Category: Uncategorized

Day 171, smoke alarms, lunch.

Cannabis report: took one of the 5mg:5mg chocolates at 8:30. Nice chocolate flavor and some aroma of espresso. As of 10pm I felt exactly nothing. And my night’s sleep was typical/normal, woke several times.

So I guess I have shown, one, that I am insensitive to THC at the 5mg level. I am curious to know how much it takes to feel any intoxication. And two, that 10+mg of CBD may have improved my sleep. I need to think about which of my purchases I want to double-up on tonight.

Wednesday, 5/22/2019

Started with a run, as usual. Fiddle-farted around with something, I don’t remember what, until 12:30 and time to meet Scott for lunch. Afterward I realized I was not too late to do sorting at FOPAL. Yesterday I did extra time there assuming I would skip today, but in fact went down and did some sorting anyway.

This evening, I belatedly realized, is when I’d booked myself for Mama Mia! at the Hillbarn. I think I’ve only been to the Hillbarn one other time, several years ago. It’s a nice venue. They had steeply-raked seating around two sides of the room, and an elaborate Greek Taverna on the other two. The house was packed and very enthusiastic. The lady next to me insisted on sharing with me all the other times she’d seen this show, and often urged me to have fun. The large cast worked very hard through a whole lot of choreography, my goodness so much dancing. The two female leads had good voices as well.

Heading home at 10:30, highway 101 was down to two lanes for construction. I didn’t get home until 11:30, so did not take any cannabis. I want at least an hour before bedtime to assess any effects.

 

Day 170, FOPAL

Cannabis report: The Kiva gummies are fairly large. It occurred to me when I took two at 9:15, that a gummy, which largely dissolves in the mouth as you chew it, should be processed a little faster than a soft-gel or a chocolate. However, I felt no effects at all in the following hour.

Did the 12mg CBD/3.6mg THC dose affect my sleep? Possibly! I only woke up enough to check my watch one time (12:45), as opposed to 2-3 times in a typical night. I slept soundly from then to 6:10am. Now, how can I get a clearer picture of the situation? Should I not take any tonight? Unfortunately, sleep quality is so subjective that the placebo effect, or its inverse, is inescapable. The only way to be sure would be to have identical-looking gummies and have someone randomize them for me.

I think I’ll just continue with the third preparation I bought, the Kiva chocolate which has 5mg/5mg. That’s 40% more THC. Possibly will edge the THC level to where I’ll feel a buzz? But half the CBD.

Tuesday, 5/21/2019

Sent off an email to the advisors, saying I want to move on the infamous Form 706, estate tax portability. Walked to the YMCA through light rain showers, and back.

Since tomorrow has several things happening, I decided to do my FOPAL work today. I found 6 boxes of computer books waiting. After culling and pricing I shelved maybe 40 books, and sent four boxes to the bargain room. Then I did an hour and a half of sorting.

Bought a few grocery staples, then went home via the hardware store where I bought two, combination smoke and CO detectors, with voice alarms. A tinny little voice, based on what I hear pressing the Test button, but certainly if this voice starts squawking at you about smoke in the middle of the night, you’ll wake up. Tomorrow I should find time to mount them.

Tonight is a presentation of 42nd Street in the CH auditorium. There’s a resident, Robert, who is a film buff and organizes series of films. This is the first of an American Musical series. I had supper, and in the supper line was greeted by a couple of women as “the new man”. OK… Unfortunately the film didn’t really hold my interest. I left after about 40 minutes of it.

 

 

Day 169, blood, bed, realty

Monday, 5/20/2019

Cannabis report: a soft-gel containing 10mg CBD, 2.5mg THC, had no effect. An hour after taking it I might have felt just a tiny bit buzzed, about ½ glass of ale buzzed, but it could just as well have been imagination. And there was no difference in my sleep, either in duration or frequency of waking. So tonight I will try the 3:1 gummies. Each gummy contains 6mg CBD, 1.8mg THC, so I will take two, for a total of 12mg:3.6mg. That will be 20% step-up in CBD, 50% in THC. Effects to be reported tomorrow.

