Day 142, dentist, lunch, floor meeting, dinner

Tuesday, 4/23/2019

Began the day by walking to a mile-plus to my appointment for dental hygiene, and walking the return, stopping at C.H. en route to check my mailbox. Disappointed that with all that walking, the phone shows only 7,000 steps.

Spent some time organizing penda-flexes. (No, auto-correct, it is not panda flexes!) I like making sense of all these old files, discarding outdated and irrelevant stuff, organizing the remainder into simpler categories that will be easier to remember.

Then it was time to meet Scott for lunch. Pleasant meeting, I’d say just-ok food at Dan Gordon’s, who, Scott pointed out, was presumably half of the former Gorden-Biersch Brewery, whose restaurant was once in that same space.

On the way to lunch I stopped at MaxiMart Pharmacy to get a refill of the antibiotic pills I take before any dental procedure (to protect my replaced aortic valve). Oops, prescription expired. Leave it, we’ll apply for a renewal, check back tomorrow. They know me by sight, partly because I’ve gotten meds there for 20 years at least, but more because I was in there what feels in retrospect like every other day all last fall, picking up one or another med for Marian. It was probably only once a week, really, but I had some bad emotions walking up to the door, from all the associations with her long illness. But now, this is for me, and I’m not ill, just getting a preventative med. So it was alright.

On the way back I stopped for a few groceries, including the indispensable peanut butter. Should I get a big jar? I’ll be on a full meal plan in a few weeks. Oh hell yes, I can have peanut butter in my room, to eat at my own bistro table in my kitchenette.

Soon it was time to leave again for the Sixth Floor Meeting. Craig was in the chair and did a good job. There were 30 or so people there; I learned the names of about five, and was pleasantly greeted by all. The topic of the meeting was the upcoming move off the sixth floor so the great rolling renovation can have it. Here’s the time-line:

August 12-23, the seventh floor people move out of temporary units and back to their renovated permanent units.
Temporary units are cleaned.
August 26-September 6, sixth floor people move into temporary units.
Around January 2020, sixth floor moves back, fifth moves out.

Angela, who I met with a week ago to choose decor options for my unit, is in charge of this. So far they have done the in/out swap for the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors and have it down to a science. She explained the process in detail and pretty well satisfied everyone.

From there I went to supper with Craig and Diane, and damn it four other women whose names I didn’t get. Wait, one was Eva. I also met Jerry and his wife (name?) and saw their apartment, on which they did an extreme renovation when they moved in two years ago. It’s very attractive, extremely “modern” with gray and black cubes and track lighting. Jerry is very technical and has a complex computer setup with multiple large monitors. I’m going to like him, I think; I certainly intend to call on him as a resource getting my various devices working with the CH systems.

I excused myself after one cup of coffee to go to a Stanford Baseball game. Got there at the bottom of the second, Stanford behind 4-1. The next two innings Stanford hit three or it may have been four homers and went ahead 9-4. I left after two hours and it was only the sixth inning.

Day 141, ‘nother day of doin’ s**t

Monday, 4/22/2019

Began the day by watering the plants. There are only six, but they are all doing well. I haven’t managed to kill them. I look forward to having their company at the new place.

Then I went for a run; 38 minutes of steady (if slow) jog, felt good all the way. God bless podcasts, though. I doubt I could do any kind of exercise if I had to do it without distraction in my ear.

Settled down to the killer to-do list. First up: apply for a residential parking permit for downtown Palo Alto. Have to upload a picture of my driver’s license, which of course has Tasso Street on it, plus some document that shows the new address. I make a PDF of a couple of pages of the CH contract I just signed. Upload these, click “apply”, it comes back and says, that address isn’t eligible for a parking permit, or no permits are available. Uh-oh. Do the whole process again just to be sure; same result.

