Day 271, getting stuff done

Friday, 8/29/2019

Wednesday I had found various things niggling at my mind as needing doing so made a to-do list that got longer and longer, so after a run this morning I sat down to-do. First off was the laundry. While that was running I paid two credit card bills, filed some odds and ends on the desk.

Then wrote to Katherine the Insurance Person telling her that (a) my house is gone, you can close out my homeowner’s and earthquake insurance and please how much do I get back? and (b) if it makes a difference on my car insurance, please note that the car is now garaged in a secure gated garage every day; and (c) yes I want renter’s insurance but I don’t think I need coverage for $100,000 of property value as shown in your quote, maybe half that?

Then as I had half-promised, I wrote a nice five-star Yelp review for Chuck the realtor. He really deserved five stars, for all the back-and-forth and planning and phoning and texting that went into this sale. Which, I remind myself, he did while managing other clients at the same time.

Then I sent an Amazon gift card thank-you note to Deborah the Estate Sale lady, thanking her for being alert and encouraging the couple during the estate sale, who eventually became the new buyers.

Then went through my last eight months of credit card payments to try to get a handle on how much I spend. The point of that exercise was that I have an appointment with the Bob the Finance Guy on the 9th, where we will decide how to allocate the proceeds of the home sale. Bob and his partner Marshall have a recommended procedure where one keeps five years living expenses in a rotating set of liquid investments, apart from the rest of one’s capital. Well, to set that up we need to know what a year’s expenses are. Adding up the average of my credit card payments over the last 8 months, plus my Channing House rent, suggests that to maintain my present life-style I need… well, I don’t want to put the number here. But suffice it to say that by Federal poverty standards I am living very well as a family of four. So I sent an email to Bob telling him this info as prep. material for the upcoming appointment.

What else? Oh, I have it in mind to buy the painting that I saw on Day 154, Eight Pelicans. I had emailed the artist, Carol Aust, a few days ago and gotten tentative times to visit her studio. As she’s in Oakland I thought it would be fun to get Darlene and Jessea to go along with me. So I called Darlene, but they are going off for a few days. We decided the 20th would work. So I emailed Carol asking if we could come on that day. Later she replied that would be fine, so that’s booked.

By now the laundry was dry so I folded that and then it was lunch time.

After lunch and a quick nap I decided on two events I’d clipped out of the Thursday entertainment insert in the paper. One was Eric Clapton at the new Chase Center in SF. I checked the google map and it is a doable thing, it’s less than a mile walk or Lyft from the Caltrain depot. There are tickets but they cost just… If Eric was the pitcher, a nosebleed-level seat outfield of third base is $90. First balcony at the coach’s box angle, which I’d consider acceptable, is $325. Nope for now. I might reconsider the cheap seat. I mean, it’s rock and roll, so no problem hearing him; and surely he’d turn to his left once or twice so you could see his face through your binoculars…

Second was Momix in San Jose. I have good memories of seeing Momix at, I think, Memorial Auditorium at Stanford, probably 20 years ago. And this was quite reasonable, a good seat on a Monday night, $50. So I booked that one.

And now my monster to-do list was almost to-done.

I had seen an ad for Skechers shoes mentioning “wide fit”. I am having some trouble with a corn on my right foot and both my feet are odd-shaped so, how about it? So I drove to Valley Fair shopping center and bought a pair of Skechers. That took a couple of hours, round trip. About 6pm I went down to supper and decided I didn’t like anything on the menu. So I got back in the car and on a whim, drove to Palo Alto Pizza on California Ave and had a delicious small pizza and a beer. Brought home a couple of pieces for breakfast.

Day 270, Yosemite and theater

Thursday, 8/28/2019

Drove to the east bay to the Yosemite ave warehouse for a day of “curatorial review”. Toni and I went through five boxes of artifacts, verifying the number, noting condition, adding notes to the database records. We found several items that hadn’t been photographed or had been photographed poorly, and passed those to Bud and Sherman who were doing photography.

This might sound boring but it had its moments. One came when we were looking at a large circuit board. Its database record description basically said “PCB board”, plus the usual dimensions and other details that we always note. But what was it, actually?

