Friday 5/8/2020

Went for a run but an odd coincidence made me shorten it. Once again I had left the building without my mask. Well, it was early and nobody was around. There’s a point where I cross a pedestrian bridge over a creek. Approaching this I found myself catching up with a man walking slowly, also without a mask. He was slow, but fast enough that I could not pass him before the entry to the bridge. So I’d have to follow him over the narrow bridge, in his breath-wake. Nunh-unh. So I turned away and took a shorter route home.

One nice thing today was that for the first time in weeks, I heard construction workers below me on the 5th floor. So they are back on the job.

I did some programming. I played HiveSwap for half an hour, until I got stuck again; then I watched more of the YT play-through to see what arbitrary clue I had missed.

The weather was warmish, up to 80 in the afternoon, and for the first time this year I was comfortable sitting out on my balcony.

I tried watching a play streamed by the UK National Theater, By Jeeves. It was by Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Weber based on PG Wodehouse. That’s a pile of talent, and should make it good, but it wasn’t. If I’d seen it in a theater, I’d’ve left at intermission. I left the stream earlier.

And that was the day.

Thursday 5/7/2020

Did the 7:15 aerobics class. Then, after a bit of sitting around catching up with the internet, I started the Thursday apartment cleaning. Dust. Wipe down kitchen, and then all the surfaces in the bathroom. At the start of the DIY Housekeeping thing, they gave me a vacuum, a swiffer, and a big spray bottle of a cleaning solution, Peroxy, “hydrogen peroxide based cleaner”. It’s odorless, clear, and very effective. Light spray on any hard surface; wipe it around with a damp rag; wipe it off with a dry rag; it sparkles. Go over all the wood surfaces with a dry rag and Pledge.

Then move all furniture onto the carpets and Swiff the hard floors. Then move all the furniture off the carpets and vacuum. Then change the bed linen and done.

My shower has clear glass doors. Back on Tasso street I kept a squeegee in the shower and squeeged (is that a word?) the inside of the glass before getting out. It helped a lot to keep the water spots from building up on the glass. I decide to do that here also. I order a squeegee and a suction-cup hook from Ace Hardware up the street. After lunch I go up and pick it up.

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Got an email from SFJazz: all concerts through August canceled. Damn. I had booked two shows that I was really looking forward to. Now I have to decide whether to return the tickets for credit or donate them. I split the difference, claiming credit for one show, donating the other.

 

 

Wednesday 5/6/2020

Started with a run. I found myself awake at 5:50, so I ended up starting my run at 7am.

At 9 am I got notification that my grocery shopper had started working. She arrived with the stuff just before 11am. I hastily put the bags in my room and headed for the basement, because today was car freedom day, when we are allowed to take our cars out of the garage. I took the Prius out for a 20-minute run, just to warm it up and charge the battery, then back to the garage.

Back upstairs I broke down the grocery order. I had filled out order forms for the 7 customers (6 plus me). I put them around the big table in the 6th floor dining room and put the items next to their forms. At this point I noticed (rather belatedly) that the case of Anchor Steam I had ordered was on the bill, but not present.  I texted the “runner” and yes, it was still in her car. We arranged for her to circle back with it later.

Then I wrote down the prices of everything and added up the individual bills, and delivered everything to the recipients. By which time my lunch tray arrived at my door, and almost at once I got the text from the runner, she was outside with muh beerz.

After lunch I placed an order for pizza delivery. I had agreed with Patty to share a pizza tonight. We did that last Wednesday, when she ordered. Rather than split that, we agreed I would order this week.

What a busy morning. Think I need a nap.

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Supper was nice. Patty and I sat on opposite sofas in the lounge and talked while gorging on pizza. First time I’ve eaten a meal in the company of another person in … six weeks?

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Bag balm! Stuff fucking works! Once or twice a day I put a little dab on the back of each hand and rub it around and up my forearms, and it moisturizes nicely. All the dryness I was having from washing so often, is gone. Also, remarkably, the little patch of psoriasis I’ve had for years on the back of one hand, is staying softer and smoother than it has in a long time. I’m getting to like the smell of creosote.

Tuesday 5/5/2020

Started the day with Victoria’s step-aerobics at 7:15. This time there were four attendees, up from one (1) last Thursday. It’s a gentle workout, but it is a workout.

