Lovely day except for a couple of things. I had lunch scheduled for tomorrow to introduce Leah to Dennis, and Dennis called to say he was sick. Then before I could decide whether to cancel, I got an email from Susan, one of the actors in the drama class whose rehearsal I was at yesterday, saying that she had tested positive for Covid. Since I was in the same room with her for a couple of hours and talked to her one-on-one, I’ve been well exposed. So now I have to avoid all group activities and the dining room until I have tested negative on the 5th and the 7th. Assuming I do.
Other than that I took care of some stuff, worked on printing out some of the guitar music that I have been playing off the screen of the computer.
Because rain was promised, and there was actually a blob of green approaching Palo Alto on the weather radar map, I did a 2-mile walk on the treadmill. In fact, no rain fell.
I paid a bill and practiced some guitar, and I got rid of some of the model-building paints. Then after lunch I worked AV for a tech rehearsal by the drama workshop group. Setting up mics, and practicing capturing video. That ran 2 hours.
In the evening I worked at getting some song scores printed out off the websites I’ve been using, so I don’t need to have my laptop when practicing.
Remember when you used to write checks? And when the year turned, and you’d write a check and put the wrong year on it? And swear, and have to tear up the check and write “VOID” in your checkbook for that check number? Ah the good old days. I spent the morning and some of the afternoon working to set up an AI writing assistant. Hoping to jump-start my novel. We’ll see. I also spent some time down at FOPAL, partly because I had a couple of complicated donations I didn’t know what to do with, and wanted to catch Janette, the boss, for advice. And I did. So those things somewhat dealt with.
I haven’t mention the big screw-up. I was getting less and less happy with the 240z project, it just wasn’t working out, and then I was pressing a decal into place and broke off a piece of the body. To fix it would be a lot of work and I just said fuck it, and not only did I trash that project, I also decided to clean all the model-building stuff out of the closet. Today I gave away the airbrush and my collection of paints.
I opened the new year with the standard walk, and felt fine. So that’s nice. On return to CH I got the news that the talk that was scheduled for 11am, the one we helped Dr Basso rehearse for on Friday, had been canceled, as he felt unwell. Had it not been canceled for that, there would have been another problem, in that the AV desk in the auditorium was still covered with a plastic tarp after the weekend’s rain had produced another leak. But it was relief all around that he’d canceled.
I had been invited by Carolyn to join her and Edie and Gwen for lunch. As normal on a holiday, lunch was a big deal meal, and then dining services all pack up and leave right after for afternoon with their families. So the menu was a little fancier than normal.
I asked the ladies what kind of songs I should be rehearsing with the guitar, and one said, Peter Paul and Mary, and another said, Pete Seeger. So after lunch I spent some time collecting guitar music from those, and have a bunch of songs to work on. One Seeger number, I think the title is “Get up and Go“, is going to work very well. It’s funny anyway but I can “sell” it (better than Seeger, if I dare say so). So that is definitely in my “set list” for the next time I perform. Which is not scheduled in any way.
At 5:30 there were only 6 of us who met in the 6th floor dining room to share our sack suppers. But a friendly little group, me and Carolyn and Edie, plus Dr. Margaret and Diane and Craig.
Quiet Sunday morning. Dining services provided a nice lunch. At 5 I brought the car up so the SWBB car pool wouldn’t have to trek the long basement walk to the Lee garage. The carpool was only me, Patty and Martha this time. The game was a non-conference one against Morgan State (Maryland), and Stanford won easily by 60 points.
Back to CH by 7:45 in good time to join the new years eve party on the 11th floor. Sat at a table for one round of Trivial Pursuit, when was the last time I played that? Peter and Al were playing Jenga at a very high level, I caught the end of the game:
Into bed by 10 to lie and listen to the explosions of illegal fireworks from east Palo Alto.
This morning my neighbor Dr. Margaret called me in to help her fix her antique clock. It’s a very tall “grandfather” — I think the right term is a “case clock” — easily 7 foot high that her grandfather got in payment for a medical bill, in England way back sometime. She had been trying to adjust the pendulum and disconnected the pendulum. There’s only one guy in the whole bay area who works on these and he’s booked out for months. So I provided the muscle and at her direction we removed the top cover that surrounds the works. Then we could see where and how the pendulum attaches, and it was fairly simple to reattach it. Then the clock starts the tick… tock… routine just like a grandfather clock should sound.
