Wednesday 03/30/2022

The big deal today was a rehearsal of the Colby memorial on Friday. At the AV committee meeting I had agreed to do this one, with David G’s help. I never met Jean Colby; she had moved to skilled nursing before I moved in. The daughter was to arrive at 10. I went to the auditorium at 9:30 and did much of the tedious and complicated setup for a zoom simulcast. One laptop as the host, and its screen mirrored on the big projector. My iPhone on a tripod, logged in to zoom providing a view of the audience. A second laptop which would have the presenter’s powerpoint slides, and share them with zoom.

David G arrived and we decided to use his laptop to show the slides instead of my spare. Wilma, the Channing House Grief Counselor (whom I’d never met) arrived, then Betsy the daughter and her brother. Betsy had broken down the event into a full-page timeline, very organized. We copied her slide show onto David G’s laptop, and the music she wants played at the end, onto my host laptop when (after 5 minutes of fiddling) we found there was no way to get music from his laptop, into the auditorium speakers, but we could from mine. This is the kind of shit we fight through to do these presentations: you have to get the voices from the room speakers to zoom, the voices from zoom to the room, the music from the laptop to the room, the slides onto the big screen and also visible to zoom attendees, a view of the speaker to zoom, etc. So many streams of content moving in so many directions.

After a couple of hours we had worked through it all and everybody knew what was what and everybody left.

Except as I was going out, I met Jerry coming in, carrying a mic of his own. He had a theory about the supposed failure of the mixer board, so I followed him back in. Long story short, he with my help verified that the problem was not in the mixer board but simply in some loose connectors on a panel. Major coup for the residents, major fail for the sound consultants who were going to replace the mixer.

Had the afternoon free, and I printed a couple more pictures to keep the picture rails on my outside wall fresh. I like to imagine people coming down the hall to check out my pictures, but probably very few do.

Patty invited me to have supper with her and Oscar and Margaret, two fairly new residents. Oscar had at one point in the 1980s, a software venture, his products were file-conversion apps for micros like the TRS-80, to write data on IBM-formatted 8-inch floppies. Ah the good old days.

Tuesday 03/29/2022

This morning my goal was to shrink my email inbox. I don’t normally keep emails in my inbox, unless they represent something I need to do or follow-up on. So that list of things has gotten bulky and I swore to clean it up. Which I did over an hour or two, got the number of saved emails down by half. The remaining ones need somebody else to do something.

Then it was time for the writers group. I took half an hour before to write something, copying and pasting from an early blog entry.

At three it was time for the A/V group to meet. We had two things to discuss. First, we had to distribute the 5-6 events for April. I ended up with the Colby Memorial which has the virtue of coming up quick, this week, then I’ll be off for the rest of the month. Then we had to talk about the resident-only zoom account mentioned earlier. How to manage it, if we have to have one? The group sentiment was to share the ID and password among the 5 of us who can do zoom events. I would have preferred a single “zoom czar” but was overruled.

Monday 03/28/2022

Up at 5:30 and easily into the lobby and calling the Lyft by 6. All travel elements worked nominally; boarded on schedule, departed on schedule, and was on the ground at SFO before 10am. Back to Channing House by 11. Unpacked, had lunch, then down to FOPAL to process the accumulated computer books. Back for supper. No problem-o.

Sunday 03/27/2022

Another day to (mostly) kill. About 9am I walked downtown to try out a new coffee shop, then back to the hotel. Reading, napping. Oh, checking in for my flight tomorrow. I have my boarding pass in email, in my Apple Wallet, and printed on real paper.

Finally it was time to meet Harriet at her hotel, the Doubletree. That meant another mile of walking. Phone says 2.4 miles total, which is b.s., had to be over 3. Anyway, Harriet had arranged to meet up with Cade and Lane, two women who live in Moscow ID, and who have been fans of Tara since she started her head coaching career at the U of Idaho. They had driven in to see the game. They picked us up at the hotel and we went to a nice restaurant, ClinkerDagger, near the arena. Decent meal.

Then into the arena for the game. Harriet and I sat in a long row of vacant seats in the lower bowl but early into the start of play, we got bounced, but were able to settle into another long row of empty seats a little higher up.

Texas and Stanford are both know for tough defense, allowing about 52 points to opponents on average, each. So the final score was Stanford 59, Texas 50: both the defenses were good but Stanford’s was just that bit better. So, a successful trip. The team is on to the Final IV.

