Wednesday 8/5/2020

Went for a run in the morning; felt normal. I had two meetings scheduled for the afternoon. In the time before I painted the hood of the model. I did it manually, with my widest softest brush, and invented a new technique that I think will be useful in future, to get a smooth coat with a brush. Tomorrow I will apply gloss clear to the hood and then can set the body aside and work on the interior for a while.

The first meeting was the Residents’ Association executive committee. Rhonda attended, to bring us not-good news. Another staff member has tested positive. This person had been sheltering at home since 7/31 because of symptoms; however there were other staff members and some residents in close contact with them before. So another handful of staff are sent home to quarantine (and presumably 1 or more residents are in isolation).

There were already 20 staff in home quarantine. They will get their second tests tomorrow, and if they come back negative, those staff will be back on the job next week, but in the meantime, staff is short. As a result, some changes. One, all housekeeping that was DIY, is back to DIY. So tomorrow I get to clean my unit again. All interaction with staff is to be by phone or zoom unless absolutely necessary. Maintenance work orders are deferred unless critical.

Further news. I discussed the matter of the T-Mobile cell phone antenna on the roof on day 1.220. It’s back, but in a different form. Some people who feel strongly about it have contacted KPIX (CBS 5) and that station is planning a story on the antenna. Rhonda declined to be interviewed and gave them the official statement by our board, reporting the 3rd-party engineer’s report. KPIX may or may not go with the story.

From that meeting I and Marcia were scheduled to talk to Kim from HR (not Kim from Marketing) about resident volunteers. Last Friday, Rhonda asked for people to volunteer to be Resident Volunteer Coordinators. I hesitantly did so, as did Marcia. So this was a meeting to tell us what we could and should do to establish that brand-new role. Unfortunately due to the above-mentioned staff upset, Kim didn’t start the zoom meeting. She called us later, and said one of the first things they may use volunteers for is food delivery, wheeling the carts of trays from room to room to deliver meals. She suggested that we begin by actually doing that job. So at 7:20 tomorrow morning, I will get trained on delivering a cart load of food.

Tuesday 8/4/2020

After the aerobics class and before the CH Writer’s meeting, I fielded a tech call. Craig asked me to check on Terry, who (Craig claimed) had an old Mac that, according to Paul Ma, the CH staff tech person, needed an external, USB, wifi adapter. Hmph, seems odd. Well, I called Terry who said, no, it’s an old HP laptop of some sort. So I bounced that one back to Craig.

The Schwab statements were ready so I updated the Nest Egg spreadsheet. The Nest Egg was down about 13% on the year a couple of months back. It has recovered to be 8% down on the year now.

The writers’ group had a cue, or topic, of “that memorable hotel room” which produced a lot of interesting travel reminiscences. I had no contribution to make. Not as a writer. After the meeting I helped Margaret figure out why she couldn’t hear a Zoom meeting in her new bluetooth headset. Turns out, Zoom audio has an option, “use default sound (built in speaker)” which if selected, makes it ignore your system setting for sound output. So I had a tech success after all.

For the car model, I took a step back. Early on, I had set out to spray gray primer on the body. I did spray the hood and got a good coat, but when I went to spray the body, something, I don’t remember what, messed up, and I gave up on the primer. So the hood had gray primer and the body was still white plastic. Predictable what happened. Four coats of the light blue on hood and body, and four coats of the clear. And finally I set the hood in place on the body and… oops. Because of the medium-gray base coat, the hood is perceptibly darker and grayer blue, than the body. Set them a foot apart and you can’t tell. Set the hood on the body and it instantly stands out as not-quite-the-same-color.

So all I did on the model today, was to sand off the paint on the hood, taking it back to white plastic. (Now obviously there was another option, to strip the paint off the body and prime it, but that was out.) Tomorrow I’ll figure out how to paint the hood. Maybe with a brush.

