Day 213, FOPAL

Wednesday, 7/3/2019

Started a run about 7:30 but my body just didn’t want to do it. Not short of breath, just general lack of energy and stiffness. I’m always on the lookout for symptoms that would indicate my replacement aortic valve is breaking down, so this was a concern. I cut the excursion short, walked mostly for 1.5 miles. My late sister’s husband Wes used say he “felt few”, meaning sickly, sub-par. So I felt “few” for a couple of hours, but felt back to normal by noon.

Drove to Woodside for my haircut with Chris. Bought some fruit there, including a punnet of Blenheim apricots. And walked away from it when I left. Damn.

Went on down to FOPAL to work the computer section and do some sorting. Although I felt normally strong, after 3.5 hours of schlepping books around my back was hurting, and I left a little early.

When I got back to C.H. the little electronic gizmo on the dash that lets me into the garage didn’t work. Maybe it was cooked by being in the sun for a few hours? Whatever, I parked on the street and went to turn it in at the front desk. An hour later, the desk person called to say that a new dongle was ready for me. So I moved the car into the garage.

Waiting for me in the mail area was my shipment of Saturo. I decided a couple of days ago that I was tired of not being able to get breakfast as early as I want, on the days I want to get going. So I ordered a couple of packs of Saturo, the ready-to-drink meal replacement that tasted best to me when I was reviewing such products last year. I had meant not to do this until one of two companies that have promised ready-to-drink Keto meal replacements made good on the promise, sometime in the fall. But I want the simple logistic now, of having an easy, instant, 350 calories of balanced nutrition in the fridge whenever I want it.

I started out eating alone at supper, but sat at a table for four, not one of the little two-person booths on the edge. So Al came and sat with me, so I put away my phone (reading on the kindle while eating) and made conversation. Which was good.

Tomorrow, the 4th, is going to be a holiday for me, too. Quiet and relaxing is the plan.

Day 212, book, museum

Tuesday, 7/2/2019

I began the morning by driving to the Y for a small workout. I departed late enough that the dining room was open, and I picked up a bagel and banana to eat while I drove. However, I want to be able to do my workout here, and drop the YMCA membership. However, that will mean changing the workout, as two apparatus that I use, aren’t in the C.H. gym.

Right now, the fitness director has announced her departure, and a new one hasn’t been appointed. There is a buzz of email on the house list of people lobbying for the director’s assistant, Clark, to be promoted. He’s apparently very popular with the residents. I have no opinion; he seemed nice enough when he evaluated my fitness back on Day 152.

Anyway, when that is resolved I intend to get with whoever is director and ask for help in mapping out an exercise routine that will strengthen the particular muscle groups that I’m concerned about, and that I can do here.

That done, I edited another chapter of my book, and explored one of the websites where I might get hard-copy made. That would be Blurb, which I used to produce two photo books for the Cardinal WBB team back in 2012 and 2013. I still need to check out Kindle Direct, because why not be able to sell through Amazon?

During this I was getting emails from Chuck with documents to e-sign and return. We are finally and definitively separated from Lawyer Lady, and good riddance.

I had a quick lunch and headed off to the museum to lead that tour that I accepted yesterday. Stopped briefly at Tasso street to sign Deborah’s sales agreement. The tour were a dozen residents of The Terraces at Los Altos, another upscale senior residence. They could have been a random selection from C.H. Anyway I had fun with them and they seemed appreciative.

Back to C.H. in time for the monthly Upgrade Progress meeting held by Angela. She went over again the timeline for the 7th floor moving back and the 6th floor moving out. No changes but a little more detail. Our common areas, except for the laundry room, will be closed for renovation starting later this week.

Between 3:30 and supper time I began to explore a replacement for PhotoShop. I am a bit of a PhotoShop power user, very familiar with it, have used it to process hundreds of scanned slides etc. A couple of years ago, Adobe changed their pricing so that one no longer could own the latest PhotoShop (or Bridge or LightRoom, etc) but only leased them via an annual payment for Creative Cloud membership. I put up with this while finishing up my slide scanning, but did not renew when it came due this spring, and all that software has stopped working. Actually I still have a five-year-old PhotoShop that works, but it would be nice to have something current and supported.

