Wednesday 02/26/2025

Started the day with the bi-weekly laundry. Wrapped that up by 10. Got an early lunch at 11am. Then I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of large, cheap, planting pots. Only after I got them home did I realize I will have to drill drain holes in them. But no prob, they’re some kind of plastic and I hav a drill. Also potting mix. So I am set up to divide the big begonias.

Brought all that back and transported it to my balcony. Then went to a different nursery because I had forgotten saucers. Then to the Rinconada library for the FOPAL social do, to say goodby to Janette, who has been running this organization of mostly volunteers for a decade and is retiring.

Back to CH for the Good Times committee post-mortem meeting, discussing all the things that went wrong or could be improved from the ValDay show. Although everybody who talks to us says they enjoyed it, they also say things like, not enough seats, ran too long, etc. So we have a list of things to improve.

Left that meeting early at 3:30 to join Joanne for a walk. We talked about lots of things but nothing personal.

Had dinner with the Goldens. David G. is running a lecture event tonight, which I think I will go and attend.

Tuesday 02/25/2025

Love that date, 2025-02-25. Did a bunch of shit in the morning including squirting peppermint oil around the engine compartment of the prius. Probably pointless. Also, filed a claim on my car insurance for the $4155 bill. State Farm very helpful. We shall see what comes of it. Even half back would be nice.

Writers meeting; I had nothing to contribute. Then went out in the car shopping for large planting pots. I mean to divide and repot my giant begonias, and step one is to buy two nice pots, about 14 inches high and wide. The present plants are in really nicely decorated earthenware pots. I shopped the Ladera nursery and Wegmans and was disappointed in the small selections. Stopped at Stanford Shopping Center at the Pottery Barn. Guess what the Pottery Barn has very little of? Pottery. Did some online shopping and found that very likely Home Depot has what I want. Will check tomorrow.

At 3 I set up the audio on the 11th floor for the annual meeting of the Heritage Circle, the people (including me) who have donated to our resident-created and -managed improvement fund. Which is now pushing toward $6M, despite giving out grants left and right to improve life here. For example it provides the money to hire proper coaches to take people to SF for the symphony, ballet and opera (none of which I take advantage of).

Had dinner with Marc and Sophia and a couple of other people, nice group.

Monday 02/24/2025

Having no car I decided to walk the 3 miles to FOPAL. I left early and stopped half-way at Midtown for coffee and roll and a banana. Then on to FOPAL, where I processed two boxes of books finishing just at 11am.

While en route David G had emailed that he and Peter would be rehearsing for a lecture tonight, at 11am, did I want to join them? So I hurried my work, then called Joanne. She had emphatically told me that she was available to drive me places, so I took her up on it. She picked me up at 11:15 and I was able to join David G and Peter at 11:30.

Also I had received a call from Crystal at Toyota that my car was ready. So at 3pm I met with Joanne again and she drove me down there. The car seems alright. Later I checked my insurance and it appears that my Comprehensive coverage should apply to rodent damage. So that’s a job to do tomorrow, submit a claim.

I got back just in time for the 4pm meeting of the Common Spaces Task Force. This is a committee of residents to advise Rhonda and staff on revision of the many, small and scattered spaces around the campus used for public purposes. Like the hobby craft shop, the sewing room, the computer room, and many others. My interest is to finally get some action on creation of a music practice room and to rationalize the storage used by the gift shop so as to get their racks of used clothing out of the backstage Green room. A dozen people on the committee so there are 25 opinions on everything, but we’ll see.

The lecture was by Urmi Bahu, a friend of Peter and his late wife Juthica. Urmi was here from her home in Calcutta to attend Juthica’s memorial last week. She manages New Light India, a charitable trust that provides day care and schooling for the children of sex workers. She’s an impressive person with a great story to tell.

Sunday 02/23/2025

After watering the plants and doing the big crossword (in 31 minutes, hey baby I still got it) I decided to walk to Cal Avenue. Which I did, and browsed the farmers market. Kinda wish I ever cooked any more, it would be fun to buy some ingredients. But no.

