Went for the standard walk and felt fine. Just like 2020 or earlier.
Drove to FOPAL to process 6 boxes of books. This is the week before the sale weekend. Today I spent two hours pricing and shelving. I plan to go back for another hour tomorrow to tidy the shelves and arrange books nicely.
Back home, David G. called, wanting to experiment with computers and zoom in the auditorium so we did that for an hour plus. David G. is a retired surgeon, smart, experienced computer user, and with the both of us that zoom simulcast crap is still a struggle.
Also have a tech squad call to help Grace with some iPhone problem. Talked to her briefly in the lobby before supper, and it sounds like her iPhone can’t connect to wifi? Promised I would look at it tomorrow.
Today, I decided to take my neglected pot plants in hand. I had a plant whose leaves were dirty because there had been a white fly infestation. I had killed these nasty things with a soap spray, but they drop sticky liquid, and then wind-blown dust sticks to the leaves. The same plant was also leaning over and needed to be staked.
Plus at the Strategic Planning off-site weeks ago, our table favors were tiny succulents in 1-inch pots. I’d brought a cute one home but it needed a proper pot, the tiny plastic pot needed watering every day. And also, months ago I had bought a really lovely marantha or such with pretty green and purple leaves, and plunked it down in the living room by a window. It had been very happy there, so happy that now it was so completely root-bound it wouldn’t hold water. But the only larger pot I have, lacked a saucer, which is essential for a plant that stands on an end-table.
Off to the nursery to buy a nice 4-inch pot, and some plastic stakes, and some potting soil and some 8-inch saucers. Then I took the gummed-up plant (I don’t even know what it is, I lost the tag) and held it under the shower to get it washed off. Staked it upright. Potted the little succulent. Re-potted the big marantha. Watered everything.
At 1pm I had a conference with Stew and Lennie over an upcoming event. That was about the day. I could have gone to two baseball games, but didn’t. Just kept tabs on them online. Also the Warriors won.
I meant to continue last night, where I was telling about looking at Road Scholar tours, to add an emotional reaction. I was looking for something else, but one of my searches turned up a tour of the south of France. Looking briefly at the itinerary I saw a lot of familiar names, starting with Aix-en-Provence. That brought a wave of memories of when Marian and I toured that area in… what year was it? This morning I went into the photo collection to verify the date: that trip was in 1990. Anyway, something about remembering that trip just gave me a wave of loss and grief such as I haven’t felt in quite a while. A different life, now absolutely out of reach.
Saturday 06/04/2022
Decided that I wanted to walk to Midtown for coffee, which I did. I held open the option of taking a Lyft back, which is what I did the last time I did this, but no, when I finished the coffee and scone, I felt fine and just toddled on back on my own tootsies. And felt great. Total miles for the day, 4.4.
At 1 it was time to go to an event, a choral performance. One of my neighbors, Bert, is a member of the Peninsulaires, an a capella singing group. Today they were holding a joint performance with Mission Valley Chorus, a women’s group. I was on my way to my car in the basement when I passed Bert’s wife Barbara, who was waiting for two other riders to carpool with, and attached myself to them for the free ride.
The performance was nice.
Neighbor Bert is 3rd from the right
This was at Grace Lutheran in South Palo Alto. Afterward, at Bert’s suggestion, I took a look at the church’s A/V setup. Very fancy with a video switcher and six cameras. I took a couple of pictures of that and sent them to the A/V group.
At 6pm I left in my car for Stanford to see Stanford baseball play Texas State in their Regional game. Stanford had a bad moment in the 4th and was behind 1-4. Coincidentally I had just got a frozen lemonade thing from the concession stand. I like the frozen lemonades because they take a long time to eat, ten minutes or more. Now I realized that I would be sitting in a big crowd (fewer than half with masks) with my own mask down, nibbling frozen treat, for ten minutes. And we’re trailing. So fickle fan that I am, I left. Stanford eventually lost, and will have to play on the loser-bracket game tomorrow. I have not stayed through a whole game this season. It is quite the waste of money. I think next year I won’t renew my season ticket.
Back home at 9pm, I got absorbed in working on my essay for Tuesday’s writers group and now it’s 11:30 and I am way late going to bed.
Went for the standard walk and felt fine. Definitely stronger than pre-TAVR.
The year is half over, so how, you ask, am I doing on my crossword puzzle times? Back at the end of 2021 I wrote that my time to solve the LA Times daily crossword puzzles was steadily increasing. Is that ominous trend continuing? I thought mid-year was a good time to check. Yes, the trend continues.
I’m holding my own on Sunday and Friday. The other days I’ve slowed down another 5%.
Mid-morning a neighbor called me because she had updated her version of Quicken and it had messed up the display of her data. In the end I was no help. I don’t know Quicken, so I just tried to back her up to a prior version, but failed.
At noon I headed over to Sunken Diamond to watch Stanford Baseball play in the NCAA regional they are hosting. They won.
Spent some time looking at the Road Scholar website and thinking about where I might travel. Right now many of their tours are already booked for the rest of the year.
Went for a modest walk. Then called a couple of people on my committee trying to get somebody to cover a couple of events. Looks like it will be me, sigh.
After lunch and a quick nap it was time to go to the museum to lead the 2pm tour. Only 6 people who stuck with me but didn’t seem that excited. I blocked on a couple of points in my talk, just came up blank forgetting what my next point was. I don’t like doing that.
First thing, I went for The Standard Walk, the first one in about 3 weeks. I felt it at the end, but not in the same way that I did pre-TAVR. Then I just felt tired and wanted to rest early. This was more about muscles feeling strain from being out of shape. Anyway, little bit and I should be getting back to where I was, wherever that was.