I knew from its appearance that it was an S-100 bus board, because I had owned and worked with many of them in the CP/M era, roughly 1976-1980. It had two ZIF (zero insertion force) sockets with handwritten labels in marker, 2708 and 2716, which I was pretty sure were EPROM chips. So, it’s an EPROM programming board. All I had to do was type the maker name and a couple of words more, “Solid state music s-100 programmer” into a search and there it was complete with a photograph of the identical board and even a link to the original manual! So we could enter a much more informative description and that URL into the database entry for that artifact.

This is the kind of thing that us old-fart museum volunteers can do almost without thinking, but would be hard for anyone else.

Back to C.H. to clear my email and get a quick supper, and then off to the Pear Theater to see a production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. The cast did it quite well and it was fairly enjoyable.

Day 269, docent disappointment, FOPAL, escrow closes

Wednesday, 8/28/2019

Went for a run in the morning. Initially told myself, “listen to your body”, bearing in mind I was not 100% yesterday. However when I got up, my temperature was 97.7, i.e. the Shingrex Fever is gone. Started easy and thought of cutting off one loop, but finally did the whole usual course and felt ok.

Around 10 I got a call from a lady at Chicago Title; she couldn’t figure out how to do a wire transfer to my Schwab account. I quickly gave her the number of Cindy, the knows-all does-all person at my financial advisor’s office. Shortly after I got copied on an email from Cindy, and soon after that, my Schwab account showed that my “personal value” (sum of all accounts) had increased by 112%. Not a bad gain for one day.

So I definitively am no longer a homeowner. That was one of the first firm decisions I made when, a bit more than a year ago, I started thinking about how I would order my life in the likely event that Marian did not survive. I formally started the process about seven months ago. Now it is finally achieved. I felt a brief flutter of uncertainty, almost a panic, realizing that now I have no other place than this one. The Tasso street house had not been my residence since I drove away from it June 15th. From the end of July, when the estate sale cleared everything out and emptied the place, returning was no longer even an unlikely fallback option. But now, it’s irrevocably gone.

The feeling didn’t last. Thinking about it several hours later, I don’t feel panic or uncertainty; just a bit of the familiar grief at having shed another piece of the old life.

I was scheduled to lead a tour at 11:30, a private tour of 30 Apple employees. Looking forward to talking to techies. And I had been told that semi-famous Apple guy Bud Tribble would be in the group. So I went to the Museum and waited, and waited, and they didn’t show. The desk guy called the contact number; someone answered and said, “I’ll check and call you back,” and didn’t call back. Huh. I left at 12.

I had not intended to go to FOPAL today, thinking a full tour would be enough exertion, but since there was no tour, I went back to CH, changed out of my red docent shirt and went to FOPAL. There I put up new shelf labels in the Computer section that I had made last weekend, using a bigger font so they are easier to read. Went through three boxes of books and kept almost half of them. Then did sorting for three hours. My steps for the day: 12,061, 5.4mi.

After supper there was a jazz concert in the auditorium, a local group, the leader and I think the pianist both friends of C.H. residents. They were ok but I didn’t stay for the whole show.

Day 268, fever, lunch, tech squad, financials

Tuesday 8/27/2019

I had a tossy-turny night, awake for a couple hours from 1am to 3 or so. But then slept right up to 6:10 and really didn’t feel much like getting out of bed. My arm is mildly sore around the vaccine site, nothing serious, but I just didn’t feel 100%. Took my temp: 99.1º, or a full degree above my usual 98.0. So, shingles-shot fever? I decide to take it easy for the day.

In case I had something contagious I got a banana and a bagel from the to-go refrigerator and ate in my room. I canceled my lunch date with Scott. I generally puttered around, although I put in an hour at the main computer starting to organize my notes for the rewrite of my YA novel. Feeling somewhat better around 12, I went to the dining room for soup and bread — they have been setting out really good, dark-brown bread at lunch times, and two slices of that and a bowl of the day’s soup is a good lunch.

At 2:30 there was a meeting of the Tech Squad. The main topic was a presentation from the two principal founders of a startup, park.com. (Website clearly not finished as of now.) They have an app that will supposedly allow re-use of the numbered parking spaces here, for staff and visitors. If I’m going out for the day, I would use the app to say my space is available. I could charge for it, or not. Someone needing to park, staff or visitor, could reserve the use of my spot. Bert pushed them pretty hard on the fact that there are many, many parking-space air-b&b-like apps. But it appears the facilities team is willing to give it a trial.