That was all in the morning. After lunch I went for a 2.5 mile walk, up to the campus and back. I should say, the gouty toe has faded almost back to a normal color, and although it can still emit a sharp pain if bent the wrong way, it didn’t bother me running yesterday or walking today.

During the writers’ group, amid all the travel reminiscences, Margaret noted there was a series on Prime about traveling the canals of England. Tonight I found it, Travels in a Narrowboat, and am watching it. It is about the lowest-key show you can imagine. Canals are very quiet, the boat moves about 4mph top speed, and the whole show is just … so … soothing …

Monday 8/3/2020

This will be short, because there isn’t much to tell (quarantime is starting to fold in on itself). Went for a run, which felt fine. I think that spell of weakness a week ago may have been because I had no food before starting out: a “bonk” as we used to say in cycling. I had part of my breakfast shake before leaving today and all was well.

At 11 my neighbor Peter gave a book talk on his autobiography, Painted Pebbles. He read a few dramatic passages remembering the days of Nazi occupation of Hungary, and of the Hungarian Revolution.

The rest of the day was alternate reading and working on the model, mainly trying to finish painting the body. Many frustrations and do-overs. It is really difficult to get a clean, blemish-free coat of paint. To do it right I need a bigger shop with a proper ventilated spray booth to control dust, and a better quality air-brush/spray gun.

That’s about it. Tomorrow I will have to do something different.

Sunday 8/2/2020

For breakfast I had the leftover pulled pork from last night, reheated. Very nice. Then at dinner-time, came a nice dish of… pulled pork! with sweet potatoes and a salad. Well, I like pulled pork. The CH kitchens didn’t provide BBQ sauce, but a little drizzle of sriracha fixed that.

Over the day I spent, must have been three hours fighting that nasty little airbrush. I took it all apart and found it had old paint from the first time I tried to use it. The product came with zero instructions on how to disassemble or properly clean it. In the course of cleaning it, however, I almost ruined it. The base/handle incorporates a battery, and a motor that pumps air out the top. Turns out, the air inlet is the USB charging port on the side. So I was holding it over the sink, using the air pressure to blow out the spray pipe while running water into the feed cup. Water ran down the side, and got sucked in through the charging port. Soon it stopped working because the handle was full of water. Then I spent a lot of time trying to get it to dry itself out, which it finally did.

Despite this and other problems, I did manage to apply decent coats of two different colors to the car body.

What’s left is to get a coat of clear acrylic on it. I applied this to the Chevy model with a brush and it came out ok. But I could try to use the Abominable Airbrush one more time before I junk it.

Saturday 8/1/2020

Took it easy as is my wont on Saturdays. Felt fine, except for the gouty toe, which made walking a bit difficult. In the middle of the day it was quite swollen. I took a picture but it isn’t that different from yesterday’s picture, except the toe is more of a cherry red.

Supper today was BBQ from Armadillo Willy’s, via DoorDash. This was a plan suggested by Patty, who shared in the meal–to the extent that sharing is allowed. Which means, she and I waited together for the driver, split up the meal into separate bags, and went off to dine alone. Anyway it was very good and a nice change.

I finished the chassis and undercarriage of the Ford model, and finally got to everything set to begin painting color on the body. I have been looking forward to this, but unfortunately I looks like I made a stupid mistake. I tried to go cheap on buying an airbrush. I bought a small one, quite a clever design that incorporates its own air compressor into its handle, and all for a third what an airbrush plus external compressor costs. I should have known, you can’t go cheap on tools. Trying to save money on a tool is usually a sure way to waste money; I know that.

The little brush doesn’t deliver enough paint nor spray a wide enough pattern. It takes for bleepin’ ever to build up an opaque coat of color and the narrow pattern makes it very difficult to get a uniform coat. I painted the hood, a separate part, and stopped.

So I spent a lot of the evening reading “10 best airbrushes for model makers” type websites, of which there are several, and looking at youtube videos on using an airbrush. Actually from some of the videos I learned a couple things and I am going to disassemble my cheap brush. It may be better than I think, although I doubt it.

