Friday 07/14/2023

Took the standard walk for the first time in a while. It went fine. In fact the latter half went fast because I was practicing a talk I plan to give to my AV team next week.

Then I put on my red docent shirt and went off to CHM to lead the noon tour. I had scheduled this at the request of my basketball friend Harriet, who said she had a couple of visitors from out of town who would like to see the museum. So the three of them arrived in good time and joined the tour. Everybody enjoyed my talk it seemed. The visitors were Dave and Judy, up from San Diego. After the tour we went for lunch across the street at Cucina Venti, which has poshed itself up somewhat since I was last there. Also its prices. Oh well.

Nothing much to say for the rest of the day. I plan to watch the Friday live stream from SFJazz, with Savion Glover.

Thursday 07/13/2023

Did the gym thing. Twice in a week. Will I do it again Saturday? Time will tell.

Just like yesterday, walked to T&C for coffee and scone at Peet’s, then across the parking lot to the PAMF building where my cardiologist hangs out. This appointment went nicely. She listened to my heart and said the TAVR valve doesn’t have any sounds that suggest backflow. So it is functioning nominally. Yay! We reviewed my BP and she reduced one of my three BP meds from 7 days to M-W-F only. See you in a year.

Back home, at 1pm I met with Alice. Alice is very smart, very with-it. She has a bit of a reputation for being a PITA around CH, because she is very involved in progressive political causes and organizes a lot. (She has more than once traveled to Washington DC on her own to lobby congresspeople.) However she is nice enough in person and like I said, quick on the uptake. At the last RA meeting, David Golden had thrown in an extemporaneous plea for more AV volunteers, and Alice had contacted me to volunteer. Can’t turn that down.

Today I met with her on the 11th floor and walked her through using the Lecternette there. Then we went downstairs to the Auditorium and went through using the downstairs Lecternette, the one we wheel out to the lobby for events there. She had no problem picking it up. We went backstage and she showed me some things about the stage lights that I had not known! Then we went over the auditorium microphone usage.

After supper we had a concert, flute, violin, cello, piano, some classical music. It was well performed but I didn’t stay for all of it.

Wednesday 07/12/2023

I planned the whole morning around an appointment with my cardiologist at 11am. This has been in my calendar for weeks and weeks. Somehow, when PAMF notified me of the date they had assigned for my annual visit, I thought it was Wednesday. So a little after 9 I headed out on foot for the Town & Country shopping center where I had a nice coffee, then at 10:30 walked across the parking lot to the medical building and checked in.

The nice receptionist seemed to be having a problem finding my appointment. Then she said, “Your appointment is for tomorrow.” Yup, I had put an appointment for 7/13 into my calendar on 7/12, all those weeks ago. And when I did the online check-in they wanted it had escaped my notice that the appointment date was 7/13, or didn’t notice that the 13th was not Wednesday. So, nice walk, no doctor. Tomorrow I will get to repeat the same drill I guess.

Later I followed up on an A/V puzzle. The Activity Room is a classroom sized space on the 2nd floor, used for exercise classes and meetings of all sorts. It has a big TV with ZoomRoom, and a sound system, and a lectern with a microphone. But some users would like to have a second mic, one they could hand around, for some meetings. In a closet there is a cart full of discarded audio equipment. In it I found a wireless mic and receiver with a label on a piece of tape, “Not Working”. I took it and cleaned it up and thought I had a major win when it appeared to be working. I connected it to a speaker and I swear that for two seconds, it was putting out sound. Then it cut off, and the little LED that says “RF OK” meaning the mic was synced with the receiver, went out and never came back. I took it apart and looked for a loose connection but no, there was no visible problem. It had a brief fling at working then died permanently. I gave it to the IT guys to recycle.

We had our monthly 6th floor meeting and dinner. Nothing exciting except, it appears that there is finally a taker for the room across the hall from me, which has been vacant over a year. A John McKuen (sp?) who Carolyn says seems very nice.

Tuesday 07/11/2023

Did the gym thing. Doing the gym machines once a week does not cut it. I need to either drop it, or do it more often. Three times, perhaps? It’s only half an hour.