Call the number given, get nice woman who says, “Yeah, Mister Cortesi, I was watching you upload these, I was just waiting for you to call.” OK, that’s weird. Bad enough I have Google looking over my shoulder at every email. But whatever; she takes my email address and says “OK, you’re all set” and gives me some directions on how to download and print a temporary permit.

I email Craig asking how to get a login for the CH resident’s web portal. He replies almost instantly, get one from the front desk. I email Kim asking what I need to do, to get the process of applying for a parking space started.

Friday I received a long letter from my lawyer. I’ll call her Nancy because in fact that is her name. Anyway, it had endless details on how as an executor I should go about making an inventory and valuation of Marian’s estate. So I wrote an email back saying, in short, “She owned nothing that wasn’t part of the trust, why I gotta do this?” More nicely phrased with specifics of course. But in fact I found our “Community Property Agreement” in which we each said, “whatever’s mine is yours, too”; and also a separate agreement in which we both said that whatever possessions we had or would get, clothes, jewelry, whatever, was part of the family trust. Plus her will making me her heir. So if I’m satisfied with no detailed inventory, shouldn’t nobody else need one. We’ll see if Nancy agrees.

Cleaning out the garage, I found an old iPhone 5s. Apparently when I got my newer 7s, I put the old one in the box. OK, now what to do with it? Search for “donate old iPhone”, find Secure the Call which repurposes old phones as 911-callers for homeless people. They provide an address label, but clearly I need a padded envelope too. So, time to go out and stuff.

Stop one, the local CVS to buy a small padded envelope. Stop two, the hardware store to buy a padlock. Stop three, Channing House. Talk to the girl on the front desk. She doesn’t remember how to create resident logins, and who does it out for lunch. We arrange she’ll email me about it. Then I go in to the dining room and have lunch: salmon, and a nice mixed-veg sauté.

During lunch I get an email from Chuck; they are going to put up an ad as we discussed Friday, would I please take some pictures to use in it. OK, another thing for the list.

Then I go down to the basement to see if I can find the Fitness Director, so as to sign a waiver, so as to be able to use the gym excuse me, Fitness Center. Fitness director appears to be out. Also, oddly, the door to the gym appears to be locked, although I can see someone inside using equipment. My room key doesn’t fit the door. What’s the deal there? Well, next time.

I go into the garage and check it out. There are 51 spaces, about a fourth are empty in the middle of a weekday. When I try to go back into the basement, the door is locked. My room key fits the handle but doesn’t operate it. Then I spot a camera and a button and a sign, “please stand on the yellow spot when pressing the blue button so we can see you.” I stand on spot, press button, almost instantly the door clicks.

I take the elevator to the top, the 11th floor, and have a quick look around this public space. It’s a large-ish room with a rather large (72-inch?) TV at one end, lots of armchairs, and some tables. Windows on three sides with a view of the hills to the west and the east. Big open walking decks on each side.

Nothing left to do, so I head out and make stop four, my bank to deposit a Via Benefits check. They promised to send a direct-deposit form to me; it hasn’t come yet.

Back home I take pictures of several rooms. Unfortunately I got rid of my wide-angle lens some time ago and I can’t get a picture of the inside of the bathroom. I use the iPhone’s panorama feature to get the kitchen, but the bathroom is just too small, the panorama looks bizarre. I do not take a picture of the outside, because at this stage I don’t want people to be able to identify the house and come knocking.

I set up the new padlock, it has a four-letter combination. I had planned to set it to DAVE but alas! it has no V! So I set it to DALE instead. Now I need to go back to CH install it. Later!

I rewrite the much-shortened to-do list, adding a couple of items. I print the mailing label for Secure the Call and tape it to the padded envelope and put the old phone in it and seal it. Aha! In the mail is the deposit form from Via benefits. I fill it out, put it in a stamped envelope, address it. Now I need to go to the P.O. and also, wash the car. Out again!