Friday 7/31/2020

I went for a run this morning and it felt completely normal throughout. However as I walked the last block to CH I noticed a general mild feeling of weakness. No nausea or giddyness, just general feebleness. I went upstairs and checked my vitals and was relieved to find temp 98.1, BP slightly high at 140/114, pulse slightly low at 62. I’m always on the lookout for signs my artificial aortic valve is breaking down, but that BP and pulse is the exact opposite of what you’d expect if the valve were failing; it would cause a high pulse and low BP. So I had what I meant to be a bit of a nap, but turned into an hour slumber, and then felt normal again.

Except for a toe. One toe had felt sore last night and this morning and, hello, it was showing gout. Is this not a classical presentation of gout? Rubor, dolor, little bit of calor. I’ve had a few episodes of gout before. Welp, guess I have another. By evening it was cooling off a bit. All the news that fits…

Did not do much except read, and a bit on the model. Rhonda’s 4pm Covid conference had some interesting news items. One, owing to the severe staff crunch, with 26 employees quarantined at home pending tests, with the head chef doing prep work, the food services manager running the dishwashers, and the housekeeping staff delivering meals, they are reassessing some things. They have stopped trying to spray-sterilize the many incoming packages, partly because of staff time, partly because the spray disinfectant, the same as they use on the elevators, hand-rails, etc., is in short supply, and partly because current advice is that the chance of virus transmission by packages is low.

And they are planning to re-open the garages for full access! Another week of limited return times, and then we’ll be able to bring our cars back in any time.

Another interesting, and reassuring, item was about our policies with respect to those staff members who can’t work. I’ll quote Rhonda’s remarks as received in email later,

Within hours of receiving a positive test result, Kim Kurtis (our Human Resources Director) and Paola Robles (our Human Resources Assistant) goes to every department for impromptu staff meetings. They… answer questions from staff and address their fears. They offer support services which have included hotel stays for those who do not want to risk exposure to their families, to Instacart deliveries for an employee who was too ill to shop for their family. … And, they check in on employees while they are out to see if there are any additional ways we can support them.
 
You may also like to know that Channing House has always had a generous policy for Paid Time Off (PTO). We always required that anyone with a fever, or various other symptoms, stay home. Our generous PTO policy supports that expectation. Our COVID PTO policy enhances that with the ability to use more PTO than an employee has earned. Which means that the employee continues to be paid while they cannot come to work when it’s related to COVID.

It is really nice to know we take care of our staff in this way.

Thursday 7/30/2020

Did the morning aerobics. Soon after, found the weekly sack of fresh linens outside my door. Last Thursday was when Marta cleaned the place professionally. This week I’m on my own. In hopes of another professional cleaning next Thursday, I only swept the kitchen/living room floor, and changed the bed. Given the situation with Housekeeping staff having to deliver food, probably next Thursday I will have to get out my little vacuum and spray bottle of cleaner and do it right.

Off and on through the day I worked on the model, where I achieved a bit of a coup. The model has a detailed front end including steering knuckles/kingpins, and a detailed little tie-rod between them. The kingpins are set up so they could pivot, giving steerable front wheels. However, the connection between the tie-rod and the steering knuckles was designed to be cemented solid. A pin on the knuckle went into a hole in the end of the tie-rod, and if you didn’t cement it, the tie-rod would just fall off. So close to articulated steering, but not there. Assembled to instructions, the wheels would be fixed.

So I cut off the pins that came up from the steering knuckles. I took a tiny little drill bit and drilled a hole through the end of each steering knuckle, where the pin used to be. And I made little bitty rings of brass wire to link the tie-rod ends to the knuckles. Viola, articulated front steering. I’m rather pleased with this so I am including two pictures.