Did a little desk work, paying an insurance bill, and entering the end of month values for my various Schwab accounts in the spreadsheet. I note that I created this spreadsheet back on Day 31, early January 2019. This gives me an overview of the state of the Nest Egg. The total as of 3/30, was down %20 for the year. In April it recovered some, and is now down only %13 on the year.

Through the day I was fielding emails about our weekly 6th floor shopping. I ended up with a list of nearly 20 items — after everybody said “nah, nothing this week” and then had second thoughts next day. This week I am trying Errand.com for shopping instead of InstaCart. The actual shopping will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big day for other reasons. (Not really.)

Did three computery things in the day. An hour on the Affinity photo book (dodging and burning, three different ways, including one I’d never heard of); proofed three pages for Distributed Proofreaders; and did some study in Crafting Interpreters. The latter got my nickers in a serious twist, because I strongly disagree with the way the author is presenting the information.

I was listening to a podcast where they were going on about the movie, His Girl Friday. I think I’ll try watching that on Prime Video tonight.

 

Monday 5/4/2020

Went for a run; it felt fine. Divided my non-fiddling-around time between crafting interpreters and studying Affinity. That was about it.

OK, editing. Couple of things worth noting.

One, little flashes of grief. Haven’t been troubled by these for some time, but somehow, looking at the plants reminded me of Marian, and later something brought up recollections of trips we had taken together. Not grieving so much for the person, as for the entire life as a couple that ended. I remind myself that I’ve done a good job of crafting a safe, comfortable, moderately interesting new life, and that’s great. But the old one is gone, never to return, and that makes me sad when I dwell on it.

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In the area of not-dwelling-on-it, I spent some time with the game, Hiveswap. I “cheated” by watching a video walk-through to get past the latest snafu, getting Joey (not Josie as I wrote before) past the latest snake-lizard monsters and into the safety of the attic. Where she is shortly sucked into a bizarre portal and the “swap” of the title happens: Joey is transported to another world, and we see a different character, a sort of evil Joey?, being transported the other way. I believe the game maker’s plan was to have a second game about that character, but they didn’t finish it?

Anyway I stuck with Joey through the first couple of scenes in the new place, which included an amusing puzzle. She picks up a bizarre alien ipad thing and tries to log into it. The log-in process involves playing a game of “snake” — remember that old game from the 80s? If you can get the snake to eat five targets, Joey is logged in to the pad. That only took me about 6 attempts.

Sunday 5/3/2020

I used to maintain a varied structure to my week. Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon, working at FOPAL. Thursday, artifact work at the museum. Friday and/or Saturday, lead a tour. Sunday morning, coffee at a coffee shop while reading the paper; also watering the plants.

All that’s wiped away now, so every day is pretty much like every other. We try to keep up some standards, anyhow. Sunday I still water the plants and do the big crossword. Other than that, it was pretty similar to Saturday, and Friday, and…

Well, next Saturday morning I will do my laundry, so I  have that to look forward to.

The programming book that I’m working through, Crafting Interpreters, gave me a little bit of mental work. I’m finishing up chapter 9, and at this point have the skeleton of a programming language implemented, with variables and if-statements and loops working. So at the end of each chapter the author has these “challenges”, basically extra-credit puzzles. The one at the end of chapter 9 was, “Ok, you have loops working. In many programming languages there is some kind of a break statement that terminates a loop early. Add a break to your interpreter. It should be a syntax error to have one outside of a loop. Inside a loop at execution time, it should end that loop only.”

Working out how to do that took me a few hours on Friday and again Saturday. Then while taking a walk today I figured out what I was missing, so finished that task and tested the code.

Fun, right? Fascinating? Well, better than doing another crossword puzzle. Which I also did.

 

Saturday 5/2/2020

All days are quiet now of course. But when I got up I decided I would not go for a walk today. Spent the day entirely in the room. Did some coding.

Played a little of Hiveswap. I’m ambivalent about this. The game is cute and inventive, but it’s basically a puzzle game. I don’t mind solving easy puzzles, but the hard ones are just so arbitrary. Example. In this game our adorable avatar Josie is trying to thwart some multi-legged serpent monsters. One traps her in the basement. Command Josie to  thwack it with her flashlight; that doesn’t help. OK, what else do we have? She has some doggie treats, have her throw some at the monster. Monster eats treats and says something snappy, but isn’t defeated. Josie is proud to be a dancer, click to have her put on her ballet shoes, click the monster. Graceful Abscond! says the game, but no, she bumps into the monster and hurts her knee. Have her put on her tap shoes and do her tap dance. Monster says something scornful. But now if you try the ballet shoe escape after the tap dance routine, now she gets by the monster and up the stairs. You have to do it in the right order, or it doesn’t work. Arbitrary.

