Sunday 09/15/2024

My feet were sore after yesterday’s hike. Oh, and using the excellent Dish trail map I worked out that the total elevation change for the circuit is 479 feet. From the Stanford Gate which is where you park, up and around in either direction, you will gain 479 feet and lose it again. I had lots of time to wonder how much climbing I was doing, while I was slowly doing it, so… good to know, I guess.

Today about 2pm I got antsy and took the car down to San Jose to the art museum there. Actually there was some kind of mexican/native american festival on the plaza so I wandered around that too. But the main thing was, they had opened an exhibit of small objects by Alexander Calder, that I wanted to see. Calder made lots of jewelry and trinkets out of twisted wire, for instance. But the star of the show for me was this exquisite little mobile, about 18″ high and wide.

The tiny little wire loops that connect the rods just make you say awwww. That lily-pad plate that circles the neck is just soooo 60s. The whole thing, really. Eames chairs and bell-bottoms, the whole mid-century thing.

Saturday 09/14/2024

On a quiet morning I met with Mary for a short rehearsal of our song. Then I sat down with the three (3!) Tetris Jr. games I bought off eBay. The third one came in the mail yesterday.

One, from Japan, was in fine shape. I put batteries in and it worked fine.

One was sold as “junk for parts”. It had two problems. One of the little buttons on the face had broken. And when I put batteries in it, it kind of worked but a block of pixels on the little screen was dead.

The third, which came from Spain, was still in its original blister-pack. The package copy was all in English. On this one, the little LCD screen had turned mostly black, so it was unusable. But I took the buttons from it and put them in the “junk” one. Then I took another part, I don’t want to spend 500 words trying to explain which, but anyway, swapped another part, and bingo, the dead pixels were back! So now I had two fully working ones, to go with my old original.

About 2:30pm I was feeling pretty sluggish. The temp outside was around 70F and I thought, I should really go for a walk. Where? Well, why not the famous Dish walk? I haven’t done that in a while (later I searched this blog, it was February of ’22). So I drove over there and was able to park and I walked the Dish walk, a 3.5 mile loop that goes past the big radio astronomy dish. It has lots of hills. I was walking slow, in fact I was passed by a lot of people, and I passed nobody. But I made it.

Friday 09/13/2024

Took a mid-length walk first thing. Then had a couple of hours to read up on Waiting for Godot, famous play I had tickets for, tonight. Since I had invited Joanne to join me, and she is an educated and discriminating play-goer, I thought I should know something about the play. I skimmed the Wikipedia page, and it pointed to the e-text of the script itself, so I read the first act and some of the second. I liked the first act; I read parts out loud and it sounded like fun.

I also added a sound track to a keynote slide show that Stew had made, a lot of black and white photos of famous folk singers. I attached sound tracks for several folk songs other than the ones in the show. This will be looping the half hour before the show starts, as the audience comes in.

Lunch time, Ethan the marketing guy called and asked if I would be willing to host a prospect. Sure. His name was Hung Chi, and interesting guy who knows senior residence admin very well since he was, he said, the Facilities manager at The Sequoias for ten years, and since has run senior residence houses. So I guess he must think CH is OK if he’s considering it.

Then it was time to set up for the Activity Showcase. Karen and Donna, who organized it, had done a terrific job. Thirty-five tables in the auditorium and into Quad 4 of the dining room, one for each volunteer-run committee. I sat at the AV table with two more Davids, G and M, and tried to talk people into being interested in microphones and cameras and such. Got a couple of recruits, maybe.

Afterward, took a quick shower and changed into nicer clothes. Ran up to 11 to help Lou set up his mics for his meet the city council candidate night. Then back down to the lobby to wait for Joanne for our scheduled 6pm departure, and she was already there at 5:40, so we headed out.

Dinner at Terun on California Avenue, and then since we had extra time, just walk a loop of Cal ave, which is now a pedestrian mall with a dozen restaurants with outdoor seating, all busy.

Off to the Bus Barn to see Godot. The first act was good. The second act, which I hadn’t had time to read, was a disappointment. Beckett pretty much used up all his ideas in the first act, I think. The actors were good, as usual, and as usual I’m amazed at their ability to memorize two hours of script. But it was 2 hours plus an intermission, and like I say, the second act is kind of a repetition of the first act, with nothing new to add.

So, home late. Saturday tomorrow with nothing on the calendar.

Thursday 09/12/2024

Felt like a busy day but looks like nothing on the calendar. Before lunch I went down to the local nursery looking for two things. One, a plastic stake to prop up a jade plant that wants to fall over, and two, a hanging pot a little larger than one I have that is occupied by an heroic hoya or waxplant, which has is being strangled in this little 3-inch hanging pot it has been living in for a decade or so. Easily found plastic stakes, but not hanging pots. They had rope and chain doodads for hanging a pot, but no attractive pots with holes or lips or ears for hanging by.