Not much else to say about this day. Well, one thing. I have Marian’s retirement clock on my desk. It’s a nice, heavy, gold thing that sat on our mantel for years. It’s very accurate, and runs for about a year on a single “N” cell. This morning during aerobics I noticed it had stopped. Time for a new battery. How to get one? I didn’t want to start yet another Amazon order for one stinking $3 pack of 2 batteries. I could fill out a form for “essentials”, and the staff will shop it next Tuesday, but I don’t want to give the staff any more to do in this crunch time.

Bleep it, I said, I’m going to walk to CVS and buy it. I put on my hat and got about halfway over to the CVS on University when my conscience got to me. Yes the risk is minimal but is it really essential to take it? Once again, do I want to risk being the one who brings the virus into Channing House?

Nope. So I turned around and walked back. And in about 2 minutes I had found TheBatterySupplier.com, a wonderful website that sells batteries of all kinds and doesn’t charge shipping. In five minutes I had placed an order for a 2-pack of N cells. It may take a week to get them, but whatever. I have five other clocks in the apartment (microwave, dvr, house phone, iPhone, wristwatch).

Wednesday 7/29/2020

Yeah, another day of gripping excitement. Well, a gentle pinch of excitement. Went for a run, and shortly after returning I got the car out of the garage and went for a drive just for fun. I thought about going down to the Baylands for a walk but instead went up 84 to Skyline and back down Page Mill.

Very few cars on the road, but quite a few cyclists. I remember the pleasures of cycling Skyline and Page Mill. Put the car safely away at 1:30. Maybe Saturday I’ll go to the Baylands.

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Worked an hour on the car model. Although this model has better plastic details than the prior one, its instruction sheet is not as good. I’ve found a couple of mistakes in it, and today I had to spend ten minutes trying to make sense of a graphic where the drawing doesn’t match the plastic parts at all.

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On my balcony, the dragon-wing begonias are begoing bonkers.

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At 5:30 comes an email: a special Zoom meeting is called for 6:45 tonight “for an important COVID update”. Uh-oh. Will it be the first infection among us Independent Livers?

Turns out an employee in food services tested positive, and had been in close contact with others, so 20 food service employees are on furlough pending tests. In the meantime, the remaining food staff are confined to the kitchen where they prepare food and load carts wearing PPE including face shields. And delivery to the rooms is being done by whatever staff are available, primarily housekeeping and office staff. So in-room housekeeping services are again on hold.

Rhonda emphasized we are all to practice safety more than ever, and emphasized specifically that we are not to eat with persons from another household. I had a tentative date to go out for pizza on Saturday with another resident. While the meeting was in progress I sent an email canceling that.

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Still reading Journal of the Plague Year and it is interesting how they tried to contain it with some measures that are familiar to us now. Defoe quotes at length from the orders of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London. Among the rules,

…all plays, bear-baitings, games, singing of ballads, or such-like causes of assemblies of people be utterly prohibited … all public feasting,… and dinners at taverns, ale-houses, and other places of common entertainment…

Just the same, like parts of the USA, they couldn’t bring themselves to close the bars, only ruling

no company or person be suffered to remain or come into any tavern, ale-house, or coffee-house to drink after nine of the clock in the evening…

One striking measure of control was locking people into their houses. There was a system of watchmen and inspectors, who could go into any house to examine a sick person, and if the inspector decided this was a case of the plague they would lock up the house with everyone who lived there inside it, and set a 24-hour watch outside to make sure nobody left the place. You got out of such confinement only by dying, or by having an inspector come in and verify there was no remaining sickness. Defoe admits

many people perished in these miserable confinements which, ’tis reasonable to believe, would not have been distempered if they had had liberty, though the plague was in the house.

and says that

it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from them.

Yeah, you think? We are more sensible, we confine the healthy people. Plus, we have internet. In 1650, if you are quarantined, the only “media” is your window to the street.

Tuesday 7/28/2020

This is the first day of the pandemic where I’ve been seriously bored and antsy to be out and doing, with nothing to do. I wrote to Frank at FOPAL hoping he’d come up with something I could work on out in the courtyard. Maybe tomorrow.

