Tuesday 06/15/2021

Hey, today, June 15, is the 2nd anniversary of my moving into Channing House! That would have been Day 195 “moving out”. Probably I should think about rearranging my furniture, after two years, but I can’t imagine how to do that.

Did the aerobics on the 11th floor, three of us physically present and one on zoom.

Writers group at 11am. I had nothing to read, but listened to the others’ work with pleasure.

After lunch went to FOPAL where there were 5 or 6 boxes to cull. Not much of quality, I only shelved maybe 15 books at the end. The rest will go to the $1 bargain room.

FOPAL is edging back to normal. We still wear masks in the building, but they no longer require appointments for donations. Open from 3-5pm every day for drive-up donations. First sale coming in August.

I meant to post this yesterday. According to a Japanese car enthusiast website, these are official design renderings of the 2023 (available late 2022) Toyota Prius.

I think that is a really pretty car. My 2012 will last just fine another year, then I will get in line for one of these. Supposedly there will be a “sport coupe” model as well. Not too sure about buying a 2-door, but it might be real purty too.

Monday 06/14/2021

Went for the standard walk. Was a bit more tired than usual, finishing it. I’m continuing to be mildly concerned about my health. My temp has been going up toward 99 in the evenings. Today it was 97.7 at dawn, which is excellent, normal. But now at 7pm it’s 99.9, which is almost high enough to call myself ill.

The monthly Resident Association meeting was at 10:30. Today in the admin section, Rhonda presented on the planned charge structure for nursing activities.

She presented a chart that clarified a lot of things for me. Down the left, each row of about 25, listed a nursing activity, e.g. eyedrops, blood pressure. Three columns: the left column had check marks in the first 3 or 4 rows; these are the few nursing services that are included for independent living. Middle column, a longer line of check marks, the services that are no-charge to Assisted Living. Last column, check marks all the way down, services that are no-charge in Skilled Nursing.

She explained that as a CCRA, our business model is based on actuarial statistics: people will live a certain length of time at each level of care. During the pandemic, owing to various problems including a shortage of AL units, some people have lingered longer in IL and the nurses have spent time supporting them. However, if they continue providing free AL services to IL residents, it breaks the business model. But now that the 3rd floor renovation is wrapping up, with its addition of 20-ish new AL rooms, they need to get all that straightened out. People who need more assistance (putting on compression stockings, putting in daily eyedrops, help bathing…) can enter AL where they get all they need (and their rent does not change).

There was an hour of discussion following this but my take is, everything is working pretty much as the contract I signed promised. You get the care you need, your rent doesn’t change, but the trade-off is you have to move to an appropriate unit.

There have been two couples on my very floor who fought this for a while. In both cases the husband is moderately healthy and mobile, while the wife is declining badly. This puts a steadily increasing burden on the husband; but in both cases either the wife or both resisted letting the wife move to AL. One couple finally agreed. The other is still hanging tough.

The rest of the day I slogged around my room doing more or less interesting stuff but being physically inert. By 5pm I was sick of myself and went for a mile walk. On return I grabbed a sandwich from the to-go refrigerator and had it with some cherries and a beer.

Sunday 06/13/2021

About 7am Dennis called to say he could pick me up at 8 to attend another girls’ basketball game featuring Kaylee Mills, the 12-year-old phenom. We had done the same a week back (Day 2.180).

The game this time was at Sequoia HS in Redwood City. We got there in good time for the 8:30 tip. Most of the Mills clan showed up: Dennis’ oldest son Bill (father of Kaylee, husband of Kaylee’s teams coach Kay), Dennis’ daughter Denise and her husband, and stepsons Ted and James, plus James’ wife and grandson Josh. Good size cheering section.

As before, the girls displayed pretty good ball-handling, strong defense, lots of energy, but a low shooting percentage. But “our” team won.

The rest of the day I pretty much just slouched around in my room. Around 9pm Jean sent to me along with many other recipients, a string of emails with pictures remembering her brother Emile. Among these old snaps were of course several featuring me and Marian. Here’s one from 1996.

Seated, Octavie on her 100th birthday with her three children Marian, Emile and Jean. Standing, spouses of them.

Of this group only three survive today: Me, Jean, and… believe it or not, that shirt. Hanging in my closet now.