Got the car washed then, and came on home to go on etsy.com and in five minutes had picked a very attractive little hanging pot and ordered it.

Met with Lou to figure out why he couldn’t get the microphones to work on the 11th floor. Then we joined a good times committee meeting, finalizing arrangements for the Big Shew the next Friday. Including how to adjust the program IF Joanie attends, and depending on WHAT Joanie wants to do. Maybe she’ll just say a few words, but if her voice is working (this is day to day apparently) she might sing. Basically whatever Joanie wants to do, is fine with us, but we wanted to have a plan for adjusting the program on the fly for different possibilities.

Wednesday 09/11/2024

I couldn’t go for a walk first thing because I had to meet with Stew and Susan in the auditorium at 9:30, which really meant me going down there at 9 to turn stuff on. Then the phone rang at 8, it was neighbor Martha, who had just been misled by a scammy website into giving her yahoo mail address and password. She was trying to change the password and it wasn’t working, indicating the scammer had already changed it, maybe.

So I worked with her rather intensely for an hour and we got the yahoo login back and could view her mail in a web browser, but Apple Mail on the Mac and her phone, couldn’t connect. So I left her and went downstairs and worked with Stew and Susan until 10:30, then back to Martha’s place for more of that. We worked with the Yahoo online help and got pretty much everything fixed except Mail. One problem is, her Macbook is old (2015, geez) and running a version of MacOS that is two levels back of what she could run. I left her updating the Macbook.

Then I rebuilt the Folk Fest video picking up two requested changes, that takes 90 minutes, but while the iMac is munging on that I could practice my music. At three I went downstairs for the Wednesday coffee hour, and then got called away by Sandy who was setting up for a concert in the lobby. Her problem was easily fixed.

The concert was at 4:30, two pianists, father and son. The son is a professor of composition at Stanford, the father retired. They played various jazz things and were quite skillful and worked together well, but I didn’t care for the sound of their music. I decided to put on my walking shoes and walk to midtown and get supper out. But passing through the lobby I saw Caroline and remembered that this was the day of the 6th floor monthly dinner, so I diverted to that, dinner with her and 4 other neighbors from the 6th floor.

Except none of the desserts on the menu pleased me, so I skipped dessert, instead walked the 2 miles to midtown where I had 2 scoops of mint chip at the Baskin-Robbins, and got a Lyft back.

Tuesday 09/10/2024

Today as usual was the writers meeting. The cue was “memory”. About 9am I had an idea of what to do with it, and in an hour wrote a nice little piece, which I wall append.

Then it was time to go down and set up the auditorium for the Folk Festival rehearsal. This was not a full rehearsal, but just the songs where residents were actually to perform. I am in two of those. I got through the first one, “City of New Orleans” without screwing anything up. On “You’ve Got a Friend” with Mary, I missed my entrance on the third verse. We did it over and it was ok.

Later I went out and bought more sugar for the hummingbirds. My single feeder need to be filled three times a day, often has all five ports occupied.

At 4 I turned on the 11th floor TV. Anybody could do that, but several different people had asked me over the last couple of days if “the tv will be on for the debate”. Like it took my special magic to turn it on. Anyway, not wanting to watch the debate in a crowd, I ordered my supper for take-out and ate in my room. DIsappointed: Trump didn’t implode, Kamala didn’t hit any home runs. Whatever.

Here’s the thing I wrote for the group.

Memory support

What did old people do before we had internet-connected computers in our pockets? (Which in fact would be 2008 and later.) Or at least, on our desks? (i.e. 1995). Before then what we did is suffer. We stumbled and stammered and sputtered; snapped our fingers and said “You know! That… thing. That you… Oh, you know what I mean.”

The brain is a marvelous and mysterious thing, all the more mysterious for its failures. I have a large vocabulary — or did — multiple tens of thousands of words, all neatly filed and linked in a multi-dimensional semantic network. Of late, the fishnet has developed holes, where threads that once were knotted to words are dangling loose.

The annoying thing is, when you are swinging along from node to node, producing an effortless stream of amusing conversation and you come up to a gap, you know what word you want; you just can’t access the word itself. You know all about the word; you have a sensory memory and descriptive connections, but each of theses strands of your semantic net dangle loose, where they used to be tied to a noun.

“In our guest room we had a nice… shit.” Piece of furniture. Against the wall. Used it as a couch. Had a handmade crocheted throw on it most of the time? Cushions were brown, you folded it out to make a guest bed. All those strings are there, but the word has gone AWOL. Until a person, or your web browser, produces it, and then, of course! FUTON.

Yesterday at lunch we were talking about the last time any of us had attended A.C.T. in San Francisco. I had a clear memory of the last play I saw there. Not its title, of course! I can see the stage from our upper loge seats at the Geary Theater. I can remember the play had something to do with an imaginary horse, and a boy, and the name “Peter” is associated with it.

