Thursday 07/18/2024

Looking at a mostly-uncommitted day I tidied up the apartment for Wanda, watered the plants, and headed out. Bought some gatorade at Safeway. Went to FOPAL intending to sort, but found 5 boxes of computer books so spent two hours processing them. Then a lunch snack at the grocery store and then an hour sorting.

Back for a nap while Wanda cleaned the room. Decided to try a new restaurant, Dumpling Hours, a dim sum dumpling place. This was good, but too much food: a small order of steamed dumplings plus a bowl of won ton soup was a huge meal. But I ate a lot of it. Also they don’t give you any utensils but chopsticks. Manouvering a slippery won ton out of a bowl of soup and eating it without dropping it or dripping soup – a challenge.

Over the course of the day I must have exchanged 20 emails following up on one project or another. But I didn’t “do” anything.

Wednesday 07/17/2024

Despite some lingering tenderness in the foot, I went for the standard 2+ mile walk and it was ok. By evening, the tenderness was almost gone. Swelling and pink color reduced but still visible. Would you like a photo of my feet? I thought not.

Had a very pleasant hour playing guitar and singing. My voice was on, for once. I am especially tickled by my rendition of Radiohead’s song “Creep”. Proper emo screamer, I am.

After lunch was the monthly FOPAL zoom at which boss Jannette properly advertised the Vintage Computer Fest need for volunteers. Later she posted an online sign-up page, very well constructed. Nice.

I ran an event in the evening: a talk by Ann Cribbs. Ann Cribbs was an olympic swimmer at the 1960 games in Rome! For the last 50 years she has been a significant player in all sorts of public efforts in sports and in Palo Alto civic affairs. She was one of the founders of the ABL, the first women’s pro BBall league; she was on a couple of Olympic organizing committees; brought the Senior Games to Palo Alto; lots of other things. Strangely enough she does not have a Wikipedia page!

Especially nice from my point of view, she didn’t have any powerpoints or videos to show. Just stood behind the podium and talked, which makes running an event really easy from the AV standpoint.

Tuesday 07/16/2024

The prompt for this week’s writers meeting was “the future, prognosticate or imagine”. Of the 10 pieces that were read, the majority were gloomy, gloomy, gloomy. We seniors don’t have an optimistic view of the future. Although Connie mentioned in conversation that her grandchildren were very different, full of ideas how to fix the world. Between 8:30 and 10:30 I wrote a little piece of fiction, see below. Not cheerful, but at least entertaining.

Despite continued foot pain I walked 1.3 miles, mostly down to the hardware store. Yesterday Dr. Julia responded to a message saying she didn’t want to prescribe allopurinol just now because if you have active gout, she claims, it can precipitate a worse attack. Check back when your symptoms go away. Yeah, whatever.

I went to Ace hardware to buy a watch battery. For some time I’ve been concerned that my Casio digital watch was getting old. I light up its dial 2-3 times in a night to check the time. I use its stopwatch function every day for crossword puzzles. Turns out, I bought it on Amazon back in 2021. At that time I put its prececessor, a slightly different model, in a drawer. Checking it today, that one was still running. So I looked at a couple of youtube videos on changing the battery and decided to change the battery on the old one. Took it apart carefully. Noted the battery type. Walked to Ace and got another. Went to reassemble the watch and somehow screwed it up. Lost a tiny part. Pieces wouldn’t fit together correctly. Just screwed up all around. So I ordered a new watch from Amazon, it’s only $25. To be sure of having a working one.

Here’s the piece I wrote today. I was thinking about the future, and how global warming leading to sea level rise will flood much of Bangladesh, forcing literally millions of people into migration into not very friendly neighboring countries as refugees. I had a notion of a future person flying in a drone-type aircraft over flooded lands. That turned into this. (complete with typo.)

Monday 07/15/2024

Foot still tender, took a half-walk, a mile in all. Then time for the monthly event coordinator’s meeting. August looks light for AV, which is nice.

Down to FOPAL to clean up my section after the weekend’s sale. Two hours of work, then back. Added the August events to our AV team shared spreadsheet.

Speaking to Ian at lunch about an 11th floor event coming up, I remembered I had not updated the 11th floor instruction manual to account for the change I made in the microphones there. So I spent an hour doing that.

Had a pleasant supper with Martha Ian and a couple of others.

Played the guitar some. Not happy with the guitar after the work I had done on it. There is something subtly wrong, not sure what.

Sunday 07/14/2024

Still enjoying the gout, although it is improving, or at least not getting worse. I can walk without a limp if I walk slowly. Did the usual Sunday morning things, although the NYT big puzzle had a bunch of really stupid puns that I couldn’t figure out, but I give myself a pass for not finishing it because they were so stupid. (How stupid? The puns were all on state names, and one I remember, the clue was “Girl is a good runner”. Answer? Missiszippy. Get it? “Miss is zippy”? That one almost made sense, the other 5 or 6 were worse.)