There’s The Gimp, the open-source image editor. I picked up a book on it last week at FOPAL, so downloaded the program and checked it out. It lacks several features that I used heavily, as well as having a confusing UI (and the book wasn’t very good either). No.

For certain things, GraphicConverter is very useful and I have it on both computers, but it isn’t my favorite tool for image editing.

Some time ago I bought a copy of Pixelmator and it would probably do most of what I want. However I recently heard of Affinity Pro and decided to try their trial download. And Wow! am I impressed. For $39, here was a program with every feature of the latest PhotoShop, and more. I watched a couple of their tutorial videos, tried out a couple of things, and immediately bought it. Yes. Nice.

Day 211, book, museum, dinner

Monday, 7/1/2019

Began the day with a run. There was nothing more on the calendar until noon, when a person from facilities had made a date to take some kind of inventory of my Comcast equipment in preparation for the move.

I spent a couple of hours, then, on a light edit of my book, To Thrive Beyond Belief. I had declared it complete just a year ago. At supper with Betsy Young the other night, she had mentioned it: she’d googled me and knew the name of the prior book. Another guest, Bob, had expressed interest in it. He and Betsy said, can you put a copy in the library here?

I was a bit embarrassed to have to say no, the current version was an online e-text only. I investigated later and there are several ways to create bound copies of the book, and I think I’d like to do that. But before I do, it needs one more edit. I’m finding a number of minor typos and less-than-clear sentences. So there will be another version and I’ve started on it. This is one of the back-burner projects that I set aside last year when Marian got ill, and it is a pleasure to return to it. Writing and editing are really satisfying for me.

Right at 12, the facilities guy knocked on the door. All he ended up doing was to note the modem and DVR and put his own barcode label on each. It’s not clear to me why these need to be treated separately from my other furniture, but whatever.

At 2pm I started for the museum where I had signed up along with five other docents, to provide gallery support (which means, standing around in the exhibit area and answering questions) to a group of 120 students from a Stanford summer course. The students arrived with a scavenger hunt, a sheet of 20 rather vague riddle-like clues to objects they were supposed to find. So we gave them hints, when we could figure out the allusive clues ourselves.

Returning to C.H. on the freeway I thought I would stay on until the University Avenue exit. This proved to be a mistake. Apparently a lot of people want to exit to East Palo Alto at 5pm, and I spent about ten minutes in standing traffic before reaching the exit. Once on the exit, there was a clear lane for University Avenue west; all the traffic was going east. Note to self, in future take Embarcadero road and Middlefield.

I’d been invited by Patti and other sixth floorians to supper at 6, and barely made it. Pleasant conversation about C.H. politics and national politics. I’m living in a building full of raging liberals! Thank goodness!

In the middle of the day I’d had email from the new volunteer manager saying that they needed coverage for a tour of senior citizens tomorrow. The slot was still open after supper, so I took it. I can squeeze in a tour before I have to be back here for a meeting at three.

Late in the day I got an email from Chuck with and attached PDF of the cancellation paper we had been expecting the Lawyer Lady to sign. Thinking this was it, I texted him to ask, should I print, sign, scan and return it? Um, no, that’s the unsigned form. Wait until we get the actual one signed by her. Which we haven’t. This was just him, forwarding to me, the email from her agent, in which her agent said, Chuck, here is the form I sent Daphne to sign. I’ll let you know when she does.

Stranger and stranger. If it wasn’t for the fact that L.L. is in fact an attorney, I’d be asking, have we any legal recourse? Can we threaten to take her deposit? But you know, I don’t think I want to get into a legal pissing contest with a partner in a law firm.

Day 210, coffee, FOPAL, supper

Sunday 6/30/2019

For Sunday morning coffee I went to Mlle. Collette. The coffee and pastry selections are top-notch. I snagged a pleasant seat at a table outside that was partly shaded by a tree. The other outdoor tables were in full sun and I don’t think would be very nice for reading the paper.

Back home I spent an hour repotting the two big plants for which I bought pots last week. When I watered them, however, water from the bottom crept toward the edge of my deck. None actually spilled over, but definitely I need saucers to match the pots.