Tomorrow morning early I head home, hopefully back to CH in time for lunch (not likely).

Saturday 03/26/2022

So this is the off day between tournament sessions. A whole day to be passed in Spokane.

The La Quinta Inn has full breakfast. This morning at 7am the breakfast area was dominated by, I think, some kind of team, girls and their parents, probably high school because a college team would have fewer parents. And the make your own waffle machine was out of order. Oh well.

After breakfast I set out to walk around down town. I checked out the indoor mall where there is a multi-screen theater playing several movies I have no interest in seeing. Spent some time browsing Auntie’s Bookstore, where I found the one magazine that always soothes me: Wooden Boat. I took it back and read it cover to cover. I don’t know, I can read about making boats for hours. With that and naps and a book on my kindle I passed the afternoon.

I had a ticket for an event at 8pm. I made a reservation at a restaurant near the theater for 6:30. This was the Europa Bakery, a bar/restaurant with an Italian menu. The meal was quite good, caprese salad and tortellini in a red pepper sauce. When I asked for the check, the waitress handed back my credit card and informed me, “We have a customer who likes to anonymously buy meals for some people and he’s picked you tonight.” Okayyyy so I had dinner for free. Thanks, anonymous benefactor!

My event was a solo comedy show, Julia Sweeney: Older and Wider. She had already done the show in L.A., but it turns out she grew up in Spokane, so she came back here to tape it as a comedy special in her home town, and in fact in a theater where she worked as a teenager. It was pretty good, I had a few chuckles.

I had walked over to the restaurant and the theater, about 1.2 miles, but took a Lyft for the return trip. That’s because there are quite a few homeless people hanging around the 7-11 across the street from my hotel, and along 2nd avenue. I’d walked this area twice earlier but didn’t want to do it after dark.

Friday 03/25/2022

Basketball wouldn’t be until 4pm which meant passing a day in Spokane. Which I did mostly by walking around. On the Gonzaga campus I found a nice little art museum that was good for half an hour. Walking around Riverfront Park I had the first real period of grief in months.

I have been in Spokane at least 5 times, always following SWBB, and of course, always with Marian. So every other time I have walked through this park was with Marian. So… yeah.

I ended up back at the hotel around 12, and chilled in the room until 3. Then off to the arena by Lyft. Here I found that the ticket I’d got from the Stanford ticket office was TERRIBLE. Directly behind the basket, 25 rows up. I have pictures of this but it’s too much trouble to get them into this chromebook I use when traveling. Take my word for it, they were the worst possible seats in the whole arena.

Fortunately several weeks ago, when I decided to go on this trip, I had bought a seat from the NCAA. Although this seat is in the upper deck, it is toward the center and turned out to have quite a good view. Harriet, who also got shafted on tickets, same section as mine, just moved herself to a vacant seat in a better section of the lower bowl. There’s no real usher policing going on.

In the first game, Ohio State put up a good fight but couldn’t quite beat Texas, losing by 3. They actually had the ball in the final seconds and could have tied the game, but Texas didn’t let them get a shot off before the buzzer. Too bad, as I’d rather see Stanford play them than Texas, to whom Stanford lost early in the season.

In the second game, Stanford seemed to have no problem with Maryland until the fourth quarter when a comfortable 20+ point lead started to evaporate. Stanford finally won by 10 but it wasn’t easy.

Thursday 03/24/2022

Puttered around getting ready to travel and packing. Went down for lunch at 11:30. Then at 12:30, met with Yadira and Pam re the Zoom account. Gave Yadira a couple things to think about, like very probably the staff can’t be without their own Zoom account for a couple of good reasons. We settled that if we were to have a resident zoom account for events, they could front the first year’s cost for us. Then Pam’s Events committee could factor the cost into their annual ask of the Heritage Circle for following years. That’s progress. I agreed to see if the AV committee is willing to take on the job of administering a resident zoom account when we meet on Tuesday.

Then it was time to call a Lyft and head for the airport. The flight to Spokane was delayed an hour but no big deal. I was surprised, though I guess I shouldn’t be, that SFO to Spokane was only 2 hours, from pushback to touchdown. Two long days of driving, it would be.

Got a Lyft to my hotel, and later, another to a restaurant. Frank’s Diner, in a real converted railroad car. Very good burgers and fries. And just for a change, an Uber back to the hotel. If it were summer, I think I would have walked at least one of those trips, it was a bit over a mile, but it was dark and chilly and late.

