Tuesday 09/23/2025

Did stuff in the morning before the writers meeting. One, a mic stand. In a sleepless moment around 3am, I was thinking how I want to bring this 4-piece bluegrass group to perform, and in some of their videos, they have a mic apiece. We have 4 mics but do we have 4 mic stands? I knew there were three, and I’d seen one in the Green Room except that one was missing the head, the piece that holds the mic. But I thought I had seen a head in a drawer somewhere… I went and rummaged around the AV desk and yup, there was a detached mic head. Took it into the Green Room and found the abandoned stand, screwed the head on it, bingo, a 4th mic stand.

Since I was in the Green Room anyway, I took pictures of a bunch of things that should not be there. Went back to my room and made a little gallery of them. Sent the link to the gallery to a half dozen people who should know about stuff, asking for comments on what to do with them.

Then with a little time before the writers meeting, I hastily wrote a couple paragraphs on the assigned topic, “School lunches”. I’ll put it at the end.

Went from that to lunch. On return, started the laundry which was complete by 3. Had the AV team meeting at 4pm. From that I went to Peter’s apartment at 5, he was hosting a guy from Google who was looking for volunteer opportunities to work with seniors. Peter had asked Craig and Burt and me, as members of the tech squad. We had a nice dinner together. I don’t think anything was resolved, but nice chat.

Burnt spaghetti

I have wracked my brain trying to find memories of school lunches, and only turn up little faded fragments. I know that through grade school I carried lunch in a metal lunch box. I have better tactile memories than visual: the cool metal box with a smooth ridge around the lid, the glossy white interior, how the spring-loaded latch snapped into place, the feel of the waxed paper my mother used to wrap the sandwich. But of lunch as a process, a sequence, a social event — nothing.

High school even less. I’m sure there was a lunch room with tables, and a cafeteria line with trays, but I cannot mentally see the room or anything in it. My only real memory is an unpleasant one: the mouth-feel of burnt spaghetti. A regular offering was some kind of pasta bake, pasta with cheese cooked in large aluminum pans. A serving was a gummy yellow brick of pasta on your plate. And the spaghetti ends that protruded from the top of the brick were always, always overcooked, crunchy and hard. The body of the orange block of pasta was good, pasta in runny orange cheese, but I can remember how unpleasant it was to bite into any part of the surface layer, the hard pasta cracking between your teeth and the sharp ends poking your gums.

Monday 09/22/2025

Took the standard walk (ending up with 4 miles for the day). Then off to FOPAL where I expected to be done and back in time for late lunch at CH. Hah. I wasn’t finished until 1:30 so lunch was a PBJ in my room.

Common Areas group met for the first time since July, and I had completely forgotten that I had an action item from then which I hadn’t done: to plan what more work was needed in the Green Room. So after the meeting I grabbed Mary Beth the boss of the gift shop and we looked at the gift shop’s stuff still cluttering the Green Room. And I sent some emails to people who would be interested in this. But mainly I need to get in there and make a list of every damn thing that clutters the place, and what to keep, and what is needed.

Dinner with David and Karen and Linda. Fun chat.

Sunday 09/21/2025

Read the paper, watered the plants, did the big puzzle. Sat down to figure out what to do with the day. Decided I would walk to the Stanford campus, check out the Cantor museum, have an early lunch on their nice little terrace restaurant. Also noticed on the stanford.edu site that there was an exhibit of early Apple artifacts in the Green Library. So off I went for that.

Spent 40 minutes browsing around in the Cantor. Had the planned lunch. Walked to the library building. The exhibit of early Apple stuff was very small. They had an Apple I, and a prototype of the Apple II, and a couple of other things. Walked back. 4 miles for the day.

On return I realized that I had completely forgotten: today was the first day of the new Brunch Buffet service in the dining room. And I had missed it. Well, it will be back next week too.

At 3 I attended a meeting arranged by Bert and Dean to listen to two people who are researching for falls, the causes and preventions. Like the similar meeting last week, I don’t see where us residents discussing programs with outside people is of any use. We don’t have a budget and can’t commit Channing House to do anything.

