Thursday 12/19/2024

There was no CHM volunteering today (and none until 1/6, I hear) so I had an open day. I set myself the goal of reading two things that had been sitting on my coffee table too long. One was the latest edition of Scribble and Sketch, the CH literary magazine. I wish that was online so I could link to articles in it, because there are some good ones.

The lead article was a profile of Arlene (Kwok) Sullivan. I’ve mentioned her a number of times, as the person who does piano accompaniment to various performances. She’s well over 90, but is still an excellent pianist. She had many years experience as a performer with different groups, but the striking part of the profile were pictures from when she was a teenager, and a star in local Chinatown dance bands. As a very young person she sang “Any Bonds Today” at WWII bond rallies. As a mother she formed a band with her own teenage children. She taught music in several bay area schools. There are also a couple of shocking medical tales from two different doctors. At the back, they published a piece I wrote on being jaded about holidays, which I included here back on day 4.347.

The other was the book Nexus by Yuval Harari. Joanne bought that and loaned it to me to read first. I have mixed feelings about it. Harari presents many interesting historical examples to make these important points. First, improved communications do not automatically bring improved knowledge, or more democracy or more “openness” — as optimistic tech people tend to assume. He shows how the introduction of the printing press led directly to the witchcraft panics of the 1500s, in an early example of better communications only improving the transmission of conspiracy theories. For a more current example, Facebook’s algorithms strongly aided the Rohingya massacres in Myanmar: the algorithms were designed to increase “engagement” and the algorithms “learned” that violent anti-Rohingya propoganda increased engagement. On the other hand, a modern democracy can’t function without plentiful communication, but a totalitarian state can. There’s lots of complex “this, but again, that” here, but a clear warning against letting computer algorithms be decision-makers without requiring a clear appeals system. He talks about the failings of algorithmic judicial sentencing; he doesn’t mention health insurance companies using algorithms to deny coverage, that news is a little too recent for a 2023 book. In general I think the book has a lot of important historical lessons, but could have been better organized with clearer conclusions. (Maybe he should have run it through Claude.ai…)

I noticed an odd coincidence of health numbers and want to write about it. This post is out of sequence, falling between days 6.017 and 6.018.

Every morning I take my blood pressure, temperature, and my weight, and write those numbers in a spreadsheet. For the systolic (higher) BP number, the spreadsheet also keeps a 14-day rolling average, the point being to smooth out random variations and spot any trend. I’ve been adding rows to this spreadsheet since 2020 so I have a pretty good data set.

For example, I can scroll back and see that my weight has been slowly declining. For many years prior to 2018, my weight was around 180 and I was, frankly, kind of pudgy. Over 2018, the year of Marian’s cancer and death, I dropped more than 10 pounds. (Stress is a great diet plan.)

Per my spreadsheet, from 2020 to 2023 my weight varied between 164 and 170. However through 2024 it has declined again, hanging around 162-3 and once hitting a low of 161, which pleased me at the time.

For most 2020-24, the 14-day BP average has varied between 100 and 115, mostly around 108-110. This is an appropriate value, given that I’m on three different drugs that reduce BP (metoprolol, amelodepine, and spirolactone, the latter only 3 days per week). The low pressure causes no issues, i.e. I don’t get light-headed when standing up or anything like that.

In October 2024, I started noting higher than usual BP readings: 117, 128, 124. More significant, the 14-day average began creeping up, from 110 in mid-October to 119 in early November.

Simultaneously my weight, which had been around 162, crept up, reaching a 2-year high of 166 in early December, with no change whatever in my eating habits.

In the two weeks since that point, my BP has declined to its previous values, with the average down to 114; while my weight has dropped back to 162.

In summary: my BP and my weight increased smoothly from early November to mid-December, then both numbers dropped back to previous levels by late December.

This would only be a curiosity, except that early November was when I started noticing periods of arrhythmic heart action, was concerned enough to consult my cardiologist, had the diagnosis of PVCs, and wore the monitor patch or two weeks.

And — wait for it — the PVCs have become much less frequent, or at least I’m noticing them much less often, this past two weeks.

So: was there a single underlying cause for all three things, the slightly increased BP, slightly increased weight, and the arrhythmia? They rose together, and fell off together. Or was this just a freaky coincidence?

Wednesday 12/18/2024

First thing, I tossed all the laundry, one week’s worth, into a single big load and started it washing. Took the standard walk while that ran. Put it to dry and fiddled around. Anyway, now I have all the clothes I need to pack for next week.

I pulled out the Dell laptop I bought a while back to make sure it was working. Its battery was flat of course. I plan to take that on the trip instead of my Macbook. But I ran into a problem: it insisted my admin password was not what I was sure it should be. I have used the same login/admin password on every machine I’ve owned for 20+ years. But apparently I didn’t on this one? So I looked up how to do a password reset (you boot into safe mode and you can get a root window, and do a password reset.) When I tried to reset to my standard password it wouldn’t accept it because it wasn’t 8 characters. Oh! Clearly that’s what happened — when I set the machine up, I must have added an eighth letter to the familiar password to meet that requirement. I even know what the added letter probably was. Damn passwords.

