Tuesday 07/04/2023

Did the gym machines for the first time in a couple of weeks? and definitely feel it.

Prior to the writers group at 10:45 I wanted to write something. The cue was “My Country” but Connie said, take it where you want to. I kind of felt like maybe a poem? So I started writing a poem that kept getting stranger as it went. It was really a discovery process over half an hour, finding words that fit together and each led to something else. I’ll put it at the end.

Staff marketing person Ofelia had asked if I would host a couple who were interested in CH for lunch, as Ofelia had to leave. OK, sure. So I hustled down to the lobby at 12 and met with Bill and Jane and we shared a table that Ofelia had reserved. Nice people, easy to get along with. Today’s lunch was special; the dining staff was running a BBQ on the patio. You went outside and picked up your choice of foods and brought it into the dining room. The spread looked good, but unfortunately I picked the ribs and they hadn’t been cooked long enough. The meat was done but clung to the bone and was chewy. So I mostly ate cornbread and baked beans.

I piddled away the afternoon and took a short walk and then it was time for a 6th floor picnic. As usual on holidays we picked up sack suppers after lunch. By arrangement those who wanted, met in the floor dining room for a group picnic. There’s going to be another such day on Friday, because the dining room is being used that evening for a (well deserved) staff appreciation dinner. We’ve decided that rather than a sack picnic we’ll order in pizzas that day.

At 7:30 it will be time for the TGIF and fireworks party on the 11th floor. This TGIF is being sponsored by the “23rd floor” — the combined residents of the 2nd and 3rd floors, which have fewer apartments than the other floors. There will be rootbeer floats I am told. After sundown, people will stand on the roof and watch the fireworks from nearby cities. Since we had that very close-by fireworks show from Stanford a couple of nights ago, I’m not sure I will stay up there for that.

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Country considered as Brownian Motion

Oh, where is my country?
Surely not where I was birthed?
But then, all birth is random,
juxtaposing genes to mix
and do whate’er the flux
of place and daily happenstance
decree. Country is just context,
jar, enclosure for a stochastic
boil, all reflecting and deflecting,
momentum zero in the end.

Monday 07/03/2023

Started the day with a shortish walk of a mile plus, and with coffee and a pastry for breakfast. Then it was back to work, to run and record a First Monday Book Talk. The speaker was newish neighbor Susan, most of whose career was spent as a teacher at College of San Mateo. Besides teaching, she did research into the life of an author I had never heard of, Michel Tournier (me-shell turn-yay), publishing several scholarly papers and eventually writing a book on his career.

First Monday Book Talks are where an author, preferably but not necessarily a CH resident, talks about their book. Susan rocked it; she gave an enthusiastic and interesting half-hour biography of Tournier and his major works and got a big hand. Gigi, who is the producer of this series of talks, had a large table for 6 for lunch. Pleasant chatting.

Then off for three hours at FOPAL, processing 7 boxes of books and tidying up my shelves for the sale which is next weekend.

Sunday 07/02/2023

After watering the plants I decided to have a bit of a walk. The temperature has finally moved into summer, with a predicted 85, but it was pleasant out. I walked to the California avenue market. Had a bottle of juice, bought a pound of Blenheim apricots, and took a Lyft home.

At 4 I met with Jerry to discuss what to do about the auditorium upgrade bid. He still thinks the side-monitors, which were deleted from the original grant request by CH staff, were in fact important, but in any case, the role of the Heritage Circle, which bestows the grants, needs to be clarified to staff people. I set up a meeting with David T (one of the many Davids around here) but couldn’t make it any sooner than Friday.

At 5 I joined Marcia who is bringing in a local G.I.F.T. group. These are mostly teens who put on plays in any location (“We are used to performing in people’s back yards”). They are going to perform here on this Thursday. Today we met with two of them, Juan and Julie, to go over the sound and light possibilities of our stage. I was very impressed with these two. Julie must be, I don’t know, 17? and has the assurance and knowledge of a 30-something stage veteran, as well as an excellent singing voice, as she demonstrated while testing the microphones. I’m sure the show will be fun to see, even though they will have just an hour for a run-through before performing in this location new to them.

Saturday 07/01/2023

Lazed around until time to go to lead the noon tour at CHM. As often happens, the 2pm tour had been canceled for lack of a docent. As often happens I thought about being a hero and sticking around to do another tour. As usual, I decide Nahh.

