Well I dunno. I was pretty busy all day and I don’t remember doing what. Main activity was to attend a play at The Pear. I did not like it. It was William Shakespeare’s the Land of the Dead and it was a supposed comedy, Shakespeare with zombies. Although the cast as usual worked very hard and professionally, the script in my opinion was a mess. There were some bad directorial decisions, as well. An important character is the actor Wil Kemp, the guy who played Falstaff and other of Shakespeare’s comedy roles. The play makes him a manic, nonstop comic, constantly horsing around and bothering everybody (which he might well have been). Fine, but for some bizarre reason they gave that role to a a rather petite woman. She worked her butt off but just couldn’t be a convincing slapstick comedian, she didn’t have the physical presence for it. Anyway, not good.
Sanded the primer coat on the 240Z and then gave it a 2nd prime coat.
Took a shorter walk down around Pardee Park. Somehow walking toward 101 and the bay is “down”. Strange, since the terrain is dead flat. Oh well.
Did some little things. Practiced guitar, sprayed the 240Z with gray primer. Felt busy. Sometime I am going to keep an accurate log of what I do on such a day. Oh well.
After lunch set up the auditorium for the AV meeting, to which only 5 came. Presented the new head-worn microphone. I saw this on the priest at the Kelleher mass, and bought one for $29 bucks off Amazon. We have head-worn mics which are basically a loop that hangs over one ear. To be secure you need a dab of surgical tape to keep it against your cheek. This mic has two loops, so it goes over both ears, and has a wire that circles around the back of your neck. This gives a solid base for the microphone that sticks out alongside your cheek. Everybody tried it and agreed that it would work for most but dubious for anyone with long hair.
We also talked about showing DVDs from laptops instead of using the Blu-Ray player in the equipment rack. We have a Macbook Air that works with an Apple DVD player for this. But we also have a little Acer PC. Later I took that upstairs with me and installed the driver for the Apple DVD player so now we can use either it or the Macbook.
Did a lot of minor things this morning, watering plants, tidying the apartment, and editing a document. What? Well, yesterday somebody asked on the email BB for help showing the Macy’s parade on the big TV on 11. And I replied by email saying, there’s a nice binder with illustrated directions right by the TV. Bert on the other hand actually went and met with the people, and told me that my directions left out a key step. So I brought down the binder and edited the instructions to include the missing step and of course, you can’t edit a document without checking everything, so that took an hour. I saw Edie by the elevator and got her to agree to test my directions. She’s smart but not at all technical, so a good tester.
Picked up my sack supper. Figured out how to make my new doorbell button stick. What? When I moved in I was equipped with a wireless doorbell button and a battery operated base station to make the ding-dong. Unfortunately the base station doesn’t give any indication when its three(!) C(!) batteries run down. Somebody who visited said, your doorbell doesn’t work. Well, crap, what a waste to buy more C-cells. So from Amazon I ordered a wireless doorbell whose base station plugs into a wall outlet, hello, no batteries and always working. Except the button didn’t want to stick to the old double-sided tape on the door frame. Found it on the floor 10 feet down the hall. So today I figured it out, some sticky stuff I’ve had a long time for hanging posters.
Lunch in the dining room which was in fancy mode, greeting you at the door with a selection of wine, salads, lobster stuff on a puff pastry. People already at the table said the turkey entree was all white meat, so I ordered the ham, which was fine.
In the afternoon, just to get out of the building, I put the 500mm lens on the Nikon and went down for a walk in the Baylands. Low tide, boring birds, no good pictures resulted.
Had dinner with 5 other stay-at-homes, brown bags in the floor dining room.
Bit of guitar practice. Paid a bill. Then in the hour before the writers group I threw together a couple of paragraphs to the cue, “describe a minute in enough detail so we can see it.” So I described the start of guitar practice, tuning and playing one chord.
After the meeting at 12 it was time to rush off for an IBM reunion lunch with Tom Daniell, Scott, and someone I hadn’t spoken to since 1979 or so, Zoe Lepturgeos. Pleasant lunch and reminiscing. Tom and I agreed that our memories are jumbled, whereas Scott has the whole history of that era of the 70s and 80s in detail.
From there to FOPAL to process the other 5 boxes of computer books that I didn’t finish yesterday. And then home. Unsurprisingly after a major Mexican lunch, I had no appetitie for supper.
First thing, took a walk. Practiced guitar a bit. Then it was time for the monthly Event Coordinator’s meeting, at which we get the next month’s calendar of events. I need to transcribe those into my AV events spreadsheet and schedule an AV meeting. Yawn.
