Day 241, FOPAL, tour, realty, play

Wednesday, 7/31/2019

Started with a run; it felt fine.

Paid a couple of bills. Yesterday I got an email from Amy wanting the signed contract for the staging, so I did that routine: print out the contract PDF, sign it, scan the signed page, and email the scan back to her. About 11am I left for FOPAL where I found four boxes waiting at the computer section, but they only yielded a dozen books to shelve. Lots of immense paperback tomes, Everything about Windows 95, The Complete Red Hat Linux Version 3, and so forth. Fifteen-hundred page doorstops, now of no interest to anyone. However, the haul did include several high-value books, little specialist books that people are paying $35-70 for.

Then I spent a couple hours sorting, before leaving at 1:30. I had received a text from Chuck telling me how much the painter’s estimate was. I had intended to bring my checkbook along so when I got that text, I could write a check and take it to Tasso street. However I had not brought the checkbook, so now I had to go back to C.H. and get it; write the check; and go deliver it.

Now I had an hour before I was scheduled to give a tour to a private group. I had meant to spend it sitting quietly, possibly napping, in the car. However at this point I started exchanging texts with Chuck and that led to realizing that still hanging is the issue of getting fresh mulch spread on the landscaping. What day will it be ok to block the driveway with a pile of mulch, what day will Richard the gardener be available to spread said mulch, I need to order the mulch to be delivered, aaaaagggghhhh!

Flurry of texts and emails (Richard doesn’t do texts) and settled on a date of Monday. Also got an email from Amy, fine you signed, but can you send the check, also? Then into the museum to wait for the tour group to arrive, which they didn’t, so I spent the time calling Lyngso Garden Supply and scheduling the delivery. But they couldn’t give me a time, “call back on Sunday afternoon and we can tell you what your 2-hour window will be.”

Compounded by: I had signed up to lead a tour of 25 people, but the document waiting at the counter specified 50. No way can one docent lead that big a tour. But when they finally showed up they were a reasonable group of 25 after all. And pretty independent, a core group of 10 or so stuck close to me, the others kind of wandered around us on cometary orbits. Which is fine with me.

After the tour I could email Richard about the uncertain start time on Monday. Back to C.H. where I wrote Amy’s check and mailed it, fortunately the usual mail delivery hadn’t happened on time so it went out tonight.

For supper I spotted an Open table with one other person, who turned out to be Beverly, and we were later joined by Cathy. I like the Open table concept. By sitting at one you are saying, I’m unaccompanied and open to anybody’s company. There are smaller tables where you can sit by yourself and nobody will bother you, or tables where people who know each other arrive in a group.A couple of nights back, I sat at an empty Open one, and nobody joined me, which was dampening. So I saw Beverley (who I didn’t know) sitting alone at an Open table I joined her and that was Ok.

This evening I had a ticket for a TheaterWorks presentation, The Language Archive. I didn’t like it much, and left at the intermission.

Day 240, echo, alterations, brass polish

Tuesday, 7/30/2019

First thing today was to go to PAMF to have a cardiac echo test. This is preparation for a routine exam by my cardiologist in a couple of weeks. I had opted for an 8am appointment. The Encina street office of PAMF is nominally 20 minutes’ walk and my first plan was to do that.

However, yesterday afternoon my box of new clothes arrived from Bonobos. As expected, the blazer is a good fit in the arms and shoulders, but too tight around the waist. Two of the three pairs of pants are also juuuuust a bit too tight for comfort. Those two are from one line, the pair for a different line are exactly right, despite all having the same nominal size. Anyway, I wanted to drop off the jacket and pants for alterations at Jacquie’s Sew and Sew, a tailoring shop I’ve used before with good results. Jacquie’s opens at 9am. There were other options but I chose instead to toss the clothes into the car and drive.

The echocardiogram was a short routine operation. I’ve had them before, and from what I could see on the screen, it looked the same as before. The technician of course wouldn’t offer any opinion. “Your doctor will tell you about it.” Which is only sensible.