At 4pm it was the semi-annual Board of Directors Financial Committee update. The auditorium was set up for max capacity, where they open the folding doors into the dining room, and probably 120 or so residents turned up to hear a presentation on the financials for the 2018-19 fiscal year and the status of the current year. Bottom line, CH has plenty of funds, but the operating budget is losing around $1M a year (on a $20M budget) mostly owing to the fact that 20 units have been taken “off-line” to use for temporary locations during the Upgrade. When that finishes in two more years, a return to profitability is expected.

This was followed by a soiree in the courtyard. I sampled a couple of the foods on offer, did not take a glass of wine even though it was free, and went on back to my room where I dined simply on cherries and a PBJ. However by 9pm my temperature was back to normal (for me) of 98.1. So hopefully tomorrow will be ok.

Day 267, run, relief, bridge, shot, FOPAL, realty, dinner, outage

Monday, 8/26/2019

First thing in the day I went for a run. A bit over 30 minutes of jogging, and it felt good. Not just ok, actually good.

I was scheduled to play bridge starting at 10. I was showered and dressed by 9am so I sat down to face my fears, or at least, my discomfort: dealing with the rejection of that

Road Scholar (RS) insurance claim.

To recap, I had scheduled a tour starting September 6. Later I realized that was the day I had to transition to my temporary apartment for the upgrade, and also that the house sale might push toward that date. So I re-booked the tour for 9/28, but unfortunately did this just too late for it to be free. Instead, RS gave me half credit for the later tour and I had to pay the additional half, about $3200. So I filed a claim with the trip insurance I’d bought, and a couple days ago, got the rejection of that claim — even though I thought I had been covered by the RS “for any reason” cancellation policy.

Now I went deeper into the RS website and found that the “for any reason” clause is not part of the insurance policy, so the insurer is not required to approve the claim on that basis, only on the allowed reasons in the policy. The clause is a Road Scholar policy that applies to clients when they have bought a trip insurance policy at the time of booking the trip. The policy is, if you cancel a trip “for any reason” and the insurance doesn’t apply, they give you the value of the unpaid claim as a credit, under the small restriction it can only be used to book a different trip.

When I understood this, I called RS and a cheerful customer service rep looked up my account and confirmed that, yes, they did show a $3200 credit that I could use against any other RS trip in the next 15 months. OK. Done. I’m pretty sure I will want another RS trip sometime in 2020, so… ok.

This was a big emotional relief for me. I had been dreading trying to protest the insurance claim via email, finding documents to bolster my case, etc. That’s all off the table, I won’t lose the money and I don’t have to do any more to save it. So I went off

to play Bridge

with a light heart. Craig is a serious bridge player and, since we were bottom pair last time I partnered him, he wanted to meet before the scheduled 10:30 start so we could go over our convention card. There have been a number of small changes and tweaks since Marian and I studied bridge techniques.

Craig’s group plays tournament style bridge, with pre-made hands in “boards” that are played by all tables, with your standing at the end depending on whether on at least a few hands you did better (e.g. an overtrick) or worse (e.g. going down on a game contract) than the people at the other table. Table singular since we only had eight players, two tables.

Almost to lunch time one of the other players announced he didn’t feel well, and went off to the Wellness Wing to get looked at. So we went early to lunch and Craig scared up another player, Ruth. She was glad to join us because it was her move-out day, and she had been looking at a boring day sitting in a guest unit while the contents of her unit were moved.

We finished the last board about 2:40. (That evening I got Craig’s results email; he and I were once again bottom pair of the four. I am just not that good a bridge player to do the tournament game. I wouldn’t mind playing casual bridge, but there are currently no casual games being organized, although I understand there are couples who meet to play regularly in their private units. I can do one of two things: play a lot in some of the many online bridge games and try to get better; or perhaps organize my own casual game. Or forget bridge. TBS.) So now off to

my Shingles shot.

Multiple people have independently recommended that I get a Shingles booster. The previous Herpes Zoster vaccine has proved ineffective, and there’s a new one. I got an email from PAMF telling me that a limited supply of the new vaccine was available and recommending I book for one, which I did last weekend, for 3:15pm today. Then Craig asked me to play bridge; but I was pretty sure I could get to the Los Altos location by 3:15 after bridge, and so it turned out.

