Saturday 09/13/2025

The production of Cabaret was excellent, great dancers and music. With the 8pm curtain it was 11pm before I got to bed. Still got downstairs what I thought was early in the morning, to see Joanne off on her trip but she was already gone.

I did an inventory of my balcony garden. I had thought to go to the nursery and buy one or more additional plants, but in the end, decided not. I did some maintenance and repotted one plant, but I have enough now.

I did go out shopping, to IKEA, to buy a new pillow. My current pillow was from IKEA in 2019, when I moved in to CH, and its stuffing was pretty degraded. On a whim I also went to a liquor store and stocked up on my favorite beer. I have enough Rogue Dead Guy Ale to keep me for months, at the usual rate of one can with dinner every couple of weeks. Heavy drinker here.

Funny thing: I also bought an IKEA pillow and some Dead Guy Ale four years ago, on Day 2.235.

Did some music practice, alone and then with Susan on our performance of Supercalli.

Talked to Dr. Margaret about my renal cysts. The report from the ultrasound on Friday said the one big one is 15 x 16 centimeters, which is, um, large? Imagine a rubber ball the size of a large grapefruit, full of pee, tucked up under your ribcage on the left side. Certainly have to do something, at the least, drain it as I did 4 years ago, Day 2.238. But I’d like to discuss doing something more permanent. That would be some fashion of laparoscopic surgery to physically reduce the cyst. But maybe not; the draining process is simple enough that I could go on repeating it, perhaps annually, forever. Why risk any kind of surgery, even laparoscopic?

Anyway I had now crossed off every item on a long list I started a few days ago. Yay me.

Friday 09/12/2025

Met with Joanne and her friend from up North, Jan, at 8:30 and we walked up to the Town and Country shopping center and Joanne’s favorite coffee shop, Douce France. Talked a lot. Here’s a coincidence for you: Jan, who lived mostly in the Seattle-Tacoma area, wanted to hear about my growing up there, and when I said our mailing address was Graham, she lit up and said, oh I used to know a guy from that area. What was his name… Doug. Doug… and after a couple of minutes she remembered, Rasmussen! Douglas Rasmussen!

Well, Doug Rasmussen was a classmate of mine through grade school and high school! Has to be the same guy. Of course I never stayed in touch so I had no idea what happened after high school. Jan thought he married someone named Susan and settled in Tacoma.

So we three sat with coffee and yakked for an hour, then they headed back. I hung around the shopping center because I had an appointment at the nearby PAMF for a flu shot at 11, and an ultrasound at 11:30. For the latter I was supposed to drink 24oz of liquid in the hour before, so I sat around doing that until 11. Got the flu shot. Got the ultrasound. Walked on back home in time for a meeting where a Stanford Robotics person talked about robots and what maybe they could do for senior facilities.

Practiced some guitar, specifically trying to learn to play “Ticket to Ride” and “Bye Bye Love” off YT videos.

Now going to go to the Bus Barn theater to see “Cabaret”. Report tomorrow.

Thursday 09/11/2025

Only one schedule commitment today, a rehearsal with Tom in the auditorium at 2. I spent the rest of the day catching up with various pending things. I put together the video of the book talk last monday, that took a couple of hours. Maybe three. I made a list of about 8 other pending things that needed attention and crossed off about half of them.

Oh, a couple days ago my new Pendleton blanket arrived. First new bedding for a few years. Here it is new out of the package, with creases.

The creases have pretty well smoothed themselves out after 3 days of use.

Wednesday 09/10/2025

First thing, met with Joanne and we drove to the Baylands and had a very pleasant walk, just the two of us. Tomorrow a friend, Jane, flies in to join her and Saturday they two will fly off for a week in Port Townsend.

Then I spent several hours taking care of the various changes to the Broadway video needed from the rehearsal issues. Then I dropped in on Pam in the nursing center, and found she is on the final slope. Her friends Judy and Florence were with her and told me she hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, and although more or less conscious, she isn’t responding or talking.

