Thursday 06/13/2024

No breakfast, off to PAMF for a blood draw at 9am. Must have been 15 people in the lab waiting area. But because I had made an appointment using their app, my name was called after only a minute. Sorry, suckers.

Then down to University avenue for a cup and a cake, and to CVS to buy a mucus reducer (guafenesin) which I hope will help keep my throat clear prior to my singing performance tomorrow, when I sing a duet with Mary R. at the TGIF party. I have to hit B3, the B below middle C. Sometimes when I try, it comes out a rich vibrant note, and sometimes a squawk, depending on how clear my throat is. So I took one 1200mg timed-release guafenesin and have to say I didn’t notice any more or less mucus in my throat through the day. Well, worth a try.

Then I drove down to the Sunnyvale community center, just to see where it was and where the parking was. I have a ticket to a concert there for 7pm tomorrow night. So tomorrow’s timeline is, 4pm, rehearse one last time with Mary; 4:45pm perform with Mary; 5-5:30pm eat snacks and chat with my neighbors at the TGIF; 6pm get in the car and drive to Sunnyvale for the concert. So I wanted to know the route and where to park, as the timing may be tight.

Back to CH, quick lunch, change into my red shirt and slacks, and off to the museum to lead a tour. This was a private tour for the employees of a financial firm, mostly 20-somethings I would judge. They were nice.

Back home at 4, change clothes again, and at 5:30 join a friend, Joanne, for a walk to a local restaurant. This was a very pleasant outing.

Wednesday 06/12/2024

Laundry day. Also took care of some shit. Scheduled myself for some blood tests in advance of my physical next week. Tidied away a lot of various things that had accumulated on my coffee table. Went out and bought a few things, including a new plant. Potted same plant. Bought some wine because tonight is the 6th floor monthly meeting and dinner, and I haven’t brought wine to dinner for months. Then I sat a table four 4 with Craig and Diane and Sophia, and Craig had brought two half-full bottles of wine, so it ended up I was the only one drank any of my wine. Which was a good thing because it turned out to be not very good. Bad choice on my part. I dumped the rest of the bottle after supper.

Tuesday 06/11/2024

For the writers group assignment “write about a toy or book from your childhood” I wrote about the “Freddy” series of books by Walter Brooks, starting with Freddy Goes to Florida. I wanted to write about the only toy that comes to mind, which was a Space Patrol ray-gun that was part flashlight, but I couldn’t find any online pictures that matched my recollection, and anyway what’s to say about it if I can’t really remember how it looked? But I took a look at a few pages of Freddy Goes to Florida online and was amazed by the quality of the writing.

Monday 06/10/2024

Time for the Resident Association meeting. This one was significant in that Rhonda’s part was quite lengthy. Looking back I see I didn’t even mention the focus group meeting on wednesday 6/5. This all dates back to last year when an outside firm ran a satisfaction survey, the same survey used at a number of other senior residences. CH came in low on several points, where our low was like 85% happy, compared to other facilities taking the same test that were 89% or 92%. Not huge differences, but apparently the Board had said, we need to look better on the next survey. Or maybe Rhonda, who is a noted figure in Leading Age, the trade association of elder facilities, doesn’t like scoring lower than her peers.

Over the prior two weeks staff have been running small-group focus groups to discuss the areas where CH didn’t do as well as others. The one that I participated in was about the low score in “communicates clearly with residents” or some such question. We talked about just doing frequent feedback, returning to issues that have been queried before even when there is no real progress to report.

Today when we got to the Staff Input part of the agenda, Rhonda spent 20 minutes going over all sorts of pending projects, what has been done, or why we are waiting on permits or for agencies to respond, etc. It was actually quite interesting and definitely an improvement in communications.

From there to FOPAL for the post-sale triage, eliminating the books that have not sold in 4 sale weekends. And processing another box of donations.

At 3:45 I met with Kay and we practiced for the birthday dinner. This is a bi-monthly event where people with birthdays in those 2 months sit together in Quad 4 of the dining room, and customarily there is a short (10-15minute) musical performance. In the past that has been classical with Kay on flute and John on piano. But next time it will be me on guitar with Kay on flute backing. We sounded pretty good.