I read my essay on “Every day (I update this blog)” to the CH Writers and people seemed to like it. Maybe a few new followers, but probably not. People around here don’t follow blogs they way I do, as far as I can tell. In the essay I referred to Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (which anyone can download here). Some parallels emerge at once, and some differences.

One difference was how slowly Defoe’s plague moved, owing I suppose to how limited was the ability to travel in 1664. In autumn they get rumors it is in Holland, then in the spring shows up in the parish of St. Giles, and takes months to work its way across London. People didn’t move that far from their neighborhoods, I guess. Or maybe it had to do with the mode of transmission: the Great Plague of London was the bubonic form, transmitted by fleas, not through the air in droplets. That means that to spread the disease requires an infected person to carry their fleas to a new location, or to infect the fleas in another location, which is not as convenient as just sneezing or singing near another person. Of course, once the fleas of a household were infected, all the people who slept or spent time in that house would be infected.

One striking parallel was the immediate rise of quack remedies and their opportunistic purveyors:

it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors’ bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally set off with such flourishes as these, viz.: ‘Infallible preventive pills against the plague.’ … ‘Anti-pestilential pills.’ ‘Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before.’ ‘An universal remedy for the plague.’ ‘The only true plague water.’ ‘The royal antidote against all kinds of infection’

We’d like to think we’re smarter now than 450 years ago, wouldn’t we? Chloroquine, anyone? Bleach?

There were “astrologers” and others publishing all sorts of prophecies of doom.

Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such books as terrified the people, and to frighten the dispersers of them, some of whom were taken up; but nothing was done in it, as I am informed, the Government being unwilling to exasperate the people,

Facebook/Twitter?

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I omitted to mention that yesterday and the day before I received rejections from agents, and another today. Still about half of the 30 submissions still open. I was impressed at first that agents were replying fairly promptly, within a week or two; but now it has been more like six weeks. Of course a few of them just say, if you don’t hear back in twelve weeks, it means no.

A couple of the rejections read as if the agent had actually read the sample prose; others are less specific and might just mean they didn’t go past the submission letter itself. I haven’t much hope of an acceptance, but it would be really nice to have at least one agent ask to read the entire MS.

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I was reminded of Pelajis the other day when I read Fried Rice Comic. I keep up a bit with the world of web comics, which is a new creative/publishing genre, barely twenty years old. (So far as I know, the longest continuous running web comic is Schlock Mercenary which started in 2000. There are a few others nearly as old, and many nearing the ten-year mark.) I follow several of web comics with enjoyment. There’s a huge range of artistic and narrative styles, all very different from the old syndicated newspaper comics.

Anyway, the annual Eisner Awards are the Oscars or Emmys of the world of comics and comic books, and since 2017 they have included an award for Best Web Comic, and this year that award went to Fried Rice Comic. If you haven’t read any web comics, read a few pages of that. Lovely, delicate watercolor illustrations, pleasant characters… and nothing happens!! Fifty damn pages (and it only updates once a week, so that’s a year’s worth) and nothing has happened except they go to church and later have a quiet little party.

So my test readers told me that in Pelajis not enough happens. Lemme tell ya, there’s more action on one damn chapter of Pelajis than in a whole year of the Eisner-winning Best Goddam Web Comic of 2020. Also, more jokes. Go figure.

Monday 7/27/2020

After my run I alternated between reading and working on the model car: paint a bit, read a while to let the paint dry or the cement set, and repeat. Eventually I finished the engine.

Late in the day a combination of a note from Scott, and a blog I had read earlier, combined to lead me to write a little screed to the CHOpinion mailing list, on the facts around the Federal response to the Portland protests. I also completed my essay about blogging every day and sent that to the writer’s list. So I did quite a bit of writing, although not in this blog.

Here are some views of the V8 engine. For starters, here’s the real thing.

Here’s the model a little closer up.