After my run, I decided to try giving blood again. Back on Day 66 I tried to donate blood and was turned away for low hemoglobin, 11.9. Following that I talked to my doctor, who wasn’t much concerned, and have been taking an iron supplement. For a month I took one daily; for the last few weeks only two per week. Stanford blood center has been sending out emails, critical shortage of type O (my type), so I’ll give it a try.

My hemoglobin came in at 15.9, four points higher than the last time. So I was allowed to donate.

Following that I drove to IKEA again. As noted a few days ago, I selected a bed frame there. But later, reading customer reviews on the IKEA website, there were a number of people complaining. The headboard of this “Trysil” frame has gaps between the cross-boards. People complain that their pillows slip out between the mattress and the lower cross-board. In the picture on the product page, it doesn’t look like that would happen. However, when I look at it in the store it is clear there is a gap of an inch or two between the bottom of the board and the top of the mattress. Why?

I figured it out. Some of the IKEA mattresses are 9-10 inches thick, and some are 11-12 inches thick. At the store, the Trysil frame is displayed with a “Morgedal” mattress, which by coincidence is the one that I had selected on a previous visit to the store. The Morgedal is only 10 inches thick. On today’s visit I tried other mattresses, and settled on the “Haugesund” model, which is 12 inches thick. When placed on the Trysil frame, the Haugesund mattress will be flush with the bottom of the lower board in the head.

In a bunch of texts Saturday, I agreed with Debora the sale manager that her buyer would pick up the dining table and chairs on Friday the 31st. After that time, the dining room here will be empty. I will move all the boxed furniture that I’ve collected (flat-packs of a desk, a file cabinet, a chair, a table) into the dining room. To them will be added a media console, two more chairs, and a love seat, all scheduled for delivery from West Elm in the first week of June. During that week of June I will also go to IKEA and order the bed frame and mattress to be delivered here. All to be stacked in the dining room.

Then on the 15th, the movers can just move all that into the truck first, followed by a few boxes of my possessions, art work, television and computers, for the move. I will also have scheduled a TaskRabbit contractor to come to CH that afternoon to help me assemble at least the bed, if not all the other things. Hopefully by sundown on that Saturday I will be fully moved in. We’ll see how that plan works out.

Later Chuck came by with realty news. The Woman who Works at Apple has dropped out. It’s odd; according to her realtor, the woman and her mother both love the house, but when the realtor asked them, it was the father who told her, he didn’t think the house was right for his daughter. Hmph. Butt out, dad.

The realtor for the Lawyer Lady is pretty sure she won’t go above $2.5M. That’s not enough, in my opinion and Chuck’s. Although it is not too far off my target. Chuck thinks she could afford to go higher, just wait and see.

Meanwhile he’s not getting a lot of calls from the ad. He got one call today, a buyer in Santa Clara who is looking for a fixer-upper. I suggested, and he agreed, that he’ll call her back and make the pitch that although this house is not in need of fixer-upper type maintenance and repairs, like you see on the TV shows, it definitely would benefit from, and increase in value from, serious remodeling. She can have all kinds of fun renovating the kitchen or adding a second story.

We also signed a bunch of disclosure and advisory forms. One relates to the need for smoke and CO detectors. So that’s a to-do item for me, which I can easily handle: get those installed. I have a smoke detector in the bedroom, but haven’t tested it in a long time. Its battery is probably dead. I had one in the living room and took it down, I don’t remember why. And have never had a CO detector. Well, we had a CO detector in the RV we used to have, and had to disable it because it constantly went off in the night, I guess from the CO of our breath while sleeping.

 

 

 

Day 168, coffee, Mary Jane, art, sky

Sunday, 5/19/2019

Woke to the sound of rain, the arrival of the third of a string of unseasonal rain storms. I’ll bet this will be the last rain we see until November. In fact I hope so, because I took the winter cover off the A/C condenser last week. It’s not used to being wet. (But then, IOMISEP.)