The list of possible side-effects for the new vaccine that I had to sign is pretty long and has some really dire symptoms. Most common is arm pain and possibly a slight fever.

From there I went to FOPAL to clean up the Computer section. It was a typical haul, four boxes sent to the bargain room, about 30 books priced and shelved. While I was there I got a call from Chuck. The escrow will pretty surely be closing tomorrow, and he wanted to request a favor. He’s had a good year, and would like to defer the receipt of his commission on my sale to 2020, when possibly conditions won’t be as good and his taxes would be lower.

I guess this is OK, although it does mean that I would receive the amount of his commission as part of my receipts out of escrow, and would sign a no-interest promissory note to him — I think? It’s a tax dodge, but as long as my hands will be clean, I don’t mind doing him this favor. I called my financial people, and everybody was in meetings or out of the office, so I left a voice mail for Howard. Who unfortunately didn’t call me back. So I headed back to CH for

Patti’s Farewell Dinner

Patti had invited me, Craig and Diane, Jerry and Betty, and Gwen, to join her to celebrate the eve of her move-out to a different floor. People have various reactions to moving. Me, I’ve only been here 2 months. I don’t mind the move. I really like my unit with its Eastern view and floods of light all day, and will be very happy to get back to it next January. But I’ve got no big emotional investment in it. Others, like Patti, feel like it’s an exile; she’s concerned about her plants and other items, and feels like she’s being separated from her friends.

So after I’d returned to my room and was browsing Reddit about 8pm, a goose (as I learned next morning) flew into some power lines nearby and blacked out the middle of downtown Palo Alto. People took this pretty easily. No running and shouting. There was, I think, someone trapped in an elevator; at least, I heard the elevator alarm bell being rung. Don’t know how that was resolved.

I went to bed at 8:30, and woke up at 9:30 when the lights came on again. Turned them off, went back to bed.

Day 266, coffee, art fest, supper

Sunday, 8/25/2019

Coffee this morning at Mlle. Collette, who definitely have the best pastries. Walking across to there I was reminded that University avenue is closed off for the Palo Alto arts and crafts fair. I returned to that about 11am and walked the whole thing.

The first couple of blocks of this were somewhat emotional. Practically the only other times I’ve walked an arts festival I’d done it with Marian. And this time, of course, I was seeing things that she would have stopped for. A purple blouse, she’d have checked that out; every jewelry stand she’d have stopped to look over the earrings. So it was a bit sniffly walking along. But in a nice way, I guess.

I was taken with some hand-woven wool blankets. My one and only blanket is very utilitarian. I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond and basically picked one that was the right size and not ugly; but it’s plain and the fabric isn’t friendly to the hand. So at the end of my circuit I looped back to that stall and bought one. Back home I remade the bed with it and it looks very nice.

I also found a cheap broom and dustpan combo at Walgreen’s. I needed that mostly to sweep up the debris from repotting the wax plant yesterday, and in general to keep the balcony tidy.

I’ve been thinking about the tour I’m going on in just a month from now, and thinking how and what to pack. I think it is likely I can get everything I need into a single carry-on bag, not even my roller bag but a smaller one that fits under the seat. I also thought about what I wanted in my pockets, and the answer was: nothing. I don’t want to lose my phone, passport, and/or credit card to a pickpocket. Then I remembered that I still own a “man purse”, a nice leather cross-body bag about 6×9. I will carry passport, credit card and phone in that, clamped under my elbow; nothing in my pockets.

But what about clothes? The Road Scholar pamphlet actually advises having a few quick-dry garments and hand-washing them in hotel sinks. If I do that, I only need, besides what’s on my body, maybe three pairs of shorts, three of socks, two shirts, and a second pair of pants. Plus a jacket. Which all fits in that small bag.

But I don’t have any quick-dry pants. Mostly I have jeans. I don’t want to put my new slacks to this kind of rough treatment. So I sat down and poked around internet retailers and ordered a couple of easy-care chinos from Eddie Bauer.

About 4pm I drove to San Jose to meet with Dennis and Toni for supper at their favorite weekend restaurant, the Black Sheep in the Willow Glen area. Nice supper and conversation. Dennis is a great fan of the Celtic Games which are next weekend, and I’ll probably join him there on the Sunday.

