Wednesday 10/02/2024

Did the laundry. Puttered around with pictures. Puttered around playing the guitar. I’m thinking I want a better guitar; I may go over to Gryphon Instruments and try some out. Bored with the CH dinner menu; took the car and went out for a gourmet treat — In’n’Out Burger and Shake.

I’m a dork.

Tuesday 10/01/2024

I had written an essay for the writers group several days ago, unlike my usual practice of doing it in the two hours before the meeting. See last Friday, 5.301. So I read it and it was nicely received. One other essay was really good, far better than mine, Susan’s wonderful description of the sound of the Good Humor truck when she was five.

After lunch I met with two people from Prime Fiduciary. The Heritage Circle committee is having them in next Tuesday to talk about fiduciaries, and this was a rehearsal so the two presenters could get used to our setup. It was a very useful, productive rehearsal.

Monday 09/30/2024

Took the standard walk, first time in a week, and it went fine.

Then cruised down to FOPAL where I found 4 boxes of donations, but this donation was of unusually high quality, so where I’d normally send half to the bargain room straight off, this time I only sent about a third, and it took 2:30 to the good stuff processed and shelved.

Evening, there was yet another candidate meeting, two city council candidates. One was Ann Cribbs, who I sort of know from way back, 98 or so, when she was the founder of the ABL. And she was here this year (5.229) giving us a talk on the Olympics.She’ll be fine, I’ll vote for her. The other was George Lu, and he presented himself well also. But the meeting was long and boring and I left before it was over.

Sunday 09/29/2024

In the morning I spent some time playing with the pics I took at the farmers market with the iPhone 16 yesterday. That camera is really, really good. Also I gave them funny titles: gallery.

At 1pm I brought the car around to take part in the three-car car-pool to the Pear theater). There were all told 15 CH residents that have season tix to the Pear and all use the same day (second Sunday) of the run. We comprised about a third of the audience.

The play was Once on this Island, apparently a well known musical that has had multiple Broadway stagings, and somebody reminisced that her granddaughter’s high school put it on. It’s nice. Not riveting, but nice. Doesn’t really have an ending. But the staging was unusual. The scene is a Caribbean island. They did it in the round, with audience on 4 sides, and in the middle the set consisted of an area about 20 by 30 feet square, piled with about 4 inches of beach sand. The actors were barefoot and everything happened on the sand, dancing singing, etc.

Saturday 09/28/2024

Nothing much on the schedule today until 5pm. I started with a nice walk to Mme. Collete’s coffee shop, then through the saturday farmers market taking pictures of fruit with the new iPhone (gallery).

The date at 5 was to the retirement celebration of Marshall Serwitz and Bob Sullivan, the financial advisors we went with sometime in the late 90s. A couple years ago they began a transition, selling their practice to Cerity Partners, a larger firm. Now the two original guys are completely out, and they invited their old clients to a party at the Los Altos Hills Golf & Country Club, which it turns out is just as posh as it sounds.

I put on my best clothes for this, including my sport coat jacket. I looked quite distinguished, I thought. Which was a good call, because when I got there I found 100 or so people dressed up as nicely or nicer than me. Quite a distinguished looking crowd — of strangers. Well, I knew Bob and Marshall, and said a brief “Hi” to them, and I chatted with Howard and Pat and a couple more people from their office that I recognized.

Then I found myself in my least favorite environment, a crowd of people I don’t know. I did have a conversation with a nice couple for a few minutes. Then I found out the schedule: there was a buffet line, and tables set for at least 150 people, and we were going to have dinner, and then there would be speeches around 7pm. Yeah, no. I had a coke and circulated a couple of times around the floor, and then I ducked out and went home. Late supper at CH.

Friday 9/27/2024

Dunno if it was the high-dose flu shot or the covid shot or the combo, but yesterday was miserable. However I slept soundly from 9:30 to 5:30 and was feeling fine by midmorning. I took a shorter walk than usual.

Did some writing for the next writers meeting, using the cue “the soundtrack of your life”. Only idea that came to mind was “K J R Seattle Channel Ninety FIVE” — anybody who grew up in the PNW can sing that. Well, Wikipedia has a whole lot of history about KJR that I had no clue of, when I was listening to it in 1957-62 times.

I had been asked by marketing to have lunch with some prospects. Me and Joanne L and Erica, entertained Mickey and GIbson. Nice couple. I guess we represented CH well. Didn’t turn them off anyway.

Practiced some guitar. Quiet day. Hey, I’m a quiet person. Senior, you know.

Thursday 09/26/2024

Slept very poorly through the night. Woke up to a temp of 99.1, 1.5 degrees higher than the previous two days. And feeling crappy. Felt crappy all morning. Slept a lot morning and afternoon, although by afternoon I was feeling much better and actually did a little writing.

I assume all this was reaction to the pair of shots yesterday morning, Covid and high dose flu. Expecting to be normal-ish tomorrow.

Wednesday 09/25/2024

Walked the mile to PAMF for an 8:30 appointment to have my flu and covid shot. Then to Peet’s nearby for coffee and pastry. Killed a little time there and then down University to the T-Mobil store for a new phone, but they actually recommended I buy it at the Apple store, so I went on to the Apple store and bought a new iPhone 16.

We had the monthly AV team meeting at 2pm. After supper I attended most of a talk by Ed Shikada, the Palo Alto City Manager. I say most, I don’t know how long it will actually run but I was there for 45 minutes of it. Palo Alto is being managed.

Tuesday 09/24/2024

Let’s see, what did I do today? Not much. Couple of long naps were the major achievement. Attended the writers meeting but had nothing to contribute. Assisted a couple of teachers from East Palo Alto to set up for a presentation in the activity room. Played a little guitar for the first time since last Friday. Did an excellent job of clearing out my email inbox, which was satisfying.

Monday 09/23/2024

Started with a walk. Dropped one leg of the usual walk because I just felt a little down. (Although I note I ended up at 3.8 miles and over 10k steps for the day, not sure how). At 10:15 I walked the five blocks to the main Library where FOPAL was having a social for volunteers. You know how much I love standing around talking to people? About that >.< much, that dot right there. I stood around and made chat for about 15 minutes and snuck out.

After lunch I had to hang about to 2pm when a nice nurse (is there any other kind?) came by my room as arranged to give me my annual wellness check. Do I know the date today? Yup I do. I killed the time before 2pm by fetching from the auditorium, the little MacBook Air and the Acer laptop that belong to the AV team, which only rarely get used. Charged their batteries and updated their OSes.

Then went down to the FOPAL office and processed 6 boxes of donations, 2 hours.