Started Sunday as usual with the NYT puzzle during which there was a blink outside. I counted slowly to six when BLAM! a very sharp and loud crack of thunder hit. So I drove to coffee through steady rain, instead of walking.

Back to the house I settled down to continue my research (which I started Friday but omitted to mention) into edible marijuana, and marijuana dispensaries. Probably the most informative tutorial was this one from leaf science. Key points:

  • Two major components are THC and CBD.
  • THC produces the psychedelic effects, ranging from euphoria all the way to paranoid panic.
  • CBD produces the soporific/sedative effects as well as pain relief.
  • Different strains of the plant have remarkably different ratios of CBD:THC, all the way from 30:1 to 1:30.

I thought this was a key paragraph:

When you eat an edible, THC gets slowly absorbed into your bloodstream through the stomach and intestinal tracts. THC then gets broken down by the liver, which converts THC to a more potent chemical called 11-hydroxy-THC. The result is a high that is more intense and psychoactive effects that last much longer.

So THC, eaten, is more impactful even than when smoked. And the general advice is “start low and go slow”.

I am not interested in getting high. (Really. I do not like the sensation of being drunk. I drink beer for the taste, and rarely finish a glass of it. Maybe a relaxed cannabis high would be nicer, I wouldn’t know–yet.) My principal interest is in getting longer and better sleep (presumably a CBD effect). But going forward, I might experiment with  a small amount of THC as a social lubricant. But that will take careful and cautious experimentation.

Checking out local retail outlets with Yelp I settled on Harborside in San Jose. They have a very extensive online selection of products, and offer in-store pickup or delivery. Checking edible products, I found the following interesting:

I set up an order for a bottle of 10 soft-gels in the 4:1 ratio, a bag of the 3:1 gummies, and one bar of the chocolate. After I uploaded a picture of my driver’s license, they texted my phone to say the order was in progress, and a few minutes later that it was ready for pickup. So I drove down to their store. You have to show the back side of your license to be scanned at the door. (I never knew that the back side of my driver’s license has an elaborate bar-code thing.) Then I used a debit card to pay for my $90 worth of edibles and was out again in minutes. The whole excursion took less than an hour.

My plan is to try one, 4:1 soft-gel at 9pm tonight, and I’ll report on the effects if any later.

With a lot of Sunday left, I headed out meaning to visit the Cantor Arts Museum on the Stanford campus. After I parked and walked along the Goldworthy Snake sculpture toward the Cantor, I was deflected by signs to the Anderson Collection. This is an entire new building to house the collection of the Anderson family. The building has been constructed since the last time I was inside the Cantor, so clearly that has been a while. Anyway, I opted to visit the new collection on this visit. It’s all modern, non-representational, and mostly from large to heroic in scale. The work I most enjoyed looking at is this Untitled acrylic dome by Robert Irwin.

irwin_untitled

It’s fascinating how your eye has trouble finding the edges of it, which seem to turn into a haze. The camera has less trouble so it looks more defined in the picture.

After walking through this collection I noticed that the sky was what I think of as “English”, lots of big loose cumulus with blue sky beyond, and sun-breaks sweeping around. It’s a common look for English skies but rare in California. I decided to drive up to Palo Alto’s Foothills park, to Vista Hill, in hopes that it would be puffy cumulus to the north and maybe the City shining out. Sadly, no. The lovely blue and sun-streaked sky was only here in the South Bay, the north was still under rain clouds. I took a panoramic shot but it’s not worth uploading.

Day 167, dish, movie

Saturday, 5/18/2019

I’d been aware since yesterday that Saturday was a blank on my Google calendar. Nothing scheduled. But I know how important it is to Get Your Butt Out Of The House And Do Something. An aimless day of sitting around feels awful. So, eating breakfast, I’m thinking what to do, what to do.

