Thursday 02/16/2023

Lots of things today. Started in the gym. Then I put in an hour on taxes, which was very successful. What I did was locate and download all the 1099 and similar forms that I needed.

I’ve been meaning to get a POLST together for some time. This is basically a more terse statement than my “living will” document, covering specifically what treatment I want, or don’t. I had the form for months, but the hangup was, it has to be signed by my physician, supposedly after a frank conversation on end of life choices. I didn’t expect to see her until August, the usual time for my annual visit. So it’s been lying on my desk.

Finally I got off my ass and did something, specifically, I messaged her asking if I could drop the form off for her signature, and also with a copy of my “living will” which basically says all the same things (“no CPR, comfort care only”) in lieu of the conversation. She messaged back on Tuesday, that’s fine. So Tuesday I dropped those documents off. Yesterday I got a call that the papers were ready.

At 11am I headed out. First to down to Los Altos to the Dr.’s office to pick up the POLST. Then to the Mitchell Park library complex for a FOPAL luncheon. But on the way, stopped at the grocery for some supplies. And then after parking at the library, I spent 5 minutes attaching my new 2023 license plate sticker on the Prius rear plate.

The luncheon was just a pizza party that Janette, the FOPAL director, had put together to make volunteers feel happy. We ate pizza and participated in a Palo Alto history trivia quiz. Sample question, “Leland Stanford owned property in another Bay Area town where he was originally going to site his university — what town was it?” Answer, Fremont. Apparently his wife Jane liked “the farm” on this side of the Bay better.

Back to CH for a 2pm meeting with other AV team members and Gerald of IT, to learn about some of the features of the replacement sound board. It has an effects channel, any mic can be directed through one of a menu of ambience mods, like “large hall”. Basically a choice of reverb effects, which are pretty useless. But also it has a bluetooth input, and he demo’d pairing the board with his phone, and playing music from Spotify into the system. There might be a use for that some time.

Now to make up a package consisting of the POLST, my Advance Directive, and a cover letter listing people to inform “In the event of my demise or incapacity”. Copies of this package to be filed with CH and … where else? Not sure. Handy by my desk to take along if I am every hospitalized.

Wednesday 02/15/2022

Went for the standard walk in the morning, in the new walking shoes, and it all felt fine.

At 10 I had a tech squad appointment with a resident, Joan, to deal with a couple of tech issues. The issues turned out to be minor. One was, she could get Zoom on her iPad but not on her MacBook. Turned out, nobody had ever installed the Zoom app on the MacBook. So I did that.

At 1pm was the monthly Zoom meeting of the FOPAL volunteers. The sale weekend just past netted over $14,000, a good haul.

At 3pm I met with the rest of the Sock Hop event committee to go over preparations for the event which is this Friday thank goodness. There were four people scheduled to perform as singers. One of them had a minor stroke last week and is recovering in the skilled nursing wing.

Today the husband of another let me know that he had tested positive for Covid. I saw him Monday when he was suffering from what he thought was a cold, and he had asked to not do an event that he was scheduled to run. Today he tested positive, and will be in isolation for a week. Well, I asked, what about Karen? He wasn’t sure. So we don’t know if we are down two singers or just one.

At 6 I went down to run the event that David M. couldn’t owing to illness. I had Kass as an apprentice. She really wants to learn to do this stuff, which is great. The event came off with only one minor hitch, when I forgot that I had muted a microphone. When we tried to use that mic for someone to ask a question from the audience, they couldn’t be heard. Turn it on. It IS ON. Oh crap, sorry… I un-mute it. Well if that’s the worst issue we have…

Tuesday 02/14/2023

Did the gym round. There’s a new machine in the line-up, but not operational yet.

Felt very creaky and slow. Took a couple ibuprofen.

Writers meeting. Read a thing. Piece of the novel I keep thinking I will try to write on, and don’t.