Then down to FOPAL to process a bunch of books. There were 10 boxes waiting, which I knew because Frank had sent an email about the status of FOPAL yesterday, including the info that there were 10 boxes of donations at the computer section. The donor of several of these had evidently been most active in the 90s. As a result I set aside nearly a box of stuff to sell at the Vintage Computer Faire next summer, rather than on my shelves now.
I did 5 boxes (2 hours) and went home. I’ll go back and finish them up tomorrow.
Rhonda’s monthly open meeting at 4. Featured a staff bio: they’ve been doing staff bios under the title “road to Channing House” for a while now. This time it was Yadira Aldana, I’m not sure what her actual title is now; she’s been in different posts over the years. Just a useful admin type. She was born in Mexico and came to California when she was three; first of her family to go to college; now has a master’s in psych and gerontology.
Quiet Sunday morning. At 11, joined the car pool, this time just 3 of us, to go to the SWBB game at noon. The opponent was Duke. Stanford took an early lead and seemed to be in charge. Duke came back strong in the 3rd quarter, and the game went to overtime. Stanford finally won by 2, when Duke failed to score on their final possession.
First thing was a date for coffee with Harriet, basketball friend. I had planned to walk the 1.6 miles over to the coffee shop in Midtown. The morning news was talking about the rain moving through and the streets outside were wet. But the radar map on the weather site showed that all the rain activity — all the green pixels — had moved off East already. So I did walk. Had a pleasant chat over coffee, during which, a new rain shower started. So Harriet gave me a ride back.
Other than that, a quiet day. Practiced guitar. Took a tech squad call, lady having trouble with passwords. That was about it.
Took a standard walk. At 10:30, put on my red shirt and drove to the museum to lead the noon tour. That went pretty well, about 10 people, very attentive.
Practiced guitar. Revised the short video I made yesterday, to make it a little longer, at Kass’s request. Then sat down to make an orange color.
Previously I had purchased some Light Orange acrylic paint. It looked like the right color in the color patch at the online hobby store, but when it arrived it was clearly too light and yellow. Today I sat down with a sheet of plastic for a palette, and a couple of blunt hypodermics for dispensing small quantities of liquid precisely, and experimented. I had some deep red from the same paint company. Pretty quickly I worked out that just a teeny addition of the red to the orange got the right color. About 1 drop to 16 drops, or so.
I put all the orange in a bottle and threw in a couple of screws I had in my junk drawer, to facilitate mixing. Measured the weight of the paint in the bottle (by weighing an empty bottle then the full one), and began dispensing single CCs of red and shaking, shaking. Pretty soon had the right color. Here it is, posed against the same reference pic as yesterday.
Today’s main activity was to drive to Berkeley to attend the funeral mass for Bob Kelleher. Bob’s wife Lolly was Marian’s college roommate at Cal. For decades we played bridge with Bob and Lolly, once a month, alternating their house and ours. Lolly died a couple years back, and Bob died just 3 weeks back. I had not expected to find the coffin was at the mass, but it was, with burial scheduled for this afternoon.
There was to be a reception at the parish hall after and I know that had she been there, Marian would have stayed for all of it, of course. I kind of wanted to, but was intimidated. There were maybe 100 to 120 people there, and when the mass (finally!) ended, they all exited the church and formed a large chattering mass outside on the church steps. So many people I didn’t know, who all apparently knew each other. And a few people I did recognize but couldn’t instantly put names to. The four daughters I knew, and I recognized a couple of their husbands. I hugged one of the daughters, Bernardine, but the others were not in sight, or surrounded by layers of well-wishers. So I chickened out and left.
I took advantage of being in the East Bay and stopped at one of the few remaining well-stocked hobby stores, Hobbies Unlimited in San Leandro. They have a very complete display of paints from several makers, but I still couldn’t find a good orange. Wait, have I mentioned the 240Z? I finally acquired a model kit for a Datsun 240Z. They aren’t available in the US, but I found a Japanese kit on eBay. I must paint it the orange of our (Marian’s) 240Z. Here’s a reference shot, not our car but very similar,
There are several different colors of orange in that shot, depending on the angle of the light, but none of them are available in a bottle or spray, that I can find. It’s a “burnt orange” color, kind of hinting of caramel. Right?
Came on home and finished editing a short 4-minute version of the Appreciation Fund kickoff party.
Then off to SWBB. There were 5 for out carpool and I drove. Yes the Prius holds three across the back. My supper was a tall cup of Chicken Pho, which was delicious. Very spicy and hot. The game was v. Cal Poly, who were completely out-classed, the final score was like 80-30. Basketball really should have a “mercy rule” like they have in softball. Up by more than 30 in the third quarter, game declared over, drive home safely. But no they have to play on to the end. Which risks injuries as tired players get desperate.
Codgerville 