Bailed out in part by the daily event calendar from CH. At 3pm they are going to show The Green Book in the auditorium. That’s a movie I meant to see in the theater and couldn’t sync up with Dennis to go. Also I’m curious to see how good their projection system and sound system are. So that’ll be the afternoon.

For the morning, well, a walk. Where? Why not the famous Dish walk? I’ve only done it once that I recall. Marian and I walked up as far as the Dish and back (a 2.5 mile round trip) maybe 5 years ago. I know it’s very popular and parking around the trailhead is scarce. Still, it was only 8:30, so I thought there should be space.

There wasn’t a spot on the first pass but I looped back and got a spot on the second. In hindsight, it would make great sense to take a Lyft to the entry gate, especially starting from Webster street.

The walk is pleasant but not easy; there are several steep upgrades. I did a full loop, nearly four miles, 9000 steps per the Health app, and 19 flights of stairs to show I wasn’t wrong about the upgrades. There were lots of people, of all ages and physical conditions. And turkeys:turkies.jpg

From there I came down to California Avenue and had a cappuccino and a scone for brunch. At home I played two hours of the game I’m exploring. Then it was time to head for CH and the movie.

The projection system is just OK. It’s a big video projector mounted to the ceiling, and with the lights dimmed its color and brightness are OK. But something was wrong either with the DVD or the projector settings because it was showing the image at the hi-def TV 16:9 aspect ratio, while clearly it should have been in the slightly wider, widescreen movie ratio. Everybody looked slightly skinnier and taller than life. It wasn’t a bad mis-match and I could it ignore it most of the time. The sound also was OK, although it seemed like mono; if it was stereo the speakers aren’t far enough apart for the size of the room.

The movie was OK. Viggo Mortenson did a wonderful job of being an ignorant Italian tough guy. Mahershala Ali was impressive as both an actor and as a pianist. The script tried too hard and unsubtly to push the audience’s buttons, but it was hard to resist the manipulation.

cadillac-deville-1962-5I could forgive a lot because the film also featured a 1962 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. I have a history with this car. When I first came to San Francisco, a dropout from the UW, my sister Joyce let me live in her apartment and also got me a job as a flunky at the Cadillac dealership where she was the PA for the dealership manager. So for one long summer I had the job of parking customer cars and bringing them back when the customers came to pick them up. I hopped in and out of these pretty machines hundreds of times. I can remember exactly how the steering wheel and shift lever felt under my hands.

After the film I sat around in the lobby reading for a bit until the initial 5:30 supper rush had subsided, then had a decent supper and came home to watch the Warriors, for the second game in a row, come from behind to beat Portland.

 

Day 166, grumpy, map, docent

Friday, 5/17/2019

Today’s main activity is to lead a docent tour at the museum at noon. Right after breakfast I decided to follow up on something I’d noted by chance yesterday, that the

Hillbarn theater

is doing Mama Mia, which I’d never seen and should be fun. So I went to their website and tried to buy a ticket. Mostly sold out but there are seats for next Wednesday, fine. Advantage of being a widower (look on the sunny side…) I want only a single seat, and there were some scattered around in the center. Nice. Try to check out. It wants me to sign in or register. Sigh. Register. Wants name, email, address, age(!?), telephone number and of course a password.

You know what? Just sell me a ****ing ticket already! It so irked me I just closed the window and went for my run. But now, writing about it — nose biting for purpose of face spiting? — I went back and filled out their ****ing form and gave them a ****ing password. Nicely they present a menu of emails you can opt out of. Good! Opting outoutoutoutout. So.

Did my run, 37 minutes of jogjogjog and felt good (who’s old? Moi?). Showered shaved dressed in my red docent shirt and sat down to do another little chore I’ve been meaning to do: work out an equivalent to my current

jogging route

but starting at 850 Webster. Go to Google maps and map my present route. It turns out to be 2.6 miles from home to the coffee shop where I usually stop. About 2.4 miles of actual jogging; the tenth mile at the start and the last tenth I usually walk.

