So, Frankenstein. Some elements were world-class, some were not. The acting was generally, good, especially Jacob Elordi as the monster. Visual effects: absolutely wonderful. The props, especially Victor’s early experimental partial bodies, and every element of the elaborately dressed sets — terrific. The things I assume were CGI, especially the wolves and the human bodies being hurled and tossed — terrific. The ice-bound ship, which I assume was part practical set and part CGI, was lovely. All these visual elements had rich, deep, credible detail.

Well, one visual detail was amusing to any fan of The Lord of the RIngs. At an early point Victor is given possession of a decrepit tower to use for his experiments. The first time I saw this tall weathered stone tower, I thought Orthanc! It was a visual double of Saruman’s tower in the LOTR movies. I kind of suspect del Toro might have done that on purpose, giving the evil scientist the lair of Tolkein’s evil sorcerer to work in.

So what’s your problem, David? Two issues. One, Science. Especially simple physics. So many things were shown that just could not be, like the monster moving that thousand-ton sailing ship. I don’t care how strong he is; if a massive vessel is raised up, there is an equal and opposite force down, which, assuming he was strong enough to support it with his body, would then be pushing down on the ice through his feet. In other words, he would have sunk into the ice before the ship moved an inch. Or when he helpfully pushed large wooden fence posts into the soil just by leaning on them. No. I’ve set fence posts. Strength is not an issue; it’s that he would have to weigh tons to be able to push down that hard without his feet coming off the ground. And all the “electrical” paraphernalia Victor builds and employs, the glowing glass cylinders that represent “batteries” and so forth. None of that made any sense at all.

Second issue is moral. (Spoilers here) At two different times, Victor saves his own ass by blaming the monster for a crime that Victor himself committed. At the end, Victor and the monster reconcile and the monster forgives his “father”, but for me the moral scales don’t balance out; Victor gets off free for two really cowardly betrayals.

Friday 11/14/2025

Took a morning walk with Joanne. Then puttered around until lunch. Following lunch we got in Fred with Lois, and went to the book sale at the Menlo Park Library. I bought a couple of books of poetry.

Back home I took a tech squad call to Susan whose new Macbook I helped install a few weeks back. It had developed a black area on the screen which on close examination was obviously a failure of the LCD screen. Diagnosis, warranty repair time.

After supper I participated in a sing-along session in the lobby. And so to bed.

Thursday 11/13/2025

Got a lot of stuff done. In the morning I compiled the video of last night’s talk on the Milk Pail. This was somewhat different from the usual job where I have the cloud recordings from Zoom, which exactly sync the display of the slides with the time in the talk when the slides are shown. Here I had the video recording off our cameras, and a separate folder of four short videos and about 25 pictures that the guy had shown. I had to drop those into the timeline and move them around to the right places. It took about 3 hours to get it all assembled but it was done by lunch time.

At lunch someone commented that there was a new technology for assistive hearing devices, replacing the T-coil that we use to send audio to people’s hearing aids. The person didn’t remember any details but before supper I was able to find it: Auracast, an extension to the Bluetooth standard, for broadcasting audio over radio to a whole room. I read up on it, then wrote up an explainer email saying we need to get ready for this, and sent it to the appropriate people after supper.

Between lunch and later I worked on selecting and printing some pictures to put in my hall gallery, which hasn’t been refreshed in months.

Now I am going down to Patty’s room where with Joanne and Mildred we will watch the new Frankenstein movie.

Wednesday 11/12/2025

Joanne had chosen the Baylands for the Wednesday hike. Erika and Martha signed on so we were a group of four. Just about 2 miles on a very dim cloudy day.

Steve, retired owner of the locally-famous Milk Pail restaurant, and the presenter for tonight’s talk, came at 5pm. Kass was free fortunately so we three sat around trying to make sense of his collection of pictures and videos, getting them all set up on my old Macbook, the one that works with the auditorium projector. Then dinner. Gloria, who sponsored Steve for this talk, had reserved a big table. I thought she would have already had a guest list set up but no, she was just winging it so I got included in the table.

So the talk went ok. We did not use zoom, but I recorded video off the cameras and will try to put together some kind of record of it.

Tuesday 11/11/2025

Did something unusual: went to the gym and did the round of the machines. What was different was the time. I had tried going early, 7:30, and ran into too many people. So this time I went at 8:30 and it was better, a couple of people on the walking machines is all. So I will keep doing that now I hope.

Writers group, I had nothing. Couple of good essays by others.

Met with the guy who is going to speak to us on Wednesday night, the former owner of The Milk Pail Market, which was apparently very popular with some people up to a decade ago when it closed. I don’t think Marian and I ever went there although I was aware of it, just off San Antonio Road. Anyway, went over what he wants to do, mainly just show some pics and tell stories.

There’s a jazz concert tonight, local group, going to go listen now.

Monday 11/10/2025

Day starts with the Resident Association meeting. Which wraps up in a remarkably short 29 minutes. I meant to head for FOPAL at once but I bumped into Joanne in the lobby and she said, want to join me and Martha for a walk down to Edgewood? Oh heck yes, so we spent a couple of hours on a walk for coffee.