I saved the game and quit when she’s stuck in the kitchen with another monster who is keeping her from getting to the carrier pigeon with the marbles she needs to decode the…never mind. I will go back to a youtube walk-through to find out what arbitrary sequence of actions I have to do to solve that.

First thing, though, I coated the coffee table with generous amounts of Liquid Gold. Four hours later, the wood had entirely slurped up the oil. On the left, glossy with a coat of oil. On the right, later. I didn’t wipe it, it just drank up the oil.

 

 

I’m delighted at how the color has come back. See yesterday’s post to see how it was kind of yellow-gray. Now the deep red-brown I remember is coming back. It’s a nice piece. The top is made from four pieces of wood, with “book-matched” grain and almost invisible seams. The legs are pure “mid-century modern”. It is lightly “distressed”. You can see a black spot; that’s from a mistake with a sharpie 20 years ago. There’s a very small cigarette burn from the early 1980s when we still smoked.

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In the evening I watched some of a movie. I have this web page saved, “The 100 best movies on Amazon Prime tv”. One was The Thirty-Nine Steps which I watched Wednesday night. Tonight I tried Annihilation, Natalie Portman agonizing over a strange DNA-morphing alien thingy. So slow. Nice that the adventurers are a bunch of women. But it gets dreary and threatening and I got impatient. I pause the movie and take a look at the Wikipedia article. Oh goodness. That’s stupid. I exit the movie and watch a Rifftrax short feature instead.

Friday 5/1/2020

At last, the first of May! (Memory brings back from my college days, “Hurray hurray, the first of May, outdoor screwing begins today” — as if any of us were doing any screwing in any locale. But I digress.) No, the first of May means, it is not a fashion faux pas to wear straw hats in public! (Only a boor would be seen outside in a panama hat before May Day or after Labor Day.) I own a couple of very nice panama hats, and I’ve been putting off wearing them on walks until now.

I don’t wear any hat on my runs, which I took one of this morning. Then back to the cell, oh get real, it is a very nice and comfortable apartment. Did some coding. Then at noon came the email from Ace Hardware, so after lunch I walked up there (in my straw hat) and they brought out my bottle of Liquid Gold. I did a test application and it looks good.

Couple coats of that and the table should look a lot better. However I decided to wait until tomorrow to apply it. This morning I had taken all my recycling to the collection area down the hall, so I have no newspapers to put down. Tomorrow’s paper will serve to protect against spills. Ok I was smart enough to move it off the carpet, but I don’t want oily stuff getting on my vinyl plank floor either.

Later the bluetooth game controller I ordered last week arrived. I paired it to the big iMac and was disappointed to find that Vendetta didn’t respond to it. I have a couple of other games to try with it.

Friday brings CEO Rhonda’s 4pm phone meeting. It’s actually a zoom meeting but most people attend by phone. Anyway the big news today was that with the modification of the shelter orders, construction can restart on our 5th floor upgrade. That’s very good news. Doesn’t affect me directly, but there are a lot of 5th floor residents who in early February moved out to temporary quarters, and suddenly found themselves with no schedule for when they could move back.

In response to a question from someone else, Rhonda clarified that only contractors who could be limited to the 5th floor would be coming back. They can enter and exit via the freight elevator and never interact with residents in any way. But there is no unlocking for the contractors who would enter current units. Which means, sigh, the Valet company, to whom I paid a sizeable deposit back in February, can’t come in and remodel my closets.

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In the latest Channing House newsletter there is a timeline of our virus response. It is amazing how much has gone down in two months:

• 2/28, first confirmed case in Santa Clara county
• 3/2, dining room stops all self-service, removes anything multiple people would handle
• 3/4, limit of 3 people per elevator
• 3/6, library, gift shop close; dining room limits to 3 people per table
• 3/9, 9 cases in SCC; residents must sanitize hands before entering dining room
• 3/11, all outside visitors banned
• 3/12, NBA and NCAA seasons canceled
• 3/14, start checking staff temperatures on entry
• 3/15, begin checking residents’ temperatures on entry
• 3/16, official “shelter in place order” announced; new hand-washing room installed and residents wash hands before entering dining room
• 3/17, dining room closed; residents pick up take-out meals in brown paper bags; gym closed, fitness classes canceled
• 3/22, no more entry from the garage, those who want to use their cars must park on the street
• 3/25, start of food delivery to each resident’s door; first fitness classes on zoom

So that was “a year in a month”, says Rhonda, of the staff handling all those changes so fast.

