Thursday 02/06/2025

Headed out early on a rainy day to drive to the Shustek Center. CHM is finally restarting volunteer workdays there for the first time in a good while. However they are still in the process of converting to the new database named QI, so we cannot as yet make new entries. So no cataloging. And when something is relocated, we have to note that on a paper list because locations can’t be updated yet. I, Toni and Bud started the task of digitizing the Loan Records, a complicated clerical task.

In the evening we had a concert, no I was not the person running the microphones, by a local singer, Thu Ho, accompanied by a good pianist and an excellent upright bass player. Standard jazz numbers.

Wednesday 01/05/2025

As I was planning a walk later, I took a shorter walk in the morning, a mile around to have breakfast at a nice coffee shop. Later I processed the video of the Shakespeare group and put it on my public dropbox and emailed the director. Who hasn’t replied yet. Played some music and then it was time for early lunch.

At 12:30 I met with Joanne for the walk she was coordinating, normally several people but today only me, her, and Martha. We walked a couple of miles around the Baylands. The Baylands are a large area, maybe a couple of miles on a side? of sloughs and banks on the edge of the Bay. For decades up until about 1990, Palo Alto had a garbage landfill there, building up quite a hill of trash that was sealed with layers of clay and soil. Eventually, not sure what year, it was converted to a public park. The hill, or series of mounds of sealed trash, covers many acres, twice the size of our Old Ranch at least, and has the local name of Mount Trashmore. And there are paths over and around it and public art works and stuff. So that was nice, and I ended up with 13K steps and 4.8 miles for the day.

On the drive back, Martha and I were trading memories of IBM — she was a systems engineer out of the San Francisco office a few years after I was a customer engineer there. (Her last name is Claypool, in case that rings any bells with Scott?)

After supper I set up the auditorium for a talk. This was by Anton Eremin, a 21-year-old immigrant from the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned for protesting the Ukraine war. He got away to Mexico and came into the USA for political asylum. Quite an impressive, articulate guy. He arrived two years ago with no English; he now speaks it very well with little accent. He continues to be an activist, supporting protest groups inside Russia, and also agitating for better treatment of refugees here. To a question from the audience, did the USA meet your expectations when you finally got here? He noted that yes we have political freedom and the police don’t arrest and torture you for saying what you think. On the other hand, in the streets of Vladivostok there are no homeless, no graffiti, no fentanyl. So, you know, pros and cons.

Tuesday 02/04/2025

At 8am an AV contractor was supposed to come to look at problems with our sound board. They were delayed, arrived more like 9. The two problems were, One, the BlueTooth module was inop.; we used to be able to pair a phone with the board and play music through the system, but it stopped working. Two, there is an effects, or FX module that you use to add reverb to inputs and it doesn’t work.

The contractor’s analysis: it’s broken. Have to send it back. But we can’t do without it, can you give us a loaner? I’m not sure what the upshot was, I had to leave. Our IT guy Paul finished the transaction.

I had just time to write up a contribution to the writers group for the prompt, a memorable beverage. Lots of interesting contributions. Mine was pretty trivial, I won’t bother quoting it.

Later in the day while my room was being cleaned, I took the guitar to the music room on the 9th floor and practiced. I sounded pretty good. And did other stuff, like re-making the drama group video because some people preferred their morning performance when I’d used the evening one. So it goes.

Monday 02/03/2025

Started the day with a standard walk. It appears I kept walking all day because I ended up with over 10K steps, 4 miles. Busy busy.

Drove down to FOPAL, processed 5 boxes and set up my section for the upcoming sale weekend.

Back home after lunch I did the tedious work of assembling the final video of the Drama club’s show of last Thursday (6.057). It actually took only about 2 and a half hours for the editing. Then it was time for the Poetry Out Loud group, which Joanne leads. My choice to read was “Relax” by Ellen Bass. It’s funny, and profound. Although the Buddhist parable it includes needs more thought than you can give it, just hearing it read aloud.

Down to supper early because it was “mixer” night, at 5:15. You pick a table number from a hat at the door, and so you sit with, presumably, people you don’t normally eat with. Usually I end up with the same people I regularly see, but tonight I had one table-mate I’d never eaten with before.

