Friday 10/03/2025

Back to our custom, Joanne and I had a nice walk this morning. Then at 10:30 I met with Helen, who has good design sense, in the Green Room to talk about how to manage storage in a not-ugly way. There are two sturdy shelves, about 6 feet above the floor, about 8 feet long, one on each side of the room. They are 17 inches deep. So we envision a row of similar storage bins or boxes or such. Now to find them. I spent an excruciatingly boring hour going through the web sites of the Container Store, IKEA, and Target, and didn’t see what I want.

Basically need a box that is 16 by 16, and maybe 12 or 14 inches deep. A line of those down the shelves would look good and be useful. It would help a lot if there was some kind of label area on the end, or a clip, where you could note the contents.

After a quick lunch I went down to FOPAL because Frank had texted that there were 6 boxes waiting for me. That was Thursday. When I got there, I found 9. I processed most of them. Got back about 4.

Had dinner with Craig and Diane and Gwen.

Thursday 10/02/2025

In the morning I did some AV tech stuff. One, I got some more stuff out of the green room. Then I sat down at the AV desk in the auditorium and found that the microphone drawer was in disarray. I spent 20 minutes getting everything out and organized. Then thought about a problem that appeared with our new sound board: that on the new board you had to set the input gain just above 0 or you got feedback. I remembered that the signal to the board came from the wireless receivers, which are in a rack backstage, and the receivers have an output gain setting. So I set all the receivers’ gain down and et voila, the mics are right when the controls are in the middle.

After lunch I drove down to the museum and led a tour for a group of 25 programmers, mostly age 30 and below, from the company Databricks. They were fun, interested. Also young. I am talking about what is, to me, very recent history, like the beginning of the web, in 1993? and realize that some of my audience wasn’t born then. Alright, as your parents.

At 7:30 we had a jazz concert by singer Thu Ho, accompanied by top-notch musicians, including pianist Adam Klipple. Nice show, good songs and music.

Wednesday 10/01/2025

First event was a Wednesday hike organized by Joanne. The usual five, her and me, Joanne the Lesser, Erika, and Martha. We went to the Arastradero preserve where we have hiked a few previous times. As we went up (and up and up) Joanne the Lesser commented on how I was not breathing as hard as she remembered from the first time we took that hike. Apparently slightly increased walking and also climbing stairs to the 6th floor has had an effect. Yay me.

Through the middle of the day I was working with various people on getting stuff out of the Green Room. A major win: Nancy of the Treasure Trove had already disposed of a complete rack of used clothing that was stored there. I thanked her and asked if it was ok to get rid of the two tired old clothes racks that were left, she said fine, so I did. We progress. Also worked with Mary Beth on persuading her that the Treasure Trove should fund a simple upgrade to the AV desk in the auditorium.

Patty had organized a dinner for Phil, a 6th floor neighbor who today moved to the 8th floor. She invited me plus Joanne and Sally who are the floor reps for the 8th floor. Nice dinner with nice people. Afterward we went up and viewed Phil’s new apartment which is very, very nice, nicer than mine for sure. A large one-bedroom in the corner, which is like mine, but with nicer carpet and some really fine built-in kitchen and office fittings.

Tuesday 09/30/2025

Spent the day communicating with people, mostly by email. Tidied the room for the housekeeper. Maryanne came by with her handwritten piece for the writers group. I had agreed to read it for her. Her vision is very bad and she has a lot of trouble reading her pieces, although they are well-written, detailed reminiscences. The prompt this week was “Freedom” and she wrote on the freedom of having gotten tenure as a teacher; how she was limited and constrained her first three years, then as a tenured (I didn’t know that high schools had such a thing as tenure) teacher she could bust out and teach Dickens and such classics her own way.

Composed emails to the people who are responsible for the boxes of stuff in the green room, proposing a meeting. I had a notion for how they could be better stored but I needed help. Later in the day, one of them, Donna, wrote back that in fact they had gotten a promise of a cage space in the basement for their stuff. That was very welcome news. More emails to try to make that happen.

Attended the Appreciation Fund meeting at 2pm. I had been asked to do what I did before, take an audio transcript, run it through an AI to generate meeting minutes. I did that; the newest version of Claude did a very nice job.

More emails to set up meetings with various people. Finally it was supper time and I decided to be a hermit, and had a sandwich and tea in my room.

Monday 09/29/2025

As Joanne was using Fred to take some of her buddies out to lunch, I had to get to FOPAL by other means. So I walked. It’s a bit under 3 miles (3.7 for the day). Only two boxes to process, but some interesting stuff. Anyway, I took a Lyft back.

At 2pm the Channing House Drama Club — the group who took lessons and directions from a professional and put on a program of short plays and skits back last January. The professional who they employed then has moved on. Today they met with Sarah Dean, the artistic director of the Pear Theater, and her choice of a person to guide the Drama Club, Efsun Sweet. She’s a nice woman who has coached drama at many levels, middle school, college, but never seniors.

I don’t intend to get on stage with them, way too much work, rehearsing and learning lines and all. But I will probably do their AV as before, and today I wanted to show the pros around our stage and green room and such. I was hoping they would agree with me that a certain collection of old scenery flats were junk and could be trashed. Alas they did not, but thought they could be useful. So darn, they have to stay.