During this process I realized how it was really more convenient to do my plant-watering on Sunday. I’d been upholding Marian’s decades-long tradition of Monday watering since her death, but… it would actually be more convenient to do it on Sundays. (Actually, the plants on the deck, with more wind and sun, need another shot of water mid-week too.)

Next, I was replying to an email from Frank, another volunteer at FOPAL who I’ve been chatting with, when something in his note reminded me of PGDP, the site that applies crowd-sourcing to the job of proof-reading and formatting old books for Project Gutenberg. From roughly 2005 to 2015 I put in thousands of hours there, helping to create free online versions of dozens of books. Then, for various reasons, I fell out of love with it and hadn’t given it a thought for several years. Did it still exist? Did my old ID still work? Yes and yes. There went an hour down the internet drain…

Meanwhile a text came from Deborah; the washing machine buyer planned for this afternoon had canceled. That opened up the rest of the day.

OK, what else to do with a Sunday? For a couple of weeks I’ve had a goal of taking another train trip to the City, to see the Andy Warhol exhibit at SFMOMA. Should I do that today? I was just about ready to do this, using Google Maps to decide whether I would walk from the station or take a Lyft, when I noticed that Google had helpfully colored Market Street with a rainbow to remind people that today was the Pride Parade. Oh. That could make the streets, and the train either way, a bit crowded. OK, put that off again, to maybe Tuesday or Friday.

Now what? Well, I feel some pressure to get down to FOPAL and tidy my section. Normally I’d do it on Monday, but Monday’s schedule is chopped up with obligations at noon and 2:30. So, how about doing FOPAL today, freeing up Monday? So that’s what I did: drove to FOPAL and spent two hours tidying up the computer book section.

From there I stopped by the local nursery to buy those saucers, then stopped at Tasso street for another small kitchen item. To my surprise, Deborah was at the house, busily pricing and arranging goods. We talked about the used McCroskey mattress. She’d asked its age, and I’d managed to find when we bought it by searching old credit card statements online: November 2013. She’s selling it for $90. I didn’t tell her how much we paid for it. Well, actually, I don’t know, because we bought multiple items on the one transaction. But it was at least 20x the sale price.

Something about remembering the purchase of the mattress, and/or seeing our goods being priced for sale, or both, gave me a solid grief-spasm on the drive home. I want to write about grief and anxiety, which I’ve not mentioned for some time, but this post is too long.

At supper time I was again disappointed with the dining room’s offering. The food has been adequately attractive so far, not great cuisine but ok, until Saturday lunch and again tonight. Chicken wrap for Sunday dinner? And a veggie dish with a lot of carrots, something I dislike. I served myself, took a couple of bites, and left. Went up University in the car and took the first open parking space, which was right in front of Walburger’s, which I took as a sign, and ate there. Not sure what I will do if the food continues to annoy. I’m not a fussy eater; I’m more a “fuel up and go” person. We’ll see.

Day 209, Dennis, bookcase, concert

Saturday, 6/29/2019

I started out the day with the plan to go to Cost Plus and buy that damn bookcase. I was getting ready to do that when Dennis called and suggested I give him a tour of C.H. Sure, when? and we settled on 11:30. That left a small window between 10am when Cost Plus opened, and 11:30. Could I go get the bookcase? Probably. Could I assemble it? Probably not (but almost did).

I was at Cost Plus when they opened, and quickly obtained the large and heavy flat pack, about 6 foot long, 18×8 inches around, and over 100 pounds. It fit easily in the Prius, but was far too heavy for me to tote alone. On the way back I stopped at T-Mobile and returned the micro-cell thingy. Back at C.H. I went to the basement office of facilities and the on-duty guy was happy to get a dolly and help me run the big box up to my room. It was now 10:45, and I had a go at assembling the thing, but it was still half-assembled on the floor when Dennis called to say he was here and had his visitor’s badge.

So I showed him around, he was favorably impressed, then we decided to have lunch. At first I was going to eat in the dining room but the offering really disappointed me. A vegetarian Rueben sandwich or an uninspired looking pasta dish. I said, let’s go out instead, and we bailed. We ended up at Joe and The Juice which was ok.