Lots of emailing in support of the AV group. I;m having trouble getting people to sign up to cover events. Trying to be cool and supportive. Takes time and attention. Tomorrow, more of that.
At 3:30 I left for CHM where I watched a live interview with Sal Kahn, the founder of the hugely popular Kahn Academy, free online education for the world. He’s a warm, engaging, articulate guy. His interviewers at this event, not so much. They should have just put him behind a podium and let him tell his story. Kahn Academy was already serving millions of learners in 2019, but you can imagine what two years of pandemic-related school closures has done. You’ll have to imagine it because there were no specific numbers given tonight.
Paid a couple of bills. Took a short walk, up to Whole Foods to see if they had my favorite beer, as they sometimes do. They didn’t. Worked on the car model. Attended the writers group meeting. I had nothing this time, but next week’s cue is something I can get into: “your favorite comic strip or character, and what it says about you.”
At three points today, somebody from El Camino Hospital called me to check on me. One was legit, in the sense that I could have a conversation. That was a call from nurse Kathleen, who works with Dr. Rammohan. She asked intelligent, probing questions and had useful info. Among other things, she reminded me I was supposed to book an appointment with cardiologist DiBiase, and an echo. After she rang off, I did call for that and scored the last appointment on DiBiase’s last day before she leaves on sabbatical! That’s in early August.
The other two calls were useless. One was a person who clearly knew nothing about me or what procedure I’d had, and just wanted in the nicest way to run through a long script of questions about my post-op care. The other was a recording from the head doctor assuring me they were very grateful I’d chosen their hospital for, fine, thanks, click.
Had a long nap and ate dinner in my room. Although signs and feelings are, that the TAVR has improved my health all around, it hasn’t done anything for my overall mood.
In the morning I went down to FOPAL and as usual found 6 boxes of computer books. It took a couple of hours to process them, which I did with no problem. Then back to CH for lunch.
Have I written about the 4th floor TV? My friend Stew led a drive to get his 4th floor to install a big TV in their lounge, his idea being they can show movies and such. They got a very nice looking 65-inch Samsung on a wall mount. They have a Blu-Ray player and plan to get a Roku. (The staff vetoed them getting a Comcast subscription for it; I’m not sure why. Nobody to charge the subscription against, maybe?) But Stew wants to be able to get content from a laptop up on the big screen.
This ought to be possible; the TV claims to support Apple AirPlay and whatever the Windows equivalent is. So today I tried for the second time to make that work. And failed. Two different MacBook Pro laptops, one new, one 5 years old, and both can “see” the damn TV on the network, they both list it in the menu of remote devices they could talk to, but when they try to connect they spin for 30 seconds and say “Unable to connect with” the name of the TV.
It’s not a big deal; they work very well when connected to the TV by an HDMI cable. But it would be cool to do it wirelessly. Never mind.
Then I went downstairs and picked up my sack supper. On holidays we get a sack supper and the kitchen staff gets off work early. Next to Patty’s apartment and borrowed a serving bowl and spoon, as I don’t have those. Then I pitted about a pound and a half of cherries. I took that and my sack to our picnic in the floor dining room at 6. Ten people around a big table. Including Edie, from whose house the big table came. It really is a gorgeous table, with eight matching chairs. Couple folding chairs to fill in. Nice.
Later I plan to go up to the roof and look for meteors. Results tomorrow.
After all my usual Sunday morning pleasures (watering the plants, doing the crossword) I decided to go to the California Avenue farmers market and maybe buy some cherries. The 6th floor is having a picnic supper tomorrow night and I could bring them to share.
In other times I have walked that 2-3 miles, and probably will again, but this time I drove. And after buying cherries and an almond croissant from The Midwife and The Baker, to Safeway for a few groceries. Then home to pass the time until 2 when there was to be a jazz concert at the Congregational Church. That’s just a 1.2 miles away and my initial plan was to walk that, but when it came time to leave, I didn’t feel like walking so went again by car.
The concert wasn’t great. Nothing wrong with the musicianship, in fact the performers all had (per the program) very long resumés in pro jazz and the singer, Kenny Washington, is famous enough that I had heard of him, and he was fun to listen to. But much of the selections were not a type of music I can listen to for any length of time. I have a simple ear, I like melodies and rhythm. This was the kind of show where each of the six players would take a looong solo, in turn.
In the morning I first filled out my ballot for the June election. One more thing off my coffee table, it’s almost empty now. Then I walked the ballot up to the drop box at City Hall. I was walking briskly, more brisklier that lately, and feeling good. The TAVR really made a difference, it isn’t just placebo effect.
I came back by way of the farmers market, which I haven’t been in for a couple of months owing to dieting, and bought a pound of Rainier cherries and a chocolate hazlenut pastry. That was my breakfast and my lunch as well.
Then I helped a neighbor, Joan, record a treasured tape from her walkman (yes, a real Sony Walkman from the … 90s?) into her Mac.
After a nap I went down to the auditorium to help David M. run a concert. He would normally have done it alone, but he just had two stents put in and isn’t supposed to exert himself. I didn’t point out that I just had a giant stent put in and am not supposed to exert myself either. Turned out, there was no exerting needed anyway.
The concert was really nice, two women doing classical piano and violin duets. Very complex stuff by famous composers and done very well indeed.
Dr. Rammahan had referred me to a cardiac rehab program at El Camino Hospital. Dr. Margaret says there is a better one, HeartFit for Life, which was founded by the late husband of another resident, Karen. I like the look of their website and of course they are much closer than the other. So I messaged Dr. Dibiase asking if she approved would she refer me to that program. I kind of like the idea of a closely supervised fitness program to get back, or back-ish, to where I was. At some point.
