Sunday 09/01/2024

Did my usual Sunday things — does it count as a ritual? I wrote about having your own private rituals in To Thrive, and no, my unvarying Sunday routine isn’t a ritual. The difference between a ritual and a habit or custom, I said, is that the ritual is done at least as much for a symbolic meaning as for its practical effect. (I remember being rather proud of myself for figuring that out.) I don’t do the NYT puzzle, or water the plants, to represent something other than puzzling or watering. But I digress.

Next, still on the hunt for decent fruit, I walked to California avenue for the market. Found some acceptable pluots and some yellow raspberries. Took a Lyft back, so only 3 miles for the day.

Peeled and chopped up the fruit I had collected in a nice metal bowl borrowed from the 6th floor kitchen, and put it in the kitchen refrigerator for Monday afternoon. Did some music practice.

Looked ahead at pending events, I have an SFJazz concert on Thursday, and a play a week from Friday, and an extra ticket for each. I see the concert on Thursday, Hiromi, is sold out. I emailed my neighbor Joanne to join me for the play on the 13th. I need to find somebody who appreciates jazz to join me for the concert.

Saturday 08/31/2024

Another day with no appointments. Walked to the nearby farmers market. On Monday afternoon, as usual on a holiday there’s no evening meal service. Also as usual the 6th floor will gather in our dining room to picnic on our sack suppers. I have the notion that I’ll make a fruit compote, a big bowl of cut-up ripe fruit. So I walked around the market sniffing the fruit and being disappointed. Maybe my nose is shot, but I didn’t smell ripe fruit. Bought one basket of raspberries and some nice red seedless grapes. Later in the day I found some decent pluots at the grocery store.

Spent an hour collecting the audio for some folk songs to play in the half hour before the actual folk fest. Spent some time practicing my two numbers.

Dropped down to FOPAL to take care of a task that’s been pending for two weeks. Somebody donated a box of 20 identical books, manuals for how to build projects based on a commercial hobby chip. Useless without the kit of electronics, and anyway available free as a PDF online. But they were bound with spiral plastic rod. In order to recycle them I had to separate the plastic from the paper. I took my wire-cutter and did that job, getting several nicks in my hands.

Stopped at Town and Country and had a Kirk’s burger for supper.

Friday 08/30/2024

Took a slightly shorter walk in the morning, although I made up for it with another walk later (3.7 mi). Then printed up and put out a new set of Thames bridges pictures. One more change, in September, and then in October I will fill both picture rails with shots of Tower Bridge from every angle, and then in November I will have to think of a new class of pictures to post.

Then took a tech squad call: Miriam’s tv would only show her basic channels, PBS, ABC, etc. If she tried to go to CNN or ESPN or such, it put up a smarmy Comcast error message “Sorry, there seems to be a problem here”. Rebooting the Comcast box didn’t help. I’d never seen the like. But the message had an error code. If a message has an error code, you can google it. Well, I don’t Google as a point of principle, but it’s clumsy to say you can duck-duck-go it. Anyway, of course other people had seen the same problem and several had a solution. You can make your Comcast do a “system refresh”. This is apparently a reboot plus a refresh of info from the Xfinity mother ship. It takes 20 minutes to do, but afterward the message was gone and all the channels were back.

Another top tech tip: don’t get superglue on your finger tip. I was fixing one of my picture frames this morning and got glue on the tip of the finger I use with the Touch ID pad to unlock my laptop. Now it can’t recognize my fingerprint. Nor my phone, except at least with the phone, I had trained it to recognize both my right pointing finger AND my left thumb. So I could unlock it while holding it in my left hand.

In the afternoon I practiced my two performance songs and my voice was “in”. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. Today it was rich and resonant, I sounded so masculine, like Johnny Cash’s little brother Cletus. Music is fun when it works.

Thursday 08/29/2024

At 10am I drove to the museum to lead a private tour, 20 seniors from The Villages, a residence in south San Jose. Nice group. I didn’t do well, though (by my standards) as I was trying to modify my memorized pitch to suit what seemed like a less technical group. I fumbled and stammered a lot. Well, a little. Anyway, they were nice.

In the afternoon the Good Times committee met to further plan the upcoming folk fest, and Stew had big news: Joan Baez is going to attend, and may say a few words. It happens that one of our residents was her personal physician back in the day, and has maintained a social relationship every since.