At 4 I opened a zoom meeting for the AV team. We had decided to meet by zoom this time because Bert was ill. Except he must be really ill, or out to the doctor, because he didn’t join. Anyway I presented a slide show reviewing how to put a presenter’s laptop on the auditorium screen without a zoom meeting. Main thing, we got events in the January calendar covered.

Tuesday 12/17/2024

Didn’t leave the building today. In the morning I took a bunch of cell phone pics in the auditorium and then constructed a short keynote (apple speak for powerpoint) presentation to share with the av team when we meet tomorrow.

Then the writers meeting, for which, for the 4th time running, I had no contribution. Others did, quite nice short essays about animals.

Practiced some guitar. That was about it for the day.

Monday 12/16/2024

The sky was cloudy but at 6:30 am the sun found a hole and shined nice light on my porch so I grabbed a shot of hummingbirds at breakfast.

Got an early start on the standard walk which went fine. (3.8 miles for the day.) Had time to kick back before the Event Coordinators meeting at 10:30. Here I got the info on January events, and entered them into the AV spreadsheet.

Then I figured out when and how to hold the AV team meeting: by zoom (since Bert is confined to quarters by illness) on Wednesday at 4:30. That ensures all but one person can attend. I wrote to her separately and she picked an event to run. So that is set, except there’s a topic I want to present so tomorrow I need to take some pictures to show on zoom.

After lunch I went down to FOPAL and did the post-sale cleanup and processed two boxes of donations. On the way back, stopped at Safeway to buy another two sacks of sugar for the hummingbirds, which don’t seem to be slacking off. When I go to refill the feeder, I tell them, “Yo, Arizona is over there! Migrate!” but they don’t.

As I came back from supper I looked out to see a nice moonrise. Frankly I am astonished what a good job the iPhone camera did with the wide range of light levels in this shot.

Sunday 12/15/2024

First thing, after the Sunday ritual of watering the plants and doing the crossword, was to walk to nearby coffee shop Mme. Collette’s, to meet with Leah Lin. Leah is the consultant who I engage to be #1 on my “living will”, ahead of Dennis. She likes to meet with her clients twice a year just to keep in touch. We had a nice chat over coffee and croissants.

At 12:30 I met Joanne for lunch, after which we walked to the Lucy Stern Community Center to see a play, Miss Bennett or Christmas at Pemberly. This was really well done, great stage craft, the actors all did great, had super comic timing. It was funny and romantic and all.

Dinner with Caroline and the Green’s, a new couple to CH.

Saturday 12/14/2024

Today was a blank on my calendar. I thought oh boy, I’ll get some reading done, and other stuff. Well the day just flew by and I’m not sure where it all went. I did get some reading done. I also restarted guitar practice for other tunes. Wrote several emails, which always takes time, to think and get the wording just right. Anyway, another day in the books.

Friday 12/13/2024

For my morning walk I was joined by Joanne, which is always nice. Then I settled in to edit the Holiday Concert video. That took a few hours. Here is the final result. Me and Alice singing RATCT comes at about 32:00. By the way an “American Masters” episode about Brenda Lee will be on PBS the evening of 12/16, i.e. Monday.

Today was employee appreciation day, when the staff have a party in the afternoon, get their annual bonus (“appreciation fund” donations from residents) checks, and go home early. Which meant there was no dinner service tonight. The sixth floor voted to have pizza, which I ordered. It arrived at 5:30 and much of the 6th floor gathered in our dining room to eat it. Three people were going out for other reasons, and two were sick, and two are just out of the picture on the left. But here’s a bunch of my neighborhood.

Thursday 12/12/2024

Today for the first time in several months, we had a volunteer work day at CHM’s Shustek Center in Milpitas. In the morning period we didn’t do a heck of a lot, except to exercise the volunteer-use PCs, which hadn’t been booted in months. Each one had to be fired up and get its Windows updates done. But mostly we just chatted with each other about what’s been happening with us and with CHM. Then adjourned for lunch at Eric’s, as of old. Then I had to leave instead of working the post-lunch period, because I had an event to run back at CH.

This was a performance by the Kara singers, a choral group sponsored by Kara grief support, a Palo Alto organization. I was thinking ho-hum more Christmas music but when they were warming up my ears perked up. This was a bunch of serious adult singers, well led and with sophisticated arrangements. They were really good. Unfortunately the only time they could give us for a concert was 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon, so only about 40 people turned up to listen, but the music was excellent.

I should have spent some time editing the video of the holiday concert but I didn’t. That can wait for tomorrow.

Wednesday 12/11/2024

Today the holiday concert was performed twice, at 10am and at 7pm. I ran the AV for both, plus I and Alice sang RATCT each show. We were 8th on the bill, after the group sing-along and before the “jazzy trio”. We did not suck, to my relief, and got nice applause each time. CH is a very forgiving audience.

In the middle of the day I went for the standard walk, so with all the nervous pacing around the auditorium my phone shows almost 4 miles of walking.