Something I read online pointed me to a movie, Bob Dylan: the other side of the mirror, a documentary made up of all Dylan’s appearances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, 64 and 65. No commentary, just performance video. Turns out, it’s on Amazon Prime for $3.99. What the heck, so I showed it to myself. Good stuff.

That, plus an episode of Mr. Bean, brought me to 9:45, which is when there was to be fireworks from Stanford Stadium, following a MLS game. So up to the 11th floor and out on the roof. It was a nice fireworks show, and closer than the nearest ones will be on Tuesday. The onshore breeze made nice patterns from the smoke, too.

Friday 06/30/2023

I went for the standard walk, first time in a week. Then I had not much to do until 2pm, but I filled some of the time writing a report to my AV team on my meeting with Tom and Gerald.

At 2pm I joined Ian and Gigi and Susan in the auditorium to help Susan practice for her First Monday book talk. It’s going to be quite interesting. Ian had signed up to do the AV but Susan and Gigi want it video recorded, which Ian hasn’t done, so we will work together on it.

When the book talk people cleared out, Bert came in, wanting to practice a zoom event. Bert has lots of ideas and likes to experiment. So instead of working my carefully planned checklist he wanted to plunge in and do things other ways. Eventually we got the results.

I met with Patty for supper a deux so we could talk over the state of the auditorium upgrade. Patty is part of the Heritage Circle committee that approved that grant a year ago. She gave me a new perspective on the situation. Basically reminding me that the HC approved the grant proposal, not a specific sum of money as a budget cap but a specific list of items to be accomplished. So I should make sure that we know what we want and have a plan to get it. She is frustrated with two other approved grants, where the staff have overruled and basically sidelined the resident committees that proposed the work, doing it staff’s way instead, and leaving the people who thought it up and argued for it, with their noses rather out of joint.

One case of that which rather shocks me is the approved grant for electric car chargers. The three person committee that planned and pushed that grant includes a guy whose resume includes a seat on the California High Speed Rail commission (not to mention many years at the IMF approving transit loans to national governments). To bypass his advice seems rather feckless.

Thursday 06/29/2023

So I tidied the apartment and was just about to head out the door for a day at Shustek when my phone rang. It was Joe, the cantankerous old coot (and he is all three things even looking from my age). His Firefox was doing weird things and he couldn’t get to his email, and must be my fault. I went and spent half an hour, and I am ashamed to admit I lost my temper with him. That was when he said I had promised to be there yesterday morning at 8 and didn’t come. See yesterday. His email was on the screen when I left. I got to Shustek in Milpitas at 10 exactly, then spent ten minutes writing an email to Bert, who runs the tech squad, explaining the situation and saying I can’t work with Joe any more.

After lunch I polished off the last of Sandy Fraser’s papers, so I had processed most of the 40+ boxes (Toni did a box or two one day) into 29 storage boxes. Yay me. Gretta was very complimentary on the achievement.

Wednesday 06/28/2023

First thing I was to meet with Joe because somehow in working on his computer yesterday I had messed up the setup that he is absolutely habituated to, the only way he knows to use it. So he said last night, so we agre were ed I’d be at his door at 8am. I called his room, he didn’t answer. So at 8:05 I went down to the dining room and intercepted him just coming out. “It’s all working fine now,” he says. So I didn’t need to come by. Thanks for letting me know, Joe.

Next up was a 10am zoom meeting with Gerald and Tom of IT to go over issues with the current quote for auditorium work. It was only small things I was concerned about and we resolved most of them. The next round of the quote should be acceptable, although less than I had originally hoped for.

That meeting ended at 10:40, and at 10:45 I was due in the Auditorium for a Marketing Event. I was one of four residents to assist at a luncheon for prospective new residents. About 40 people were there, the majority having paid a fee to be on our waiting list. That’s a new thing, people put money down to have an assigned spot on the list, and to specify the exact type of apartment they want. So if a 2BR unit comes open, it is offered to everybody on the paid list who wants a 2BR, and only then to people who haven’t paid.

Anyway I was at table 4 with a pleasant couple from San Francisco. They know CH because his mother lived here; she passed in 2018. After a 20 minute marketing slide show we four residents, me and Sally and David G. and Helen, went on stage and answered questions from our marketing person, and then from the audience. It was all fun and good humored. Then we got lunch.

By 2pm I was back at home. Later I got a call from Peter asking for help planning the use of the zoom room in the conference room, so after supper we met there and contended with Zoom generally for an hour. Zoom really makes it hard to sort out all your settings.

