Thursday 02/22/2024

I signed up to lead a tour of 15 Apple employees at 11:30 am, but Wanda wanted to clean my apartment at 9:30 so I left early, did an errand, then sat in the car and listened to a podcast in the museum parking lot until time. The tour went well. I’m doing another tomorrow, which may not go so well.

Back home and by arrangement met with my neighbor Dr. Margaret. She is recently back from a trip to Tanzania with a ton of really good pictures and cellphone videos (close up lions, baboons, elephants, etc.) that she wants to put together with iMovie. She’s been trying really hard to learn it on her own with youtube videos and such, so I offered to help. We spent a solid two hours hunched over her laptop building the first 20 minutes of a movie. I think she has learned enough to carry on for a while on her own.

Then practiced music. I am scheduled to perform sometime in March at the Lee Center, for which Puff the Magic Dragon is requested, and then in May at the spring concert, I hope with Lynne doing the routine I scripted yesterday. Which means learning these songs well enough to not embarrass myself. Back a few months, I was going to do Puff and then dropped it, so I had practiced it a lot, and still had problems. So now I’m switching to a different way to do the chords which seems to be a little easier. Anyway.

Wednesday 02/21/2024

Did my laundry. Took a medium walk between loads. During the walk I conceived a way to do a cute musical act. Taking off from that Durante-Shirley Bassy video I linked yesterday. So I wrote it all up screen-play style.

At 1pm was the monthly FOPAL volunteer zoom meeting. No big news. The February sale netted a fairly weak $16K.

Spent some time printing four new pictures for the gallery in the hall.

At 7:30 I went down to listen to a lecture by Russell Toll, who is a professor of neuroscience and operates a clinic where TMS (trans-cranial magnetic stimulation) is used to diagnose and treat PTSD and depression. Quite interesting. Their site is still “under construction”.

Tuesday 02/20/2024

Did a couple of chores first thing, and then still had time to write something for the writers group meeting at 10:45, so I did. The cue was “your favorite hour of the day” and that was an easy question to answer.

After lunch I did some music practice. One thing: the song that Lynn wants to duet on is one I’d never heard, Jimmy Durante’s “One of Those Songs”. She had a sheet with guitar/ukulele chords on it but I wanted to hear it better, so I looked for versions on YouTube, and I found a real gem. This is just too good. Now, there is no way Lynn and I could reproduce this performance but it sets a bar for enthusiasm.

After supper I had the AV job of running a movie. In this case it was Kramer vs. Kramer with an impossibly youthful Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

Here’s what I read to the writers group. It’s very meta, talking about itself and all.

I like 8 to 9am.
I am at my sharpest, most alert, most productive. I exit the bathroom showered and shaved. While I dress I hold the shape of the coming day in my mind, its lumps and gaps. I anticipate the times of trouble, times of accomplishment, times of rest.

And usually, I have a mental list — or, often, a physical, written one — of things I need to do. Then I do them. Briskly.

Today I had two listed items, scrawled on the back of a waste sheet of paper last night as I was going to bed, and I quote:

1099
Docent

This morning, after making the bed, putting on shoes, and — the last step of dressing — taking the phone from its charger and slipping it into my pocket, I sat down at the desktop computer, signed in to Schwab, and downloaded the 1099 forms for my various accounts: PDFs dropping neatly into the folder named 2023 Tax data.

Moving to the laptop — because for reasons unclear, the bookmark for the Computer History Museum volunteer sign-up sheet isn’t on the desktop machine — I reviewed my Google calendar for the rest of this week, and reviewed the list of available time slots for docent tours. I meant to pick one, but there were two that looked like fun and I signed up for both, updating my Google calendar to mark off the time for each. There’s a couple of accomplishment time-lumps to be considered on Thursday and Friday.

And looked at the clock: it was 8:25. I love 8 to 9am; there’s still time to hack up some kind of essay for the writers group…

But there were several essays to the group that were better than that. I can’t quote them because I don’t have permission. But this group writes good stuff.

Monday 02/19/2024

I took the standard walk, which seemed a bit more effortful than sometimes. At 10:30 it was time for the Event Coordinator’s meeting. This has often run long but today it was all wrapped up by a bit after 11.

One of the attendees was Lynn, who among other things runs the harmonica group, and plays the ukulele. She wanted to show me her “fake book”, that’s the term for a musician’s collection of sheet music. “Fake” because usually it only shows the most minimal info for a song, the key and the chord changes, or maybe a melody line. She’s been building this for years and it’s a huge binder.

Like me she is slated to perform in the spring concert in May and she wanted to talk about sharing the stage. Which is fine by me. I had two songs planned, and she had one. We agreed that we’d sing together on her song, then I’d do one of my solo, then we’d sing together on the third. Now we have to rehearse. But May is a long ways off.

Then to lunch with Stew, Lou and Joanne, the principals of the Good Times group that put on the Strollin’ event on Saturday. Stew wanted to do a post-mortem but there wasn’t much to dissect, feedback has all been positive. We, actually they, talked about how to get more people to dance. But then talk turned to the next event, which will focus on folk music, and will be in September.

After that I headed down to FOPAL, finding a stack of 8 boxes of donations. I got through them all in 2 hours, and got back in time for Rhonda’s open meeting at 4pm This was well attended, there must have been 80 people in the auditorium and 20 or more on zoom. The topic was the dining services changes which had provoked so much comment at the RA meeting last week. Discussion was calmer this time but there were plenty of questions.

Then I had supper with Patty, Martha, and the Allens. Craig has pretty well recovered from his recent operation to remove a tumor from his neck.

