Tuesday 05/07/2024

The prompt for the writers group was “restaurant experience” and I didn’t plan to write anything, then had a little flashback and wrote a few paragraphs in the half hour before the meeting. I’ll stick it at the end.

Prior to the meeting, which is chaired by Connie, we talked about the lost recording of her talk, and she volunteered that she wouldn’t mind doing the talk again and recording it. In the few minutes at the start of the meeting we agreed to do that on Saturday. Which is a great relief to me as I felt really bad about fucking up the recording of the actual event. Connie is a saint.

I rehearsed my own songs, and met twice today with Lynne to practice our number for the upcoming Musicale. That is coming on fast now: tech rehearsal on Thursday, two shows on Friday.

I was in the auditorium for something else this afternoon and three of the other acts were there rehearsing, and Mary the producer, and so we talked about some of the tech, where to put mics etc.

OK here’s a little flashback to the 1960s.

Monday 05/06/2024

Took the standard walk. Back in plenty of time to open up the Auditorium for the First Monday book talk, this month by Connie, a friend and a writer that I admire. So the event went off fine, she read well from her book, the audience loved it (everybody loves Connie). One little problem. I was supposed to record it. I thought I had, I had her nicely framed and lit on the camera screen, audio just right — but when I went to download the recording, there wasn’t one. I’m not sure what I did; I’m pretty sure I pushed the Record button, but somehow — no recording. I feel like a real schmuck. I apologized sincerely to Connie who was nice about it, but… damn.

Off to FOPAL for three hours of work to get my section ready for the sale this weekend. Back home to mess around, practice my songs for the upcoming performance — which was weeks away, it seemed, until somehow that became this week.

Sunday 05/05/2024

At 10, drove to CHM to lead a tour. This was a group from Temple Emanual-El, a dozen people of about my age which is nice, they knew right away what a punch card was.

After lunch I worked on Bob Schwaar’s printer issue and solved it, following a suggestion from Bert to just delete every file related to Canon and download new drivers. That worked.

At 3 joined Lou to figure out how to connect an Android phone to share its screen with Zoom.

Had dinner with Edie, Gwen and Craig, because Craig’s wife Diane is out of town.

Saturday 05/04/2024

Worked on music a bit and generally messed around until 1pm when I brought the car around front to drive in the three car pool going to the Pear theater. Thirteen of us went to see Love Letters, which is a simple play of two actors (Wikipedia). Kind of corny but well done today.

Had a nice nap and supper and then took the 15 minute walk to the Lucy Stern complex to see Palo Alto Players production of The Music Man. I had not really expected to enjoy this old chestnut much. The last production I saw was on TV, I think PBS? a couple years ago, and I found it kind of tired and disturbingly sexist. This production was much better. The direction and the acting by the two principle actors, Professor Hill and Marian the Librarian, made the romance more sincere and eased up on Hill’s aggressive assault on Marian. Most important, the ensemble, all the kids and the citizians of the town, were just superb. Whoever choreographed the dance routines did a great job and the players executed perfectly.

Friday 5/3/2024

Walked to Cafe Zoe in the morning (3.2 mi for the day). At 10:30 as planned stopped by Bob’s apartment to try to get his scanner to work with his new MacBook. I failed. I’m the third tech squad person to try and fail. Later in the day Bert called with a suggestion which I will try tomorrow.

Met with Mary and Arlene to practice “An Old Fashioned Wedding”. It will be alright as a comedy routine, probably.

At 1pm helped an outside group set up for a memorial on the 11th floor. This event was arranged by a resident, although the deceased honoree was not a resident. Still, the resident had arranged a nice spread of snacks and wine from Dining Services, which I know is not cheap at all, so… I guess it’s legit. Anyway I set up audio and video for them, and went back at 5pm when they had wrapped up, to take my gear away again.

Thursday 05/02/2024

Took the standard walk this morning, because I didn’t, yesterday. After lunch, put on my red docent shirt and went down to the museum to lead the 2pm tour, which was only 3 people at first, but a 4th joined on the way. Not much else doing.

Wednesday 05/01/2024

One third of the year gone. How about that?

