Tuesday 09/19/2023

Out early, walk to PAMF (2.2 miles for the day) for the second blood draw, after I consumed the single tablet of dex last night. I have no idea what this is supposed to prove. The Sutter Health website notifies me of new test results and this one hasn’t come in yet.

That left me an hour to write something for the writers group. The cue this week was “music lessons”. I’ll stick what I wrote at the end. It was a good session, ten or eleven people had written, and all but one of them had similar experiences to mine, where they didn’t get have a good experience or learn anything.

Afternoon I helped Edie solve a silly problem with her Mac. And I took down the pictures that have been in my hallway gallery for several months and decided what to print for the next set. I printed one picture, 17×11, and the printer goofed up and did some banding and skipping. Didn’t quite ruin the picture because it only affected the left and right edges, so I cut it down to 14×11 and could still frame it and put it up. But then I had to clean the heads, and then I had to run a “power cleaning” which takes a long time and uses up half the capacity of the waste-ink-box. But after that the printer was ok.

The set of guitar strings I ordered two days ago arrived, thank you Amazon Prime, and I spent an hour re-stringing Karen’s guitar. Then I downloaded a guitar tuner app for the iPhone. Tuned it up and it sounds great! It’s a Yamaha, quite large, I think it’s Yamaha’s copy of the Martin “Dreadnought” style. With new strings it feels good and it has a very big sound. I played it for ten minutes and my left hand is sore. Not the guitar’s fault. Just out of condition muscles.

Monday 09/18/2023

Out at 8 to walk to PAMF. Dr. Marx has ordered a cortisol level test which involves having a blood draw, then 12 hours later taking a single dose of dexamethasone, and another blood draw. So I walk to PAMF for the first blood draw, then have a nice coffee and pastry for breakfast at Peets, and walk back.

At 10:30 it was time for the event coordinator’s meeting, where we finalize the calendar for the next month. Back to my room to enter all the events into our A/V calendar spreadsheet and schedule an A/V team meeting. Then to FOPAL for a couple of hours of book pricing.

Back in time for a quick nap and then Rhonda’s monthly open meeting. This is one thing that distinguishes CH from most senior facilities. Staff respects residents sufficiently to have monthly direct contacts, including things like, today, going over the Strategic Plan and how it is progressing.

Then Rhonda finished up by sharing a presentation she had given to the Lee Center residents last week. Called “road to Channing House” it was basically her autobiography. The initial motivation was a dementia program called the Golden Leaf, which among other things tries to build trust by having residents and staff share their “road” to where they are now. Rhonda led by example, but other staffers are expected to provide similar talks in coming months.

Anyway, her bio is quite impressive, with multiple degrees, first in financial management, which she practiced for a number of years as a consultant and as a manager; and then a masters in geriatric care. She met her husband the first day of college, and is still married to him. He’s a physicist and chemical engineer. They have one natural daughter and one adopted son.

Before supper I put together another event video, from zoom recordings of a memorial a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, I ordered new strings for Karen’s guitar. Lightweight ones, so hopefully it will not be too painful getting my calluses back. Do I want to practice enough to get my calluses back?

Sunday 09/17/2023

Did a little writing in the morning. At 1pm I brought the car around to be one of three CH carpools to Noises Off at the Pear Theater. They did a really good job on that show. Very entertaining and fun.

Evening, dinner with Karen and David M and Bob S. We talked a lot about the music of the 1960s, when all of us were in, or just out of, college. Or dropping out, in my case. I was (as usual) the only person at the table without an actual degree. It developed that Karen has a guitar that she hasn’t played in decades (took lessons a while then put it in the closet). She offered to loan it to me, and they brought it around after supper. So now I have a guitar in my apartment. Not totally sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Saturday 09/16/2023

A lovely unscheduled day. I walked in the morning to Cafe Zoe in Menlo Park. Very tasty zucchini/carrot cake.

Later in the day I actually did some writing on the novel.

At 7pm, walked over to the Lucy Stern theater to attend Matilda the Musical. I had seen this show in London, Day 1.078, and as you can see from that link, thought it “very silly” and also had a hard time following the lyrics. Well, the TheaterWorks production was just as silly (no surprise, same book) but was even harder to understand. This was due, at least mostly, I’m pretty sure, to a really bad sound system. I’m sitting in an excellent seat, G108, 7th row center. All the sound seems to be coming from high up to my left, and it is too loud and distorts on all the peaks.

