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.

Sunday 02/16/2025

The mouse ignored the traps again and is still there. In fact it may be nibbling on wires as they do, because now the passenger seat belt warning is on even though nobody is in the seat. And the car still smelled funky when I took it out this morning. So I called Joanne and she agreed we could use her car for our date tonight. I will deal with the mouse by taking the car to Toyota tomorrow and let the pro’s deal with it.

At 3:30 we left in Joanne’s Subaru Forester for Oakland, where we attended a concert by Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi, two performers I’ve been a fan of for years. It was an excellent concert, really good and fun.

Afterward we drove across Oakland to Soi4 Thai restaurant where by arrangement we met with cousin Darlene and her partner Jessea. Had an excellent thai dinner and conversation. Drove on home down 880 and 84, back by 9:30.

Saturday 02/15/2025

Had the morning pretty free. Did some actual reading. Also went and checked the goddam mousetraps in the car. They were un-sprung, but the mouse is definitely still there. Proof, a few fresh droppings, and now little balls of fluff, the little bastard is scraping fibres off the mats and (I guess) underside of the seats to make nest material.

I reloaded the traps with peanut butter bait, but also put a couple of droppings and a bit of the fluff in the trap, so it would smell familiar.

In the afternoon I was committed to helping Peter set up for a big “celebration of life” for his recently-deceased wife, Juthica. She was well known around CH and around the Stanford community, so the auditorium filled up and overflowed into the dining room. I managed the sound and the zoom (only 6 people attended on zoom, so that was a waste). The hour-long memorial was followed by a big reception in the lobby. I don’t want to know what Peter had to pay, because our dining services team laid out an elaborate snack bar with some indian food (Juthica was born in Calcutta) and other snacks, really a handsome spread, plus the usual drinks, for about 200 people.

I feel tired and plan to go to bed early. Tomorrow is a fun adventure day.

Oh yeah. For anyone who cares, here is a link to me performing Annie’s Song. All of the images behind me were made by the Midjourney AI image generator. Except the rose, that was an actual rose. But those people embracing? Totally imaginary.

Friday 02/14/2025

Started the day in an excellent way, with a walk with Joanne. We stopped for coffee and I gave her a present, an inexpensive scarf, and she gave me a miniature box of high-class dark chocolates. I emphasized “inexpensive” because she has a very explicit policy of not accepting free tickets or meals from me, always insisting on paying her own way for everything. So as I told her, I kept it inexpensive so she wouldn’t be embarrassed by it. (And it did cost less than $20.) She liked it.

Then I had not a lot to do until after lunch. About 2 I went to the auditorium and did all the tech setup for the Good Times Valentine’s Day show. Then I had more time to kill, then went to early supper at 5. Finally got to be showtime. Here’s the audience before the show.

Extreme left, Susan P, whose job was to run the display of lyrics for the sing-along numbers. Various performers and organizers in the front rows. The place was full, 80 people or so, and the show went mostly correctly. There were a few tech glitches but nobody noticed. My performance of “Annie’s Song” was well-received, a good hand after.

So that’s behind me. There are still some things to do this weekend, then my schedule opens up, and I’m glad.