Then worked out a route of exactly the same length, but quite different terrain. Well, all flat like the present route, but different scenery. North on Webster street to San Francisquito Creek; follow a curving street along the creek; cross a footbridge into Menlo Park for a loop up Willow Road; cross a different footbridge back into Palo Alto (passing El Palo Alto, the town’s eponymous redwood tree), and down a back street to a coffee shop on University Avenue. Exactly 2.6 miles.

Got an email from Chuck, a slew of

realty disclosure

statements. My goodness there are a lot of different disclosure statements. Lead paint. Carbon monoxide detectors. Earthquake hazards. Some of them I couldn’t see how to fill out. Chuck had sent them as e-signature files, where you try to write your signature using the mouse. Instead I print out all eleven pages, look them over. Sign some obvious ones. Send an email back, need some guidance on these.

Then at 10:30 another email from Andrew, they have only the first of the four-page form that I’ve given them now twice. I get my copy from the pendaflex folder box and stop by their office on the way to the museum to drop it off.

I give my tour to about 15 people, get a round of applause at the end. E-chat more with

Chuck.

Of the two prospects, the Lawyer Lady’s agent has submitted an offer of $2.5M. However that was a misunderstanding. L.L. has just changed agents and the new one was not up to speed, didn’t realize that the latest ad had specified an asking price of $2.9. When Chuck pointed this out, she said she would consult with her client but didn’t know how much higher she could go.

As to the other prospect, the woman who works at Apple, Chuck has not heard back despite leaving several texts and a voice mail to the agent. That agent is a long-time Palo Alto realtor and Chuck thinks it is unusual for her not to respond. However during the showing the other day, she had commented to Chuck about planning a knee replacement operation soon, so possibly there is some health issue. Anyway, we left it that Chuck and I would meet Monday afternoon to talk about the disclosure forms, and hopefully one or both agents would have come back with something by then.

In the evening I combined an errand with supper. Earlier in the day, the

Prius

had popped up a message “Key Fob Battery Low”. Oh! Now, how do I open up the Prius key fob? I’m pretty sure I’ve done it before but don’t remember how. Youtube to the rescue; just click in the search bar and start to type “Prius key…” and “…fob battery replacement” pops up, and there are a dozen videos.

Turns out it is stupidly simple; Toyota did a great job on this design. The key fob contains a physical key that pops out when you press a button. I knew about that and actually used the physical key once when the 12V battery went flat. Turns out, they designed the key blade itself as a tool that exactly fits a slot at the bottom of the plastic fob. You pull the key out, turn it around, and use it as a lever to pop open the case of the fob. And there’s the battery. Nice!

I noted the number and went to Midtown where I bought a pair of the CR1632s and had supper at the Thai restaurant.

 

 

Day 165, Yosemite, CH

Thursday 5/16/2019

Drove through unseasonable heavy rain showers to Yosemite, the Museums warehouse for a day of work. Aurora, the curator, assigned me to work with Ken doing photography. She’d turned up a couple of boxes of previously cataloged artifacts that had never been photographed. We have a new volunteer, Tom, who spent a long career in Burroughs and its later incarnations as part of Sperry. Aurora had him sit with her all day as they went through every Burroughs-related artifact in the catalog and he added or clarified information in the descriptions.

At four I headed back toward Palo Alto but not simply home. In the daily CH schedule — which I now get in my email every morning — it said that there would be a ceremony in the lobby to welcome Rhonda Bekkedahl, our new CEO. She’s been acting CEO for a few weeks, and in fact it was she who conducted my signing day a few weeks ago. I sat across from her at her desk and she led me through each of the numerous documents I had to sign. She was warmly congratulated by the chairman of the Board, who noted that both the outgoing CEO (who retired last month) and the Board as a whole were unanimous in recommended Rhonda as his successor. She’s been an executive here for some time, COO for a year. So she knows the organization and is apparently liked by the staff and the residents.