The actors were all working really hard, well-rehearsed, sharp, great dance moves, great physical comedy. Can’t understand a word they sing. The whole long story that Matilda tells the Librarian? One word in 20, maybe. A shame. During the first big number I decided I would leave at intermission, and I did.

Friday 09/15/2023

Went for a standard walk in the morning. Then spent the rest of the morning in my California Driver’s License on-line study program.

There was a frustrating half hour during which the DMV website kept getting 504 time-out errors while trying to verify my phone number. It would send a text with a 6-digit code, but then crash with the error when I tried to enter the code. Or it wouldn’t send the code. Repeated trials using different browsers on different computers all failed, and then finally it all worked and I was in.

Once in, the on-line class was pretty well designed. I took lots of hand notes. The quizzes at the end of each section were rather simple. Hopefully the test at the DMV next week will be as easy.

At 4:30 I went down to set up the auditorium for the long-awaited C&W Jamboree. The committee had done a great job setting up and decorating. My part went smoothly, and I was given lots of heartfelt thanks from everybody for how smoothly all the videos and stuff came off. No big messups or even little ones. A good time was had by all.

Thursday 09/14/2023

Spent the day at the Shustek center, cataloging old manuals. That’s about it.

Wednesday 09/13/2023

A nice low-pressure day. I took the standard walk first thing, and it was ok. I rebuilt the C&W video for what I hope is the last time. I helped Sandy figuring out how to make a page magnifier work in the CH library. Somebody had donated this thing, it has a 15-inch CRT monitor (“hey the 80s called, they want their TV back”) on a stand with lights under it. You put a document on the tray and can roll it around and the TV shows a magnified image. She hadn’t figured out how to hook it up. It wasn’t hard. Afterward, it was ugly, but it worked.

Dr. Margaret is back from her summer at her place in Tahoe. I’d been saving my old blu-ray player for her at her request, and I installed it. In fact she already had a DVD player and didn’t know it. It was in the bottom of her media cabinet and not hooked to the TV. Somebody gave up early, I guess, when moving her stuff back, in 2019, from the upgrade. Well now she has a better one which actually works.

Today was the monthly 6th floor meeting and dinner. Nothing special from the meeting. While I was sitting in the dining room having supper, David G came by. He’d been setting up for the evening’s speaker, and couldn’t make the ceiling camera work. Well, it worked, but it wouldn’t zoom or pan. I suggested a couple of things to try. He came by a few minutes later and said those hadn’t worked. Then he went to another table to have his own supper.

Since I was done with my entree, I got up and went into the auditorium. I verified that the camera was on but wouldn’t pan or zoom. Those functions are controlled by a little box. I power-cycled the little box. Pan and zoom now worked. I went back in the dining room and told David G. Score one for the old “have you tried rebooting it” ploy.

The lecturer was Dr. Lerone Martin, currently in charge of the MLKJr. Institute at Stanford, where they are collating all of MLK’s papers. Couple of penetrating questions from the audience. “What would he have thought of our intervention in the Ukraine-Russia war?” Ans. MLK was all about non-violence, but struggled with non-violent responses to evil violence. “What did he have to say about discrimination toward women?” Ans. In many ways, socially, economically, he foresaw a future that didn’t yet exist, but in matters of gender, he was a man of his time.

Tuesday 09/12/2023

In the morning I completed preparing the video for the C&W show. For what I thought was the final time, but of course during and after the rehearsal this afternoon people wanted changes, so I will do it one more time. I edit the material in iMovie. Then I have iMovie export the finished video as a file, which will typically be 8GB in size and takes an hour. Step 2, run that through Handbrake which produces a video of the same resolution that is just over 1GB. This takes 45 minutes. While it runs I go back and verify the exact starting times of each “chapter”, that is each of the 24 musical numbers, like “Crazy” at 17:42. These are in a text file and only need changing from the point where a new song is added. The compressed video is opened in Metadoctor, an app that knows how to add chapter markers, and it loads the text file and marks the chapters. Then I just have to copy the movie off the desktop machine and into the laptop that will show it.