Because tomorrow morning, which would normally be laundry day, is kind of booked, I decided to do my laundry this morning. Patty’s name was on the schedule for 8-12 but the washer wasn’t running. I called her and she said no problem, she wasn’t laundering this time. So I ran my laundry in between other things.

At 10 I met with Edie (6th floor Edie, who is very smart & funny) to help her buy a new iMac. That was fun. At 10:45 it was the writers meeting. The cue was “best advice you’ve ever had” and I had thought about it and come up with nothing. I don’t remember anybody giving me advice that altered my path. So I hadn’t written. I had to leave that meeting early anyway because I needed to leave for California avenue before 12.

That was because sister in law Jean had invited me to lunch to meet AliceSally. Alice Sallyis a retired school teacher, also a widow, that Jean has been sharing her house with for several months now. I hadn’t met her yet. She turns out to be a nice person.

From there I had to drive over to FOPAL to meet with Frank, another volunteer. It only occurred to me yesterday, that the Vintage Computer Festival is coming up in less than a month. For the last two years, FOPAL has had a table to sell books at the VCF. It’s been quite successful, we moved a lot of books last year and took in about $700 as I recall.

Over the year since then I’ve been setting aside books that probably won’t sell in the regular sales, but might sell to a bunch of people interested in old machines. Like DOS manuals from 1990. I put these in boxes labeled “Hold for VCF” and send them to the bargain room. Frank rules the bargain room. Today we met up to locate all those VCF boxes and count them to see what we had. This meant moving about 40 heavy boxes of books around to get at the heavy boxes of VCF books. Turns out there are ten in total. We also spent some time putting prices on some software discs. Look on eBay, kind of take an average of what you see. For example, a distribution DVD for Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard” goes for $20-30.

By 4 I was bushed and came home.

Monday 07/10/2023

First up was the residents association meeting. Nothing especially newsworthy there. After that I drove down to FOPAL and did the post-sale cleanup, sending all books that had seen four sale days without selling, to the bargain room. Three boxes worth. Processed one box of new donations. Did an hour of sorting and tidying up the sorting room.

In the afternoon I did a lot of emailing to keep my AV group organized. Exchanged emails with Alice who volunteers to join. Proposed changing out the lectern in the auditorium; I can’t think why I didn’t propose that years ago, there is so much annoying about the present one.

Jerry and Betty invited me to dinner. Mostly because Jerry wanted to know what was going on with the auditorium, I think.

In the evening there was quite a pleasant concert in the lobby, a jazz pianist, Bob Applebaum, who has performed here before, and a friend of his on bass guitar. They did a bunch of standards from the 20s, like “Someone to watch over me”, doing each straight and then with jazz improvisations and general rewriting.

Talking with Lenny afterward I heard about a new policy that staff has thought up, regarding the video recordings we make of our meetings, that seems quite bizarre to me. We will see.

Sunday 07/09/2023

At 10 I warmed up the auditorium so Edie Eddy (yes, real name) could rehearse for her Sunday at Home talk next week. She went on a cruise from Norway through the islands above Scotland. The cruise line had a photographer along on all the day trips, and gave passengers a DVD, 40 minutes of video of their activities. She is going to talk over it and narrate her trip. She practiced a bit. It’ll be ok, I guess.

At 1:30 seven of us gathered at the usual spot. “At the coke machine” is the meeting point for car-pooling to either basketball or the theater. In this case, we were going to see Falsettos at the Pear. This is a musical from the 80s, with a theme of love in the time of the AIDS crisis. Remember that? How for a decade, there was a quiet slaughter of many young creative gay people? Now AIDS is survivable, but in the 80s or 90s it was a death sentence. This play was a Broadway hit in that era.

The play is all music, no spoken lines. The actors were almost all excellent, well all had excellent voices. Three or four were really good at acting, too, reacting and conveying emotion with body and gesture. It was a bit long for my taste, but not a wasted day.

Saturday 07/08/2023

I did pretty much nothing all day, except that at 10am I went down to the auditorium and chased a bug in our system and found it. For the last couple of zoom events, the audio from zoom participants has not been audible in the auditorium. If a zoom participant is unmuted, they can talk and other zoom participants can hear them, but their voice should also be heard in the auditorium and isn’t.

