Friday 12/27/2024

Travel but no travail. Headed out from Laurel’s place in a light rain at 8. Turning in the car was no problem. Seatac makes you walk a mile to get to the gate, which I remembered as soon as I saw it: N17 is part of a group of four gates around a large cattle pen seating area. I’m sure Marian and I waited there for flights to SJC before. Anyway my flight soon got a gate change to the opposite end of the building, N7 in another group of four gates. The flight was slightly delayed owing to the gate change, but it was without incident — also without scenery, flying through clouds the whole 500 miles until the last 30 seconds over downtown San Jose. Home just before 3pm, and home feels very nice. Down for dinner in the dining room, telling people at the community table, about the Vashon Troll.

Thursday 12/26/2024

I had planned an outing for this day, to Vashon Island. Dennis, Toni and Denise were not interested; Vashon is too long a trek south from Everett. Laurel was game, so we started at 10am for the Washington State Ferry terminal at Fauntleroy in West Seattle. We got lucky and were just in time, the last car onto the boat for the 20 minute run to Vashon.

While riding, Laurel was handling her texts which are numerous, and got one from Ed Lewis, a friend who is a professor at UC Davis but visits Seattle often. As they conversed by text, Laurel mentioned Vashon and Ed told her about the Thomas Dambo giant Trolls. There are six of these monumental sculptures around the area, including one on Vashon.

Because of ferry luck we were early so drove across the island to the park where the Troll “Oscar” is found, a short walk from the car park.

Having greeted a giant troll we drove back to the village at the center of the island and had a good lunch at The Hardware Store Restaurant. Now it was 1pm and time for the Vashon Historical Museum to open. This was the point of the trip.

For several years, like 2013 to 2020, I spent most Thursdays at CHM doing volunteer work under the direction of a lovely woman, Gretta Stimson. Gretta was a terrific manager, unflappable and always ready with an answer for any difficulty we volunteers raised. Then she announced that her husband had a new job on Vashon Island and she was leaving. She’d grown up the Seattle anyway. We all sadly bid goodby to Gretta. Later we heard that Gretta had put her Museum Science degree and experience to good use and landed a job at the local history museum. So here we were and there was Gretta.

That’s the pic Laurel took with my phone, and I uploaded it to the laptop and sent to all the volunteers who had worked with Gretta back in the day.

From there we headed back to the ferry terminal. We had to wait in a long long line of cars for about half an hour, then loaded onto the Issequa and returned to Laurel’s home. A very nice day.

Wednesday 12/25/2024

So I and Laurel drove first to son Gary’s place to pick up some hors d’oeuvres that grandson’s girlfriend Tessa had made, and then the 1-hour drive in fairly heavy rain to Everett. Denise and Jason welcomed us. Laurel Dennis and Toni had conversation, and toddler Tyler provided amusement. Denise made a fine feast of a dinner. Pictures were taken:

Drove back down I5, now in only slightly moist conditions. At Laurel’s we relaxed and planned an outing for tomorrow.

Tuesday 12/24/2024

Belated entry, I just went off to bed without a thought for blogging. It happens. Anyway after a quiet morning around Laurel’s place I headed out to the opposite end of Greater Seattle, North to Everett, an hour’s drive. Grand-niece Denise was already hosting her parents Dennis and Toni, and just starting to make the family’s traditional Christmas-eve gumbo. So we all sat around kibitzed that process. Around 5 sat down to delicious stew. Then I headed back down “the 405” finding Laurel with a son and grandson and their partners finishing their supper.

Monday 12/23/2024

Laurel and I drove a loop around the south-east of Seattle. First up to Black DIamond, small town founded around a coal mine back in the day. Here we looked at a housing development where Laurel hopes to get a house soon. We also had pastries and coffee in a local bakery.

Then on past Enumclaw where one finds a good view of Mount Ranier, which was “out” today, meaning visible, not cloud-shrouded. In fact it was a very nice day, hazy with clear skies, contrary to the forecasts. Here’s the mountain.

Then on to Wilkeson, another coal mining town, where we tried to spot the house that my father built circa 1920. We couldn’t be sure we saw it.

From there we took a meandering loop back to Laurel’s place. Here we met with her son Gary for lunch and had a long conversation. Then a comfortable evening with TV and cats.

Sunday 12/22/2024

Had breakfast, watered the plants, and at 9am caught my scheduled Lyft to SJC. Got there by 9:30. Took maybe 10 minutes to get through the TSA precheck line and had two hours to kill to boarding. Flight departed on time and arrived a few minutes early. (So who’s afraid of holiday travel?) The only slowdown was a quarter mile hike to the rental car shuttle and waiting for that shuttle.

Budget gave me a Hyundai Tucson, small SUV, quite comfortable, and I discovered that it supported Apple CarPlay, so I paired up my phone and had apple maps direct me to Laurel’s place. In the dark and the unlit side streets off Wax Road it took a while to complete the last quarter mile, but I got there.

Spent the evening chatting with Laurel and petting the cats.

Saturday 12/21/2024

My main activity today was fussing with travel arrangements. I booked a Lyft to pick me up at 9am — that should give me ample time to be bored before a 12:40 departure. I checked in to the flight with the nice Alaska phone app, stowing the boarding pass in my Apple Wallet. I decided what to wear or the next 6 days and packed my wee little bag which fits under the seat. No big achievement, I used the same bag when I did the ten-day Greek Islands trip back in oh my gosh 5 years ago.

