Friday 01/26/2024

Took a shorter walk in the morning. Then did a couple of minor things and some guitar practice until lunch at 11:30. Right after lunch I put on my red docent shirt and left for the museum. There I led a custom tour for 20 Stanford Law students. I adjusted my usual route to include the Atanasoff sort-of-computer which I normally don’t cover. But now I could tell law students about the huge Sperry-Honeywell patent suit that invalidated Mauchly’s ENIAC patents and established that the digital computer was a public idea for anyone to use.

They stuck with me through my extended tour, probably an hour and a quarter, and seemed interested, so that was flattering.

Thursday 01/25/2024

Tidied up and left for Shustek a bit earlier than usual. Today all the Thursday volunteers, those who work at Shustek doing cataloging, and those who work at Yosemite doing other curatorial tasks, were to meet at Yosemite for lunch. Ordinarily we all meet at one of a rotating list of restaurants. But today would be Gretta’s last day so lunch around a table at Yosemite and say goodby to Gretta. Which meant bringing something to eat, so I left early to stop at the store and buy a sandwich.

Gretta started with CHM in 2015, so I’ve known her for nearly a decade. For the past three years she’s been in charge of the acquisitions (“acquisitions registrar” is I think the job title), and on Thursdays that meant managing a crew of us old fart techies(*). The other days of the week I’m sure she had other things to do. But she always kept this diverse crew busy and focused, and always was cheerful and constructive, quick on her feet, ready to answer whenever somebody said “Gretta….?” which was about every ten minutes through the day. I am very sad to see her leave. She’s moving to Vashon Island in Puget Sound, where her husband has gotten a job running a year-round environmental campground.

I left Shustek about 3:30 which was later than I meant, because at 4pm was the annual Resident-Trustee Budget meeting, where the financial state of CH for the past and next fiscal year would be discussed, and the rise in monthly fees revealed. But traffic on 101 was backed up at Shoreline, so I moved over to Middlefield, and it was 4:10 before I got there. I didn’t miss much. The rise is 6%. The good news is, we are losing less money next year than this, and look like reaching break-even again in FY26.

(*) including IBMers me, David Bennett, and Steve Madsen, and Paul Laughton. Paul’s claim to fame, though, is that he wrote most of Apple DOS for the Apple II.

Wednesday 01/24/2024

Ran the laundry, and while waiting for machines to cycle, I put in 1.25 miles on the treadmill, and began the task of downloading videos for the Strollin into the sixties event.

Then down to FOPAL to tackle that huge pile of boxes. There were 8 to go when I left on Monday, today there were 10. I got through 6 of them and then had to leave because I needed to be back before 3, because the marketing people had asked, could they show my apartment to a prospect at 3pm.

In fact the prospects never showed, so that was a waste. But I got the rest of the videos downloaded. On Saturday I’ll start making them into a single video.

So I made myself a sandwich for supper and left for FOPAL again. Another 2 hours there and the floor by my section is completely clear. Back home at 7:30.

Tuesday 01/23/2024

Took care of some stuff in the morning. Went to the IL nurses office and reviewed what they had in my folder. Replaced the Advanced Directive form, verified the other stuff. Wrote an email to the Prime FIduciary guy (and am surprised at no reply by day’s end). I have a number of questions, mainly because I do not see in my files, where I modified the Trust to make them first successor trustee. Which is kind of the point of having them.

Last night I patched together a little essay for the writers group which started at 10:45 as usual. The theme was something like “what you keep and what you lose” which caused my mind to flash back to day 1 of this blog, when I de-invalidized the house, getting rid of all the evidence of disease and illness. (The “it started here” link goes there.) I padded that out and generalized it a little bit. Then I worried about sharing it; and then I realized how silly that was. I am quite sure (and they confirmed this after) that everybody in the group has been through some variation of bereavement. I knew a couple of the writers had lost children; most had lost spouses. So it was well received.

At 3:30 I went down to set up the auditorium for an easy event: running Patty’s son’s documentary Piano Girl (here’s the link if you want to watch it). There was an employee meeting in progress when I got there, and I eavesdropped. Rhonda was giving staff the good news that because of new minimum wage laws, and other reasons like the competition for staff in this sector, wages would be going up. She also mentioned that they would be seeking ways to increase revenue, including charging for things that had previously been free. Not sure what that means. I guess I’ll hear about that at the annual Resident-Trustee meeting Thursday afternoon. Rumor has it we will hear monthly fees will be up 6%.

Anyway by 4:05 the auditorium was almost full. I was surprised at the turnout, although everybody knows and likes Patty and her son Jeff. The hour-long show went smoothly — you might say of course, it was a simple job of driving the projector from my laptop — but you just never know. Glitches happen. The audience was very quiet and attentive and lots of applause after, so good for Patty.

Kay had arranged a dinnertable for 6 for Patty and some others including me, so that was nice.

Monday 01/22/2024

It was wet outside so I did my walk as 2 miles on the treadmill in the gym. Then a little guitar work and soon it was 11:30 and time to go to the lobby to meet my lunch guests. This was Dennis and Patty, to meet with Leah Lin. Leah is a paid consultant that I am hiring to be my medical representative, number 1 on my advanced care directive. That puts Dennis as number 2, relieved of the responsibility to respond instantly if something happens to me. Over lunch we talked about end-of-life issues, what I want or don’t want in the way of treatment. And revealed several things I need to do to get these issues covered.