They also reminded me of the upcoming wedding of daughter Denise, which reminded me I need to make some kind of wedding gift. So when I got home I looked up their registry; a very practical couple, they are registered with Crate and Barrel and Target. I bought one item off their list, a camping tent.

So between the packing and the pants and the wedding gift that was a bunch of niggling frets off my mind, with not even the satisfaction of a to-do list to check off.

Day 265, Docent, Lisp

Saturday, 8/24/2019

I was chillin’ and killin’ time before my 11am departure for the museum when I remembered, oh, I should check the plants, maybe they need water. Stepped out on the deck and discovered that the plant stand holding the hanging pot for one of the wax plants had at some time fallen over, the pot shattered, and the plant, now a naked root ball, was looking water-stressed, not surprisingly.

Fortunately I had a spare pot and a bag of soil, so in a rather frantic ten minutes I got the plant re-established in a pot with dirt and water. All this while successfully keeping my white slacks clean. (This morning I noticed the plant was looking ok, and also that both the wax plants were putting out buds, they’re going to bloom again. They already bloomed prolifically back in — May? I remember they had just finished blooming before I moved to Channing House in June.)

Anyway I arrived at the Museum in plenty of time for my docent tour. I had a good sized group, 25 or so at the start, at least 15 still with me at the end.

There was an annoyance: I don’t recall if I mentioned about this dude who runs private tours. He’s big, looks Irish (sparse reddish hair, florid complexion), and appears to do a decent job of guiding small parties of 2-4 people through the museum. Unfortunately he seems to always be starting his tours just before 12 when I start my Saturday tour. So I catch up with him, lead my group through his, then he catches up and is there talking to his group on the fringes of my group. Today I twice turned up my little amp and deliberately talked over him. I’ve previously complained to Jesse, the floor manager, who said he would speak to the guy. We have no problem with people leading private tours. But it’s no bleepin’ secret that the official tours start at 12 and 2. If he’d just schedule for half an hour before or after, there’d be no problem. I sent an email to Jesse complaining. We’ll see.

Back home I spent some time with Lisp. I have finally found a decent tutorial book! It is Common Lisp: A gentle introduction to symbolic computation by David Touretzky. I’m using the free online version; an updated version is available on Amazon. This guy knows how to introduce a complex subject! He takes it from the most basic fundamentals and builds concepts step by logical step, at every step showing the why of each idea, not just the what. It’s a model of good pedagogy, and I say that as a professional writer of manuals.

Part of the fun of Lisp is seeing the ancient roots of the language. It was first implemented on an IBM 704, a vacuum-tube computer, and features of that first implementation are still fundamental to the semantics of the language. Touretzky makes that clear, where none of the other tutorials I’ve seen did. None of the others made the very important connection between the way lists are laid out in memory and the way the language primitives work, and so forth.

Day 264, FOPAL, Road Scholar

Friday, 8/23/2019

Wasn’t feeling totally pip-pip in the morning, even a little diarrhea (so–what was in that fancy meal last night?) so while I started out for a run, I turned it into a brisk walk for the latter half.

I had to skip my usual Wednesday stint at FOPAL this week, so instead I went there today, working from 10 to 2pm. Quite a few nice new books in the Computer donations, for a change; ones I could price at $10 and above. Then I sorted like a champ for three hours.

Back home, I made new shelf labels for the Computer section. When I took it over, I arranged it into interest groups, and made labels for the edges of the shelves. The hope is that somebody scanning the shelves will see “A.I. and Machine Learning” and think, oh, right, I’m interested in that, and browse the 20 or so books in that group. Where if books were sorted by author, or just unsorted as before, they might never find the book they are willing to buy.

The shelf labels I made two months ago are looking a little tatty, and also I thought they could be bolder, so I made new ones, scaled up a couple of points and in bold italic. When next I go down there (Monday?) I will put them up.