After lunch went down to CHM to lead a custom tour for a group of 30 teens from, I think, China? Big group, too big really, so right from the start I encouraged them to wander off and explore, and many did. For the core group who sort of stayed by me I did a really fast round, way less intense or detailed than my usual 60-minute-plus tour. Just Tour Lite, done in 45 minutes, pointed them to the retro games exhibit, and done.

Felt quite tired after. Think I might be aging a little.

Saturday 07/13/2024

Another easy day, favoring the foot which has continued its recovery although my left big toe is still fatter and pinker than its right-side counterpart. Still, I expect by tomorrow to be good enough to do the docent round I’m scheduled for — 33 international students, it says. Hopefully with another docent?

Drove the five blocks to the CVS store and picked up a couple of prescriptions – but not the allopurinol that I hoped for. On Friday I placed a message to my PCP asking her to prescribe that. I think that may have happened but later in the day, because around 4pm I got an ambiguous text from CVS that a prescription had been received, but it didn’t say for what.

Walked around the farmers market and bought a handful of apricots and peaches. Then down to the Peet’s coffee shop to stock up on my morning coffee beans. On return I found a package had arrived, and very timely.

Last two times I ran a docent round, the battery in my little belt amplifier ran out before the end. Which told me its rechargeable battery was getting old. So I took it apart and got the numbers off the battery and ordered a new one from DigiKey. And it had come today, just in time for tomorrow’s tour.

That’s the device with the old battery, I should have taken a pic with it apart. Thing to notice is that little connector? It’s keyed so it can only go in one way. And when it was in, the red wire was on the right. Fortunately I took a skeptical look at the new one and its connector was wired just the opposite, so the red wire would have been on the left if I had plugged it in. I had to get the wires out of the connector and put them back the other way. Imagine my relief when I turned it on and it lit up and worked.

Friday 07/12/2024

I got a better idea of how effective a half tab of codeine was, when it wore off later in the night, and my foot became extremely painful. I resolved to take the next day very slow, and to eat a minimum of food. So spent most of the day in my apartment, in my easy chair. Took a lot of naps. And through the day, the foot got better. By evening it was still a bit tender, but I could walk almost normally.

Thursday 07/11/2024

A good time was had by all. What more can a happy promoter say? I was the promoter for a concert by the Keller Sisters. Several of us had been to hear them at the San Gregorio General Store (Days 4.255, 4.344, 5.135). I wanted them to play a concert here. As I’ve hinted, the job of booking music acts has been pretty much in the hands of one resident for a while, and her tastes run to classical and occasional jazz. Sheryl and Kerry do rock/pop/folk, original songs and covers. So despite me and several other residents recommending them, no move was made to book them. So a couple months ago I just took it on myself to book them. Which caused some resentment, but I stayed cool — but I was extremely concerned that the concert go well. I set up the auditorium at 5; the musicians arrived at 6:30 as scheduled. I had one minor A/V hitch: I knew as pros they would want a monitor speaker, a speaker turned toward the stage so they could hear themselves. Unfortunately our monitor speaker had developed a 60-cycle hum. Quite unacceptable. But they were chill and go by without..

We had about 70 people in the auditorium and just about everybody had a good time. I saw a couple of people edging out the back door after a couple of songs; well, you can’t please everybody. Lots of people hung around after to chat with the musicians and talk. It was a success. So hopefully our performing arts committee will be a little bit looser about who they’re willing to book in future.

My foot was really sore, several people commented on my limping. At 5pm I took a half of a tab of codeine — I stashed away a bottle of it from hospice days. It didn’t make a lot of difference, of course I can’t say how hobbled I would have been without it.

Wednesday 07/10/2024

First up was to go have my teeth scraped at 8:30. However it was laundry day also, so I started a load on the way out. Then, because my left big toe was quite painful, I took the car for this 6-block ride to the dentist office; and I remembered that Dr. Marx had said cherry juice was said to be a folk remedy for gout, so afterward I drove to the grocery and bought some. During the day I drank nearly a quart of cherry juice and I can’t say that it helped.

Other than that I didn’t do much. Actually there were like six little tasks that I had been meaning to take care of, that I took care of, but I won’t try to write them down as they seem so trivial. I also completely forgot that this was the day for the 6th floor dinner, and ate a sandwich in my room and napped right through it. Getting old, you see.

07/09/2024

Woke up with sore left big toe; here comes gout. Slows my walking.

Actually wrote something for the writers group, on hobbies. Sounded profound, got some sincere sounding “great” and “excellent” remarks.

Have had no contact with sis-in-law Jean for days so, called her up and made a lunch date. We went as usual to Eric’s Deli Cafe, chatted and got caught up. She’s perking along ok at 96.

Dinner was a planned outing with neighbor Edie. I’d helped her a couple times with her computer and she wanted to treat me to dinner, so we did. Nice. But I had a beer. One beer, and I can’t stay awake. I’m going to bed early.