Made a surprising discovery. When I went to Seattle and Port Townsend just over a year ago (September ’23), on return, I couldn’t find the keychain with my Prius key fob. I had carried it because it had my apartment key, and I thought I must have somehow left it in the rental car. I had to get a replacement apartment key and mailbox key. I had a spare Prius fob which I started using.

So today, probing around in a crack at the bottom of a side pocket of my bag, my fingers found a lump — the missing keychain and fob! The fob battery was dead, but I replaced it and now I have two Prius keys as before, and spares for my apartment and mailbox.

Friday 12/20/2024

Very little on the schedule for today. The AI interest group met at 11 and we talked about AI use and other things or 45 minutes. At 3pm I set up a mic on the 11th floor for a private party, and at 8pm I went and put the mic away as the party was breaking up.

There was a concert by a pianist and a singer, Christmas music. David M was doing the sound and called with a question, easily solved. I went down to listen to the start of it but quickly left. I’ve heard those songs too often and the singer was not good enough to make up for it.

Thursday 12/19/2024

There was no CHM volunteering today (and none until 1/6, I hear) so I had an open day. I set myself the goal of reading two things that had been sitting on my coffee table too long. One was the latest edition of Scribble and Sketch, the CH literary magazine. I wish that was online so I could link to articles in it, because there are some good ones.

The lead article was a profile of Arlene (Kwok) Sullivan. I’ve mentioned her a number of times, as the person who does piano accompaniment to various performances. She’s well over 90, but is still an excellent pianist. She had many years experience as a performer with different groups, but the striking part of the profile were pictures from when she was a teenager, and a star in local Chinatown dance bands. As a very young person she sang “Any Bonds Today” at WWII bond rallies. As a mother she formed a band with her own teenage children. She taught music in several bay area schools. There are also a couple of shocking medical tales from two different doctors. At the back, they published a piece I wrote on being jaded about holidays, which I included here back on day 4.347.

The other was the book Nexus by Yuval Harari. Joanne bought that and loaned it to me to read first. I have mixed feelings about it. Harari presents many interesting historical examples to make these important points. First, improved communications do not automatically bring improved knowledge, or more democracy or more “openness” — as optimistic tech people tend to assume. He shows how the introduction of the printing press led directly to the witchcraft panics of the 1500s, in an early example of better communications only improving the transmission of conspiracy theories. For a more current example, Facebook’s algorithms strongly aided the Rohingya massacres in Myanmar: the algorithms were designed to increase “engagement” and the algorithms “learned” that violent anti-Rohingya propoganda increased engagement. On the other hand, a modern democracy can’t function without plentiful communication, but a totalitarian state can. There’s lots of complex “this, but again, that” here, but a clear warning against letting computer algorithms be decision-makers without requiring a clear appeals system. He talks about the failings of algorithmic judicial sentencing; he doesn’t mention health insurance companies using algorithms to deny coverage, that news is a little too recent for a 2023 book. In general I think the book has a lot of important historical lessons, but could have been better organized with clearer conclusions. (Maybe he should have run it through Claude.ai…)

I noticed an odd coincidence of health numbers and want to write about it. This post is out of sequence, falling between days 6.017 and 6.018.

Every morning I take my blood pressure, temperature, and my weight, and write those numbers in a spreadsheet. For the systolic (higher) BP number, the spreadsheet also keeps a 14-day rolling average, the point being to smooth out random variations and spot any trend. I’ve been adding rows to this spreadsheet since 2020 so I have a pretty good data set.

For example, I can scroll back and see that my weight has been slowly declining. For many years prior to 2018, my weight was around 180 and I was, frankly, kind of pudgy. Over 2018, the year of Marian’s cancer and death, I dropped more than 10 pounds. (Stress is a great diet plan.)

Per my spreadsheet, from 2020 to 2023 my weight varied between 164 and 170. However through 2024 it has declined again, hanging around 162-3 and once hitting a low of 161, which pleased me at the time.

For most 2020-24, the 14-day BP average has varied between 100 and 115, mostly around 108-110. This is an appropriate value, given that I’m on three different drugs that reduce BP (metoprolol, amelodepine, and spirolactone, the latter only 3 days per week). The low pressure causes no issues, i.e. I don’t get light-headed when standing up or anything like that.

In October 2024, I started noting higher than usual BP readings: 117, 128, 124. More significant, the 14-day average began creeping up, from 110 in mid-October to 119 in early November.

Simultaneously my weight, which had been around 162, crept up, reaching a 2-year high of 166 in early December, with no change whatever in my eating habits.

In the two weeks since that point, my BP has declined to its previous values, with the average down to 114; while my weight has dropped back to 162.

In summary: my BP and my weight increased smoothly from early November to mid-December, then both numbers dropped back to previous levels by late December.

This would only be a curiosity, except that early November was when I started noticing periods of arrhythmic heart action, was concerned enough to consult my cardiologist, had the diagnosis of PVCs, and wore the monitor patch or two weeks.

And — wait for it — the PVCs have become much less frequent, or at least I’m noticing them much less often, this past two weeks.

So: was there a single underlying cause for all three things, the slightly increased BP, slightly increased weight, and the arrhythmia? They rose together, and fell off together. Or was this just a freaky coincidence?