Friday 05/24/2024

Took a moderate walk in the morning. The hip pain is back. It bothered me the rest of the day. This is not good. Makes me walk like an old person.

Had a rehearsal with Mary for our duet. We are sounding better. Not good, but I’ll never be that. Better.

Spent quite a bit of time getting a proper sheet music of “New Lovers’ Waltz” (mentioned on 5.172). I want to do it for the birthday dinner where I am supposed to sing, and I hope that Kay will play flute behind, but Kay doesn’t do anything by ear, she has to have proper sheet music with notes on it. So I created that. First using pencil and then I said fuck it and paid $59 for a music editor so I could make pretty notes and staffs and such. Well, it passed the afternoon.

Memorial Day coming up Monday, is another day when dining services will offer sack suppers, and again the 6th floor is going to rebel and have food in, this time Thai food. I was commissioned to go and order it, so I did, placing a $400 order for a variety of dishes to be picked up at 5:15 Monday. I’ll get paid back, at least mostly.

Thursday 05/23/2024

Another Thursday with no trip to the East Bay to do museum stuff. They are still replacing carpet and otherwise recovering the Shustek center.

I took a tech squad call to help Lynette with an email issue, after which she sprang another problem on me involving Audible and Amazon. She could get her audio books from her laptop but not from her phone. I actually gave up on that one after floundering for 45 minutes. She called later to say she had solved the problem herself, from watching the things I did and doing them again. OK, a fix is a fix, I’ll take it. I also did a personal favor for Grace, helping her get her Uber and Lyft payment methods straightened out.

And the Good Times committee met to finalize the list of songs for the September party or Folk Festival. And I practiced some songs. And here it is 8pm and I’m not sure where the day went.

Wednesday 05/22/2024

Took the standard walk, which went fine, except a couple hours later my hip was not exactly painful but just kind of sensitive and I noticed it made me walk in a slightly unnatural way. Ibuprofen is your friend — for now.

At 10:30 was a meeting called by Rhonda, with a presentation by Bert, on the response to the fire alarm of Saturday night (5.169). It wasn’t good. They went over at length the meaning of “shelter in place” and how a lot of what went on was unsafe and unproductive. For example, people (a) using the elevators at all (b) to go up to the 10th floor to see what was going on. People calling the front desk to ask why the fire alarm was sounding. At least I knew not to do that. But so many fools did, that the front desk person, who handled the incident in a highly professional way, actually missed an important incoming call because the phone system was jammed. And some dopes actually yelled at her and got angry.

I did two wrong things. One, I left my room, went to the lounge. Two, when I did leave the room, I did not actually check for fire. You’re supposed to touch the door to see if it’s hot. Well, you know? I think if there was fire in the hallway, I would have noticed when I touched the metal door handle. Things I did right? I put on pants, shoes, and a hoodie before I went out. There were people walking around in robes and slippers.

Nobody is happy about how loud the alarm is, even less happy about the flashing strobe light. The strobe is to wake up people who are hard of hearing. A few people had physical reactions to the strobe. But the worst part of it is, the alarm sound and light go on and on — 45 minutes this time. That’s because it can only be silenced by a Fire Department person, and that will only happen after the Fire Department person has determined there is no further risk, and goes down to the basement, using the stairs because they don’t trust elevators, to turn it off. 45 minutes of BLAAAAT (flash) BLAAAAT (flash) BLAAAAT (flash). Rhonda promises to take this up again with the PAFD however there are city, county and state regulations.

Anyway, at 3 we had our monthly AV team meeting, and quickly settled who would do what for the coming month.

Tuesday 05/21/2024

Messed around in the morning. Sat through the writers meeting, I had nothing to contribute. Worked on music. Specifically, spent some time trying to learn a song by — well I didn’t mention the most significant thing about my Cal. avenue farmers market visit of Sunday, did I?