I drive to the Post Office and mail the Via Benefits envelope and the old cell phone. Drive to the car wash and buy the Prius its first bath since it got polished on day whatever? And to the grocery store for a few necessaries. And home. I need to put together the pictures I took to mail to Chuck. But I want a nap, too! What will I do?

Day 140, easy Sunday

Sunday, 4/21/2019

I deliberately did little today, and avoided looking at the full-page to-do list on the dining room table next to all the C.H. documents I should read and file. Had a pleasant coffee and crossword time at the local coffee shop, which was unusually quiet well past 8am. I guess people were either at church or preparing a Sunday dinner.

About 11 I drove to the museum to do the noon tour. Ken, another docent, was also there; they usually schedule two of us for weekend tours. But the parking lot was nearly empty and few people were in the lobby so we agreed there wouldn’t be enough people to split in two groups, so he went on home. I ended up with about 12 people.

For supper I thought about going to C.H. and decided I didn’t want to; and instead drove to Town and Country shopping center for a burger and a beer.

This exposed a problem I am going to have to deal with in coming weeks: general shyness and introversion and enjoyment of a quiet meal. For all these decades, Marian and I had the custom of sitting down with our plates in the living room and watching TV (often a cooking show) while we ate, and talking little.

This won’t be an option at Channing House. Once I take up residence, I will need to eat at least supper in the dining room. Which opens a whole can of (trivial, but real) worms for the born introvert. Which table to sit at? Who to sit with? What to talk about? Initially at least some residents are going to want to get to know the stranger in their midst. I’ll have to talk about myself and be affable and shit. I’ve eaten in the dining room twice now, once as Craig’s guest and last Friday — and I see I didn’t mention that in the blog! — I went back there and ate alone. There were enough tables that I could find an empty one and nobody came by, except the waiter. (You fill your plate in a cafeteria-style line but there are waiters who provide drinks and take away used plates.)

Choosing a table was fraught; I was early, and had no idea of the conventions and customs. I was afraid I’d end up at somebody’s regular table and they’d come in and… what? Be offended? Give me a break. But this is the kind of thing an introvert deals with. If you don’t understand it, consider yourself lucky.

Day 139, planting Marian’s tree

Saturday, 4/20/2019

For some reason I’ve been anxious about this day for days, and woke up repeatedly in the night before. Well, part of that was that I expected to need to “say something” and had been working up a cute little 3- or 4-minute eulogy, practicing it as I walked various places (and while tossing in the night), trying to get where I wouldn’t completely break down while delivering it. Part of the anxiety was being a host, feeling responsible for the success of an event or the pleasure of the attendees. Marian used to suffer that feeling to an extreme degree, so maybe I was channeling her (joke).

In the end (and of course) it all went off fine, and I didn’t have to say a thing. Catherine Martineau, head of Canopy, did a nice, and brief, talk about the three people who were having memorial trees planted today. Then we set to work.

Denise, Scott, June, me, Jean, Darlene, Dennis, Liz, and the tree

The site was alongside a very popular bike path, one I’ve ridden many times. The tree is out in the clear but somewhat sheltered from wind, and should grow well. I look forward to checking it over the years.

We adjourned to brunch and then everyone scattered, satisfied with a job well done. My only “host” role in the end was to have chosen a restaurant that was easy to get to and had good parking, yay me.

In the afternoon I did a bit of sorting of folders. One job is to collect pend-a-flex folders from a couple of different drawers, get rid of unneeded stuff, and organize the remainder into folders that I can remember. The present folder tabs have evolved over a long time (like every other damn thing I have) and are redundant and contradictory.

One folder had various documents about the purchase of the house, the original mortgage (long paid-off), etc. I moved those to the “brown binder”, the estate documents binder that is kept in a fireproof box. One folder was “Appliances” and contained the user manuals, and receipts, for pretty much every major purchase: stove, bedroom set, washer/dryer, etc. etc. And some things we don’t have any more.

