Thursday 03/21/2024

Main activity today was, that I had signed up for a bus trip to the City to visit the DeYoung museum. My main interest was the exhibit of photos by Irving Penn. Penn had a 60-year career primarily as a fashion photographer for Vogue, but also took many influential photos of ordinary people around the world. People were taking pictures of Penn’s pictures all over the place. I only took one, one of his earliest fashion shots that is just amazing in its composition.

Titled “Man Lighting Woman’s Cigarette”. The only thing in sharp focus is the wine bottle. It’s all insinuation and indirect storytelling and suggestions of how the elite lived in the 1950s. The gloves… the off-the-shoulder gown…

Back home, there was a “marketing update” — the marketing department (3 people) invited us in to the auditorium for snacks and wine, and told us about how we are at 100% with 37 different people on the “advantage” list. That’s people who have put down a refundable $10K deposit to be in line to move in. They won’t all move in; as someone at my table said, “how many of them will get tired of waiting and go to the V instead?”

Wednesday 03/20/2024

Did the laundry. Took a shortish walk while the first load ran. Paid a bill. Emailed Charley at Prime Fiduciary to schedule a visit to sign and notarize a durable power of attorney.

At 1pm, joined the monthly FOPAL post-sale zoom meeting. Nothing exciting to report there. At 4 I went down to attend a lecture by Rose Gottemoeller, a rather distinguished person to address little old CH but she’s a friend of somebody who lives here. She had interesting things to say about NATO and the US, and about the Ukraine and Russia.

David M. did the AV for this event, I just attended, a refreshing change.

Tuesday 03/19/2024

Handled some routine management matters for and with the AV team. Joined the writers meeting and read my piece in my turn. Practiced some guitar, then, faced with an unscheduled afternoon, I went down to FOPAL and did book sorting for over 2 hours.

Monday 03/18/2024

Took a shorter than usual walk, because I realized, one block into it, that I had not put on my supportive walking shoes, just my usual loafers. But I walked nearly as far for the day as usual.

At 10:30 was the monthly event coordinator’s meeting. At my place in the agenda I laid down the law that if somebody scheduled an event for a given month, after the beginning of that month, we the AV team would not promise to cover it. Maybe there would be someone who could find time, or maybe not.

Then I spent two hours at FOPAL dealing with computer books. Back in time for Rhonda’s open meeting where, this time, she announced the Heritage Circle grants for the FY, including $33K for auditorium improvements, yay. Later she scheduled a meeting to discuss how to spend this, for Friday at 1.

Sunday 03/17/2024

Yeah, that. Fiddled with some pictures. Played some guitar. Rehearsed a duet with Lynne. Had an Irish Coffee at the St Pat’s party in the lobby after supper.

Saturday 03/16/2024

My big task today was to complete the application to renew my passport. What a pain. Although the .gov website did its best to be helpful. I spent a couple of hours taking and printing an acceptable picture. But I got it all together and ready to mail.

One thing I learned from staring at my own face processing the passport photo: I’ve aged quite a bit in the last couple of years. My face has wrinkled up a lot, compared to the head shot I took for the 2020 Channing House directory.

Talked briefly to CEO Rhonda, about the process of creating a music practice room, a process that has been stalled for over a year. Learned that it was held up because of a tentative plan to put additional HVAC equipment in a certain room, but that plan has now been dropped, so maybe they can get things going. She made a note to herself and thanked me.

Yesterday as part of entertaining our prospect Rob, who recently lost his second wife, I gave him the URL of this blog and suggested he click the “It Started Here” link. I don’t have any idea if he will, but — I did. And ended up sitting up past 11, reading just the first 4 months of it.

Friday 03/15/2024

Took the good old standard walk in the morning. Practiced guitar a bit. Then at 11 I put on my red shirt and went to the Museum to lead a tour. Pretty good tour, 10 people.

In the evening I was booked to have dinner, along with 2 other residents, with a prospect, Bob Mclean. This was set up by our marketing department. I’m not sure how they picked me. I suggested they add Susan, and she suggested Barbara, so that was our party, and a very congenial group we were. We talked up Channing House like proper fans. Bob stayed for the evening concert, Steve Gill singing Irish songs. Gill has performed here several times before; he’s very affable, a natural entertainer. So that was all very nice.

Thursday 03/14/2024

Off to Shustek for a day, well 4 hours of effective work, inventory-ing buttons. See last Thursday (5.097) for the details of this work. In the afternoon afterward, I cleaned up a couple of things from the action-items list that I brought home from the conference with the Financials. Also found the US Gov website for renewing one’s passport. Mine expires in 6 months, and although I have no travel plans, there’s no use letting it expire.

Wednesday 03/13/2024

Couldn’t go for a walk because I had to leave at 9:30 for my annual meeting with the Financial Advisors. Bottom line, the Nest Egg is secure. One exercise they do is to predict how much I will have through age 100. The base projection just assumes a linear growth of 6.5%. (In fact under the present management it has been growing at 9% for the last 4 years.) Then they run a “monte carlo simulation” package that tries 1000 different random assumptions, some optimistic, some pessimistic. Worst case, I still end up with money in the bank at age 100. The Nest Egg is unstoppable. As long as I don’t develop a sudden taste for cocaine and Ferraris, I cannot avoid dying well-off.

In the afternoon we had our monthly 6th floor meeting when all my nice neighbors gather. This time CEO Rhonda and Dining Services manager Gloria attended. Gloria answered questions about the new rules for food service. The questions were not really critical. Things are basically OK there. Then we all went to dinner.

At 6:30 I split to set up the auditorium for an event. Sandy came along as an AV trainee. It worked out pretty well. At least I didn’t alienate her completely.

Tuesday 03/12/2024

Took a moderate walk, then it was time for the writers meeting. I didn’t contribute anything. Then drove to FOPAL for the post-sale triage of my shelves, sending all books that have gone through four sales to the bargain room. Back for a quiet afternoon, napping, guitar practice. Just another day in paradise.

Well, I did write something, late. Stew, an indefatigable organizer, wants to revive the idea I was promoting back in 2021 (I can’t find a blog post where I mentioned it, but it was in that year). The idea was that Channing House, or the Resident Association, or somebody, should fund subscriptions to all the streaming services, so we could watch Disney and Netflix and Hulu, blah blah, on the 11th floor TV. The idea died because of the complicated logistics. There would have to be some person, or some elected officer maybe, who had the email address and credit card used to subscribe to all these accounts. Who would do that? And using what funding source? And how do you secure the IDs so the streams couldn’t be used on some other device(s)?

Stew wants to try again, so I spent an hour-plus writing a careful account of what the issues are, with suggestions, and wishing him luck.