Back home I finished the bookcase and now could unpack all the decorative stuff that had been in boxes in the bedroom. No packing boxes left! Here’s how it looks.

The only disappointment is that the shelves are just too close together to let some books stand up. The tall books on top are my growing collection of print editions of online comics.

I had an early supper as soon as the dining room opened, and then headed out to attend one of Palo Alto’s open air free concerts on California Avenue. Unfortunately there was a major league soccer match at Stanford Stadium at the same time and I got caught in some nasty traffic. But I got there in time. The main act was “Fleetwood Mask”, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band. They were just OK and I didn’t stay for their whole set.

The in-house email list had alerted us that there would be a fireworks display after the soccer match. I was sitting watching TV when the artillery barrage sounds of it began coming in my open balcony door. I’m on the opposite side of the building. I kept thinking, I should go take a look, but then thinking, nah, it’s almost over. But it went on and on. I finally went to the common dining room which is on the West side and watched the last several minutes. (It must have run 15 minutes in all.)

Day 208, washer, docent, dinner, play

Friday, 6/28/2019

Started the day with a run, ending at yet another coffee shop: Mademoiselle Collette, which Harriet has praised a couple of times. Cappuccino: good. Pastries: legit. I had a Koign Amman, a pastry I first had on our French vacation several years ago. This one was pretty close to the real thing. The only drawback to the place is its small size; it is basically a 20×20 foot cube, about the size of my apartment, and noisy. There are pleasant seats outside, however, and I may try those for Sunday morning.

Next official thing on the calendar was a docent tour, but about 9 I got a phone call from “Tarla”, the person who was supposed to look at the washing machine at 2pm. Could she send George her handyman to look at it now? Oh, sigh, I suppose so. I drove over to Tasso street to meet George who came up in his pickup truck from San Jose. He was tasked by Tarla with making sure the washing machine functioned, and taking it away if so. However, Tarla and he appear not to be the greatest planners. She hadn’t told him it hadn’t been paid for. When I said, the price is $100, he was taken aback, then said, ok, he could pay me and get it from Tarla. Then he looked at the washer and while I was making it run through its cycles, I pointed out that it weighed well over 200 pounds, and he didn’t have a dolly, so how was he alone going to get it up my gravel driveway to his truck, and without a lift gate, how would he load it?

He talked at length to Tarla, who sounded like a confused drama queen on the phone and seemed to want to blame him and/or me for the mixup. Anyway, no sale, and George went off to try to get Tarla to pay him for his mileage and time. Best of luck with that, George.

My docent tour group was the smallest ever, just one couple. Very nice people but it was weird talking to just two. I am so used to projecting my voice to lecture to a dozen or more. I had to back off, and use a conversational voice, and generally lower the pitch of my presentation. But they enjoyed it.

Dinner was a date with Betsy and her husband George. She has the task of introducing new residents at the monthly Residents’ Meeting which is a week from Monday. She quizzed me at length on my work history etc. We were joined at table by Bob. Bob retired from running Stanford’s overseas campus in Germany for many years. All these people are over-achievers, I feel very… modest. Kind of like when I went from high school ace to being just an average one of the herd in college.

A little after 7pm I made the ten-minute walk to Lucy Stern center to see A man with two guv’ners by the Palo Alto Players. I saw a production of The servant of two masters, the classic by Golden, some years ago. This is a modern version, updated from medieval Venice to 1963 England, and played with lots of bravura slapstick physical comedy and bad British accents. It was pretty entertaining.

Day 207, Shustek, Tasso

Thursday, 6/27/2019

I drove to Shustek for a day of photographing artifacts and then, when the “ready to pack” shelves were full so we couldn’t place any more photographed items, Sherman and I turned to packing.

Deborah was to do some pricing and setup for the sale this afternoon. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to work Chuck’s lockbox. She called me, then she called Chuck, and found out the changed combination, so all was well.

I stopped by Tasso on the way home, but she’d already left. I chatted briefly with neighbors across the street. Former neighbors, I guess.

Back at C.H., while getting my mail before supper I was accosted by Betsy, who has the job of introducing new members at the members meeting, one of which happens next week. So she invited me to dinner with her and her husband tomorrow to get some material for introducing me.