Sunday 06/09/2024

Usual Sunday morning. Then drove down to FOPAL at 9 and tidied up my section, rearranging and neatening books. People make such a mess while shopping. Also I think there are some volunteers who go around after the Saturday sale hours are over, and they try to make the shelves look attractive. However they pay no attention to my careful organization of shelves by topics, and just distribute books by color and size to fill the shelves. Anyway, I put it all to rights in about 5 minutes, then drove to the California Ave market. No interesting musicians this time, but score! I found one vendor selling Blenheim apricots. They are so rare. I bought a pound and a half. That’s what I had for lunch later, about 6 apricots. So good. Hopefully I can get them all eaten before they mildew.

Practiced some music. Went for a medium walk (2.5 miles for the day). Had dinner with neighbors in the dining room.

Sunday 06/08/2024

With an event tonight that might need the head-mounted microphones, I suddenly remembered that the little reel of surgical tape, which we use to secure an over-the-ear mic to a performer’s cheek, had disappeared from the AV desk in the auditorium. So I set out to get a replacement, walking to CVS, and when they didn’t have exactly what I wanted, I took a Lyft to Midtown to look in the Walgreens there. While I was there I checked out the new coffee shop that has opened across the street from a very well-established coffee shop. It’s ok.

The event was a play, a one-hour condensed version of Little Women, performed by the G.I.F.T. group of teens. They have been here twice before (day 4.217 and 4.245) with other shows. They are always energetic, talented, and likeable. The director of this show (and the prior one), Rose, is an amazing leader, with complete control over her troupe of a dozen teens. I was startled to learn that she is only 17, too. Seventeen going on 35, as they say. Anyway I just had to set the auditorium sound system up and hand everything to Rose and her team to run the show.

Friday 06/07/2024

Put on the red shirt and went off to the museum to lead the 12:00 tour. Nice group of 20-somethings. First time in a while I’ve had a group none of whom had ever seen a slide rule. I asked the oldest-looking guy, probably in his 40s, what his first computer was, “PC-DOS”.

Anyway, got back and at 3pm met with Mary and Kay on the 11th floor to rehearse our duet. Kay, former high school music teacher, said we sound fine.

Supper with Patty, Jean, Gwen and Karen.

Thursday 06/06/2024

No public obligations today. Didn’t hardly do anything. Phone shows about 0.6 miles walking, and the hip feels better for it. In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours editing and uploading the video of the lecture event I ran last night. Had a very nice dinner a deux with Connie, talking about our respective writing projects. She gave me some useful insights on my stuck novel.

Wednesday 06/05/2024

Went for a medium walk this morning, still some hip oddness. Almost 3 miles for the day.

Did the monthly check of the various accounts comprising the Nest Egg; it’s still healthy.

Ran a lecture event tonight, speaker was Faith Bell, the present proprietor of her family’s book store, Bell’s Books, rather famous in Palo Alto. Oddly enough Marian and I almost never shopped there. Up until the turn of the century, we would make nearly weekly trips to Kepler’s in Menlo Park (after 2000 we were mostly reading online) but never to Bell’s in Palo Alto. It was primarily used books, and crowded and disorganized, not fun to shop in. But tonight Ms. Bell gave a very nice presentation on the 89-year history of the store. And the event came off very smoothly, patting myself on the back for that.

Tuesday 06/04/2024

Yeah, same old same old. Before the writers meeting at 10:45, I wrote a short essay. The prompt was, describe some kind of art that affected you. There were some really good submissions. One woman described the first time she saw Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome. She was a young single mother at the time and her son was in some kind of trouble; the Pieta seemed to speak so directly to her concerns that she fell down and sobbed.

My essay was much more boring, about Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but it was well received, turns out several people in the meeting were also fans of it.

With nothing planned for the rest of the day, I went down to FOPAL and sorted for two hours. There was a family, mother, father and teenage daughter there sorting also, and we chatted.

Had a nice supper at a table with Bob, Barbara, and Joan. So, socializing.

Afterward, tried out yet another supposed AI writer’s assistant, Faible. It isn’t really designed for what I want to do.