.

Then we moved across the arena for the “Behind the Bench” talk, which opened with a very nice tribute to Marian. The pictures I’d supplied looked great on the Jumbotron, and announcer Betty Ann Boeving read a short, clear tribute. After the similar tribute to DeeDee Zahwaydah, Tara ad-libbed a couple more sentences about Marian. It was very nice, and nice for Jean and Darlene to see the regard she was held in there.

On return to the house I invited Darlene and Jesse to make free of the remaining items of Marian’s clothing, and they each took a top, more from politeness I think than real desire. Next week the remainder goes to the ACS shop.

Day 35, quiet Saturday

The Stanford Cardinal edged out the USC Trojans. The game was close with SC sometimes ahead until the fourth quarter, when Stanford took a decisive lead and held it.

Saturday 1/5/2019

Quiet start to the day, with a grief-spasm. Scott had urged me to contact Craig, another ex-IBMer who lives in one of the retirement communities I’m considering. So I did email him, and since he wouldn’t have known, I included the link to Marian’s obituary from the PostHope website, the one I wrote back on Day 1. Which meant re-reading it, which led to quite a bit of emotion for a while.

Went to the museum to lead the 12:00 tour. Talking to my dashboard on the way, to get myself settled down and ready to meet a group of people who know nothing (and want to know nothing) about my personal life, just want to have fun learning about computer history. Had a large crowd, more than 40, which is awkwardly big, but I managed to keep at least 30 of them with me to the end and got a nice round of applause.

Back home, in the mail I received the package I’ve been waiting for from

IBM Benefits

They say Marian had a life insurance policy with me as beneficiary in the amount of $5000. I have to return a form and a death certificate to claim it. Also it contained this rather peculiar note,

Marian was receiving a Settlement Benefit from IBM and designated you as his [sic] Joint Annuitant. Therefore, you will receive $4.58 monthly starting January 01, 2019 and continuing for your lifetime.

Huh? I don’t know what this “Settlement Benefit” could have been. Anyway, $4.58? Why bother? Doesn’t it cost at least as much just to process it?

I am going to call the representative whose name is on the letter and find out if I can possibly, (a) get a lump-sum settlement (it comes to $55/year; gimme $500 and I’ll call it quits), or (b) get it paid annually so I won’t see $4.58 showing up in my bank statement every month, or (c), can you combine this with the $300/month pension I get from IBM, or (d) you just want to forget about it, I promise not to sue.

Anyway that’s some paperwork I will handle on Monday.

Swallowdale

In other news, in October I was going over my bookshelves with an eye to throwing stuff out or selling it, and found my collection of books by and about Arthur Ransome, the British author of children’s classics such as Swallows and Amazons. I thought I had all his books in Penguin/Puffin paperback editions I’d bought while in England in the 1970s. I also have books about him and about the locations he used for his stories (the Lake District, the Norfolk Broads). Looking over the collection I was surprised to find I was missing Swallowdale, the second book of the series. I’m sure I owned it at some time, but now it was just not there. Which rather squelched the idea I had at the time, to sell the collection on eBay.

So on this quiet Saturday it crossed my mind to find out what it would cost to get that edition of Swallowdale. I opened abebooks.com, clicky clicky, boom: price $1 plus $5 shipping. Hey, one month of IBM Settlement money covers it! On that basis I ordered it. When it comes, I’ll try selling the collection; if it doesn’t move, I am sure the FOPAL children’s sale will appreciate it.