Wednesday 12/24/2025

Went out for a walk in the morning, mainly to hit the 7/11 to cash my Powerball winnings. The ticket I bought on Monday had two lines with the powerball number, and one had an additional number, $11, whee! All I had to do was give the clerk 9 more dollars to get my next 10 quick picks. Still chasing that big jackpot.

About 5 I took the car and drove a couple of miles to James’s place for the Minnis-Mills extended family gumbo party. Christmas Eve gumbo is a long-standing tradition with them. I think I was the oldest person there. Of the 30 or so guests, there were plenty of 40-sumpin and teens and tots. General good times and feelings.

Tuesday 12/23/2025

In the morning Joanne and I took advantage of the fact that the writers meeting had been suspended to next year, so our morning was clear, and we went for a nice version of my standard walk, over across the creek and back, and stop for coffee. San Francisquito Creek is running a steady flow, nothing dramatic yet.

A quiet day otherwise. About 5 I dressed for dinner, i.e. put on my only sport coat and a clean turtleneck, and walked the few blocks to Il Fornaio, our local fancy restaurant, for dinner hosted by Toni and Dennis. Also there, Toni’s sons James and Ted, Dennis’s son Jeff, and Denise, and lots of spouses and kids. I sat next to Jeff’s eldest Will, and across from James’s daughters Hannah and Harper. And next to Denise and Jason and their four(?) year old Tyler, who kept his parents busy. Excellent food and a pleasant experience all around.

Monday 12/22/2025

Indulged myself in a Waymo ride, Channing House to the Cubberly Center, 3+ miles, $16. I could have waited until 10:30 and driven Fred after Joanne was done with using it, but I didn’t want to wait and I have been wanting an excuse to use Waymo down here. Works fine.

Couple of hours of work at FOPAL then I walked home, 3.6 miles for the day and feeling pretty creaky afterward.

Played a little guitar, did some reading.

Sunday 12/21/2025

Typical Sunday morning. Weather dudes promising rain by afternoon, but it never arrives. I led the 2pm tour at the museum. Nice crowd, really seemed interested.

Back home I should have attended the Sunday@Home event, this month Richard and Roberta showing their photographs, and I totally spaced out and forgot it. I think I may be getting old. Although I felt young again at dinner, because two people at the table could remember Pearl Harbor, which was a year before I was born.

Saturday 12/20/2025

In the morning I went for a walk around downtown and up to Town and Country to do a little shopping. One stop, to buy Powerball chances at the 7/11. Yes, the odds are 300M to 1, but the payoff is larger than 300M. When the payoff is larger than the odds of winning, it’s mathematically a “fair bet”.

I also bought a tiny gift bag and some tissue paper for my wee little gift for Joanne. And some razors and whatever.

After lunch I ran an event, a memorial (“celebration of the life”) for Maryanne Simpson, a longtime member of the writers group and contributor to other parts of CH life. Here I ran into something new to me. A relative handed me a USB drive with a folder of images, some jpegs and some pdfs. “Could you, like, show these as a slide show?” I was lost. It’s half an hour until people start arriving. Should I use the Photos app? Keynote? Download some slide show app?

So I asked perplexity.ai: “make a slide show of a folder of images, mac os”. Turned out: it’s built into the Finder! Part of the “quick look” feature of the finder, where if you click on an image file, it pops up a view of the image. Well, if you select a batch of images and option-click, it starts a full-screen slide show of those images. I had no idea. Boom, slide show on the projector.

A second relative had music on her phone that she wanted on the sound system while people were coming in. That I knew how to do: Pair her phone with the Bluetooth input on our sound board. After that it all went off smoothly.

Friday 12/19/2025

Started the day with a Friday morning muffin mosey, including up to Town and Country for a visit to Trader Joe’s. Then back to CH to join Jerry, Joanne, and Bert for a planned caroling event. The idea was to walk around the two floors of the Lee Center, assisted living and nursing, singing carols. Jerry had put out a call for volunteers and I was surprised that there were just the 4 of us. Phil joined us then dropped out, and we picked up a couple of other AL residents on the way. Went into a dozen rooms singing a carol or two in each. Appreciated. Fun.