I’ll keep working on this task tomorrow and Monday. I have ordered a small file cabinet to use at C.H. and it has shipped, so I’ll put the newly-organized folders into that, their future home.

Spent an hour finishing a book I’ve enjoyed reading. It’s a treat to find fiction that I can actually get into and enjoy reading, in this case the works of Becky Chambers. There’s a sub-genre of Mystery called “cozy mystery” (“in which sex and violence are downplayed … and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community” — Wikipedia). Chamber writes what I can only call “cozy sci-fi” and I love it.

Day 138, signing at Channing House

Friday, 4/19/2019

Showered, shaved, dressed as formally as my wardrobe allows (slacks, sport coat, gray turtleneck) and at 10:15 drove to C.H. where I sat down with Rhonda Bekkedahl, currently COO, also incoming CEO, to sign all the various contracts involved in becoming a member of a Continuous Care operation. Done! Well, it will be done when they have successfully tapped my Schwab account for the six-figure entry fee. Let’s see… nope, hasn’t happened yet. Not my problem.

Got my room key; got shown my mailbox and my storage locker. The latter is a large (roughly 3×4 feet and 8 foot tall) wire cage in the basement.

Got a parking sticker for the car, however it is not clear yet whether there is an available slot in the underground garages. In any case I need to get a Palo Alto resident’s parking permit; with that I will be able to park anywhere on the surrounding streets and ignore the 2-hour limit signs. But I seriously don’t want to leave the car on the street all the time. We’ll see.

Declined the opportunity to have lunch there. I am now able to eat any and all meals there but I won’t start doing that before next week. This is a stressful weekend and I’d like to not start on that whole new to-do list until later. Right now I am going to sit down and read through all the bumf I’ve been handed.

Well, there is a lot to know. It’s going to be like living in a nice resort hotel. I’ve got lots to do, starting next week, to begin moving in, emotionally if not yet physically. Today I ate a simple supper at home, but tomorrow, or Sunday for sure, I need to go have supper over there.

One piece of furniture I didn’t secure yesterday is a desk. This afternoon I spent a lot of time searching the web for an L-shaped desk — because I want an L-shaped desk, damn it, for the corner of the bedroom — that had a keyboard tray — because I want my keyboard lower than the standard 30-inch desk height — and also a file drawer and a drawer for stuff. This is a combination of features that is not common. There are stark, modernist L-shaped desks that have keyboard trays but no drawers, and L-shaped desks that have pedestals with drawers but no keyboard tray. And then filter those by color, didn’t want black or dark brown or white. Finally found one, sold both at Walmart and Amazon for $100 more. But Walmart’s web page said, sorry, we can’t ship that to your Walmart. So I ordered it from Amazon; the box of knocked-down parts should arrive next week.

Big day. Vegging out with a book.

Day 137, Furniture shopping

Thursday, 4/18/2019

Began the day by going to the Yosemite warehouse for museum work. Unfortunately the work got hung up on trying to make a camera work. Museum IT staff had loaded a donated laptop with Windows 10, and the camera utility that they use to drive a Canon SLR to take pictures of artifacts, wasn’t compatible. So time was being wasted trying to download a new utility. Then we all went to lunch. After lunch there was little more progress, so I bailed early.

I wanted to visit Living Spaces, a large furniture store recommended by Amy. It is on that side of the bay, convenient to the warehouse. I’d planned to visit it at the normal quitting time of 4pm, but took the opportunity to go early.

Amy recommended another place too, West Elm, and I’d seen several attractive pieces on their website, but all with extended delivery times. So maybe Living Spaces would have something.

It’s a vast place but had little to attract me. The had a couple of L-shaped desks, but they were in a faux-rustic style, deliberately crude finishes. Ditto the media centers. No bistro tables, no love seats. One fairly attractive accent chair, but upholstered in a strong autumn-brown which would stand out, or else force me to buy everything else in a matching color.