Linda across the hall asked me to rip the video off a DVD. She thought it was a big deal, camera store wanted money, would take a week. I did it this afternoon while doing other things. Cementing my reputation as a tech wizard.

Monday 02/13/2023

No walk today because the Resident Association meeting starts at 9, and I wanted to be in the auditorium at 8, to see how David G was getting on with setting up. Not well, he had a lot of feedback issues. I stood back as he got the IT staff guys involved and they managed to sort it out, the meeting starting only 5 minutes late. But damn, “there’s always something.”

No astounding news at the meeting except Rhonda officially said, there would be no coffee bar installed in the lobby after all. This is an amenity I’ve been promoting for a long time. But however, the staff estimates that for supplies and dining staff maintenance, it’s $36,000 a year. Or $100/day as somebody pointed out at the meeting. And with inflation yadda yadda… Just the same I am disappointed.

Then down to FOPAL where I aged-out two boxes of books that had seen four sale weekends, and processed a couple of boxes of new donations.

Back home for what I meant to be a relaxing afternoon, but in fact although I did get a half-hour nap, there was a lot of emailing to do to various people and little shit to take care of.

Sunday 02/12/2023

Did the usual Sunday morning thing, watering the plants and such. I’m not watering the begonias, it is almost time to cut them back and I want them to start dropping leaves.

I ran down to FOPAL to tidy my shelves after the first day of the sale. Somebody bought a couple of very old books I had out on display, which I didn’t think would ever move. Old like 1956 and 1968.

Then I finished printing up my set of pictures of New Zealand mountains and arranged them on my hall gallery shelf.

At 1pm I joined Lois, Mildred and Carol to car-pool in Lois’s Prius down to the Pear theater. The play was Frankenstein Unbound, written or workshopped by its cast and Sinjin Jones, the artistic director. Not a success, in the car pool’s opinion. Frankenstein’s monster pursues him across multiple generations and centuries, ending in intergalactic space.

Back home watched the Stanford women demolish ASU. It used to be, the trip to Tempe was always a challenge, but that was in the day of long-time coach Charli Turner-Thorne, now retired. This was the second game in a row where Stanford was able to romp, winning by 30 or more. Maybe they are that good after all.

Saturday 02/11/2023

First up, I decide to once more walk to Zoe’s coffee in Menlo Park. It’s an ok place, not stunning. Anyway, 3+ miles for the day. I went there particularly because it had rained in the night, and I knew it had inside seating. In the end, though, I didn’t care for the dark and crowded interior and their outside tables were all dry, so I sat outside.

I printed some pictures for my hall gallery. I’ve decided to print up pictures of two of the mountains of New Zealand, Taranaki and Aoraki. We have some nice shots of both.

That brought me to 1pm, time to head down to the auditorium. Another resident, Chuck, wants to show a series of operas, every 2nd Saturday. I don’t want to have yet another A/V event to run so I convinced him that he could run the equipment. Today I was training him.

I had worked up a very detailed checklist of everything he needed to do, and I walked him through it. Of course “there’s always something” is our motto, and today “something” was that when we tried to connect the Blu-Ray player to the big projector, the image flickered. OK, plan B. That was to use the old DVD player. Fortunately all his operas are on DVD.

The opera came off just fine for an audience of maybe 30 people? I bailed out for the middle two hours of it. Really don’t like opera.

Had dinner with Patty and the Allens.

Friday 02/10/2023

Took a shorter than usual walk, wearing the new shoes. They definitely cause some change in my walking mechanics which I feel in my left hip. I think it will eventually be alright, but it just goes to show how a small change in footwear can affect things.

At 10 I drove to the Stanford Medicine clinic on Sherman ave. for a “gated CT with contrast”. “Gated” means, they put heart sensors on your chest, so that the computer can time the pictures to your heart rate, presumably so it can get a proper exposure without blur. “Contrast” means, they put an IV in your arm, and at a certain point they squirt in a shot of a liquid that shows up on the scan so they get a good image of your arteries. You know exactly when they push that button because you feel a wave of heat in certain places and a metallic taste on the back of your tongue.