A couple of months ago I wrote about trying to get IBM’s benefits administrator, VIA, to directly deposit a small regular check to my bank account. I wrote about this in detail on Day 2.128. After I sent them a form with the correct account and routing numbers, they reported that the deposit failed

for the reason code R15-Beneficiary or Account Holder Deceased.

They tried to deposit money in Marian’s name and SFCU very properly rejected it. I couldn’t figure out then or now why they would do that. Yes, Marian was an IBM retiree and I was her beneficiary, but when their paper check arrives, it is made out to me; Marian’s name is not on it. Why use her name on a direct deposit?

Read the 2.128 post for what happened when I tried to talk to their customer service people. They just couldn’t understand the problem even when they read the “reason code”. The insisted I must have given them the wrong account or routing number.

At that time I just let it go. I’ll go on depositing their paper checks, I thought.

A couple of weeks later a VIA admin called me up and wanted to try again. They really want to do direct deposit. So I agreed he could send me a new paper form.

He did, and in early May I received it. Filled it out and triple-checked it. Attached a void check. Now note these facts:

• The account/routing numbers are correct.
• The voided check shows them also.
• The voided check shows only my name. (I had Marian’s name taken off the account and new checks made in 2019.)
• They were informed of Marian’s passing in early 2019, 2 and a half years ago.

Unfortunately, I did not make a copy of the form before I mailed it. Nor did I write down the date.

Well, you can guess what happened next, right? I got this email:

Yup. Same issue. This time I am not going to bother calling them. Fuck them. They are completely, hopelessly, incompetent. Plus I am tired of being reminded that my wife is deceased.

Saturday 06/12/2021

Lovely Saturday morning. I paid some bills and filled out the May details in the Nest Egg spreadsheet. Then I went for a 1-mile walk ending at the farmer’s market where I picked up my usual delicioso pastry, and some cherries.

I treat cherries similar to grapes. I buy a pound or so of either one, and want to nibble on them for a week. To keep them from getting mildew, I run a sink full of cold water and pour in a glug from the bleach bottle. I swish the fruit in the bleach water and then rinse them off and let them dry on a towel. Then they generally keep in the fridge for more than a week.

At noon it was time for Stanford baseball. I had forgotten but two people, as I walked to lunch, asked if I would put the game on the 11th floor tv. I’m not the only person here who knows how to get that tv showing the Roku, and to find ESPNU on the Roku. But I’m the only one who cares about college baseball. So I ate lunch quickly and went upstairs and did that.

I watched the game itself on my own TV. I wanted to do other things on my computer during. Stanford just dominated Texas Tech or the second game in a row. I was paying attention when Stanford loaded the bases with two out, and hit a grand slam. Fun.

For supper I didn’t feel like eating in our dining room. I went for a walk up University Ave. Lots of people around and restaurants open, but nothing that attracted me. Walking back I passed “Indian Street Food” and bought a “bowl” based on lamb. When I got the box home I found I had enough food for a small Indian village, or anyway at least three people. Basmati rice, some kind of beans and peas, lot of spicy ground lamb. Nice supper, with a can of beer.

Friday 06/11/2021

My temp on arising was 97.3 and I felt distinctly “healthy”. Can’t definite more closely, just somehow the body was humming along normally. Temp at 5pm, 97.7. I’m back, baby. Felt good on my usual 2.5 mile walk.

At 10:30 I joined a small group to be introduced, or re-introduced, to the fitness center. It has some interesting machines, and a new one, a recumbent cycle with “virtual reality” routes on a screen, is supposed to be coming soon. I might do something down there. Anyway, the payoff for this was learning the key code to unlock the door.

Spent the rest of the day doing this and that around the apartment. Nothing exciting or worth note.

Thursday 06/10/2021

So 10 hours of sleep didn’t change anything, my morning temp was still 98.9. Maybe this is my new normal? Because at 5pm, after a full day of work, it was 98.8.

Anyway, no issues driving to Fremont, and working 5 hours (10-noon, 1-4), and driving home. Didn’t feel like eating in the dining room; had a pleasant supper of a sandwich and some cherries that I bought on Tuesday.

Wednesday 06/09/2021

My temp on arising was 98.9 (1º above normal). This is getting annoying. I don’t feel particularly ill. Am I ill? Should I worry?

I’m particularly concerned because tomorrow is the first day in 14 months I plan to go to the Shustek Center for a full day of volunteer work for CHM. Well, it’s really only 10am to 4pm, with a break for lunch; on the other hand there’s a half hour commute drive each end. Anyway, I don’t want to run out of gas hand have to quit early.