Then I worked on the video from the book talk last Monday. And completely forgot there was a 6th floor, floor meeting today. And once again nobody bothered to come down to my room and say “yo, bro, meeting time.” I feel like an idiot for zoning out like that, but I also feel rather hurt.

Ordered dinner for takeout and it wasn’t edible — just a lousy piece of meat. What a waste. I’m going to write a complaint email next.

Then I did remember there was a talk at 7:30, this time by a guy representing the Final Exit Network, a volunteer organization that provides guidance to people wanting to end their lives. California, along with 11 other states, allows Medical Assistance in Dying. This is a multi-step process, requiring two MDs to state that you have a terminal illness that will kill you in 6 months of less, a very specific prognosis that doctors are often unwilling to sign. Plus other paperwork and delay. That can be a high bar.

However, our speaker said, suicide is not illegal, although assisting a suicide can be. The F.E.N. councils people on ending their lives other ways. The simplest way, if you decide it’s time, is to stop eating and drinking. That has its own acronym, VSED, voluntary stoppage of eating and drinking. It’s a common exit route, especially for people in hospice, who can get morphine for any discomfort. A little more elaborate, but much quicker, is to inhale nitrogen. Fun fact: people used to end their lives inhaling helium, easily available for filling party balloons. No more; for several years it has been common for helium containers to have oxygen mixed in exactly to avoid suffocation, accidental or purposeful. But canisters of nitrogen are also readily available–sometimes used to fill auto tires, or for welding, etc.

I don’t feel any desire to end my life but it was kind of morbidly interesting.

Tuesday 09/09/2025

Cleaned the apartment for the cleaning lady. Adopting a new program, shamed into it actually by a certain fit and athletic old lady, I climbed the stairs to the 6th floor 3 times today instead of taking the elevator.

Maryanne, another writer, asked me to read her contribution. Her eyesight is failing so badly she has trouble reading her compositions smoothly. They are written in a nice schoolteacher cursive hand, but large, in pencil on notebook paper. The prompt was, a historical incident that had an effect on your life. She wrote a summary of the four years of WWII, as seen by her as a schoolgirl from 11 to 15. Lots of detailed memories of wartime problems, like rationing. It was about 14 pages. I didn’t have time pre-read the whole thing so I stumbled over a couple of words near the end, but I think I read it well for her.

After lunch I set up the auditorium for the rehearsal of the Good Times Broadway show. It all went pretty smoothly for a first rehearsal. I learned something new about the use of monitor speakers that will make the next rehearsal better.

Barely got everything put away and it was time for supper with Patty, just back from a week in NYC, Betty Jerry and Joanne. Then at 7 the bi-monthly sing-along evening in the lobby. Such a whirlwind of activity we seniors live in.

Monday 09/08/2025

First up, the monthly Resident Association meeting. Usual 15-item agenda, nothing worth reporting here. Then off to FOPAL to process 7 boxes of stuff and then prepare my section for the monthly sale next weekend. Three hours.

Back to CH where I started my laundry. Ordinarily I would do it on Tuesday but tomorrow’s schedule is heavy so I thought, do it now. Left a big load drying and small load washing and went to dinner. At the end of dinner, about 7pm, the lights blinked out. They were blinking the lights exactly at 7, to remind people to get a move on, but this was later and the lights stayed off, emergency lights coming on. We had a power outage.

I walked up 6 flights and found both my loads had completed. So by the dim emergency light in the laundry room I folded my dry laundry and by flashlight in my dark apartment, put it away.

Power came back about 9. I need to finish drying the last load and ironing two red docent shirts, then I can go to bed.

Sunday 09/07/2025

Sunday morning stuff. Then spent a couple hours remaking the broadway video to account for a couple of change requests. Had lunch, then remembered another change request so did it over again. While waiting for the computer to compile the video I got in some guitar practice. Went to the music room to practice my two songs.

Around 3, Joanne suggested a walk, so we went out and strolled around and talked.

Had an early supper so as to meet tomorrow’s presenter at 7 for a rehearsal. That all went smoothly so now can kick back.