So to the Prolific Oven for breakfast, and then to Jacquie’s, where they took my instructions and clothes and said, August 9th.

From there, on to Tasso street. Here may aim was to polish the brass door and window handles. They were more than ten years from their last polish, and the window handles especially were more the color of a briar pipe than brass. There were two painters there, working away. I didn’t monitor them in any detail, strictly not my job. I set myself up on the front porch with my cardboard box of polish and cleaners and my cordless drill with brush and buffing attachments.

The painters had already removed all the brass door handles into a bucket. I started with those and they polished up very nicely and quickly, using only “Mr. Metal,” a product that I’d picked up at the hardware store that promised “shine without rubbing or buffing” and doggone if it didn’t pretty much do that. When there was no heavy layer of dirt or corrosion, it was a wipe-on, let-dry, wipe-off operation and the hardware looked shiny and good.

The window handles had, I”m not sure how, picked up a layer of gummy crud, like a thin layer of brown crayon. To get that off took soaking in cleaner and whizzing with the abrasive brush. Then I used Mr. Metal and followed with Brasso on a polishing pad.

Each window handle is held in place by three short brass screws. In order to reattach them, you have to start the screw while holding the window open. And of course, I twice dropped a screw trying to start it. Dropped into the bark mulch on the ground under the window. One time I found it. One I couldn’t find.

I was already short one screw, as I discovered when removing the backmost handle from the laundry room. The handles are acceptable with only two screws; clearly I’d lost one back at the turn of the millennium. So I drove to the hardware store and went through their quite good screw and bolt shelves. I found what I thought might be a replacement but in fact, it was just too large and a tighter thread. Who knows what thread standards they were using in 1930? So now I (or actually, the future owner) is short two screws, two handles held on by two screws. I’m going to have one more try at the hardware store later on.

I finished up around 1pm and headed home. When I checked the mail that evening, I found the Amazon package with three copies of To Thrive Beyond Belief. One for my bookshelf, one for the house library. What to do with the third?

Day 239, FOPAL, lunch, realty

Monday, 7/29/2019

Started with a run. Got mentally immersed in the podcast I was listening to and forgot to turn across the creek, so the route ended up a little shorter than usual. After showering I headed out to FOPAL, arriving around 9:30. I cleared the Computer section pile, pricing and shelving another 30 books or so. Somebody had donated several books about Perl, so I assembled a whole little section of books on Perl.

At 11am I switched over to sorting, all by myself. I cleared the table. Donors brought another 5 or 6 boxes, out of the normal hours for that, but whatever; and I took them in and sorted them. So when the regular sorting crew arrived, they found a nice tidy sorting room with a clear table.

At 12:15 I headed off to meet Scott for lunch. From there headed home. Sitting around, I got a text from Chuck. He has been scheduling various operations, and has hopes of showing the house for the first time a week from Friday, August 9th. That’s excellent news. He has a floor person he has used before, who quotes $2300 to put new vinyl in the kitchen and utility room, and another $2000 to refinish the “rest of the flooring”. I commented that seemed low, was it just a coat of varathane? No, this guy is good, Chuck has used him before, he’ll sand and varnish.

I ok’d both jobs, and said I appreciated the depth of his contact list. He replied that he got contractors to work for him because he pays them promptly, and by the way could I give the painter a check for his work on Wednesday? Back of the envelope calculation, I’m committed to about $20K of work, including the tree work, the painting, the flooring, the staging, and some misc. handiwork not yet scheduled. So I wrote to Cindy at the financial managers asking that she have the brokers get me another glob of liquid funds I can transfer from the managed Schwab account to the unmanaged one, which I can write checks against.

Looking at tomorrow’s schedule, I had planned to do laundry in the morning, but there are a couple of other things I want to do then also. Checked the house laundry room schedule and met Diane there. She’s running laundry until about 8. Fine. I’ll do laundry starting at 8. I want to sit up for SYTYCD anyway.