We are not going to share this news with any of the people who are performing. Knowing this retired idol will be there already makes me intensely self-conscious about performing. I tell myself, if anyone on earth has to be used to hearing bad folk-singing, it’s her. But still. I’m planning to sing in front of Joan Baez. Acckkkkkk!

In the evening I turned on the auditorium for a candidate meet and greet: Terri Godfrey, running for the Foothill College Board. Seemed like a nice person.

Wednesday 08/28/2024

Took the standard walk, stepping right out: for the day, 3.6 miles @ 2.6mph.

Practiced some music. After lunch, met with Craig to practice our number. Then set up the auditorium for the AV committee meeting. Setup needed because, one, I wanted to zoom it so David G could attend from his room — he is on Covid lockdown — and two, I wanted to demonstrate the use of our new multiple camera setup. We took a longer time than usual to assign next month’s events because several people are away on vacation. The committee, and especially Sandy, took me task for being willing to fill in for any gap. So afterward I wrote to two people who had scheduled meet-a-candidate events, that we couldn’t cover their event.

Then off to the museum for a volunteer get together party. This was held on the lawn out front, and while the temperature was around 75, there was a brisk wind, and I was in a short sleeve shirt, very cold. Like the old days when we would go to Candlestick park for a Giants game and freeze our buns off.

Tuesday 08/27/2024

At 9am I had a rehearsal session with Mary and John. He’s our pianist for our duet, and was away for a couple of weeks. We are starting to sound good. This was the first time I realized, while we were singing, that I was actually listening to Mary, and adjusting my volume and tone to sound better with hers. Yeah, big discovery, right? Like, voice 101. Well, I’m not used to performing with others.

After the writers meeting I went down to FOPAL for an hour, then practiced some guitar. Realized I was playing “City of New Orleans” too fast, slowed it down, much better. In the evening there was one of the monthly sing-along sessions in the lobby. I went and sang for a while.

Monday 08/26/2024

Took the standard walk. With another walk later, 4.4 miles for the day.

Drove to FOPAL and was surprised to find–zero boxes of donations. So came straight home. The only other thing I did was to re-make the folk fest video because the trio who are going to sing along with PP&M requested a different version of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”.

Didn’t like my dinner entree, and didn’t feel like sitting around waiting for a dessert course, so I walked up University to Starbucks and had a frappucino for dessert. Hence 4.4 miles.

Sunday 08/25/2024

Had two appointments to help people with computer issues. At ten, showed Susan how to have both keynote and quicktime player on the screen at once. Amazing to me how many people don’t know the teeniest bit about what their Macs can do. Then tried to help Nancy get access to her old Yahoo/SBCGlobal/AT&T email account. Andrew had worked with her and run into strange responses from AT&T sign-in. I ran into the same weird shit. AT&T is nuts. Found another angle, finally got her signed in, but the email service was not visible. She is going to take it to the AT&T store and show them.

After lunch I went and walked around the annual Palo Alto Art Fair, filling up University ave. Took some candids, here’s one.

There’s a well-known poem, the actual title is “Warning”, but the opening lines go,

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,
And a red hat that doesn’t go…

This dude has that spirit.

Ate supper in my room alone, and then, ta-daa! I clean my refrigerator. It’s a nice thing to do every year or two. Or three. Not sure when was the last time, but anyway, did it now. It’s only a little half-size one and I don’t keep a lot of stuff in it, so emptying it, cleaning all the shelves, and putting stuff back took like 20 minutes. But that’s done.

Saturday 08/24/2024

Walked to Cafe Zoe for breakfast. While walking, listened to the Security Now podcast, which was going over the huge National Public Data breach, with 2.9 billion rows of data, exposing a couple hundred million people’s SSNs etc.

On return I wrote up a clear description of this issue and the need to freeze one’s credit rating. Rather than send it to CHBB, I sent it first to the tech help mailing list, to get opinions from the other techies. General feeling, freezing credit is too high a bar for many residents. To be discussed further at a tech meeting on Tuesday.

Went down to the Museum and led the noon tour. I got a super cute picture of a young lady punching her name into a card.

Came home and practiced some music. Exchanged email with various people. Feeling sleepy, think I’ll go to bed early.

Friday 08/23/2024

Took the good old standard walk in the morning. Then worked on the Folk Fest video. Over the course of the day I got it all put together, with chapter markers and all, very professional.

Met with Mary at 1:30 to rehearse You’ve Got a Friend. Later, practiced City of New Orleans several times. Getting there, on both of them.