After lunch I headed down to FOPAL where I found an incredible amount of donations waiting for me to process, at least 12 boxes. I got through about 1/3 of them; I’ll go back on Wednesday for the rest.

I want to add something to yesterday’s note. I wrote that in a hurry — I had already gone to bed and then remembered I hadn’t blogged, so I had to get up and blog in the dark before going back to bed. But I had intended to record an emotional reaction. A “transition” reaction, what this blog was originally meant for. See, right up there in the subtitle?

I was going into Piazza’s grocery yesterday morning. They have a double row of fresh fruit displays outside. Walking between these banks of fruit, a sudden memory of our typical Sunday morning shopping expeditions came back with great force. Maybe it was the smell of oranges? Normally I can go in and out of Piazza’s without strong memories, but that moment I was back in, say, 2017.

We normally planned our meals for the week on Sunday morning, debating what would be fresh and what we had on hand and what each of us felt like cooking on our alternating cook days. We’d make out a shopping list and, in the winter, like now, we’d head straight to the store. Summer we’d go first to the California Ave market to get fresh fruit. But winters, we’d be heading into Piazza’s, list in hand, past that same fruit display, picking what fruit we wanted on hand for the week. How about a melon? Oh look the little oranges are in. And so on.

Something about the time of day, the ambient light of a cloudy winter sky, the smells, whatever, brought that whole memory of our partnership back very strongly. I could easily have broken down and cried. I was walking through the store to pick up what I came for (a bottle of laundry bleach) with blurry vision and a sniffly nose.

Sunday 01/21/2024

Today, a very easy start. At 1pm, down to the basement to meet the carpool and go to the SWBB game. The game itself was close, the OSU Beavers were within a couple of points until the 4th quarter when Stanford pulled away.

Then it was time for a big celebration, as this was the win where Tara became the college coach with most all-time wins, at 1,203. I and Marian were there for her 500th, 900th, and 1000th wins, too. The hoo-rah afterward this time went on and on, and eventually the CH carpool left while it was still going.

Saturday 01/20/2024

Main business today was to lead the 12pm tour at the museum. Since I also wanted to pick up a couple of things at the grocery, I started out at 10. I meant to have a breakfast of coffee and pastry at Midtown but they were too crowded so went on down to Peet’s by the grocery. That worked out ok. Then down to the museum, and home again.

Did some guitar practice, and kept half an eye on the 49ers game as they won late. Took a look at the dining room menu and wasn’t pleased. Called Edie to see if she wanted to go out for supper but she has apparently had a relapse, tested positive again. So off by myself, meaning to go to Armadillo Willy’s for ribs, but their parking lot was completely full so back to Mike’s for pasta instead. And that was Saturday in the land of the idle rich.

Friday 01/19/2024

Just a short walk in the morning over to CVS to pick up 2 prescriptions. Then busily to work on preparing for two different AV events. On the 23rd, Patty will run a documentary from NHK (Japan TV) that was partly produced by her son Jeff. She wants to start with a map of Japan and the southern islands. She had picked up a map she liked from geology.com, but it was like 600×800 pixels. So I ran it through the magic photo ai app I have to make it much bigger and sharper, appropriate for display on a big screen. Then in the auditorium I tested running her documentary.

On 2/5, Oscar will present a book talk. He wants to discuss the movie made from this book, showing a number of clips from the film. He has a personal friend Gary who is a tech, very familiar with video production. So Oscar and Gary came at 1:30 to try out our equipment and practice the presentation. They fiddled around for an hour and seemed satisfied.

Next into the auditorium was Stew, wanting to test an idea for the upcoming music party (see yesterday). He wants to put sing-along lyrics on the big screen, but Joanne, in charge of getting people to dance, doesn’t want the screen down because she wants the stage clear for dancers. So the solution is to put the screen partway down, and to put the lyrics only on the top 1/3 of a powerpoint slide, and to make the slide background black with white text. It looks like it will work pretty well:

That was that until 6 when I joined the carpool group to go the SWBB game. This was the game where, if they won, Tara would tie the record of Coach K. They did win, beating Oregon by 30. They got off to what you might call a good start: the score was 20-0 halfway through the first quarter. To their credit, the Ducks came back getting to within 5 at one point, but to no avail.

Thursday 01/18/2024

Drove to Shustek for a day of cataloging. On return, had a meeting of the Good Times team planning the upcoming “Strollin Into the Sixties” event. Let’s says SITS for short. The song list is now final, so I have to start gathering the videos. Also seriously practicing my contribution, “Who Put the Bomp“. But tomorrow I have a series of AV events to prepare for one way or another.

01/17/2024

Took a standard walk in the morning. At 10:30 met with Jeb to give him “Lecternette 101”, a hands-on introduction to the portable sound systems we use on the 11th floor and the lobby.

For some reason I felt like documenting all the travels I’ve done outside the US. In the course of doing that, I noticed that of the detailed travel blogs we made (New Zealand, France, Germany, Scandinavia), the one for the Scandinavian countries had never been downloaded and saved. So I did that, which took an hour or so, and naturally lead to having to read the whole blog.

At 4:30 I ran down to set up a mic for the bi-monthly birthday dinner which always features live music.

That was about it for the day.