First thing on the agenda today was laundry, which I finished entirely by 10:15, just in time to head down to the 2nd floor to see Leah the hairdresser. I have been letting my hair grow for about 9 or 10 weeks now. I had an appointment at the 6-week mark and canceled it. Just to see. Well, I saw: my thin hair gets long and bushy around the back of my skull, kind of like bozo the clown’s hair. So I made an appointment with Leah and today told her, buzz it all down, make my whole head the same length (i.e. 1/4 inch) as my beard. “Make me look like a coconut” is what I said. So now I have a round slightly fuzzy head. Which is fine.

Lois had called the tech squad line to report that she couldn’t do anything with her iMac, she couldn’t even enter the login password. I asked her about it when I saw her at lunch. Nope, she powers it off and on and it wants the login password but she can’t type the password. So I said I’ll stop by about 2:30. About 2pm I was thinking about it and realized, oho, it isn’t the computer, it’s the keyboard. The keyboard is dead. I was picturing a USB cable lying on the floor or such. But when I saw her machine, it has the little flat wireless keyboard, which connects by bluetooth. And which has an internal battery and you have to charge it up every so often. So I connected it to the wire she uses for charging the mouse, and after about 10 seconds, hey, you could type a password. I did not laugh at her. She said “well that makes me feel stupid” and I didn’t comment.

At 3:30 the Good Times committee met to finalize the list of songs for what decided would be called our Folk Festival — not Hootenanny as I wanted — in September. Also that we will tell the volunteers who like to decorate, the theme is 60s Coffee House. Nothing further to be done before July, now.

Tuesday 04/30/2024

Today was the usual writers meeting, topic “doubt”, and I had nothing to contribute. Several people did, rather nice. Anyway after lunch I met with Lynne to practice our version of “If I Had a Hammer”, there’s your ear-worm of the day you’re welcome. At 3, by arrangement, marketing brought a party of 6 or 7 prospects to see my apartment, among several others. I had spent some time tidying up earlier. People said complimentary things about my furniture arrangement.

Tonight we had a performance by the Fabulous Jeweltones, a group of local women who sing the music of the 20s, 30s and 40s. They’re pretty good and it was an entertaining show. It was complicated for David M. doing the AV because they had requested that we put the show on Zoom as well, both for some of their friends outside, and to get a recording. But we have never done an event where zoom has to hear the general audio of the performers without mics. Our events always have presenters or panelists using a hand-held or head-mounted mic. And tonight we learned that our stage mics don’t work. So probably not good audio.

Huh. Somehow I managed to go to bed without posting a blog entry. First time in a long time I’ve done that. Well on on Monday I took a standard walk, then at 10:30 I visited the apartment of Lois and Randy to respond to a tech squad call. Then I ran off to FOPAL and did 2 hours of computer book pricing. Back to CH in time to meet with Mary and Arlene at 3:30 to practice a song duet that Mary and I are going to do in June. The song is “An Old Fashioned Wedding” from Annie Get Your Gun and it is rather ambitious. Here is a version of it. I’m sure I will sound at least as good as this guy. Snicker.

Sunday 04/28/2024

Pretty much sat around my room playing music and amusing myself for the morning. I found a couple songs to add to my repertoire, like “Margaritaville”. Things that (1) have a fairly simple chord structure, so I can play them, (2) have lyrics that I can get into, with a story line a/o poetic imagery, (3) and are fun to sing. Margaritaville fits all those to a T. “Me and Bobby McGee”, “Gentle on My Mind”, Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluja”. I keep finding more.

At 1 I joined an 11-person carpool to the Pear Theater to see “The Chinese Lady” about a Chinese girl who was exhibited as a curiosity in a freak show in the 1840s. It tried to tell the woman’s life story with only two actors, a lot of talking to the audience, toward the end got into the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act and various atrocities against Chinese. Well acted and produced, as usual, but not entertaining.

Last night’s play, “The Skin of Our Teeth” was pretty well described in the Wikipedia article on it. Which I read on my phone during the first intermission, just to find out what was going on. (Because local theaters no longer go to the expense of printing programs with notes and info in them, grump grump.) It also was very well produced, elaborate effects, costumes, sets, incredible production values for the tiny little Bus Barn theater. But in the end it was preachy and didactic for a modern audience — maybe it hit home, made some points in 1942 but geez, today’s audience has seen three more wars than they had seen in 1942, and the cold war and global warming, and we know all too well that humanity just keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over.

My main gripe at that play was that the theater chose to stick with an 8pm curtain time, when they knew darn well that the play ran 2:45. They could have started at 7 and sent us home at 10pm.