Was disappointed to find that the Backyard Brew coffee place, in a walkway tucked between two buildings, was “temporarily closed”. Dang. Now where should I get a nice cup and a cake? There are other coffee shops on that street but they didn’t please me. Go back downtown? Oh hey, there’s the CalTrain station right there, I could catch the next train, ride one stop, less than 2 miles, to the downtown station, and be right next to Verve. So I did that. 9800 steps, just under 4 miles for the day.

The rest of the day I fiddled around with music, and then somehow or other ended up reading our old Germany blog. (Which is still online.) In 2010 we did 6 weeks in Germany and blogged it in great detail. At some point I had converted it (and our other long travel blogs) to PDF and downloaded it. And some time recently I had clicked on the PDF. And now I started reading it. Which took about 2 hours to get through. Ah, the 2010s, when it was still an open question if your hotel would have working wi-fi. But it was a nice trip.

Saturday 02/22/2025

Spent time in the morning reading and practicing guitar. After lunch I went up to the 11th floor and set up the lecternette for Romie’s birthday party. Romie is a resident, a pleasant woman who I’ve not had much conversation with. She (or her two daughters) organized this 80th birthday party and invited lots of relatives and about half of Channing House as well. Nice event, nice birthday cake after.

Ate supper alone in my room feeling a bit sorry for myself. Not a great day.

Friday 02/21/2025

Started the day well by walking up to Town&Country with Joanne and having a nice coffee at Douce France. Got back at 10, and at 10:30 joined the line dancing class. I had to leave it early at 11 for the AI interest group meeting. This was a pleasant chat among me and Bert and David G and Helen G.

While there an email arrived from CHM on a fun-sounding AI-related event. We may decide to put that on a screen at CH for a group watch. Also talked about a series of AI-related lectures at the Avenidas senior center and agreed that somebody from our group should attend to see if we wanted the same speaker to come to CH.

Later in the day I did a run-through of the songs that I might perform if at some point I decided to do a solo concert. They come to just over an hour, which is a bit too long. But I sounded good to myself.

Had dinner with Peter who wanted to talk about using an AI to generate a specific kind of image, and also Edie and Bob, which made a pleasant table.

Thursday 02/20/2025

I wanted to go to FOPAL for one little thing, but have no car. Joanne had urged me to use her Subaru and I did, for that short trip. With that done and the car back where it belonged, I had an uncommitted day ahead.

The day was uncommitted because I had planned to spend it across the Bay at Shustek doing artifact work. However I have decided to give that up. I’ve been meaning to cut back on my volunteer workload, but not sure exactly where to cut.

Yesterday, I realized that I couldn’t go to Shustek because the Prius is still at the dealer being de-rodentized. (No progress report today, either; must call tomorrow.) When I said this aloud, Joanne had said, well, you can use my car. I guess I drove it well enough Sunday night that she trusts me, but I demurred. Not wanting to impose, not wanting to be responsible for somebody else’s car for a whole day. But then, thinking it over, I realized that, at that exact moment when it occurred to me I couldn’t go to Shustek, my immediate reaction had been: relief — I was glad not to have to go.

And that answered the question of, where to cut back my volunteer stuff. I could cut out the weekly day of artifact work. I would get basically an extra day a week, what a gift! I’ll continue being a docent, which is much less of a time-suck. Well, it’s three hours per tour: changing to my red shirt, driving to CHM, giving the tour, coming back.

So today was an unplanned day, except for an hour going down to FOPAL and back. I spent most of it reading. Took a short walk before supper, during which I saw a Waymo (driverless) car cruising a local street. They are supposed to be extending their service to this area, and this car would have been on a test run.

Wednesday 02/19/2025

I didn’t take a morning walk because one was scheduled for later in the day. I got a request from Peter to edit down a documentary so he could use a segment of it in a lecture he is sponsoring next Monday. So I did that.

Then Bert sent an email to the AV list pointing out that the 11th floor lecternette had been damaged. So I decided to fix it. The lecternette is a PA system on a rolling steel cart. At some point a decorative board had been fixed to the front side of the cart to conceal a mess of wires. This board had originally been attached with double-sided tape, which had dried out over the past probably 15 years or so. Then somebody had done a piss-poor job of attaching the board with screws, and it was falling off. So I mounted it properly, which meant using my power drill and a tape measure and some screws I got from the hobby shop on the fifth floor.