As usual there were street musicians performing at various spots. One guy, solo, playing a 6-string acoustic guitar, caught my attention because he looked kinda like me, playing. Well he wore jeans and a fedora. Stopped to listen and put a buck in his cash bucket, but then kept listening because the songs he was singing were somehow right down my alley. I ended up buying his CD because he was giving away a xerox printout of the lyrics and guitar chords to go with it. His name is Michael Bechler; he’s a total unknown and likely to stay that way; he has a web page that is just embarrassingly amateurish. But he has written some really nice songs. One I’m practicing up and will probably play at my next appearance is “New Lover’s Waltz“. Sentimental, but easy to play and sing and kinda catchy. I’m also working on “Margaritaville“. Talk about a song that sounds simple but is really subtle. Nothing happens on the downbeat.

Monday 05/20/2024

Took the standard walk. At 10:30 it was time for the monthly event coordinators meeting, always an interesting session.

Following that, down to FOPAL to process four boxes of computer books. I’m going to start adjusting my prices. For a year now, our pricing guideline has been. Find the lowest price on Amazon (or eBay if the book isn’t listed on Amazon). Mark the book at half that, rounded to a whole dollar. With a bottom limit of $2 for a paperback and $3 for a hardback. So if a paperback shows up on Amazon Marketplace at under $4, it goes directly to the bargain room, as half the Amazon price is less than the floor of $2.

Well, at the latest volunteer zoom meeting they went over our finances for the last fiscal year. And although we churn through a ridiculous amount of books each month, thousands literally, and although we generate enough money to give the Library over $100K a year — our main sale room, where my section is, where I put in all my labor, is only breaking even. The expenses of running the main sale room, rent, supplies, salary for our one paid manager, is only a bit less than our gross income from sales.

Where does all the profit come from for the Library? Mostly from the higher-value books that we sell via eBay and a broker who sells to Amazon. The monthly sales, to which hundreds of people come to shop, are just paying the rent on the building and other fixed costs.

This was very disappointing to me, and it seemed obvious that we need to charge more for our books. So starting today I began marking books a little higher. Not hugely, but an extra dollar for good condition, etc.

Back home played some guitar. Working on Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville”.

Television: I bailed on the rest of The Amazing Race. I’ve watched 20+ seasons of that show but finally decided I didn’t care any more. Also deleted American Idol from the DVR list. I really didn’t think much of the talent they were coming down to, and anyway it was all overblown. Last night I watched a PBS special, Audra McDonald. Now there is a voice. Or, Friday night, I didn’t mention it here, I put the SFJazz Friday Live Stream on the 11th floor TV to share with a few others. The performer was Samara Joy, another amazing singer. You would think that with all the auditions, Idol could have come up with one decent female voice, the kind of soprano (or alto, I’m not prejudiced) that just flows out and grabs you. Well, grump grump.

Sunday 05/19/2024

Watered the plants, did the crossword. Decided to do something I haven’t done in months (no I’m not going to look it up here) and walk to California Ave. for the market. Glad I did; the market is bustling and crowded and fun. It was busy even in the depths of later Covid, but it has picked up since then. Such a variety, not only of veg and fruit, but of prepared foods, preserved foods and bread and such. Took a Lyft back. Probably could have walked back but didn’t feel like it.

Met with Mary to rehearse our duet at 1pm. We’re starting to sound halfway good.

Happened to pass Peter in the elevator and he asked if I had gotten the event form for the party at 5pm. Nope. Well, his family is having a big party on 11 at 5pm and they did request AV help. So later I went up there and found his relatives, and we worked out what they needed, which was simply to connect a phone to the system so they could play music off Spotify. Easy.

Saturday 05/18/2024

Last night at 11:35, just as I was deeply asleep, the fire alarm went off. Our fire alarm is everywhere. Every room has a strobe that flashes and a horn that brays like an electronic donkey. Hard of hearing? You’re still gonna hear our fire alarm.