So I drove back to my side of the bay and went to West Elm. There I arranged to buy the things I want. Two items I could have immediately from stock: a chair and a bistro table. A media center will come in a week, so it will be delivered here. Two chairs to go with the table won’t come until the first week of June, so will have to be delivered to me at C.H. (and in the meantime I won’t be able to sit at my bistro table). The very nice love seat, really a short couch, will come after that. So on moving in I’ll have only two chairs, the new one and my recliner, and a box to set the TV on. Well, and a bed and a coffee table and some plants and pictures from here.

In between these, I was trying to buy tickets to concerts during the Stanford Jazz Festival in July. Supposedly members could begin to buy tickets today, but I couldn’t. Email to support got sympathy but no improvement. At the end of the day I’d bought one of the five events I want to attend. Unless their website magically starts working over the weekend, I think I’ll try to buy in person at the Stanford ticket window.

But that’s for next week. The next few days are busy. Tomorrow is a big day, I go to C.H. and sign the contracts and become an official resident. Not able to move in, but at least I could eat meals there.

Saturday is a tree planting for Marian. I’ve been practicing a 3-minute talk.

Day 136, realtor, sale manager

Wednesday, 4/17/2019

First item was a run. Started early, 8:15, so as to be back in time for the 10:30 arrival of Chuck the realtor, Vassily his contractor, and Amy the stager. Before they arrived I had a talk with Richard the gardener about adding new bark mulch to the landscaping. We’d done that twice in the seven years since the 2012 landscape makeover, and the mulch was again looking thin and gray. He reminded me how I’d set down a big tarp in the driveway so the truck could dump two yards of mulch and he could get it up clean. Oh, yeah, it comes back to me now. And that big tarp is still in the garage.

So I priced bark mini-mulch at local garden centers and we decided to do it a week from Friday.

Then the realty crew arrived, and I introduced Richard to Chuck as a reliable gardener, and then Amy said, about the mulch, hold off on that until you know when the house will be on the market and do it just before so it looks its best.

There were extensive discussions between the three of them about how to re-do the kitchen and the bath. I tried to keep my mouth shut, with mixed success. Vassily wants drawings to work from. I was surprised that Amy said, “I don’t do drawings”, so that is something that somebody (not me!) will have to organize somehow. Anyway it was left that Vassily will get Chuck “some numbers” next week. So at least we’ll have an idea of how much renovations will cost, which Chuck can balance against an expected higher price for the house.

Possibly the most significant conversation happened in the driveway, after Amy and Vassily had left. I pointed out how good the garden was looking, with the iris all in bloom, and if we could just let people see the house it might sell as-is. Chuck said, well we can do that. And we agreed he would put up a local ad, without enough detail that people could find the house on their own but would have to go through him. And he would coordinate with me to let selected people, if any were interested (Hah! thinks I), see the house as-is.

Coincidentally that afternoon I got my monthly email from Zillow.com, giving their “Zestimate” on the house of 2.9 million. I am only hoping for 2.5 clear, or about 2.7 going into escrow. So. I have hopes this will all happen without the need for fussing around with construction mess and delay.

At 1:30 Deborah the estate sale lady arrived with Thor her son, to take some pictures. She shot pics and took measurements of the major furniture items.

Two items I still vacillate about: the bed, and the big room divider that is my media stand. Of the bed, Amy emphasized to me that my queen-size is about 6 inches longer than a “full” which I had planned to buy. In the night, I stretched out and my toes touched the footboard and there was about a hands-width between my head and the headboard. Hmmm. I’m just not sure. The queen width is much more than I need; I still sleep on exactly half of it, from long habit, and the other half is unused. Maybe if it was in the new location, turned a different way, I could get used to sleeping more in the middle. Fret fret fret. If I keep it, I am spared the hassle of trying to buy a bed, mattress and new linens.

After Deborah left I headed out to FOPAL and spent 2 and a half hours finishing the cleanup and reorganization of the Computer section.