All that killed the time until lunch. After, at 1 was the monthly FOPAL volunteer zoom. I was interested because the one and only paid staff, Janette, who has held the place together as long as I’ve been around and before, is retiring, and I wanted to hear how the FOPAL board was doing on recruiting a replacement. Answer, not much; they haven’t finalized a job description yet.

At 1:30 I joined Joanne in the lobby; she had organized a walk. We were joined by The Other Joanne and her partner Erika, and we went for a 4 mile walk in the Arastradero Preserve. Back around 4. Then at 5 I joined Lou and Alice who had invited me to drinks at their place and then dinner. Peter was invited also, and the four of us socialized nicely through dinner.

There was an interesting talk at 7:30 by Vishal Subramanyan, a young nature photographer who recently gained fame for getting the first photograph of a rare animal, the Mount Lyell Shrew. He gave a great slide presentation of his pictures of bobcats, mountain lions, horned owls and other animals, all shot live in the wild.

Tuesday 02/18/2025

Writers meeting at 10:45. I hadn’t written anything, but I enjoyed hearing some rather clever short pieces on the topic of “taxes”. Other than that, it was housekeeping day, which is now 12pm on Tuesdays, so I had to tidy up.

At 2:30 I joined members of the Car-Free interest group in the lobby, to go the half mile to the Avenidas Senior Center to hear a talk on the Marguerite, which is Stanford’s system of local shuttle buses. Some walked, some rode the Channing House bus, and a few of us took our Clipper (transit) Cards and rode the #21 bus. It passes right by Channing House and goes in the general direction of Avenidas. I had not been on a Palo Alto City bus before. It was OK.

The Marguerite system is quite complex with something like ten routes, all fanning out from the Palo Alto train station. And all free for the public to use.

On the bus ride I got the call back from Toyota. Crystal, my service writer, had the bad news that yes they had to remove the passenger seat and the mice had chewed through wiring which is part of a harness connected to the air bag system, which is a safety issue, and so the wiring harness would have to be replaced, along with some other bits. Bottom line: $4,100. Considering the car would sell or trade in for maybe $9,000, that was not an easy call to make. But I authorized it.

It seems like every minute of the day aside from meetings, was spent either texting or emailing. I was trying to organize an AV team meeting, and I wrote to our facilities manager Chris, explaining about the mouse issue and what an unpleasant, not to mention expensive, experience it has been, and how maybe he should take some steps about rodent control in our garage because you wouldn’t want a repeat. I was nice and constructive in this, making it clear I was giving him time to plan before I went public on CHBB. Which I think he appreciated.

Monday 02/17/2025

This was the day for the monthly event coordinator’s meeting, where we finalize the calendar for the next month. I got all the events entered in the spreadsheet that the AV committee shares, and entered all the scheduled zoom meetings into zoom.

Then I drove the car to the Toyota dealer. They were quite familiar with the problems of rodent infestation. I said, whatever, do what it takes to get that thing out of there and fix any damage. The very nice service writer lady said she would let me know later what they would have to do. I don’t think they got to it because they didn’t call back today.

I walked from there (Middlefield at San Antonio road) to FOPAL, less than a mile, and processed the boxes of donations that were waiting for me. That took a couple hours. Then I walked the rest of the way to CH, total of just over 4 miles for the day. Arrived in time to attend Rhonda’s monthly open meeting at 4pm. Much of the discussion here was about the meal plan that will be in the “new” contract that will be offered to future residents. Everybody here now signed a “Life Care” contract, which includes a provision that CH will make available 3 nutritious meals a day. Future residents will sign a “Life Plan” contract, differing in some respects. One change will be the option of receiving only 30 meals a month included in the contract, with additional meals charged per meal.

I would sign such a deal if it were 60 or even 50 meals per month, because that is about how often I go to the dining room now. But 30? That leaves a lot of meals to concoct in my room from my personal stash of groceries, or to eat out, or order in. But this is what the marketing consultants Rhonda listens to, say that “the market” wants these days. As was pointed out in the discussion today, eating in the dining room is a major part of socializing, and a major part feeling like you belong to a community. People on the 30-meal plan will spend a lot less time in the dining room, a lot more time alone in their apartment. I personally think that the marketing people are accurately reporting what potential buyers think they will want. But they’ve never lived in a communal residence. Our marketing staff need to pre-educate people about what life as part of a tight little village is actually like.