Sunday 02/18/2024

Just a typical Sunday morning. At 1pm I brought the car around to the front forming a line with three other cars for a 12- (or 14?) person carpool to the Pear theater. We saw To Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday. It is an ok play, very well acted by a cast of six. An exploration, partly realistic and partly symbolic/fantastical, of aging and the desire to never grow up (Peter Pan) while inevitably aging.

This was interrupted in the middle by a member of the audience (of about 40 people) collapsing. The play was stopped while the person was helped out; we later heard that he had a problem with low blood pressure. The actors, who in the scene were gathered around a family dinner table, stopped where they were, then when the audience was back in their seats, restarted the scene from the top and carried on. Very professional.

Saturday 02/17/2024

Today at 1pm I drove down to the Mitchell Park library, stopping on the way at City Hall to drop off my ballot. At the library I attended a social gathering of FOPAL volunteers. This wasn’t much of an event, just snacks and coffee and stand around and chat. I left after half an hour.

Killed time until 5pm when I went down for an early supper and then into the auditorium to set up for the Strollin into the Sixties event. 20 great songs, about half of them with various residents including me, singing along with them. My rendition of “Who Put the Bomp” got a nice hand, but in fact I messed up the lyrics and had to fake a couple of lines. Which put me on a par with the other amateurs.

Anyway I am glad to get that off my mind, preparation for that event has been a job for several weeks.

Friday 02/16/2024

Went for the standard walk. Spent quite a bit of time practicing guitar. Spent some time re-reading the contract I signed when I entered Channing House. This, because of the people complaining about staff “not listening” to residents about the meal plan changes. Since the contract is the only thing that really defines my relationship to CH, I wondered what exactly it promised in the way of food service and other services, and what did it say about my rights with respect to the staff. It was quite an interesting read and I started a little essay about it.

Had an early supper, then joined David G, Martha, and Patty to car-pool to the SWBB game. The visitors were the Cal Bears, and Stanford mauled them severely, winning by over 30 points.

Thursday 02/15/2024

No CHM volunteer work on this Thursday, so a quiet day. I exchanged some emails with various about the Spring Concert that I am to be a part of. Feeling like a musician is nice. To avoid total boredom I drove down to FOPAL and did a couple of hours of sorting.

Near 6pm, I drove over to California Avenue. They have a year-round “third Thursday” series where live bands play in the street. I walked around and listened for a bit. The bands weren’t very good, but the atmosphere was nice. I had dinner in a ramen restaurant, big bowl of noods.

Wednesday 02/14/2024

Thanks to the cancellation of a planned lecture event at 10am, I was able instead to take ye old standard walk, which was nice. Then I spent a little time fooling with AV technology. I created an email alias and then a simple free zoom account. Having these will make it easier to connect a presenter’s laptop to a screen in certain situations.

At 11:30 went down and met Dennis in the lobby. The plan had been, to have lunch with Dr. Basso, but in fact he bailed at the last minute for a medical appointment. On the spur of the moment I substituted my neighbor Sandy. So our lunch table was her, me, Dennis, and Dr. and Mrs. Hartzell. Harry Hartzell was a pediatrician at PAMF for 35 years, and probably took care of at least one of Dennis’s kids. Anyway, a nice group.

At 4:30 we had the monthly 6th floor meeting, featuring this time the introduction of two new residents, Marc and Sophia. They haven’t fully moved in but came in for the floor meeting.

CH laid on a fancy supper for St. V, although since I’d had a large lunch, I couldn’t really get the full benefit. Anyway the 6th floor had supper together and all was jolly.

Tuesday 02/13/2024

Yesterday I stopped in the Activity room to check out what Ian had reported as a problem with the assistive listening device. The Activity room has a “t-loop”, which transmits the audio from the microphone and zoom room box, to some hearing aids. And there are a couple of little receivers, about the size of an old-fashioned pocket transistor radio, with attached ear-pieces, that can also pick up the t-loop audio. Except one of them didn’t work. It was easy to figure out the problem; it uses a 9-volt battery and the two little springy metal tabs that contact the battery terminals, were badly corroded. Fine, except as I was scratching at one of them with a fingernail and trying to bend the springy contact to have more spring pressure — it broke off.

I took it back to my room and considered. I could see how the little tabs could be pried out and un-soldered from their wires, but what could I replace them with? Among the Youtube channels I watch is the series by Randi Rain, where she repairs old electric toys, and I’ve seen her replace corroded battery tabs. I can do this, I thought. So this morning I headed out at 8am to Ace Hardware where I bought a strip of thin springy brass metal, just the width of the tabs in the receiver. (I was very pleased to find Ace had a nice selection of brass sheet in various sizes, including exactly what I could use with minimal cutting and shaping.) Got out my soldering iron and other tools, and I did successfully replace the two contact tabs in the t-loop receiver, and it worked. I had that all done and tidied up by 9:30am.

Then came the writers meeting. The theme was “road taken or not taken” and several people wrote very touching and interesting essays on points in life where they had made choices. I had no contribution. Thinking about it before, it seemed to me that almost everything I did was determined, me just flopping into whatever came my way with little direction. Now I think, no, there was one point when I actually made a decision to apply to IBM, with life-changing results. So I should have written about that. Oh well.

After lunch it was the second and final rehearsal for the Strollin into the Sixties show. Everything went pretty well.

I wasn’t pleased with the dinner menu and didn’t see anybody around to eat with, so I got in the car and went out. Had pulled pork at Armadillo Willy’s.