Before going in to supper, I checked my mailbox and found an envelope from Aon, the trip insurance provider for Road Scholar. In it, a denial of my claim for that rescheduled trip. I think they’re wrong, and I will try one time to get it reversed. Betty and Jerry invited me to sit with them, and we had a nice chat. I’m not happy with the old closets in my unit, even after sanding and sealing the drawers. So I asked about what they’d done. They told me a lot, and then we went up and they showed me what they’d done. Basically they had the old drawer and clothes rod structures completely gutted, and replaced them with a system of suspended hangars and drawers they’d bought through The Container Store. It isn’t quite what I would want, but I get the deal now. However, chances are this can’t be done during the coming upgrade. Next January I will probably pay for a remodel of my closets.

Day 263, Shustek, dinner

Thursday, 8/22/2019

In the morning I did a fifteen-minute workout based on a couple of online tutorials. It was enough to bring up a sweat and addresses my main concerns about core strength. I’ll keep adding to it over time.

Then I brought up the three drawers from the woodshop and put them back. Five of nine drawers refinished inside, and I’m not sure if I’ll bother with the remaining four, as I don’t use them much.

Off to a day at Shustek. Toni and I worked all day cataloging more of the collected donation of the Mother of Multimedia at Apple (Day 235).

Back to C.H. at 4:30, just time to change into my new blazer to attend the Sodexo Stop Hunger Dinner. This was a special annual event; I had to sign up and pay $80 in advance. Sodexo (our food contractor) donates the meal, all the money goes to local charities that feed the poor one way or another. The menu was elaborate, five separate courses, all very well presented and attractive to the eye. Flavors, not so great. But pretty to look at.

Clear Bloody Mary Consommé (juice of cherry tomatoes with tiny chives and vodka)
Ahi Crudo: small slices of almost-raw Ahi with chopped hazelnuts. I really don’t like raw fish so this pretty dish was wasted on me.
Arroz Caldo: basically a nice risotto decorated with chives and bits of pork belly
Adobo & Gnocchi: five-hour ox-tail braised in ginger and vinegar, with gnocchi made of sweet potatoes. The orange gnocchi were pretty but just a touch leathery; the meat was good.
Coconut Lychee Aspic Cake with passion fruit.

So they were really trying. I give them a 9 for imagination and for presentation, and about a 7 for flavor.

Anyway I was invited by Craig to join his table, which included his wife Diane, Kathleen (a different Kathleen from Day 260), Joanne, Connie, the other David, and a guy whose name I didn’t get although I’ve met him once before. Lot of pleasant conversation for about 2 hours, and now I’ve had my quota of socializing for a while.

Day 262, escrow, focus group

Wednesday, 8/21/2019

Started the day with a run; routine. At 10am the Drapery Lady came, as planned, to offer me a choice of materials. I don’t know her name; but she’s the contractor for all the drapery replacements that happen during the upgrade (which must be a fairly juicy contract for her). The point of discussion was my side window, which currently has a rather tatty and partly broken venetian blind and also drapes. She suggested, and I agreed, that both be done away with, and instead I will have a pull-down roller blind made of a beige fabric that allows 10% light penetration. It’s a modern version of the old roller blind. The works are in a neat case at the top of the window, and I think there’s a track down the sides.

I went down to the shop to collect the three drawers I’d varnished, but I decided that the inside bottom surfaces needed one more coat, which I applied, and then left them there.

At 12 I went down and ate a quick lunch, then drove to the Chicago Title office, on El Camino in San Carlos. There I met with Chuck and Andrew, and a very pleasant lady named Victoria walked me through signing about 15 different documents, the key one being my authorizing a transfer of the property deed. Well, the most interesting one was a detailed breakdown of the costs in escrow, with the bottom line of how much will be transferred into my Schwab account on, probably, the 27th.

Back at C.H. I participated in a Fitness Focus Group, a group of residents who’d volunteered to help the staff decide what to do about the gym and the various exercise programs. There was a lot of discussion and the staff people got some useful and constructive ideas. One from me, but I mostly kept quiet. There will be upgrades to the gym and some new equipment purchased. What, exactly, remains to be seen.

A lot of the cost of these things comes from the Heritage Circle, which is a voluntary fund raised and managed by residents. Building improvements, like better windows, new flooring, lighting, cabinets, etc., are paid by Channing House. But apparently things like a new stationary bike are bought with Heritage Circle funds. I haven’t been asked to donate into the Heritage fund but I imagine I will have that opportunity.

Ate supper alone. Back upstairs to research workout tutorials. I am going to begin developing a morning strength routine on my own.