Saturday 09/06/2025

Spent the morning preparing the performance video for the broadway show. Sent links to people to review it. One reply so far, Stew wants a song done differently. OK, later, Mary comes back with info that will mean another small change. Well, I expected that.

Went to the music room and practiced my two songs. Then in the auditorium set up a test of a monitor speaker placement. Stew and Susan met me there by arrangement to test the “karaoke screen”, a 30inch TV that will show lyrics to the performers. It will be driven from Susan’s laptop where she has prepared the lyrics as a slide show. That all worked.

Helped Lou take a passport photo. Had dinner with Stew, Kathy, Susan.

Didn’t leave the building all day.

Friday 09/05/2025

Took the usual Friday morning amble with Joanne. This will be the last one for a while; next Friday she flies off to the great pacific northwest for a couple of weeks.

Met with Tom in the auditorium to practice “Try to Remember” and for him to get used to the grand piano down there. I recorded a video of myself, which is still sitting on the hard drive down there, I need to take my laptop down and copy it and actually look at it.

I started assembling the video for the Broadway show and immediately ran into problems and sent emails and made calls to find out what to do.

Took my guitar down to the music practice room and practiced music for an hour.

Visited Pam. She’s alert but very weak. We’ll hear about her passing any morning now.

Thursday 09/04/2025

I started the day in the gym, doing (for the first time in forever) two full rounds of the HUR machines, which felt like a solid workout. I went a little later, 8:15 when I had been going at like 7:30. The earlier time seems to clash with 3 or 4 other people who like an early start. If they came today, they were gone by 8:15, so, good.

Then I sat down to edit the video of a talk last Monday by a resident, Dean Forbes, about his life-long avocation of Biblical Linguistics. (His professional career was manager of medical instrumentation development for HP.) This was a talk I couldn’t go to, as I was leading a tour at the museum. Bert ran the AV and got the video recording, but he screwed up. Well, not entirely; plus Dean didn’t help him by wandering all over the front of the room, mostly out of range of the camera. So what I had to work with was a video of the stage, with the projection screen in the center showing Dean’s slides, and Dean’s voice on the sound track giving his lecture. Once in a while Dean’s head would appear in the bottom of the frame.

So it was work editing the video (here it is). What I did to keep it at least a bit interesting, was to crop the image to show the key part of each slide as he talked about it. At least it was interesting to me doing it. The talk, not so much. It’s a very dense topic and he did not (IMHO) do a good job of introducing it, just jumped into some details.

Anyway that passed the time to 12 when I drove Fred to Chef Chu’s for lunch with the IBM survivors, organized by Scott. Tom Daniel, and I was happy to hear that his wife, who was very ill last time I talked to him, was much better. Denny Sargent, always the happy-go-lucky bachelor. Diana Bloch, whom I last saw in about 2002? and who has changed so much I would never have recognized her. And Zoe Leptourgos. She, like Scott and Denny, does still look enough like my memories that I would recognize her. Anyway, nice conversation, not totally about nostalgic memories.

Back to CH for a quick nap and then down to the auditorium for the annual Resident/Board meeting, where the audited financials for FY 25 (our fiscal year ends in February, so March 24-Feb 25) are presented, and put in context with prior years, and compared to the numbers for the first half of FY 26. Bottom line, we have finally juuussst squeaked over the line to have a tiny surplus of operating income over operating expense, for the first time in several years. We’re handling our depts and look like staying at break-even or better next year. Then they went over projections for if/when we go through with the purchase of a new building, a “satellite” campus. Which is in progress, but still secret, they still can’t tell us where this building is, for fear of upsetting the seller. Anyway, if or when that goes through, we will add another 10-15 life plan contracts, greatly raising our capital assets while still, they assume and hope, bringing in more monthly operating revenue than it costs. So we are sound for the time being.

Afterward there was a nice reception on the patio with lots of cute little nibbles, with a couple of nibbles and my big lunch, I’m skipping supper. I might regret that decision around 9pm, we’ll see.