At 10:30 was the writers meeting. This week we were supposed to write about what we’ve been reading. I had written my little essay while in Silverdale, so I was set.

At 12:30 I met with Marcia for lunch, at my request. Marcia is the resident member of the Board, and the chair of the Strategic Planning committee. I wanted to talk to her about what I saw as the unnecessary hiring of a consultant for yet another boring and expensive round of planning. We get along well, we’ve been working together since back in 2020 when we were the volunteer coordinators for the resident Covid volunteer groups. She told me what she understands about the process, but in fact I still don’t see it. But I’m not going to make any more trouble.

At 1:30 I started setting up for the C&W rehearsal. That only took half an hour this time so I was way early. We finally got going with a full run-through at 3:10 and finished at 4:45, so it is well under the 2 hours we’d set as a limit. After I’d tidied the AV equipment up, I could relax for the rest of the day. PBJ sandwich for supper and early to bed.

Monday 09/11/2023

Up at 5:30 in order to have time to read the agenda and stuff for the Strategic Planning Committee meeting at 10:30. Made it to the RA meeting a couple of minutes late. That ran until 10:15, and then off to the SPC.

At the SPC I made a bit of a fuss. The main point of the meeting was for Rhonda to introduce Yet Another Consultant to help with planning. This guy, Brian, talked about the “process” that his firm was going to help us through in order to decide what we want to do about a range of issues that Rhonda wants guidance on.

He had a lengthy presentation full of buzz-words and marketing-speak, and by lengthy I mean 20 minutes plus. He was describing a three-phase process, phase 1 would involve getting opinions from everybody and evaluating marketing conditions. That would take 3 months. Then a month evaluating the financials and where the money could come from to do the things that phase 1 had settled on. Then another 6-week phase of detailed planning the things.

I was pissed. When he finally asked if there were any questions, I went off. Not my usual glib presentation because I was angry, although I believe I kept it down to merely indignant. This all duplicates exactly what this committee has been doing for the past two years, I said. We got everybody’s opinions. As to marketing, we paid for a survey by a different consultancy and heard from them at length. As to financials, if there is anything in your phase 2 that Jaisie, our CFO, couldn’t give you in 24 hours, that would be her fault. We gave Rhonda good general goals and Rhonda and the staff have elaborated that into many specific actions, in fact (holding up the agenda) the next part of this meeting is to hear about how those actions are being implemented.

I was thinking, and at the end all you have is a plan, nothing actually done or even started, but I didn’t say that part.

Nobody backed me up on this. There was silence, then Rhonda nicely explained that re marketing, a lot has changed since Covid, people want other things than before. I did not say anything else the rest of the meeting. But I was thinking, if you know that, why do you need a consultant to tell you that?

Talking to Patty tonight — as ex-CEO of Habitat for Humanity she has much greater experience with planners and consultants than I — she points out that we already have a long list of things we’d like to do and don’t have money for. Having a consultant evaluate projects will not produce money by magic.

But nobody on the committee even nodded when I did my little rant, so I guess I’m outvoted.

From there I went to FOPAL and put in 2 hours on the post-sale triage and processing a couple of boxes of books. After which I was tired, and came home and took a nice 1:15 nap from 4 to 5:15. Dinner with Patty and the Goldens and Joan. Then I finished the edits on the C&W video.

Anyway, I feel fine, which I take to mean I didn’t pick up anything either in the airports or planes, (where I was masked) or at the festival where I wasn’t. Or from Bill, who Laurel says came down with some virus (not Covid) the night after I was there.

Started from Silverdale and had a little time. Coming over the Narrows Bridge, Rainier was a blue hulk, it seems so huge from that view. I had googled “best of mt rainier from tacoma” which supposedly was along Ruston way, so I had the maps app send me there. But in fact I couldn’t find a good view there. So I never got any decent looks at the Moutain this trip.

Visited for a couple of hours with Laurel and Bill, including lots of gossip and a delicious breakfast. Then off to the airport where the flight home was nominal. Actually the plane gave us a nice view of downtown SF which I’ll get off the phone tomorrow maybe.

Walking through the airport I realized I was walking pain-free for the first time in a couple of weeks, the gout having run out of toes to annoy, and I’m boppin’ along with my overnight bag on my shoulder, feeling like a capable world traveler again. You got to savor these moments of nominal physical functionality.