Before bedtime Deborah texted wanting me to meet with a possible washing machine buyer tomorrow. I’m doing a docent tour at noon, but we managed to settle on 2pm for that. So tomorrow has: tour at noon, washing machine looker at 2, dinner at 5:45, and I’m going to a play at 8pm. Checked the map. From my new home, I’m just 0.6 mile from Lucy Stern center where the play is, an easy walk.

Big day, better get some rest.

Day 206, many errands, FOPAL

Wednesday, 6/26/2019

I started the day with a run. At several points my pace was interrupted by texts from Chuck. Lawyer Lady’s agent had texted him, quote,

Chuck, I just received this text from [Lawyer Lady], “Lyn, I am so sorry about the delay. I am in negotiations (complex license). As for Tasso, I would love to buy it but I cannot swing it at the [our counter offer] price.” Chuck, this was my first communication with [Lawyer Lady] since last Friday. I think it is best for your seller to move ahead without us. Again, my deepest apologies, Lyn.

In further exchanges — Chuck likes long text conversations — Chuck noted that right at the start, Lyn had given him a “qualification document” showing that this buyer was qualified to finance the price we set in our counter. So “cannot swing it” really means, either “don’t want it” or “I want to dicker”. I texted to Chuck, and suggested he quote it to the agent,

We are not interested. We would accept her PROMPT acceptance of our original counter. Otherwise we are done with this negotiation.

We agreed he’d give them a deadline of Thursday noon, after which he would inform the escrow company that we are “out of contract”. I am not sure what happens then to the deposit she placed to open the escrow. Probably goes back to her, although I think we would be justified in keeping some of it, after the amount of jerking us around she’s done.

Back at the barn I assembled some stuff and headed out for a day of going and doing.

First stop was the Wheeler Accountants office in San Jose, to turn in the thick packet of documentation I have assembled so they can compute the actual value of Marian’s estate, and thus how much of her estate tax exemption transfers to me.

Next was a visit to Yamagami’s nursery in Cupertino. My aim is to replace a pot that broke on moving day. It was one of a pair of elegant high-fired pots. Actually I want to replace both, because the remaining one is only 9 inches wide and the plants really need 11-inch pots. I don’t know where Marian bought them but I was hoping, Yamagami’s. They do have a very large selection of pots, many more than any other nursery I know, but nothing like these. However, I bought a pair of I think rather pretty glazed pots.

I used the phone to find the nearest US Post Office, just a mile away, and went there to drop off the DVR for return to AT&T.

Next up, the grocery store next to FOPAL to lay in my favorite no-cal drinks and some snacks for the room. Then, about 11:30, I went into FOPAL and spent 4.5 nonstop hours, cleaning up the Computer section and sorting.

At this point I am not ashamed to say I felt a little bit tired. I headed home but via the T-Mobile store where I meant to return my micro-cell. We always had lousy T-Mobile reception at Tasso street, one or two bars in the living room and “No Service” at the back. That was only an annoyance until Marian got sick and we needed to make lots of phone calls. T-Mobile very nicely gave me the micro-cell, a box that hooks to the wi-fi and acts like a local cell tower. Four bars in every room, it was wonderful!

Now at Channing House I have an acceptable 3 bars everywhere, so I don’t need the micro-cell box. However, the nice young lady wouldn’t take it because I “didn’t have all the parts”. She particularly noted I didn’t have the original yellow CAT-5 cable that came with it. On the way home I remembered there is also a little antenna dongle that I hadn’t brought either. So now I have that to do over.

Anyway, home to chillax and have some dinner and maybe watch the Democratic Debate.

Oh, that revealed a weakness in the voice search for the X1 box. When I said “find debate” all it could find was the PBS show, “The Debate”. When I said “find democratic” all it found was some Netflix show called “Democrats”. Only when I said “find democratic debate” did it find “National Democratic Presidential Debate”. Why couldn’t it find that title for the first two searches? (It’s definitely artificial but I don’t know if it’s intelligent.)