I got out my phone and keyed “play horse boy peter” into the address bar of the browser. And immediately got a link to the Wikipedia entry for Peter Shaffer’s play Equus.

Thank you, my pocket supercomputer, for re-weaving another tatter in my semantic web.

Monday 09/09/2024

Huh, I went to bed last night without posting a blog entry. Sunday I did a docent tour and not much else.

Today started early with going to the auditorium at 8am to back up David G as he was recovering from a round of maybe-Covid-relapse. Or something. So the Resident Association meeting went fine, except for some annoying feedback which I still can’t figure out.

Then at 11 I met with Mary and John to rehearse our song. Then down to FOPAL to complete setting up my section for the sale this coming weekend. That was about that.

Saturday 09/07/2024

For breakfast I walked to Town and Country center, the Douce France coffee shop. Bumped into Joanne and walked back with her. Practiced some guitar. Afternoon, I went down and went out for more coffee with Dennis. Had a good chat, got some good advice.

Went for the standard walk. Practiced some music. Went to the grocery store to stock up on TP and laundry detergent. Then, since that involved putting stuff away in the bathroom cabinets, I decided to try to fix the fact that my bathroom sink drains very slowly. I carefully removed the P-trap and washed it out under the shower. It had a little crud in it but not much, so the blockage is further along. I shall report it to Facilities, but not until Monday.

We were discussing Covid shots at lunch, and I heard that Safeway had them and accepted walk-ins. Thinking I would go get one, I checked my file of medical history and realized that I got a Covid shot just recently, along with my wellness exam, in June. So I don’t think I’ll bother getting another. Everybody is talking about flu shots now, which seems early to me.

Thursday 09/05/2024

At 10am I met with Tom and Ellen, residents who had scheduled a meet the candidate event for monday, but none of the av people signed up to take it. My committee, well 2 of them, had vociferously told me I was not to jump in and fill every hole, sometimes we just don’t have the volunteer manpower, etc. So instead I got the couple to agree to be trained in how to set up the auditorium for a simple event: open the doors, turn on the lights, set up three microphones, and put everything away afterwards. Tom is a retired engineer, or I guess engineering manager? and took a very methodical approach. I had prepared a one-page checklist, and he insisted on working the whole thing through twice. I think they’ll do fine.

At 3pm the Good Times committee met. Progressing nicely; first rehearsal is on the 10th. Nervous? Me?

Afterward I met with Lou on the 11th floor and we went over how to set up microphones there, for an event he has on the 13th. I have plans for the evening of the 13th, so he had to be trained to do it himself. He’s smart; jeez the guy was big in the World Bank and has sat on the board of the California high speed rail.

I had supper at 5 and at 5:45 met with Kandis to go to a concert. This was the first of several concerts at SFJazz for which I had bought pairs of seats. I offered the spare seat to several people who couldn’t accept, then I put out a general announcement, and Kandis was first to reply. Minor problem: Kandis uses a walker. So my normal SFJazz itinerary — drive down Franklin to Grove, turn into the Performing Arts Garage, walk 5 blocks back to SFJazz — wouldn’t work. I determined that there was a passenger drop off zone outside SFJazz on Fell street (thank you Google Street View), so the plan was to drop Kandis off with her walker, drive around a big circle (one-way streets) to the garage, walk back, probably 12-15 minutes to rejoin her and go in to the concert.

All went smoothly up to the point where I got in a slow-moving line at the garage entrance, and finally reached it to see a sign, FULL Monthly rentals and pre-paid only. Well, shit. Now what?

The only alternate I knew was the Civic Center Plaza garage, on the other side of City Hall, a quarter mile walk from SFJazz. And I realized we are so old-school that we hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, so I couldn’t tell her. Also, I had both tickets.

So I drove around another one-way circle, back to the drop-off zone outside SFJazz, ran into the front door, handed Kandis her ticket, said go on in, I’ll be late. It was now 7:20 with the concert starting at 7:30.

Back to the car, around through the one-way streets over to Civic Center, park, take the elevator back to street level, walk fast back to SFJazz, and find my seat at 7:40, which was not bad going. Only missed part of the first number.

The concert was superb, two master musicians at the top of their game, and so in tune with each other. It was just a joy to hear. This (Three Wrong Notes) was the first number, which I missed part of.Apparently they had put out an album together some time ago, which won a Grammy. Well-earned.

Concert over; leave Kandis with her walker in the lobby, fast-walk across Van Ness to the Plaza, get the car, come around more one-way loops, back to SFJazz. Twenty minutes again. Kandis had apparently been shmoozing with the security people because as I pulled up, one guy in a da-glo vest came running out to say, “Are you picking up Kandis?”

And drive home. phew.