Anyway this is the first time I saw the whole membership, or at least most of it, assembled in one place. The lobby is large and it was pretty full of a crowd of a couple hundred people. I was looking around trying to feel like I fit in, but I don’t really, which is due to a mismatch with my quite inaccurate self-image. When I’m not actually looking in a mirror, I fall into the habit of thinking of myself as middle-aged. Um, dude… that train pulled out 20 years ago.

OK, fair enough, but I think I am in better physical shape than most of the other residents. However it is easy to notice how many are tottery or have wheeled walkers, while overlooking the large minority who are walking freely, standing straight and conducting animated conversations. Like Colin at dinner the other night, 93 and plays tennis every day.

Anyway, nobody there uses an actual Zimmer frame type walker, thank the lord! All nifty three-wheelers. If I saw anybody pushing one of those aluminum frames with tennis balls on the back legs, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do. But I would be profoundly disappointed.

After the meeting the dining hall had opened so of course I had supper there. I ate alone. Should I have invited myself to join one of the tables with three or four other people? Yeah, probably. But I’m not going to beat myself up about this. It just isn’t going to happen that I learn a bunch of people’s names and faces right away. I feel like I’m desperately clinging to the five or six I tried to remember from the floor meeting last week.

On the drive home I conceived another route that may be more fitted to my nature. I will not try to learn all the names, and I will not go out of the way to socialize at meals. I will relax and be my nerdy self, but I will also volunteer for multiple committees, of which there are many. I will learn people in small numbers, by repeated exposure in committee meetings and volunteer activities. From that may arise invitations to sit with people at meals. Or not; I really don’t care about that.

 

Day 164, FOPAL, realty, mover

Wednesday, 5/15/2019

I have Deborah coming with someone to look at the furniture at 1:30, and Chuck is bringing the Lawyer Lady for her third look at the house at 12:30. That means I won’t be free to do my usual 2-4pm shift at FOPAL, so I decided to go and do that this morning instead. From 9-12 at FOPAL is the physical equivalent of a run, right? Wait, let me check. No, only 3700 steps as of 2pm. But it doesn’t record how many boxes of books I lifted and carried, does it.

I had meant to do a lot of sorting but discovered in fact there was a large collection of computer-related books already sorted, to be culled and priced. Actually, I recognized them. At least two weeks ago a chap presented himself at the usual donation time with a slew of small boxes of books. We loaned him our dolly to bring them from his car, and I remember showing him a narrow gap in the mountain of donations to stack them in. Only now, in the week past the sale, have they surfaced.

On examination, these were the library of a programmer who is now (I presume) retiring; anyway clearing out his collection. Maybe 200 fat paperback volumes on Java, JavaBeans, C++ and similar software platforms. Most published in 1998 through about 2008. Generally the older stuff goes straight to the bargain room. Nobody wants to buy, for example, a book whose cover proudly says “Current for Java 6” when a quick check on my iPhone shows me that Java is now at  release 12, and support for release 9 was just discontinued.

Anyway I priced 50 or so volumes and ended up shelving 40 of them. Four boxes of books went on the cart labeled “H2”, the number of the bargain room, where they’ll sell for $1 or if not, eventually be recycled.

That brought me to 11am, and I did regular sorting for an hour more. I went around to the adjacent grocery store and stocked up on food so I would have something to eat in the evening. (But also told myself sternly, that I’ve paid for meal service at CH, and it is hardly any more distant than the restaurant I went to last night. If I don’t want to cook, I can just drive over there and have a nice nutritionally balanced meal.)

While eating a very tasty deli sandwich in the car I exchanged texts with Chuck. The Lawyer Lady had showed up with a contractor in tow, which surprised Chuck. She apparently wanted to get an opinion, either on the condition of the house or on the feasibility of some remodeling she has in mind. Was it OK with me to let a contractor look around? Yeah, why not. Nothing to hide. Then they had questions, relayed in texts. When was the furnace and A/C installed? etc. Hell, I don’t know, this century I’m sure. Later Chuck said they worked out from the maintenance record on the front of the furnace it was 2008. Apparently the contractor didn’t raise any red flags. We’ll hear more soon, I hope.