Day 238, slow Sunday

Sunday, 7/28/2019

Doing this entry rather late on Monday — the first time I’ve let a blog post slip so far.

Sunday morning I had coffee and read the paper at Verve, which I was surprised to find opened at 6AM. I got there at 7:15. Pleasant enough, although the inside seating, which looks very comfortable, is somewhat spoiled by just-too-loud music. Outside seating has plenty of sitting space in the form of benches, and is shaded from morning glare, but lacks tables.

On the way back, around 8am, I looked for the Sunday Farmer’s Market. I found the right parking lot, clearly marked as reserved for Farmer’s Market, but it was completely empty. Not a sign of a farm stand being set up. What time does it start? I’d think there would be people setting up an hour ahead, so maybe it doesn’t open until after 9am?

At noon I had been invited to lunch by Ann. I was a little uncertain when I accepted, what I was accepting for. Was this to be a tete-a-tete, and if so, was I to be propositioned? I’ve had more than one person tell me with great certainty that live males in a retirement community will be very popular, nudge-nudge, with the women who outnumber them. This always from people who are too young for a retirement community, not from any actual retirees.

So far I’d encountered nothing of the kind. OK, here’s a fact: since this blog is public, I’ll say right now, that if anything even minutely romantic happens, it will not show up here! But in this case, it turned out that Ann had very kindly set up a luncheon to let me get to know her, Marian, Robin, Ed (whom I’d dined with before) and Dirk. And very pleasant it was.

In the evening I finished watching a movie on Amazon Prime. I had been interested in the actress Melanie Stone since she starred in a commercial for a product I was writing about, Keto Chow. I watched her first feature appearance, Mythica: A Quest for Heros. It wasn’t bad, and she did as well as the rather disjointed script would allow her to do.

After that, I noticed Amazon suggesting a free movie, one of the Rifftrax series. These are really bad, cheesy movies with sarcastic voice-overs by two guys. This one was really funny. Normally “funny” TV gets a smile from me; this one had me laughing out loud at least twice. And so to bed.

Day 237, docent, sonnet, book

Saturday, 7/27/2019

Did nothing much between breakfast and departing for the Museum at 11am. Did my docent round, people liked it.

This morning I remembered the window handles at Tasso street. They are brass, and I think three times over the 40+ years I lived there, I polished them. They come up with a lovely warm shine, then over a decade or so, turn dark brown again. Which they are now, and I really would like them shiny. It’s not that bad of a job, especially if I were to use some kind of power tool. I have a good cordless drill, but I don’t have a buffer attachment for it. That’s a rubber disk on a spindle; you chuck it into the end of the drill and tie a lambs-wool pad over the disk, and then you can whizz away with your tool.

So I stopped on the way home at the hardware store intending to pick up a buffer disk, and to my surprise they didn’t have them. So at home I opened up Amazon and ordered one. It will arrive Monday, but that means I can’t, as I’d sort of planned, go do any buffing of window handles tomorrow. Well, I can, but I’ll have to do it manually, no power assist. Looking ahead, I’m hoping that the house will be full of painters next week, and I might have a hard time working in around them. Well.

In the afternoon email is a notice from Amazon that my book is now available for sale. I ordered three copies, although I’m not sure on whom I will bestow the third.

Sitting around in the afternoon I recalled a thought that drifted through my mind a couple of times lately: recalling Emma Lazarus’ famous sonnet about the Statue or Liberty, The New Colossus, I wondered what kind of sonnet she might write about today’s immigration policy. Well, how about me, could I write a sonnet? And over about 90 minutes, I did, complete with proper sonnet rhyme scheme (mostly) and iambic pentameter (ok, ok, there’s one extra foot in one line, sue me).

(Removed, so as to meet the rules of most poetry magazines which don’t want anything published before, even in a personal blog.)