Tuesday 06/27/2023

I have resolved to rise half an hour early (easy to do after the solstice) and do some writing for half an hour before settling down to read the paper. I did that yesterday and again today. After reading the paper I went on down and did the round of machines in the gym.

At 9am I went down and set up for an event: a talk by Ryan somebody, about all the electronic resources available from the Palo Alto library website. There’s a lot. I had a tech failure in that the stage lights just quit about ten minutes before the 10am start. So Ryan was somewhat in the shadow during his talk. Later Bert showed me what button should be pressed, only I swear I pressed that same button myself several times. Go figure.

Following that I joined the writers meeting which had been delayed to not conflict with the event. I hadn’t written anything. The cue was “my first experience with death”. Several people wrote really affecting, striking essays.

At 1pm I had an appointment with Joe, the guy with the malware on his mac. Turns out I hadn’t fixed it last time, so I had another try. Different malware scanner. I apparently did something to mess up his setup though, because he called me at 6 to say that he couldn’t find Firefox any more. I’m to go help further tomorrow.

Then I was thinking about the mess at FOPAL where there has been a surge of donations and stuff piled everywhere so I went down there and did 2 hours of sorting. There were about five people working and it was quite a jolly crew.

Then I looked at the calendar and realized tomorrow, my normal laundry day, was quite crowded, so maybe I should do laundry tonight? So I started a load on the way down to supper and finished the laundry after supper.

After supper I realized that I should at least get a start on making a video from the presentation this morning. So I worked on that for a couple of hours, and in fact finished the job. An “extra value day” as Bill used to say.

Monday 06/26/2023

At 8:15 I left to walk to the dentist. There the nice lady asked, did I remember to take my pre-med? Oh shit. I am supposed to take amoxicillin before a dental procedure to protect my artificial valve. I’ve only been doing this for the last twenty years. Small point in my favor, they didn’t send me a reminder text the day before like they have in the past. Anyway, they dispensed the amoxy and it was ok.

Next down to FOPAL where I spent 3 hours processing a huge pile of computer book donations.

In the afternoon I dealt with a tech issue. My buddy Bert can be really obnoxious when he gets a wild hair up his ass, as we used to say. In re the auditorium upgrade, he is fascinated with the technology of a “video wall” which he thinks we should have instead of a drop down screen and a projector. That wouldn’t be a problem except he took it on himself to send email, not to the AV mailing list, but to about 20 people most of whom are on the AV list, detailing his research into video walls. So I read up on them, it’s a stupid idea for us to have one because, duh, it’s a wall, and we have no place to put a 15-foot wide wall, that wouldn’t be in the way of all the other uses of the auditorium. I made a nice, even-toned, factual case, with lots of links to video wall vendors and such, quietly and politely explaining why I didn’t think it would work for us.

Sunday 06/25/2023

The morning was taken up with studying the vendor quote that the IT department has obtained for auditorium work. There are a number of problems with what they plan to, and things the vendor has not properly or completely specified. I spent a couple hours on that, partly consulting with Jerry.

After lunch I drove down to the local nursery and bought myself a coleus to replace a different plant that has been struggling in my living room. Hopefully this guy will feel more at home with my sporadic watering.

Then I printed a bunch of new pictures for my hall picture rails The old display which was big blossoms of one kind or another, had been up for 2 months or more.

Finally I looked at some prize-winning young adult SF novels. A big annual award deal was announced and thought I would look over the nominees for YA SF, because that’s what I’m trying to write. It was pretty discouraging. I read the samples on the Kindle pages of 8 nominees, and they were all really good. One, the winner, was good enough I actually bought it. (This one.) Two things that discouraged me.

One, all of them are written in first person point of view. That is, “I did this, I saw that, I said…” story telling mode. Back in the 90s when I was trying to write fiction and reading a lot of “how to write” advice, every single guru strongly advocated against first person, saying it is a common trap that newbies fall into. Now apparently it is the thing. In the story I’m working on, first, there are two protagonists, what would I do, switch between them, one chapter him, next chapter her? I’ve seen that done but it’s artificial. But also, I want to have scenes that take place where the protagonists are not present. You can’t do that in 1P. In 1P, the only way to report something that happened when they weren’t there, is to have somebody come and tell them about it. Awkward.

The other thing that stood out is how every single one of these award-nominated stories starts bang with strong emotion, danger, or violence. No messing around, no build up, no scene setting. I’m not good at the strong conflict ever, and need to build up to it. Maybe I should change genres, move to Cozy Mystery, where any violence is off-stage and the strongest emotion is wondering who did it.