Practiced a little guitar, did some desk work, whatever.

Sunday 09/28/2025

Channing House dining services have started a new thing, a Sunday Brunch service, a buffet, more like a smorgasbord layout, many choices of food. I missed it last week, but this week had made a date with Joanne. We got together at 11:30 and went in, piled our plates, started a table and were joined by Ellen and Prue.

Afterwards we sat in the lobby and reconciled our spending on Fred for this quarter, as per our car-sharing agreement. Because she’d paid for insurance and new floor mats, and I’d only bought gas a couple of times and one car wash, I ended up writing a chunky little check to her. The deal is working quite well, although talking over our schedules for next week, there was a bit of an conflict on Monday. Resolved by me deciding to take other means down to FOPAL.

At 1 I drove Fred down to the museum and led the 2pm public tour. This was one of those remarkable times when people just appeared magically. At 1:58 I was passing the time of day with one person, and the lobby looked empty. By 2:02 I had a group of over 15 waiting to start. I don’t know where they come from.

Quiet afternoon and evening followed.

Saturday 09/27/2025

Not much doin’ today. About 9:30 I took Fred down to FOPAL for a meeting of section managers. This was because Sven, the new volunteer coordinator, had made some changes in the layout of the main sale room, enlarging some sections, moving others. No change to my section, so whatever.

As I was putting the car away I saw Joanne coming down the street, back from getting a haircut and a pedi, and we had lunch together. Being early we could have sat at a table for 2 but on the spur of the moment I said, or we could sit at a table for 4 and see who comes along? She said, whatever you like, so we did that. Soon were joined by Bob and by Carolyn, 6th floor neighbors. Nice chat. After a break for a short nap, we met again for a walk down to Pardee park. We explored the community garden area behind that park, which I had only heard of, not seen, and she didn’t know existed. Just a bunch of plots that people can garden in, but interesting to see what people grow.

Walking back we talked about our relationship, and how we both feel it is good that we do not spend all our time to together, and although it was spur of the moment, it was just the right thing to sit at a bigger table and invite other people, rather than pairing off and being an exclusive couple.

Friday 09/26/2025

Couldn’t take the usual walk this morning, one because Joanne was entertaining a friend visiting from Portland, and two, because I had a telemedicine appointment at 9. This was with Dr. Tamrazi, the guy who had drained my renal cyst twice before, in 2021 (Day 2.238) and in December 2022 (Day 3.364). We had a pleasant chat and decided to drain it yet again although “It will fill again” he said. This will be on October 20 or 23, tbd.

Then I walked to Cafe Zoe and the long way back, skirting the creek (3.6 miles for the day).

Practiced guitar a while. I’m getting closer to being able to play “Bye Bye Love”. At 4:30 I changed into slightly nicer clothes and at 5, joined Joanne and David and Karen on the 11th floor for the Webster Street Grille. This is a monthly event where dining services gets to pretend to be a high-class restaurant, laying out a five-course meal of fancy cuisine on the 11th floor. You have to make reservations in advance and there’s a charge, I forget how much (it goes on my monthly bill) but less than a real fancy restaurant would cost. David and Karen had invited me and Joanne to join them. Very pleasant dinner.

Afterward we walked a few blocks to the President Hotel, which has a rooftop bar. Unfortunately nobody had thought to reserve in advance and it was a 40 minute wait for a table on the rooftop terrace. So we admired the view for a few minutes and walked home again.

Thursday 09/25/2025

Spent a couple hours in the morning fussing with the stuff from the Green Room. I took some items to the facilities office to be disposed of. I took pictures of a couple more odd items and sent them for comment to my email thread.

After lunch I tried to activate my Clipper card. Clipper is the universal transit card for the Bay Area. Some months back I changed my regular Clipper to a Senior Clipper. But the funds from my old card didn’t transfer over. When I checked online, the card had a $0 balance, with $90 “pending transfer”. I had called and been told “it takes a little while”. Nothing happened. I wrote a passionate request to the help email, got a reply that said, just go to a station and “tag in” and the transfer will happen. I felt dubious but today I walked to the CalTrain station and tagged in, then went to the ticket machine and checked my balance. And I had a balance; the transfer had taken place.

Back home after a nap I took my guitar to the music practice room and practiced. For supper I decided to eat alone. Sat at one of the small tables and finished reading a book (For Whom the Belle Tolls by Jaisie Lynn).

Wednesday 09/24/2025

Out at 8:30 to join Joanne, who is back from her travels, in a fast walk up to Trader Joe’s. Then spent the rest of the morning thinking about various tasks and emailing people and trying to coordinate things.

Determined to catch up on reading, spent a couple hours at that. At 3:30 went to the auditorium to hear a presentation on Parkinson’s disease. Had expected talk about symptoms and treatments, but the speaker, Dr. Michael Okun, was interested in the public health side, the rise in number of cases, increasing faster than Alzheimer’s, possible causes (pesticides? TCE?) and such. Although his book is about how to live with Parkinson’s.

The book might be interesting, Dennis check it out, but his presentation today was not really that interesting. There is another lecture at 7:30 about the Stanford travel plan but I don’t care, I’m staying in to read.