After, opened up the auditorium for the San Francisco Shakespeare traveling troupe. Very professional, well equipped, they set up their set and props and stuff fast, very cooperative. All I had to do was put out enough mics that their voices would get into the hearing-assist loop.

They presented a condensed version of Romeo and Juliet, in 52 minutes start to finish. Very well done. But it was 9:15 by the time they had knocked down their stuff and packed up so I could turn out the lights. Going to bed now.

Sunday 02/02/2025

Usual quiet Sunday morning. At 10 I met with Peter and a lecturer he is sponsoring, to rehearse for an event later this week. The rest of the day I played some music, and read a whole book of poetry by Ellen Bass. At supper time I felt asocial and walked by myself to the Creamery for a grilled cheese sandwich, but not for the chocolate shake we used to get there, just coffee. Walked down University and noticed an ice cream store, Salt & Straw, which somebody had praised to me, so had a single scoop of mint chip. It was OK but not worth the praise I’d heard.

At the restaurant the sound system was playing old Neal Young stuff and I think I could probably learn to play “Harvest Moon“. Gonna work on that.

Later: nope. There are plenty of tutorials on how to play it, and it would be relatively easy to learn — in Neal Young’s key. Unfortunately that is totally the wrong key for me, I can’t match the highs, or if I sing an octave below Neal, I can’t reach the lows. So I would have to transpose it at least 4 steps, from D to say, G? But that would make all the online tutorials useless. Bleagh.

Saturday 02/01/2025

Six hours of sleep, maybe. Put on my red docent shirt for the first time in a month or more. Had breakfast in the dining room for a change, but sat at a single table and read the internet. I like being unsociable once in a while.

Spent some time reading poetry looking for something to read on Monday. I like Ellen Bass’s work. Apparently she’s well-known; I had no clue. “Relax” is both funny and profound.

Off the museum, stopping on the way to buy a sampler of kombucha flavors. I have never tried Kombucha. I think I probably won’t like it. But I’m going to try some. Maybe organize a tasting.

Led a tour of 30 or so, and some S.O.B. kept my transistors. I had 3 transistors in a little plastic box as a show and tell. As we got to the place I wanted to talk about transistors I would hand the box to the nearest person in the group and say, “Take a quick look and pass it on.” As the box travels through the group I say “What you are looking at is three little silver cans each with three gold wires sticking out — do you know what those are?” Usually people don’t recognize them so I explain “Those are transistors, you’ve never seen them loose like that, but you are carrying several billion-with-a-b of them in your pocket right now.” And I go on to explain they do the same job as a vacuum tube that we have already talked about, but better. And somewhere along here I say, “Who’s got my transistors?” and whoever in the group ended up with them, gives them back.

Not today. Whichever person ended up with my little box of transistors — maybe not somebody in the tour group, there were lots of people in the museum today and people kept joining and dropping off — whoever last had them, kept them. Bastard!

I have some more transistors but no more little clear hinged boxes. Had to spend half an hour online trying to find a replacement.

Took a nap before supper and slept for over an hour, so rather than go down late, I just at a sandwich in my room.

Friday 01/31/2025

Took a standard walk in the morning, first time since Tuesday. Just ahead of incoming rain, although it hasn’t amounted to more than sprinkles as of tonight.

Then spent most of the day at my desk, getting my estate papers in order. Editing the Document Locator and other directions to the executor, updating things. And also making changes the financial guys recommended Wednesday.

At 7:30 met with Joanne and we drove to the Bus Barn to see Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie. Very well acted and produced play. I really wanted the ending to be not quite so bleak, he leaves the characters in a sad state.

Didn’t get home until 10:45 and my goodness it’s after 11.

Thursday 01/30/2025

The main thing today was the Channing House Drama Club presenting their program of six short skits. The scripts for these were by local playwrights, prepared for previous seaons of “Pear Slices”, an annual festival of short plays at the Pear Theater. The total ran about and hour and half for all six plays. The program was presented twice, at 10am and 7:30pm. The early show, as with some concerts, is for the convenience of the staff at the Lee Center, who wheel AL and memory care people over for an outing. Plus any IL residents who feel like it, and there were a few.