 

Thursday 4/30/2020

Started the day with Veronica’s early-morning aerobics class at 7:15. I was the only attendee, so I had a personal trainer, in effect.

Then, after a suitable time reading the internet, it was time to clean! Thursdays have been the usual day for cleaning. When I first moved in, Wanda, the housecleaner for the 6th floor, asked what day I would like my room done, and I opted for Thursdays, because I was usually away all day Thursday, doing artifact stuff. So for months I would come home to a clean apartment with vacuum cleaner tracks on all the carpets, like the mower stripes on the outfield before a baseball game.

Then came the virus, and Wanda got promoted to apprentice nurse’s aide, and I went without cleaning for a sad amount of time. Then last week I got my DIY vacuum and swiffer, I wrote about that. So today was DIY cleaning day. I have a checklist of all the surfaces that need to be (a) dusted (with or without pledge), (b) sprayed with cleanser and wiped, (c) swiffered, or (d) vacuumed. It’s a long list. Plus changing the bed linens.

However, I got through the whole thing in 2 hours, before lunch. In the afternoon, a little coding, a little Affinity Photo review, and that was the day. I didn’t even turn on the TV in the evening.

I finished reading The thirty-nine steps, which is really not a good book. So much casual cultural stereotyping. Some quite unbelievable coincidences. At one point, Buchan has written himself into a box: he’s set a big deadline in mid-June but he started the action in late May. He’s got over a week to fill before the next thing can happen. How does he pass that week? His hero has had malaria in the past; he has a malarial relapse and spends a week in bed in a conveniently safe cottage. One week of narrative time, compressed into a page. Problem solved, for the author.

One thing I want to do is to get some life back in the wood of my coffee table. It’s a beautiful object; I’m sure Marian paid a bundle for it back in the 60s; but it really has dried out and taken on a gray tone. I know it would come back to a deep reddish brown with some oil of some kind. I sought The Google’s advice and it comes down to either Scotts Liquid Gold or Old English Lemon Oil. I opt for Scotts. But for some reason the shipping time on Amazon is weeks.

Well, somebody mentioned recently that Ace Hardware was doing curbside pickup; I have a nice Ace Hardware just up Channing Street. So I go on the Ace website, select “my” store, and order and pay for one can of Liquid Gold. Email: order received. Please wait for the “order ready” email before coming to the store. Expected date: 4/30.

However, the email doesn’t come. Tomorrow, one hopes.

Evening, I try out a game, HiveSwap. It’s cute, and has actually amusing dialog. It’s one where there’s a plot, and you advance the plot by walking your character around various rooms, clicking on things to look at them and solve puzzles. I get frustrated early by not being able to solve a puzzle, so I go to the YT and watch a walk-through of the first bit. Oh, is that what it was. Actually it looks kind of fun, and I think I’ll go back to it and play some more.

 

Wednesday 4/29/2020

Didn’t mention that last night, I watched the Hitchcock Thirty-Nine Steps on Amazon Prime. Oh, I just realized that in the movie, they refer to “thirty-nine steps” but they never explain what they are or why they are significant. They talk about “warning all thirty-nine steps” as if they were agents or something. It left a bunch of other plot threads dangling, as well.

That said, I have to say the movie was better in several ways than the book. The long sequence of Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat handcuffed is still entertaining.

Today would have been shopping day, when I compile a 6th floor grocery order, but nobody wanted anything, or at least, nobody filled out one of my order forms, so I didn’t do that.

Today was also car freedom day, when I could take the car out briefly; but I opted not to. There just isn’t anyplace to go, and still be back in the garage by 11:30. We are allowed to go out before 11. Maybe next week I’ll take the car out at like 8am, go down and walk the baylands trail, and be back by 11:30.

Last week when I turned in my menu, I canceled out Wednesday supper, planning to treat myself to pizza. During the emails between neighbors about shopping, Patty suggested canceling dinner next week and splitting a pizza. Then it emerged that she had actually canceled her tonight’s dinner as I had, so we are doing that. This is better than doing it solo, as I won’t have half a 14-inch pizza in leftovers, as I would have doing it alone. So, tonight is pizza and beer night. And it was delicious.