The problem, we learned later, was smoke from a utility closet on the 10th floor. Some electrical problem related to a coolant leak in the HVAC? Anyway, once triggered, the alarm can only be turned off by a fire department person. It was 10 minutes before the truck arrived, and another 15 before they found the cause and decided there was no need for the alarm.

My main activity today was to do a docent tour at CHM. But three CH residents came along with me, Lou and Alice and Howard. We went down early so they could see the 1401 demo. Unfortunately the 1401 demo was led by a couple of new docents who were having problems with their headset mics, very annoying. Anyway, they enjoyed my tour.

In the evening we had a concert by the Peralta Consort, a group of local classic music buffs including one CH resident, Romy, on cello. I left about half way through.

Friday 05/17/2024

That rarity, an uncommitted day. I did some guitar practice, and spent some time finding new songs to learn and printing them out for my binder of songs. The exciting thing was that I got all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed and was able to schedule the Keller Sisters for a concert in July. This is a thing. Historically all, or at least most, music bookings have come through Nancy, a long-time and highly respected resident — who has been a bit proprietary about this role. She likes classical and some jazz, and has done a really good job of keeping a string of concerts passing through. But she has ignored or dismissed suggestions from other people for different kinds of acts. In the past year or so, certain people, myself included, have been agitating for a wider variety of music. And that has happened to a small extent, and I think this event I have scheduled now is a bit of a breakthrough.

Also took a medium walk and had no problem with the hip. It isn’t completely fixed, because I am slightly aware of my right hip. Gone all my life and had no awareness of the operation of my hips. But I can just feel the right hip’s action as I walk. Anyway I’m calling it healed from whatever tweak I gave it last week.

Thursday 05/16/2024

This morning I attended a talk by my neighbor Lennie (Madeline). Lennie moved about the same time I did. Her career was mostly in librarianship, for a long time managing a piece of Stanford’s library system. At CH she has made herself central in the community, just entering her second year as president of the resident association, and managing the content of ResWeb, our in-house website, which she has made much more rich and useful. That was the subject of her talk, just a walk through ResWeb showing us what was there.

I spent some time working on some AV questions, like how to share the screen of an iPhone with the Zoom Room systems that are in five of our public spaces. And why there have been complaints of Zoom audio being too low. No answers but I learned a lot.

At 1pm I met with Mary to practice yet again the “Old Fashioned Wedding” number. As former chorus director, she gave me good pointers and helped me understand the correct timing. Since it is basically a duet where each voice is singing a different song, getting the timing right is important for it to sound correct, and funny.

After a casual supper in my room, I drove down to CHM to attend an event, a preview of an upcoming PBS “Nova” episode on data sharing, and how everything you do online is harvested by corporations. They showed the first 20 minutes of the episode, then there was a panel with several experts who are interviewed in the show. (info including a youtube link)

Another thing I did was to write to the contact point for the Keller Sisters, the music act I’d seen most recently in April (Day 5.135). Late in the day Sheryl Keller wrote back, saying the price of their 3-person concert was $300, which I thought extremely reasonable, so now I have to answer. I’m not sure what dates to suggest, so I fired off emails to Kay and to Pam, event managers, asking advice.

Wednesday 05/15/2024

Did the laundry. Broke off from that to help Sandy start a zoom meeting in the Activity room. That didn’t go well, apparently because the Palo Alto Library guy initiated it as a zoom “webinar” which our zoom room handles differently from a regular meeting. He also talked too fast.

I was supposed to attend another zoom meeting for FOPAL and I forgot to do it, tsk tsk.

In the evening I was invited to join the table hosting our evening speaker, sports broadcaster Ted Robinson (known for announcing Giants baseball, Stanford football, and some Olympic events). Very affable, entertaining guy, he gave an excellent talk later. His picture of the state of college athletics, and the poor leadership that led to the breakup of the PAC-12, was entertaining but very sad.