Day 135, History SJ, FOPAL

Tuesday, 4/16/2019

First order of business was to transport our San Jose Lasers relics to History San Jose. Long story here. Back on Day 38 I mentioned sorting our memorabilia of the San Jose Lasers, a professional women’s team in the short-lived American Basketball League. The ABL folded in its second year. On day 60 I mentioned being astonished to find that, besides the team shirts and framed pictures, Marian had carefully curated two fat binders of paper items. One was from the first two seasons: ticket stubs, trading cards, press clippings and more. The other was from the last months, when the fans came together on the internet (in 1998!) to organize a final game, called HoopSalute.

I twice used the donation page on the History San Jose website to offer these items and received no reply of any kind. Fortuitously, last Thursday Dan, one of the curators at HSJ, stopped by the Shustek center for an unrelated matter. I accosted him with my tale and he said “email me your list”. Long story short, they did want the items, we set up a time, and today is the day to take the stuff to them. I drove to the HSJ office on Senter Road in the south end of San Jose, and went over everything with them. They were happy to get everything and thanked me. I’m delighted that these things are out of the house and into safe hands.

Back home I killed time laundering the bed linens until the cleaning lady arrived. I told her that I hoped she’d come just twice more. Also I gave her a little gold chain and medallion from Marian’s collection. She’d said last time she wished she had something to remember Marian by, so there.

Then I headed down to FOPAL to do post-sale-day cleanup of the Computer section. I got some advice from a couple of ladies who were doing the same for their sections. You can tell from the way we write prices, how many months, or sales, a book has been on the shelf. If it has been on the shelf unsold for two months, mark it down by half, and if that takes it below $2, send it to the Bargain Room.

I sent four boxes of books to the Bargain Room, and also found myself reorganizing the categories on the shelves. I didn’t finished, but left after 2 and a half hours. I’ll finish tomorrow.

After a short rest at home I went out to an early supper at Hobee’s. I talked to them about brunch for eight or so, around 11:30 Saturday, but they don’t do reservations. “Call a little while ahead and we can probably fit you in.” Well, I really didn’t like the atmosphere that well anyway. So, where? I want someplace close to Bol Park and easy to get to from there, i.e. no left turns across El Camino without a signal, or U-turns. I tried Cibo, a would-be upscale place in a good location, but it felt too upscale. I don’t want to host a fine meal, I just want a casual place for friends to stop by if they feel like it.

I finally settled on the decidedly down-scale Corner Bakery. It’s just a chain but it has plenty of space and parking and is dead easy to get to from the park.

During the evening, Deb the sale lady texted to see if she could come take pictures tomorrow at 1:30. Later, Chuck called to say he and Vasilly and Amy would come around tomorrow at 10:30 if that was OK. Sure.

Day 134, planning the unit

Monday, 4/15/2019

Started with a run, very comfortable. On return, showered and dressed, I spent time on the phone with Via Benefits. For the third month in a row they had ignored my information on direct deposit and had sent me a check. The phone rep said she would send me a paper form that I could return to request direct deposit. Hopefully that will be more effective than repeatedly putting the bank numbers into their web site and clicking “submit”; that hasn’t achieved anything.

Then spent an hour doing stuff–triage of the “shop”, the enclosed room in the garage building. That’s where the brown steel cabinets are that I emptied over the last two weeks. Now I worked on the cabinets up the right side, primarily paint and related chemicals (paint stripper, thinner…) and plant pots. Lots of plant pots. Those I left for the sale manager to price.

I spent some time with decorative pebbles. Back last summer, with Marian in the hospital, I tidied the three big “porch pots” of bedding plants by pulling the dying plants and, rather than replant, I put in rounds of green netting and covered them with the shiny decorative pebbles Marian used to discourage squirrels. In the winter, I moved the pots to the garage.