Then I went on to FOPAL, stopping to buy coffee. Back to CH, now quite tired, at 2pm Sat around browsing the internet. Talked briefly to Dennis. After dinner, more sitting around watching TV.

Sunday 11/09/2025

Read the paper, did the puzzle, watered the plants, then walked to Cafe Zoe for a cup and a cake.

After lunch I edited the video of an event from Wednesday, a surgeon talking about what’s new in knee and hip replacements. Pretty good talk, actually.

Then down to the auditorium to help Sandy set up for an event. This was a Sunday@Home. That series is for residents to show off their travels or their hobbies or whatever. In this case it was that Stew’s wife Kathy had been in the Peninsula Women’s Chorus when they gave a concert in 1984. The concert comprised the music composed by British and Dutch women, held in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in 1942-45.

That time and the story of how the women recreated classic music pieces with no instruments or equipment, was documented in the video, Song of Survival. The PWC concert was in 1984, and it was recorded by a movie team who included bits of it in the documentary. Stew and Kathy introduced the video; then we ran it. It’s a very well made documentary, mostly narrated by the surviving women from the camps, some of them recorded when they went back to Sumatra in the 1980s.

I thought the title was familiar and I knew the general story so I was pretty sure I had seen the documentary before. But when? I didn’t know until just now, when I went looking for the DVD on Amazon (link above). when it comes up, Amazon tells me “Last purchased in 2008, click here for the order.” Amazon never forgets. It seems Marian bought that same DVD off Amazon in 2008. We must have watched it at home, which is why I remembered the story. It wasn’t around when I was cleaning the house out, so I imagine Marian loaned it on to some friend.

Saturday 11/08/2025

Took a walk alone in the morning. Changed into my red docent shirt and headed off to the museum after lunch, to lead the 2pm tour. Went ok. Picked up some G0 gatorade on the way back. Lazed around the pad and ate supper in my room.

Friday 11/07/2025

In the morning, took a nice walk with Joanne. Middle of the day, rearranged my living room furniture for the first time since I moved in, 2019. Then lazed around doing not much the rest of the afternoon.

After supper met up with J. again and we walked the 1.5 miles to the Congregational Church for a concert, ancient music by Voices of Music. A couple of other CH people were there also and we caught a ride home with one.

Thursday 11/06/2025

Lovely day with few commitments. I decided to try to understand Da Vinci Resolve. I am sort of looking for a better video editor than iMovie. Resolve, remarkably, has a free version that isn’t crippled, and that has definitely got more features than iMovie. Oh my does it have more features. It has a user manual, quite well organized and written, a mere 220GB PDF file of 4000 pages. I got as far as page 805, flipping rapidly from chapter to chapter. In three hours I managed to prove to myself that I could do basic editing with it, but I couldn’t establish whether it could do the one thing I want that iMovie doesn’t do: put scrolling text over a video, for karaoke-style lyrics. It might? But I can’t tell. I got bored.

I got my annual wellness check at 2. Ball, Tree, Flag. 100, 92, 84, 76, 68, 60. I’m as sane as Trump.

After that Joanne and I went for a nice walk down to the Edgewood plaza for an iced tea.

I hit the dining room when it opened at 5, so I could have time to set up the auditorium before 6. That’s when the four members of The Rounder Circle were to arrive, to set up for their concert at 7:30. This was the group I discovered by chance by overhearing their lead singer, Hillary, talking to the clerks at Gryphon instruments. They showed up, and set up, and I was able to bring their sound into our system, all very smooth. I took video of their performance and their tech lead guy had his laptop and so he went away with the nice video. Their music was well received, several people told me afterward how much they enjoyed them.

And that is about the last performance related thing I need to worry about for a month. Until the December musicale at which I am supposed to sing and play something.

Wednesday 11/05/2025

Started the day with a brisk walk up to PAMF for a blood draw. This was a standard metabolic panel as a follow-up to draining the kidney cyst. Results came late in the day, no real change as a result of the drainage. My BUN and creatinine numbers are marginally high but basically flat for the past year plus.

Back from that by 9 and I set to work editing the video of my talk. I continue to get people who encounter me in the lobby saying, “great talk!” so it really went well. You want to watch it? Here’s your link!

After lunch I edited yet another video, an interesting talk by a retired teacher on the history of how California finances its schools, which has gone through many changes since the 1970s. (No, the California Lottery only pays about 4% of the total costs of education.) Heck, here’s that link.

In between those I was rehearsing my music. Then it was approaching 3pm so I took the guitar and went across to the assisted living center where I was due to perform at 3:30. I would not rate my performance very high, C-minus at best, but fortunately that is the world’s most forgiving audience. Half of them are asleep in their chairs, but the half who are awake are just so supportive. “You did that reeeeel good!” one lady would say after each song.

Anyway, that is almost all my pending jobs this week. Tomorrow is mostly clear, oh what will I ever do with myself? In the evening, the band that I sponsored is coming to perform. That will be a challenge, getting them set up, but they are quite professional and I will probably just say, there’s the sound board, have fun.