Wednesday 03/23/2022

Spent the day basically emailing people trying to set up meetings. I am getting quite tired of the volunteer roles I play around here.

Tuesday 03/22/2022

So in the morning I have a lot of things on my mind. The upcoming trip to Spokane: I keep thinking of things I need to do before departure, and running over to a notepad and writing them down, or (later) crossing them off.

Then there’s the whole thing about staff wanting residents to take over the zoom account, and how would that work. And then, a couple days ago a staff member, Caroline, filed an event request for support with a memorial. The daughter of the deceased wants to hold a memorial, which is common, but she wants to hold it in the Activity room on the 2nd floor, rather than the Auditorium. There’s no real AV in the Activity room, just a couple of loose speakers on stands and a couple of wireless mics that are wrapped in their own power cords on a cart of misc. junk. And they want to show a powerpoint presentation, with music, and make it a zoom thing for distant relatives to attend. All that would be a challenge in the Auditorium. I don’t see how to do it. Plus staff member Caroline notes that she’s requested support from the IT department — so why is she asking resident A/V volunteers to help?

I message Bert asking to talk to him. He is very confident and knowledgeable about how this place works. We set up to meet at 2:30 on his floor lounge. I talk on the phone to Pam, the Events committee person. I do some other things, emails.

At 2:30 Bert helps me get my head straight, as I’d hoped. He points out that staff cannot get rid their zoom account, because Rhonda the CEO wants to hold monthly general meetings, and no way is she going to want to rely on resident volunteers. Probably. Plus, he proposes a much simpler way for them to administer the use of the zoom account, which would take a lot of the stress off them.

He and I go and check out the 2nd floor activity room, and as we recollected, all of its built-in A/V equipment — which it once had — was still disconnected and boxed up in a corner. That was because in early 2020, they had converted what was a general activity room into a Covid ward, with hospital beds and a sealed air system. The de-conversion back to general purpose is only half-done.

So now I had a mission: to talk to Caroline and find out (a) why not the Auditorium and (b) who she’s talked to in the IT department, such that she thinks they will help. I go to the front desk and ask for her, but she doesn’t seem to be working today so I leave her a voice-mail. As for the other issue, I send Yadira an email asking for a 15-minute appointment.

With my mind somewhat relieved I pass a quiet evening.

Monday 03/21/2022

Started with a standard walk. Back in good time for the 10:30am meeting of the event managers committee. Before that I called Stanford Tickets and ordered my all-session seat for the Spokane regional. It sounds as if they will be able to give me a good seat. We’ll see.

Yesterday, and I can’t believe I didn’t write about it, came an email from administrator Yadira, to me as AV committee and to Pam as Events committee head, saying that staff would like to get rid of the responsibility for the CH Zoom account.

They created a professional level zoom account back at the start of the pandemic. They have closely guarded the password to that account since. When an event manager wants to do a big meeting — say, David G wants to start the Resident Association meeting, 2nd Monday of every month — they have to call a staff member, who logs in to Zoom with the secret email and password, creates the meeting, and then makes the event manager the host. The staff member can then go on their merry way, while the event manager conducts the meeting as host.

Now they want to be rid of this responsibility, and apparently also rid of the $800 a year that it costs, for a pro account plus the right to have more than 100 attendees. So today we discussed this at the event managers meeting. It was settled that Events could in future pay for the annual cost of a zoom account, although finding $800 for the first year, now when some of their budget has already been spent, might be a problem.

Again, this is all due to how Channing House events are all resident-driven, not staff controlled. Including the costs. Each year the Events committee asks the Heritage Fund for what they estimate to spend for the year on museums, speakers, etc.

What wasn’t settled was who, or how, the new account will be managed, that is, who will be responsible for starting meetings when needed while keeping the account credentials secure? I am carefully not volunteering myself for this.

Meeting over, I headed down to FOPAL and spent 3 hours processing books.

After supper, it was soon time for the talk by Judge Cordell. John did a great job of running the zoom, which was available to a long list of other senior residences, although in the end only about 60 people joined the meeting, and some of those were from Channing House.

An innovation here was, for the first time, John allowed Zoom remote attendees to unmute and ask questions vocally, rather than restricting questions to the chat window. I had feared doing this would start a horrible feedback loop. It did not, and I’m not sure why. The remote person’s voice came out of our auditorium speakers, and it should have been picked up by the lapel mike Judge Cordell was wearing and sent around again. But it wasn’t.