After 45 minutes of trying stuff and almost ready to give up, I happened to think of a setting… never mind the details but there was a simple software setting that was set wrong. Very satisfying to have resolved this problem.

At 6 I drove over to Mitchell Park to listen to an outdoor concert by Caravan, a Santana tribute group. They were pretty good. There was a big crowd, easily several hundred people spread out on a large grass lawn. Unfortunately our cool summer weather continues; the air temp was 62 and there was a brisk breeze. (Very much like Candlestick park back when we used to put on 3 layers of sweaters to watch a Giants game, in the 1980s.) So after 40 minutes I was shivering despite a sweater and came home.

Friday 07/07/2023

In the morning I took care of a bunch of little things. Bills, processed a video for the AV group, other stuff. Then met with David T, to get an education on the Heritage Circle and its operations. Bottom line, I and they have no real leverage over what staff does with a project like our AV upgrade that has been stalled out for months. The HC grants money to do a thing, but then it becomes one more capital project on the staff’s list of capital improvements. The staff decides where to rank it in the priority list, and has full discretion over the execution. He did suggest that in one particular matter, I should talk directly to CEO Rhonda.

At 2 I headed down to the museum to listen to Scott as he tried out his new docent tour. It and he are going to be good with a little practice.

Back at the shop, it was time for pizza. This was the second day in the week that the dining room was to be closed for dinner. On Tuesday it was for the holiday. Today it was because of a long-delayed staff appreciation party. The sixth floor had voted not to have a second sack supper picnic, but to order in pizza instead. So we met for pizza on the 11th floor.

I left that party early-ish at 6:40 to go over to Stanford for a concert. This was one of two concerts I had bought a ticket for in the Stanford summer Jazz Festival. It was a concert of the songs of Bert Bacharach (who only just died this year, age 93). The singer was Jackie Ryan, very personable, big alto voice. She was backed by Akira Tana, a Palo Alto native and a well-known jazz drummer, and three musicians from Osaka: Atsuko Hashimoto on organ, her husband on guitar, Hideki Kawamura. This group was very solid, especially Atsuko Hashimoto who ripped off several really exciting and dramatic solos during the evening. In any case, how can you go wrong with Say a Little Prayer, What’s it all About Alfie, Close to You, and of course finishing with Do You Know the Way to San Jose.

Thursday 07/06/2023

Tidied the apartment, then drove to the CHM warehouse on Yosemite ave in Milpitas. There I had my first exposure to ERMA. (ERMA was covered by the local NBC outlet, video which includes some shots of the loading dock at Yosemite.) Toni and I cataloged three pieces of ERMA today.

Back home, I had an hour break then went to the auditorium to set up for tonight’s event: a presentation of The Addams Family musical, by a group of high school students. The organization is called G.I.F.T. (Giving Individuals Fabulous Theatre), a 10 year old local organization of youthful thespians who bring performances to senior and youth facilities.

Two of them had stopped by on Sunday (4.213) to check out the facilities. Today at 5:45 the group of ten arrived, 8 actors, director, stage manager, all under the age of 18 but as assured and well-organized as if they’d been at it for decades. I had all eight of our wireless mics and other tech stuff warmed up and ready. But their tech guy sat down and worked out our sound and lights in 20 minutes. Meanwhile the cast rehearsed a couple of scenes, then they took half an hour to eat pizza, and at 7:30 they hit the stage singing and dancing and acting. The crowd loved them, they got lots of applause, and a good time was had by all.

Wednesday 07/05/2023

Facing an open day and thinking about what to do with it, when at 8:30am I got an email from Jesse the front desk guy at CHM, asking if they couldn’t please find some docents for a group of 30 students in a SJ State summer program. Well heck why not. So at 11 I was down at the museum in my red shirt. They were a nice group. I got half of the 30, of home about ten stuck close by and listened to my spiel.

That was about it for the day. In the evening I attended a lecture by a retired economics professor on the California economy. Which he has a lot of faith in, despite recent problems.