Since I’d never written a sonnet before, I think I’ll call this a day.

Day 236, walk, book, dinner

Friday, 7/26/2019

Didn’t feel like running; and anyway I used to have a habit of taking a longish walk on Fridays instead, so decided to have breakfast in the dining room and then walk to the Tasso street house to check progress.

Of which there has been none. The house is exactly like it was on Monday when I looked at it with Chuck. So I sent a text to Chuck suggesting that, as it was almost the weekend, he should try to stimulate the painter today, ok? And he didn’t reply, which probably means that, as on the prior couple of weekends, he is off playing the piano at some resort on the Russian River and out of cell phone coverage. Which is annoying. Both his absence on weekends and the lack of painting progress.

Chatted with neighbor Gloria, then walked up California Ave. and had coffee at the little invisible place in an alley, forget its name. And on home. (Over 10k steps for the day, yay me.)

Back home I worked on the book. This was mostly a matter of continuing to struggle with the LeanPub platform. The book is written in their flavor of Markdown, called Markua. Except they have been developing Markua for over two years now and keep not finishing the little corner features like poetry (i.e., a block of text in which the input spaces and newlines are preserved). I have 6 places in the book where I quote verse; they were defined with the Markua poetry markup as described in its spec, but it isn’t implemented so, when I complained in the user forum the developer suggested I use Code markup instead. Code markup (pre-formatted text in HTML terms) does preserve user newlines and indents, but it also uses by default, a monospaced font. But one can change that.

So I converted the poems to code markup and set the “Code” font to be the same as the body font, and regenerated. And discovered that code markup also doesn’t notice the markup for italics, so the italicized words in a poem aren’t, and it doesn’t recognize footnote references, so where I had a footnote reference at the end of a verse, as one should, it didn’t work. And in any case, the three places I had poems in the end-notes file (because I put poems in end-notes, ok?), this caused the PDF generation to end with an error.

Posted these issues to the user forum and the developer wrote back apologetically, yes, well, that’s how Code should work, the special characters you use for italics and footnote refs are meaningful in code so we can’t translate them. And the PDF generation errors? We’ll work on that.

So now I converted all the poems to block-quote markup. Blockquote markup does respect newlines, but loses indentations. But at least, it works in end-notes. Now I could generate a good PDF that, aside from poems not having indented lines, looks fine.

So I “published” a new version of the Leanpub book, eight purchasers will have had emails notifying them. But anyway, that version of the book now benefits from the dozens of little edits and tweaks I’ve made in the past weeks.

Then I generated a print-ready PDF and uploaded it to Kindle Direct. Kindle was happy with it, couldn’t find any problems, the preview looked good, so I clicked the “publish” button there. Sometime in the next 72 hours I’ll get an email saying the book is published on Amazon, and I can order a few author’s copies. One for my shelf, one for the C.H. library.

Took it easy for the rest of the afternoon, then went to supper, as invited, with Patti, Craig, Diane, and Karen and David. Very pleasant sitting with a bunch of chatty people, I hardly contributed anything.

Day 235, FOPAL meeting, Shustek, book

Thursday, 7/25/2019

First thing after breakfast I printed out the work estimate from Davey Tree Service, signed it, scanned it, and mailed it back to the estimator, authorizing that tree maintenance. Hopefully it will get done next week.

I went down to the garage, got the marked-up book from the car, and spent an hour finishing the edit of the printed copy. I started to enter the changes in the files but got distracted by noticing how badly Leanpub’s software was rendering the several poem stanzas I had quoted. So I started to write up a detailed problem report on the Leanpub author forum, and realized it was past time to leave, so left that undone.