When they let me go, I had a couple hours to kill before my appointment with Dr. Watkins, my thoracic surgeon from back then. Back then was fall 2020, by the way. That appointment was at the main Stanford hospital. While walking through the halls there, I noticed there was an office for the Stanford Credit Union. Oh hey, I have been meaning to talk to them. I’ve been carrying around this stupid debit card sent out by the State with some free money. And no real place to spend it. I meant to go to SFCU and have them cash it out, but they closed the office I normally go to, for remodeling. But, here was another

So I went in and the charming lass behind the counter said, sure, they could cash that card out, except they had to know what the balance was first. I had no idea. She advised calling the customer service number on the back. So I did that and yes, it was worth $250.

Then it was time to talk to the surgeon, which I was looking forward to, I like her, but in fact she’s working from home due to illness (they didn’t say Covid but I bet it is). So I got her report second-hand from a nursing assistant. Everything looks great, the part of my aorta that was expanding on prior images has stabilized. One-year call-back. Go in peace.

On the way down from their office I stopped at the SFCU office and charming lass now could take the card and charge it for $250 and deposit that in my checking account.

Late in the day I prepared a detailed check-list for showing a DVD in the auditorium. I will use this while training Chuck who wants to show operas every second Saturday.

I listened to a nice Friday Live concert from SFJazz. This was the first time I used the screen-sharing ability of my new TV. No need for a cable. Just pull down the little screen share icon in the menu bar of the MacBook and select the TV. Boom, the laptop screen and sound are on the TV.

Thursday 02/09/2023

Sometime in the last 48 hours, all the hummingbirds have vanished. I was refilling the feeders twice a day, and then for the last month, once a day, and suddenly, no birds. I guess they’ve all headed out to Arizona.

Felt less than 100% this morning but after tidying the apartment, went across the bay to Shustek as scheduled. I was assigned to the fun activity of packing. There are four shelves of artifacts that have been cataloged and photographed, and now need to be packed into storage boxes for shipping to the Yosemite warehouse. It’s fun, and I packed three boxes, making little custom trays and stuff.

However it was standing on my feet the whole time, and about 2 I felt distinctly under the weather, plus back pain. So I bailed early at 2pm. Back home, after a nap, I felt pretty much normal.

Wednesday 02/08/2023

Started out for a walk while my first load of laundry ran. Got a little pain in my left hip. Could that be due to the new walking shoes? I cut the walk back a bit. We’ll see on Friday.

Ran the laundry. Selected pictures for my next hall display. After re-reading the New Zealand travel blog I decided to print pictures of the big dramatic mountain peaks, Taranaki, Aoraki (aka Mt. Cook), Mt. Tasman.

Floor meeting at 5pm, then dinner as a group.

Tuesday 02/07/2023

First thing to do this morning was an appointment with a podiatrist at PAMF. Both my big toes have “bunions” which just means the first joint wants to angle inward. The left foot is worse, and has been slowly getting more so over the last couple of years. So I thought I’d get a consult.

Podiatrist was not a lot of help. Certainly as far as surgery goes, not indicated now or soon. Only consider that when you have real symptoms, serious pain, or can’t walk for exercise. That’s not my situation now. His best advice was to get better shoes for walking than my Mephisto loafers. He recommended a brand and model, and suggested getting an additional liner for more arch support to prop up my very flat feet.

So from PAMF I walked back down University Ave to Footwear Etc. and bought just what he’d recommended and walked home in them.

Later I was thinking about model cars, and remembered I have some kits I haven’t built. Looked in the closet and what do you know. I had at some point bought a 67 Corvette kit. Not the 63 Corvette split-window, but still. I took the sealed box over to my desk and looked at the pile of tax-related papers there. OK, I promised myself, when you finish doing your taxes, you can start on this kit. Set the still-sealed box on the back of the desk as a reminder.