Now, cleaning out the shop cabinet, I found a half-bag of shiny pebbles and remembered the others, so I gathered all the pebbles together, and then noticed they were dirty and had leaves mixed in, so put them in a plastic tub and washed them.

Well, such fussing brought me to noon and shortly Amy the Decorator appeared right on time. We walked around the house and I pointed out the few bits of furniture I meant to take, or that we could take. She took pictures and noted dimension on her iPad.

Then we went to Channing House for a scheduled meeting with Angela the Upgrade Manager. She and Amy got along great and we all spent nearly two hours in unit 621. Much of the time was spent choosing materials from Angela’s stock of carpet and counter-top samples, paint chips, and photos of cabinetry and sinks.

One problem emerged: Angela just lost her in-house cabinet maker, and is not sure whether the bathroom cabinetry that I want can be done in the next few weeks. Possibly it will have to be delayed until the 6th-floor upgrade late this year. To be determined.

Amy dropped me off at home. After she left, I drove up to Bol Park where the tree planting for Marian is to happen Saturday. On the map it had looked unfamiliar, but in person it was “Doh! of course!”. I had ridden my bike along the edge of this park many many times; it’s the bike-path from Oregon Expressway over to Arastradero.

It was easy to identify the place for the tree planting; I could see the clear signs of Canopy having prepared the ground for one of their community plantings. It’s just in front of the pen where for years a donkey lived that everyone treated as a Palo Alto mascot.

From there I drove less than a mile to Hobee’s, where I am thinking people can have brunch after the planting. Unfortunately they close early on Mondays so I couldn’t get in. I’ll have supper there tomorrow and make a reservation if I can.

Day 133, hat store

Sunday, 4/14/2019

Opened the day with my customary walk to the local coffee shop to read the paper and do the big crossword. Problem: in a month or so, living at C.H., where will I take that pleasure? All right come on, that’s an opportunity not a problem.

On return, I was faced with a day in which I’d told myself I wouldn’t do any chores. But what to do instead?

I remembered that for some time I’ve thought of going to the Berkeley Hat Store, one of the best hat shops in the area, to look for a replacement for my favorite casual fedora which is showing some wear. Well, why not today?

Two minutes (at most) with the internet answered all questions: yes, the store was open today at noon; yes my clipper card works on BART; here’s the address of the BART station in Fremont; the next trains depart at 11:17 and 11:37; it will take a bit over 20 minutes to drive there. I try to get people on my docent tour to grasp how our lives have been changed by networked computers. As fish we have a hard time seeing the water we swim in.

So I drove to Fremont, had an hour’s ride on BART to Berkeley Downtown and a nice 20 minute walk to the store. A helpful clerk wasn’t able to find an exact duplicate of my pet hat, but he found one quite a bit like it that looks ok on me. And cheap, at $32. I had a slice of pizza for lunch, and reversed my journey, stage by stage.

To continue the theme of the computer revolution: I passed time on the ride reading a book on Kindle on my phone. It was the first volume of a science fiction trilogy and I really enjoyed it. That’s a change; the experience of really getting into a story and liking the characters and being interested in the events — has been rare of recent years. I’ve abandoned a lot of books (and even more movies on TV) because I just didn’t care what was going to happen, or actively disliked the people or events. (Case in point, last night I gave up on On the Road about one-fourth through. What a bunch of smug, obsessively self-focused, asocial losers.)

Anyway, having finished the science fiction book, I wanted to get the next two volumes and although I could see them on Kindle, I couldn’t quite figure out how to buy and download them on the phone. I’m sure it was possible, I just couldn’t see how to do it through Kindle’s interface. (Sure, blame the software.) But that would really have closed the loop. Reading a book on your phone would have sounded like science fiction already, fifteen years ago (the iPhone was announced in 2007), but to be able to buy and download another volume on your phone while riding a train… that would have been perfect.

Home for a quiet afternoon and evening reading and watching TV.