I headed out for a FOPAL brunch meeting at the Mitchell Park Library. Janette, the volunteer director, told us a lot about the pickup gang, the few volunteers who go out and pick up donated books from people who can’t bring them to us. I went in with concerns about the flood of books and how we seem to be falling further behind all the time. I got some confirmation from Frank, a volunteer I enjoy talking with who knows the operations better than I. There is a mountain of about 100 boxes of unsorted donations in the Sorting Room, but Frank knows there are another 200 boxes, some dating back to last year, stacked in a courtyard by the bargain room. After the meeting I talked to Janette about this a bit; she pointed out that there are people who sort other times than the 2-4pm slots when we are open for donations. People sort at night and other times. In my opinion we need a lot more sorting, but I didn’t want to add to her burdens by harping on this point.

I did talk to her about giving a presentation about FOPAL at C.H. and she liked the idea. This evening I wrote to Betsy, on the Events committee, suggesting this.

From there I drove across the bay to Shustek. There I assisted Bud and Toni in taking inventory of the donation from a person who was the director of Multimedia at Apple in the 1980s and 90s. She apparently kept everything. Today we were just making a list of media items, dozens of VHS tapes, Betamax tapes, U-Matic tapes, Hi-8 tapes, CDs and audio cassettes. I read the labels, Toni entered the titles and other info in a spreadsheet, while Bud was going through every cassette type that had a read-only tab and breaking it out so the cassettes couldn’t be recorded-over. We got through a few boxes, with more to go.

Back home I finished and posted my trouble report with poetry formatting. Later in the evening I got a reply, saying basically that it isn’t completely implemented yet, and suggesting a work-around that I’ll try tomorrow. I’m a little dissatisfied with LeanPub. They have a basically good idea and good support, but they have been very slow to get their support complete for corner cases and smaller features. Well, I’ve no real choice but to leave the book there, for online sales. Kindle Direct will be another outlet.

Day 234, tree guy, FOPAL, book

Wednesday, 7/24/2019

Went for a run. Ended it with coffee at a new spot, not only new to me but I think quite new at all: Verve Coffee at University and High street. Looks like a winner, lots of space indoors (but music a little too loud) and in a nice patio outside; and decent pastries.

Spent an hour editing the paper copy of the book. Amazing how many tiny edits I’m making, replacing an emdash with a comma and such profound changes.

Drove to the Tasso street house to meet with an estimator from Davie Tree service. Chuck had texted it was 11am, but in fact the guy had come at 10 and gone, but left his card. I called him, and he was able to double back. Nice guy, very knowledgeable. Later he sent an estimate that was only $100 higher than the prior estimate, and it looks as if they will be able to do the work in a week or so.

While waiting I had a nice chat with Gloria from across the street. I showed her the “red” chest in the garage that didn’t go in the sale, and suggested that if it works in their garage, they take it.

From there I went to FOPAL where I found five boxes of computer books waiting. This haul was quite rich, over half of them were worth pricing (i.e. from the past 10-12 years or a subject that doesn’t date), and I ended up shelving two full boxes of priced books. There was quite a jam with four other section managers using the computers to do pricing. Then I did sorting for an hour and a half, when I felt quite tired from toting boxes around and bailed a little early. I have to say that sorting, in the summer, feels like bailing a sinking ship. You barely get the table cleared when another donor shows up with half a dozen shopping bags of books, or needs to borrow our dolly to bring in four or eight boxes. I’m going to bring this up tomorrow when I attend a FOPAL brunch for volunteers.

While I was sorting, I got a call from Jean, saying she thought her iMac was dying. I volunteered to come down and take a look at it. It booted right up and seemed normal. She said yesterday it would get stuck during boot-up. I don’t know; hard drive getting tired? She thought it was quite old; I was able to show it was a “late 2015” model. So if it has a problem again, tote it to the Apple store, it’s worth fixing.

Another problem was that her Comcast modem wouldn’t come up. In the ten minutes or so I waited, it just cycled its little lights in a repeating pattern, never settling down with “two blues” as she said it usually did. I power-cycled it again; no luck. I left it that if it didn’t come up overnight, she would have to call on Comcast for service (and good luck with that). She says she’s seen the Comcast truck around her trailer park often lately, which I think is suspicious.