At 2pm Deb rolled up with Ron and Carol, a senior couple, in tow. They looked briskly at the furniture. Carol didn’t seem impressed. I don’t think it was what she wanted. I said goodby to them as my phone rang. It was Mr. Lunardi from the moving company. We agreed that his crew will show up at 10:30 on the 15th (ooh, exactly a month from today) to pack me up and move me. Actually there will not be a lot of packing-up. I’m betting they’ll have the truck loaded ready to roll by 12:00.

 

Day 163, Adobe, Suli, mover, bed

Tuesday, 5/14/2019

…and WordPress has lost me another 200 words. If you start a post, write a few nice paragraphs, then leave the window open for a few hours, when you come back and start editing it will say “error trying to save” and whatever you do, your draft is toast.

Well, what I said before was, in my email this morning was a warning from

Adobe

that my Creative Cloud subscription would soon renew. I’ve been paying for the privilege of using Photoshop and Lightroom, but with the end of slide scanning there is little need for either. I’ve got Pixelmator and GraphicConverter which are each capable image editors. I do make use of Adobe Bridge to organize images and search using metadata tags, but I think I have an older version that will still work without an annual rental. Or I can get used to iPhoto if I have to.

So I killed the subscription, and incidentally discovered that I also had a subscription to their web page editor, DreamWeaver. That must be a relic of when Marian used an earlier version of DreamWeaver for the FBC fan site. Anyway, killed that too.

Then walked to the YMCA for a few exercises, and back. At this point I got out the CH handbook, “Moving” page, and called the top name in their list of approved movers. Left my name for a callback. Then I waited (and waited) for Suli the housecleaner to appear. She didn’t come until 1pm; I filled the time in part by starting the laundry. And exchanging texts with Chuck: the Lawyer Lady wants to look at the house again, is 12:30 tomorrow OK? Oh heck yes.

Suli did her work, we chatted, and basically said goodby to each other. She’s been working for us for at least 20 years. She was pleased that just yesterday she had found a perfect new client to take the place of her bi-weekly visit to this house. I gave her the check, saying it was a little bit bigger than usual; she said thank you without actually looking at it. It was actually quite a bit bigger than usual.

Now it was too late in the day to go down to FOPAL, where I have been meaning to go today, to try to tackle some of the huge backlog of contributed books to sort. What else to do? Well, there was the matter of a

bed.

I’ve been going back and forth on the question of the bed for months now. First I was going to leave the Queen bed behind, get a new Full size one. Then I changed my mind, I’d keep the bed. But more recently I have flip-flopped again. It really feels stupid and annoying to be sleeping in one-half of a bed. Almost all my furniture in the new place will be new. The old bed would dominate the new bedroom. I want a cleaner break with the past.

On a previous visit to IKEA I selected the mattress I would buy; I have an iPhone picture of the label. But I didn’t actually pick a frame. So now I decided to go do that. I drove over to IKEA and went backwards on their route because I remembered that the bedroom stuff was last in the winding trail.

Of their frames, one jumped out at me right away as a perfect complement to the rest of my “midcentury modern” choices, the Trysil. It’s not expensive, it’s in stock. All I have to do is figure out how to get it, and the mattress, over to CH and assembled. I believe when the time comes, like a couple of days before official move-in, I’ll hire a TaskRabbit to do it.

I went home, and shortly noticed I was hungry, so went out, aiming for Armadillo Willy’s but as I approached it I noticed a restaurant I hadn’t eaten at in donkey’s years, Estrellita’s Mexican restaurant. We IBMers used to eat there back in the … eighties? So I went in, had a nice plate of Chile Verde.

While I was eating, the moving guy returned my call, but his news was that the CH resident notebook is out of date. The moving company he worked for closed up shop a year ago. He was friendly about it. But dang, now I have to find another.

On the way home I stopped for gas, noting it had been almost exactly a month since I last filled the tank. 80mpg, 791 miles on a tank; let’s hear it for the plug-in hybrid.