Saturday 09/20/2025

Ah, a lightly committed day. Talked to Dennis a bit. Odds and ends. Played guitar a bit. At lunch, realized I hadn’t been outside at all, so went for short walk, to Gamble Gardens. Two miles for the day, I am ashamed; Joanne has been doing 6 or 7 up in Port Townsend. Well, I did climb the stairs once.

At 2pm I set up to run a documentary for Peter. The show was General Magic, the story of a startup that failed because the founders’ vision was ahead of the technology. Peter had arranged for the producer of the movie, Michael Stern, to be present, and he answered questions afterward.

Had tea and a chat with Dr. Margaret after, and helped her with two minor tech issues. At dinner with Sophia, Marc, Prue and Bob, and we had quite a nice conversation about things and stuff.

Friday 09/19/2025

Took the standard walk alone, sigh. At 11 joined the AI interest group meeting. Rather inconclusive discussion of a proposed link-up between CH and the Stanford Robotics lab, where they want to study the use of robots in care for the elderly. Our COO Elvira joined the meeting but it isn’t clear to me what Stanford wants or what Elvira will ask for.

Had lunch, took a nap, then went to the auditorium and did the hour of prep work to set up for the evening’s show, Broadway at Channing. The decorating committee had done a great job, show posters all over the place. Lots of other people than me involved in this. Here is a quick shot of the audience, well over a hundred. Mary and Jerry are singing “Only Make Believe” from Showboat.

The show came off well, the audience was happy, lots of compliments afterward. There were multiple technical glitches, but none that stopped the show or were even noticed by the audience, so that was ok. Here’s me and Susan H doing “Supercallifragilistic”. Thanks for Roberta for the picture.

Had half a beer in the lobby and then went back in and spent 30 minutes cleaning up and putting shit away. This one seemed more stressful than prior shows. I’m glad to put it in the rearview mirror.

Thursday 09/18/2025

Down in two senses, I had no scheduled commitments, and I was feeling rather depressed for some of the day. I started by walking up to Town & Country, mainly to buy some bread at Trader Joe’s. I sent a couple of cogent emails on various topics.

At 10:30 there was a sponsored presentation on electric vehicles in the auditorium. I was kinda interested so I went. The presenters from from Evucation, a non-profit promoting EV use. They did a nice job, making the case that the lifetime cost of EV was somewhat less than the lifetime cost of a gas-powered car, and contributes less to carbon load. But about half way through I was realizing more and more that I will never buy another car of any kind. Fred Forester is enough vehicle to get me and Joanne to the end of driving years. So why was I sitting here listening, and I got up and left.

I don’t know if it was that train of thought, or just that I had no scheduled things to do, or something else, but the rest of the day I had a case of whats-the-use-itis. Hopefully that will improve because I have a date to talk to Joanne on the phone at 8pm. Should cheer me up.

Oh, interesting thing. Among people I know here at CH, there are three different sons or daughters that are moving their families out of the USA. One daughter, with husband and children is moving to Mexico. Another person’s son and family are relocating to Portugal. And another son and family are moving to France. Is this a sign of a trend? Or coincidence?

Also at lunch, Elvira, our COO, wandered into the dining room and sat down at the table I was at and had her lunch while chatting with us. Although a naturalized US citizen, she is originally from the Ukraine, and has friends who live in Russia. The conversation turned to politics, and she commented that among her Russian friends, there is a feeling that “you know, all empires come to an end, and they think this is happening to the United States.”

Wednesday 09/17/2025

Took the standard walk in the morning, cleverly timing it so that I could have coffee at Verve and get to CVS at 9:45 on the dot, for my Covid shot appointment. Later CVS sent my vaccine record as they knew it. Interesting that I have had 2 Covid shots per year, for the past 4 years. I am sudden death for any virus silly enough to try to infect me.

There has been a custom of a 1pm zoom meeting of FOPAL volunteers on the Wednesday after the sale, for some time now. So at 1pm I clicked the old zoom link and there was no meeting. The new volunteer coordinator didn’t want to have a meeting, but apparently didn’t think to announce that. Oh well.

