Saturday, 12/7/2019

I was scheduled for the noon tour, which meant leaving at 11am in my red docent shirt, which needed washing. So I started the laundry before 7am, in order to get both loads done and the shirt ironed in time.

Went to the museum and led a tour that started with about 15 people. Picked up another ten or so on the way, then they evaporated and I ended up with 12 at the end. They seemed interested.

Back home, I spent some time learning the ins and outs of Affinity, the app I am starting to use to edit my old photos and print them out large on the new printer. The standard for decades has been Adobe Photoshop but as I wrote before, they changed their business model a few years ago, from selling software to renting it. When I finished converting all the old slides, I dropped my Adobe subscription. Affinity is a replacement. It cost only $40, but it has just about every feature that PhotoShop had, and a user interface that is pretty close to it. At least, a number of the PhotoShop keystrokes in my muscle memory do the same thing in Affinity. But as was true with PhotoShop, there is no bottom to the depths of things you can do with it. I ran onto a big set of free tutorial videos for using Affinity, and watched several and then immediately went and applied them to a picture.

It doesn’t show well at this resolution, but the picture on the right is improved in several ways, and the point is that each component was improved separately. The wall and the people were separated from the distant hill so it could be made darker and greener. Then I selected the man and child–including the wisps of their hair–from the masonry wall. The wall got a little darker and bluer. The faces and flesh tones got subtly brighter and easier to see. I see that their shirts should get more saturated; since they are on a separate layer now, that will be easy to do without affecting anything else.

day 5 – boat ride to malcesine

day 5 – boat ride to malcesine

Soon it was 5pm and time to call for a Lyft to Maples and the second round of the NCAA for women’s volleyball. Stanford had no difficulty in disposing of Cal Poly in three sets. The dining room wasn’t open when I left, and it was closed when I got back, so once again I had a salami and cheese sandwich and a beer in my room.

Funny thing now. Yesterday I had worked out the 11th floor mic setup — or so I thought — to supply a single hand-held mic. I woke up at 1:45am with the thought, “Was that all they wanted? Because I was given a copy of the event request form (ERF), and why the hell have I not actually read it?” So I got up, turned on a light, and read the ERF, and oh crap, they want a lectern with a podium mic plus a hand-held.

I put on some clothes and in the deep quiet of Channing House at 2am, I go up to the 11th floor. Desperate exploration reveals a little podium (brand name “Lecternette”) which appears to consist of just a speaker cabinet on a wheeled cart. The instruction sheet taped to it refers to two wireless mics on channels 3 and 4 and a podium mic, but all I can see is this speaker cabinet.

I go back to my room and compose an email to the other members of the A/V committee asking for some info on this, where are these two mics supposed to be? Then go back to bed.

Wednesday, 12/4/2019

I have a docent tour at 11, so I have to leave at 10. I shower and shave and dress in my nice docent clothes, then go to breakfast, then go to the 11th floor and resume inspecting the A/V gear. After poking and prodding the “speaker cabinet” I finally discover how the top of it opens up to reveal a lectern surface with a light, a nice mic stand, a mic to put in the stand, and in another concealed drawer, two wireless mics. I plug in the power and with only ten minutes of futzing around, I have the podium mic and one wireless hand-held working. No idea why the other one won’t, but there it is.

So I go off to the museum and lead a tour for a group of 22 college students from Mexico, who have, according to my info sheet, “good English”. They better, because I talk fast and have nada de Español. Pat Buder is there, a 1401 docent, getting ready for the Wednesday afternoon 1401 demo, and volunteers to do a private demo for my group. He also suggests that maybe I should do 1401 demos, too. I demur, having plenty of things to do already, although I agree to “sometime” let him show me the ropes.

The tour leader tells me they have “maybe an hour.” Why do groups do this? I get him to agree to an hour and a half. Then I rush through my tour, skipping several points I normally make, and get them to Pat at 12pm. This group was, in Pat’s word, “squirrely”. Of the 22, I don’t think I ever had the full attention of more than 10 at a time. The rest wandered around or gawked at their cell phones, or cracking each other up with jokes in Spanish. Well, some seemed interested anyway.

So, straight back to CH, skipping my usual Wednesday FOPAL stint. Nancy, a CH resident, was already at work setting up the 11th floor for the Canopy party. I moved the podium out to the right location and got it all ready, then helped Nancy move tables and chairs around. Eventually Maika arrived. She was one of Marian’s favorite people ever; Marian adored working with Maika on her Canopy volunteer days. Maika was surprised and pleased to see me, as was Catherine, the Canopy CEO. The two of them had visited Marian a couple of weeks before she died. At that time, I’d asked them for advice on what to do with Beau, the 7-foot ponytail palm. Catherine remembered that and asked about Beau’s fate, and was glad he had a new home.

With the help of a couple of staff from the CH kitchen, they set up a big table of catered goodies and wine and mulled cider. Eventually 30 or so CH residents, and a dozen invited guests, drifted in to nosh and listen to Catherine and three others describe Canopy’s work, and make a low-key pitch for volunteers and donations.