My role was just lights and mics, and getting a video recording. But that meant I had to be there early and pay attention through the whole thing. I was surprised that on the whole the players were better at the morning show. There were more dropped lines and awkward pauses in the evening show. It falls to me of course to edit out a single video with the best performances, morning or evening. That’ll be tomorrow or maybe next week.

In between I had time for a short chat with Joanne, and then at 4pm was the important, annual, Resident/Trustee meeting, at which we review the budget for the current fiscal year just ending and for the new fiscal year that, for us, starts in February. Key item presented is, what is the percentage increase in monthly fees. Answer this year? 5%. Which is down from 6% last year. Also CH is in good fiscal condition and there is money in the new year budget to do an upgrade of the elevators! Maybe not a full replacement, but $1.5M is set aside and that should accomplish something. The elevators date back to the 1960s, and there are often outages, and there was one time when one was out for a week while a part was made from scratch because the part was no longer stocked.

Wednesday 01/29/2025

I had a bunch of stuff to accomplish today, and did, starting with my laundry. While the laundry was going I did more video construction for the ValDay video. By construction I mean for example: I have a YT video of Gale Garnett singing “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine”. Now, Karen is going to sing along with this video, but Karen finds Garnett’s pitch too low and asks for it to be higher. I had downloaded this video. (Parenthetically: YT tries to make impossible to download their content, but I have a way around.) Then I stripped the audio track out of it as a separate file. Then I ran that file through a clever web app that can change the pitch of the music, and also strip out Garnett’s voice. I made versions one step up and two steps up, put them in my Dropbox and shared them with Karen. Karen finally got back to me, opting for the one-step-up version.

Today I opened the iMovie project and put the video, without its audio, in its proper place in the sequence. Then I pasted in the audio file with the higher pitch and no Gale Garnett, and carefully sync’d it to the video.

There was one other clip to change, the committee wanted a different version of “Unforgettable” than I had used. They wanted the version where Natalie Cole sings a duet with her father.

With those changes made (in between changing loads of laundry) I could re-make the full video which is a three-step process that takes about 2 hours in my old desktop machine. (A new machine with the Apple M4 chip could do it in 15 minutes.)

I also renewed the car’s license fee at the DMV website and paid a credit card bill. And I had time to go down to the auditorium and test how to put sound from an iPhone through our portable sound system. Also I gave a half hour to consulting with my neighbor Carolyn on her acting role in the drama group’s show. And talked to Laurel about the Mystery of Infant Cortesi. (Later in the day she solved it.) Quite a morning.

After lunch I went down to Los Altos and met with the financial advisors for my annual checkup. Bottom line, I have money to keep me as long as I care to live, with some left over. Which is nice to know. But as usual there are several paperwork things I need to attend to.

And that was the day.

Tuesday 01/28/2025

Started out with a proper walk, which I couldn’t take yesterday owing to having to support the drama group. Then got in the car, did a couple of minor errands, and drove to FOPAL where there were now 6 boxes of donations (there had been 3 when I left on Saturday). I spent three hours processing them and generally organizing shit.

Back home, had a good session practicing guitar. I was lounging in our lounge while my room was being cleaned when Joanne walked by. She was on the way to see my neighbor Edie, who she was advising on how to organize your estate and your affairs, so as to give minimum trouble to your estate manager or fiduciary, “after you croak” as she put it, to my surprise. She showed me some of her organizing lists and I had to confess that, although I’m pretty sure all the info she mentioned is somewhere in my effects, it isn’t as neatly organized and accessible as she recommends.

So now I have some organizing to do, to try to live up to Joanne’s standard. It’s been at least 4 years since I reviewed my estate documents anyway. Which is ironic because in my very own book, I wrote…

The final benefit that you can gain from an honest understanding of death is the motivation to put your own financial and legal affairs in order. When you do that, you prepare a deeply thoughtful gift for your survivors, and they will appreciate it…

After detailing all the various ways you can put your affairs in order, I add,

…the circumstances of life keep changing. Within a year or two, some of your documents will be out of date. … So you need to schedule an annual return visit to the state your affairs. (Perhaps you should make a ritual of it?)

And this completely coincidental encounter with Joanne reminded me that it’s past time to do that.