Day 205, Basketball camp, laundry

Tuesday, 6/25/2019

As planned I headed out at 7:15. I decided to take a Lyft rather than cope with the parking. Met Lily and the rest of the usual SWBB fan crew and had a quick breakfast at Jimmy V’s, the cafe next to Maples. For the opening of the one-day camp I was assigned to the “trainer table”. The actual trainer wasn’t there, I was supposed to take notes for her. Each camper whose mom had noted any kind of physical restriction–almost always exercise induced asthma–on the application, was redirected from the sign-in table to me. I was supposed to ask if she felt ok, had any needed meds or inhalers, and remind her to call Katelin, the trainer, if she had any problem whatever. As there were only about 5 campers out of the 100 affected, I didn’t have much to do.

All were checked in by 9:30. Then, it turned out, there was nothing for volunteers to do until 12:30, when check-in for the “elite” camp began. The elite camp is a four-day residential camp.

I walked across to the location for that operation so I knew where it was; then I decided to fill the time with acquiring a few things I’ve been meaning to buy. The first was an antacid, Ranitidine, that I take daily. I called a Lyft to CVS on University avenue. I was about to buy two 90-cap boxes when it occurred to me the price seemed high. Hey, it’s the 21st Century. I got out my phone and in under a minute found that the same 90-pill bottles were literally one-third the price at Target. OK, Target would probably also have the other things I want, too.

So I walked home, got in the car, drove to Tar-zhaay in Mountain View. It took a while but I found what I wanted there, including: three teaspoons, forks, and knives. I could have taken these and more from Tasso street, but I didn’t want to break into the 12-setting set there. (One supposes that a good 12-place set of stainless flatware will sell for more than a 9-place? OK, probably not much.)

From there I drove back to Stanford and parked in the underground Wilbur garage, and walked to the elite camp check-in place. Here I was assigned to the group selling parking passes. Parents who want to spend any time watching their kids need a parking day-pass, and we sold them for $5. We also told parents where to park etc.

During this period, Chuck texted from Tasso street where he was getting a painter’s estimate on the house. He will also get an estimate on replacing the linoleum in the kitchen.

About 3pm that was all over and I drove myself back for the day’s last adventure: Laundry! My first laundry at Channing House. The 6th floor washer and dryer are heavy-duty Speed Queen models that worked fine. There’s an iron and ironing board and I ironed my Docent shirt and pants.

Exciting times in Palo Alto, huh?

Day 204, planning, bridge, FOPAL

Monday, 6/24/2019

My second Monday here. Last night coming out of the dining room I nabbed a roll and a banana, and that’s what I had for breakfast this morning. Eating in the room, before dressing and going out, is much more satisfactory for me. Take in a little fuel and go.

Go I did, leaving at 7:30 for a run, the third time I’ve run this new route. The phone app doesn’t give consistent results for the distance, but it’s about right, around 40+ minutes of (pathetically slow) jogging plus a few minutes to walk the last few blocks. Being so early I didn’t stop at a coffee shop. The earliness was to be ready for the Monday bridge game beginning at 10:15.

Before I went out to run I discovered that the button on my usual shorts was loose and almost off. So on return I got out the small sewing kit I’d brought from Tasso and sewed it back on. Also after returning I finalized the estate docs for the tax people, and printed out the various maps and forms needed when I go to help with registration, tomorrow morning on campus, for Tara Vanderveer’s summer girls’ basketball camp. They want us there outside Maples pavilion at 7:45, which I calculate means I have to be out the door by 7:15.

I only had to play the first session of the bridge game this time, because I have an appointment to meet with Angela to review the completion of my apartment. I have a few QC things to bring to her attention, but mainly I want to get straight how to have a piece of furniture (the planned bookcase) delivered.

That interview was pleasant. She agreed to have fixed a couple of minor sloppy construction items and we talked about the move-out in September, and what work would be done during the renovation. To have furniture delivered, contact her.

That done, I felt the pull of my section of books at FOPAL and went there, arriving about 3:30, and staying three full hours. There was a wall of 18 boxes in front of the section. I culled them and sent 16 boxes to the bargain room, and priced and shelved about 50 books in all.

Back home just in time for the final minutes of dinner service. And then to spend a relaxing evening in the glow of much accomplishment.