Later in the day I polished the clear coat of the 240z. That revealed a number of glaring flaws in the finish, but you only see them if you are like an inch away. I thought I knew what I was doing with this paint job but… I gave serious thought to ordering a new kit and doing it all over again. OTOH, once it’s done and in a nice clear plastic box, nobody will notice.
Got bored in the afternoon and went down to FOPAL and processed four boxes of computer donations. Later, had dinner with Patty and Stew and Kathy.
Took a standard walk in the morning, timed to let Wanda clean my room, and incidentally timed to pass between bands of rain coming through.
At 1pm it was time for the monthly AV team meeting. We tried headset mics. David G made a strong argument that we need more people, and I agreed to make a recruiting pitch at the next RA meeting.
At 3pm was scheduled a rehearsal for Dr. Larry who is to give a talk this coming Monday, yes 1/1. Larry is not in the greatest of shape, but is determined to give the talk. I assisted Ian in setting up. Ian will actually run it, but I need to be there also I think.
Ordinarily this would be apartment cleaning day, but owing to the holidays, that will be tomorrow morning instead. I got the Advance Health Care Directive signed, anyway. I had lunch with Kass to talk about a tech problem with a resident’s Mac. I put in an hour sanding the orange peel out of the clearcoat on the 240z.
I spent about 4 hours trying out three of the new AI writing assistants. These are web apps that intend to assist people writing books by providing an AI writing partner. Probably the most polished example of the three I tried would be Sudowrite. I won’t go into detail here, but I spent a lot of time on these and didn’t find any of them congenial.
Here is a link to the 8 minute video of my performance last night. (See the clip in yesterday’s post for an overall view of the setup.) Today several more people came up to congratulate me on this performance. It’s quite embarrassing, really, they say very nice things though.
Today was the day for the Channing House Musical Potpourri, at 7pm in the lobby. This was the conception of Mary R, chorus director. She roped me into it when she found out I was playing the guitar again.
I did the laundry; I went for a short walk and picked up a prescription at CVS, and I put in about 3 hours getting together a new Advanced Health Care Directive and some other end of life type papers. But mostly, I fiddled around killing time until 5, when I went down for an early supper, and to put out the sound system for the lobby so we’d have a mic.
Then back to my room to fidget until 6:30 when I took the guitar down and joined the other musicians setting up. I was surprised how nice this time was, just hanging out with musicians as they tune up and get ready. Here’s a snatch of video to show the room.
Here was the program, which Mary had set up in 7-minute segments: Sing-A-Long with Arlene (pianist, in the santa hat); Baroque Trio (Lou on recorder, Alice on cello, Kay on flute, in the center of the video); piano and clarinet duet by John and Francis; Sandy doing a reading from a story by Truman Capote; a cello/flute duet; then little ol’ Moi doing two songs on guitar; and the Jazzy Trio, which is Arlene, Stew and Kay again. Jerry video’d the whole show, and I expect he will give me a clip of my performance which I may share later on.
So, David, how did it go? Well you know, it went very very well indeed. I didn’t make any musical screwups, and the audience were smiling and singing along. And I got probably the biggest hand of the night. Afterward several people came up to me to congratulate me and say they enjoyed it. Part of that might have been just surprise, since I have never done any public performance of any kind around here, and suddenly I’m singing and playing the guitar in front of a crowd. But they seemed sincerely impressed.
No writers group today. I spent the morning hour going through and organizing my various end of life documents, especially the Advanced Health Care Directive. I need to change that and I see the current one was prepared by the attorney who redid the family trust after Marian’s death. I don’t want to go back to her, and I don’t want to go down to the one in San Jose I worked with a couple years back. Anyway I did a couple of other paperwork things.
Then down to FOPAL for the weekly processing of donations. And also for another 2 hours with Frank, going through computer-related stuff he has accumulated in the storage room. The quesstion was, what of this is worth saving to sell at the Vintage Computer Fest in August, and what can be recycled? We got through maybe half the boxes before I called a halt.
Back home for a nap, rehearse (performance tomorrow night!), dinner.
Codgerville 