 

 

Day 162, Documents, FOPAL, realty

Monday, 5/13/2019

Watered the plants, then went for a run. On return I opened the big envelope of documents from the Lawyer, and brought the

fireproof box

out to the table.

The fireproof box was a purchase of a decade ago, when we were separating ourselves from Wells Fargo. This was actually before Wells Fargo got in so much public scandal; they just did a few things that annoyed us, and we moved our money to SFCU. That has worked out very well, the local Credit Union gives excellent service, and their web interface is very usable. But besides our money account at WFB we also had a safety deposit box. What to do with the birth certificates, car pink slips, etc. from there?

Turns out, you can buy a heavy box that will resist a house fire for 40 minutes or more. It probably couldn’t survive the kind of ashes-to-the-foundation fire we’ve seen in the major California wildfires, but it could stand up a typical single house fire where the fire department can give it its full attention. (It should certainly survive any kind of fire that might start at CH, a cement building with sprinklers.) We got one and gave up the WFB box.

The main tenant in the box is the Brown Binder, the binder of estate documents: the Trust, the Living Will, Power of Attorney, Burial instructions — basically, everything my successor Trustee needs to take care of me if I’m completely incapacitated, or to wind things up after I’m dead. Previously, these were all about Marian and me as a couple, with each of us naming the other as heir, conservator, etc. Now they have all been redone simpler to handle just my affairs as Survivor Trustee.

I went through the Brown Binder and replaced all the old docs with new ones. There were a couple of informal docs I write. One is the Document Locator, which explains all the others as well as listing things like credit cards and bank accounts and so on — key facts the Successor Trustee needs. Another is my Digital Directive, listing all the online accounts and passwords to be shut down. Both were much out of date and I spent an hour editing them and printing them and putting them in the binder.

Finally I went through all the contents of the box, moved a couple of things out; Marian’s birth certificate for example went to the Marian History folder elsewhere. And put it all away with a sense of accomplishment. I also paid the

utility bill

but was brought up short when looking at it, because there was a $36 balance still due, and a $0.70 late fee. What? Simple explanation: the prior bill was for $284, but when entering it in the bill-pay app, I apparently keyed in $248. Hmmph.

Anyway, off for FOPAL, where I spent two hours culling the Computer shelf. Sent books that had been there three or more months to the bargain room; lowered the price on some that had been there two months; moved some sub-sections around. Then went to help with sorting as a flood of donations were coming in the door. I could only do an hour because I got a text from

Chuck.

We were to meet at 4, but he asked if I could come earlier. Sure, no prob. I drove over to his office near California avenue. He had some news from the two showings yesterday but nothing firm yet. The Canadian Lawyer lady has been shopping, it seems, since 2016, and greatly regrets having missed out on some small cottage on Webster street nearby. Chuck knew that house and said mine is much better. Also the C.L.L. had brought her daughter and also a friend who is a decorator. This decorator friend, Chuck says, went on at length about how handsome the house is. She was still verbally pointing out its highlights when the next party arrived at 5:30, and Chuck says he was delighted because “she couldn’t have given a better sales pitch” for that party.

The second party is a single woman, 30-something Chuck estimated, who works at Apple. She came with her realtor and her mother, who is apparently ready to finance, or help finance, a purchase. They also went on at length about how charming the house is.

So the odds seem good that we should get an offer or even two this week.

I also talked to him about the IRS Form 706 that the Lawyer and the Advisors want me to file. The point of it is to preserve half of Marian’s Estate Tax Exemption so I, or more properly my heirs, can use it to shelter more of my estate. The tax accountants have quoted $3500 to prepare this form and I kind of choked on it. But with Chuck we penciled some numbers, trying to forecast what my estate will be if I live another 20 years. Would it be big enough to exceed my own exemption? Yeah, under some assumptions, as much as a third of it could be exposed to Estate Tax, which would represent a considerable tax bite on the final value of the Trust.

Home for a very casual supper (I’m getting pretty lazy about feeding myself) and some TV.