By 5:15 people were drifting away, so I struck the podium and put everything away, and was just in time to join the other 6th floor exiles for the monthly 6th-floor supper. Except I’d eaten so many snacks I didn’t really want supper. But anyway we were joined by future residents Leon and Margaret, I think mentioned them before, and one more person who has bought in but can’t move in until February, and whose name I forgot as usual.

Watched about 3 hours of impeachment proceedings I’d recorded on the DVR. And so to bed, hopefully not to wake in a panic at 2am.

Well. One year ago I was visiting the Neptune Society offices to make arrangements, and writing about my first experiences of grief. Quite a lot has changed in that year, and over the next few days I plan to assemble some kind of retrospective essay, summarizing what I’ve experienced, what I’ve done, and what I’ve learned. But for now, I will just carry on with daily posts.

However, going forward, shall I keep the Day number headings? Once we are past 365, they stop being meaningful. Maybe change the numbering system to a year and a day, e.g. supposing this has been year zero, then tomorrow could be Day 1.1, and so on to 2021 when Day 1.365 changes to Day 2.1. Or maybe drop the “Day” and just use a number, 1.15.

Tuesday, 12/3/2019

Over the past few days I’ve accumulated a lot of mental “should-do” items and finally made myself write a list, which proved quite lengthy, so devoted this morning to doing these things. Some bills. Paid up the Apple Card and then had another unsatisfactory exchange with the Apple help text system. The Apple Card just does not want to do things in ways I would like. I’ve mentioned how I can’t schedule a payment through my usual SFCU Bill Pay system. There’s no reason they can’t support that. Today I asked if there was any way I could view my balance or statement or make a payment using my iMac instead of the little iPhone screen. Nope. They do not support such a thing. There’s no support for the Apple Wallet on the bigger systems.

And that decided me: I am going to cancel the Apple Card, and not the BofA card.  Which is a bit of a close shave for the latter, because I was going to close it after its balance was zero, which I thought it would be when my payment cleared. However in the interim I took an Uber (Sunday, to the Dish walk) and I had forgotten that I had that card as the payment option for Uber. So now it had a new, $9 balance and I put off closing it to next month, and now it will survive.

Recall how a few days back (Day 353 actually) I was unable to get into the Anthem system to investigate my new drug insurance. Try again within 30 days of the start of your coverage, was the advice. So, today I tried again. The symptoms were different, another vague error message, “We can’t seem to complete your log-in” and offering three possibilities: wrong username or password, not yet registered, or account is locked. So I called the help line, and once again got a minimum-wage person with a heavy accent (Philipino?) who offered to reset the account password. Well, I had already been through resetting the password, but ok, and of course that didn’t help. She suggested I should wait until coverage actually starts. Sigh.

I went out, stopping first at Bed Bath and Beyond because I was thinking maybe I want a duvet. I was kind of chilly a few nights, but that was when the bedroom radiator wasn’t working. But maybe a not-too-arctic duvet with a colorful cover would be nice. They didn’t have any. They had duvets, but only boring gray or beige covers, and anyway a Queen/Full set would be over $300 and… nah. fuggedaboudit.

On to Target where I hoped to stock up on some Ranitidine. I had gotten that there before (day 229) and remembered exactly where they should be. But they weren’t. Name-brand (Zantac) but no generic. I also looked for note pads. Simple, 4×6, pads of white paper such as I want one of by the phone and one on my desk. Nope.

Crossed the street to Walmart. They, also, had no Ranitidine, although they at least had posted a “temporarily out of stock” note on that bit of shelf. Later, shopping online, I still can’t find it. What, is there a global shortage of the Ranitidine plant or something? No paper pads, either, plenty of spiral books and legal pads but no plain small ones.

Palo Alto once had not one but two complete stationery stores, one on University and one on California Ave. Both closed earlier this century. I stopped at a paper store in Town and Country, but they were all about wrapping and place cards and note cards, nothing so plebian as a pad of white paper. So guess what? Amazon Prime. Stack of 10, 4×6 note pads, on its way to me, $11, free shipping. Wonder why all those stationery stores closed?

After lunch I remembered that I am running A/V for a big Canopy do on our 11th floor tomorrow, and I have never touched the 11th floor mic equipment, only the stuff in the auditorium. So I went up there and fumbled around and couldn’t work it out. But eventually I unearthed the instruction sheet under a bunch of other stuff, and got squared away, so am prepared. The contact person for the event is Maika Horjus, who is a person at Canopy that Marian loved to work with when she did volunteer stuff in the Canopy office. She will no doubt be surprised to see me.

Jean had invited me to supper. We talked about various things for an hour. I had wanted to assure her of financial support if she couldn’t live independently. Turns out, she’s already worked out where to move if needed, and figures she will have enough money, but was glad I would be able to help with any shortfall.