At 2 I joined a meeting that Bert had set up, with a representative of a German company that has developed an AI-based system for evaluating people for the likelihood they will have a fall. Falls are very common among us old farts, which I only came to realize after moving here. It seems like you hear about somebody having a fall every month at least. Sometimes it only results in bruises or less; sometimes it breaks a bone; sometimes it starts them on a decline that ends in assisted living status or worse.

This outfit’s test involves shooting cell phone video of a person as they stand up from a chair, take 3 steps, turn around, three steps back to the chair, sit down. The video uploads to the cloud and is examined by their AI. Plus there is a lengthy questionnaire about health related subjects. The output is a percentage score, likelihood that the person will have a fall in the next six months. The idea is that a physical therapist can use this to find people to work with on exercises for balance etc. They have numbers to show effectiveness in reducing fall frequency in a retirement home.

There is a subscription fee for this service. So the question we couldn’t answer was, how would Channing House make a business case to justify this on-going fee? How do you quantify the cost of falls, or the benefit of reducing the number of falls? Bert is going to work on that with our staff.

After supper, Stew had asked me to run some the video and sound for his group to practice their dance routine for the song “One” from “A Chorus Line”. So I went down and ran the video over and over while they practiced.

Tuesday 09/16/2025

Writers meeting, nothing special. At noon went down and started setting up the auditorium for the dress rehearsal of the broadway show. It went ok, not too many flubs. Of course I have half a dozen notes on changes to make to the video. Tomorrow.

I’ve been messaging back and forth with my PCP trying to get some action on the renal cyst. On Monday she referred me to a urologist I’d seen before. Today his scheduler called, first opening would be 10/13, a month ahead. I said forget it, and messaged PCP again, saying, please just refer me to Dr. Tamrazi, the interventional radiologist who drained the cyst back in 2021. I don’t need to talk to a urologist about the cyst.

Then I fumed for a while and thought about what Joanne does. Joanne pays a monthly fee to be a client of a “concierge” medical practice. Meaning your doctor is on call. Although not necessarily any better seeing specialists. But I’m thinking seriously about it. I’ve been a client of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation since the 70s, when they were that organization. Somewhere in the oughts they were bought by Sutter Health. Maybe time to part ways.

Had on of my Dead Guy Ales with dinner. I am not accustomed to alcohol any more. Ready to pass out now.

Monday 09/15/2025

Headed out for FOPAL first thing. Thanks to my having handed off some of the AV chair duties to John M, I didn’t have to go to the event coordinator’s meeting. Did the post-sale triage. Bought coffee and a couple of other things.

Then I went to Gryphon Instruments and had a strap button installed on the guitar. I had been using a strap that tied with a lace to the head but it was awkward and also was compressing my ulnar nerve causing nerve pain in my left hand. So I got a wide padded strap but it needed to attach to the body of the guitar, not by a string to the end of the neck. They put in a nice gold button on the heel of the neck by the body. The new strap feels good.

Back to CH in time for lunch.

At 4 it was time for Rhonda’s monthly open meeting. She was supposed to share something about the new satellite building. She had a lot about the finances of the new building but could not yet disclose its actual location. Many people are sure they know which of the nearby buildings it is, no two the same guess. The debt will be guaranteed by Cal Mortgage, a state agency. They did a very thorough examination of the deal including an appraisal of the combined buildings, which was very positive as to value and future market prospects.

Sunday 09/14/2025

Sunday morning again. I decided to get some steps in, so I walked to Cal. ave. and back again, 4.3 miles for the day. Yay me. Didn’t see a thing at the market I wanted. So whatever.

Put together what is hopefully the final version of the Broadway video. Did a couple other minor Broadway-related things.

Worked on two songs I’m trying to learn, Ticket to Ride and Bruno Mars’s Count on Me. Two simple little pop songs. Not. There is nothing simple about Ticket to Ride. (In that video they are clearly faking playing along to the record.) Count on Me is actually not difficult except for getting the time right. He plays around with the rhythm, throws in little extra beats and such.