Oh, this morning around 4am I realized one possible reason that C.H. has been tapping my Schwab account for only a bit less than half of the expected amount. That amount is probably the amount of my monthly fee that is allocated to health care (and deductible from taxes as such), while the remainder is for food, rent, maid service and garage, i.e. non-medical. The questions remain, (a) why did they do this without my permission, (b) why did they not do it this month, (c) how do I get it arranged to make a single, auto-payment? I’m probably going to kick this can down the road to August anyway.

I left the annotated book in the car when I came up and I’m too lazy to go get it, so I can’t finish editing it tonight.

Day 233, bball camp, book

Tuesday, 7/23/2019

I started the day by driving to the YMCA, doing 15 minutes on the treadmill and my round of strength exercises. Back home I did a bit of office work, filing some things and trying to make sense of my Channing House billings. I can’t get a clear picture of how much I am paying per month. When I first signed up, they received my initial buy-in by electronic funds transfer from my Schwab account. Twice in the three months since, they have again tapped that account, but not for the whole amount of a monthly rental, but rather a bit less than half that. I don’t know why. This month, they didn’t. I don’t know why. I have been paying the amount due on the bottom line of the monthly invoice by EFT from my SFCU (Stanford Credit Union) account and I guess the numbers are working out because they haven’t called me up to say “you’re in arrears”. But I would like to set up a single, monthly, auto-pay order at SFCU. Only I don’t know how much that should be, given they might choose to pay themselves some of it from my Schwab account.

I keep thinking things will clarify with the next month’s invoice. But I guess I will have to make an appointment with somebody in the accounts office.

About 11:30 I took a Lyft to the Stanford campus where I was to assist in registration for Tara’s basketball camp. This time I was assigned to the “A-to-E” registration table along with Nancy. It was fairly complicated as each camper got a name sticker and checked off on a list, then they (or their mom usually) paid some money into their “camp store” account, so they could buy souvenirs and snacks without having to have money in their dorm rooms. Then they got their lanyard and key to their dorm room. We divided this work among us and managed not to mess anything up or distress any campers, so that’s a win.

We were all done by 2:30. I bummed a ride back to CH with Nancy, who had just bought a new Lexus and was happy to show it off to me.

Now I sat down with the paper copy of the book and kept reading, finding several more (very minor) typos. I have a few more chapters to go. Then I’ll make a new text PDF and update the Kindle Direct page with it, and officially “publish” it on Amazon. I’ll have to go back and re-publish the Leanpub version also. With that out of the way, I will start on another project, probably in early August, about the time the house is finally ready to sell.

Day 232, realty, FOPAL, book

Monday, 7/22/2019

Went for a run in the morning. Then at 10:30 left to meet Chuck at the Tasso house. We reviewed what had been done and needed to be done. Henry, our neighbor stopped by to meet Chuck. He and Chuck were not happy with the idea of cutting off an entire big limb of the oak, so that idea is out. Chuck wants to have the better-known Davey Tree Service provide an estimate, and he will have his office guy, Andrew, schedule that. Realistically the prep and staging likely won’t be done until the second week of August.

From there I went to FOPAL where I processed about 7 boxes of Computer section input, pricing and shelving a couple of boxes worth, and. sending 4 boxes to bargain. Then I settled in to do sorting until 4pm. All told about 4 hours of steady physical work.

I bought some of the sugar-free drinks I stock in my fridge, and a little fruit (since I forgot to go to the farmer’s market yesterday) and a pound of coffee, and headed home.

After supper, which I ate alone, I checked the mail and found the envelope with two trial copies of To Thrive Beyond Belief. (Marked “not for resale” because I haven’t officially “published” it to Kindle Direct.)

The cover looks great and the text is readable. I told myself I wouldn’t read it, but I read the opening and found a typo on page 9, which means I have to read it all, now. I got through Chapter 2, which is frankly, damn good.