Then I joined the AI interest group meeting in progress. Nothing being decided there. We don’t know enough and can’t get any feedback from staff on what they are doing, or want to do, with AI.

After lunch and a nap I put in an hour with the guitar. The recent bronchitis (I’m still having to stop and hork up a wad of phlegm every now and then) has left me with a lower voice than usual, which is kind of fun. Not down in Johnny Cash range, but baritone. Learning “Four Strong Winds” and a couple of others.

Early supper and then at 6:30 met with Joanne again and we walked 4 blocks to the Methodist Church for a concert by Voices of Music. This was a Vivaldi “Four Seasons” and then three other Vivaldi concerto pieces, one four four violins, and one for recorder. All of it was really top-notch, exciting music played with expert musicianship. Here’s just a taste, from their collection of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiztfE1X7E .

Thursday 12/18/2025

On Monday I had to leave a stack of stuff unfinished at FOPAL. Today first thing I took Fred and ran down there. Worked 8:30 to 11:30 and left my section completely tidy and organized.

Did some reading: trying to get into The Embodied Mind, read through the first two introductions to the revised edition. Hit the monthly Ice Cream Social event in the dining room and listened to Sandy read some of the Truman Capote christmas story that she started to read at the concert last week.

After supper, Joanne joined me in my room to watch Kpop Demon Hunters. I’ve been wanting to see this for a while, got Netflix in part to see it, and we had to keep rescheduling but finally did sit down and watch it. It’s fun. Not deep but fun and healthy. Frozen was better, and had a similar lesson, so that is still my favorite animated film.

Wednesday 12/17/2025

Ordinarily Joanne would lead a hike on Wednesday morning but this morning there was light rain, and the Baylands trails, where we had planned to go, would be sticky. So she called it off. So I was able to reschedule two other meetings. First I met with Dennis and Ellen in the auditorium. They are planning a skit with the Channing House players, and they wanted to work out if they could have their act simultaneously on the projection screen.

Then at 11 I met with Stew and Lou and David Gr, to review some DVDs of rock concerts. We plan to put on a series of concert videos next year. DGr has a massive collection of rock history dvds, books, and recordings.

After lunch I got in an hour playing and singing, the first time since I had bronchitis. I’m feeling normal today for the first time in a week and a half.

After supper at 7pm we had a sing-along. Jerry commented that people had said there was no point in having a sing-along, everybody would be traveling, nobody would come. In fact, we had the biggest group ever.

Tuesday 12/16/2025

Took an early walk to deposit a check and my ballot in a local election. Tidied the room, sorted my laundry, then it was time for the writers meeting. A longtime member, Maryanne Simpson, had died two nights ago, and the group spent some time recalling her.

Right at twelve I moved out so the cleaning lady could move in. Started my laundry, had lunch, came back, changed loads. etc.

At 3, met with Bert and Craig and David G. to talk about liability. Staff has raised a question about the tech squad referring residents to an outside consultant, namely, my friend Leah Lin. What if we, or the consultant, somehow messed up a resident’s computer and as a result the resident got scammed. What? How is this in any way a possible event. But some response is needed.

That was about all there was to the day. Was invited to dinner with Dean and Ellen, mainly to talk about Australia, which I am really ignorant about but fortunately they also included Linda who does visit Aus. every year since forever.

Monday 12/15/2025

First thing I headed out for FOPAL. The big job was to do the post-sale triage. I triaged harshly because I was overloaded. I had set up a cart loaded with stuff about Ruby and about embedded systems, from that large donation. Neither section had sold much if anything. I looked through them again and realized they were almost all from 2003-20012. In other words, more than a decade old, many over 20 years old. So not a big surprise they didn’t fly off the shelves.

Drove to Safeway for a few items, then home. At 3:45, Leia Lin came by. This was her semi-annual check-in. We just chatted a bit. Then she was off and I went late to Rhonda’s open meeting, missing the main part which was to show the marketing plans for Arris the satellite.