So I kept my morning walk short and had a couple of naps. And went to bed early (temp then 99.0).

The meeting of the Resident Association exec committee was more complicated than usual. Rich (who moved in about the same time I did) has been promoting the idea we should have more medical personnel on site than we do.

What we have is a nursing staff who are primarily occupied with the SN and AL sections. There is a Wellness Office in the tower where during business hours a nurse can always be found to consult with IL residents.

Rich points to the fact that until 2018 we had two PAMF doctors who spent part of their hours on-site. That was actually mentioned in CHM’s online marketing materials. When Rich pointed that out to Rhonda, those mentions disappeared promptly.

As Rhonda explained to the Ex.Com. today, first, the two PAMF doctors only treated PAMF patients. If you were a Kaiser client, for example, they didn’t/couldn’t bill you. But then Sutter Health bought up PAMF. They ran the numbers and said, ok, if you want one of our doctors on-site it will cost you $500K/year.

We still have a doctor as our Medical Director, who makes regular rounds in SN and is available to AL, and who supervises the Director of Nursing. But for IL, all you get is free transport to appointments outside.

Which is — I checked today — exactly what my CH contract specifies I’ll get. Nursing on call for first-aid, free transport to appointments. Emergencies, call 911, or the nurse will call for you.

However, we once had more. And Larry Basso (a distant relative of Dennis), who is part of Rich’s committee, remembers the CHM founder, Dr. Russell Lee, and today emphasized that tight integration with PAMF was part of Lee’s vision.

So what Rich and company wanted was RA permission to conduct — well it wasn’t clear what. Not a survey but some kind of information gathering to determine what medical presence our residents expect and want. He has mentioned having a Nurse Practitioner on staff, but that wasn’t said today.

After the committee left the Ex.Com. members discussed it and decided the petitioners needed to be a lot more specific. Pres. Carol is going to draft a response.

Part of the pressure for this is that coincidentally staff announced a preliminary fee schedule for optional nursing services. Turns out us old farts have been calling on the nurses for lots of non-illness things such as: help putting in eye drops; help putting on compression socks; care of surgical wounds. There has not been a clear demarcation of what services are free and what are billed, and for how much.

This has been causing quite a bit of talk as one might imagine.

Anyway early to bed.

Tuesday 06/08/2021

Did the aerobics class at 8:30 on the 11th floor. Worked a bit on Pelajis. After lunch I went to FOPAL where some retired engineer had donated his library, and most of it ended up in boxes for the Computer section. Maybe a fifth of it I rerouted to the Sci/Technology section because they were books on pure engineering topics, electrical (designing switching circuits) or mechanical. Most of the rest were just pristine copies of 15-25 year old computer science texts. A few of those are classics, whose topics don’t change (much) with changing software versions. A book on data compression, for example; the algorithms for that were worked out in the 80s and haven’t changed. But most of them were on topics where there have been major revisions in the software since the books were published. These books, hardbacks in lovely condition, are going to be recycled.

At 4pm was a special zoom meeting with CEO Rhonda. It having been announced only yesterday, there were only maybe 50 participants. Here’s the news.

Several years ago, all units on the second floor were remodeled completely, as part of building the separate nursing facility. That space had been for nursing, then it was made into 14 nice 1- and 2-bedroom apartments.

The HVAC system for these, specifically the cooling, requires plumbing for chilled coolant to come into the ceiling of each unit and be split across three distributor units in the ceilings. The plumbing is complex because it’s a full circuit, cold liquid out, warmed comes back to the chiller. All the connections in this plumbing was made with crimped connectors.

Early on the crimped connectors showed a tendency to leak, so when the full upgrade started from the 10th floor down, the architect spec’d brazed connectors. But now the leaks on the 2nd floor are getting very troublesome. The coolant leaks into the ceilings and stains them, and has to be replenished, and other issues.

So Channing House is going to spend the money to fix this problem now. Fortunately when people who have been displaced by the just-ending upgrade of 3 and 4 move back, that will open up enough units for the 2nd floor people to “go camping” as we say. The original contractor has accepted responsibility for the crimped connectors and will eat the cost of replacing them. There will be some costs they don’t eat, the move-out and move-back costs for a start. But bottom line, the upgrade process that started on the 10th floor 3 years ago, and which was going to be finished in August, will now run into December.

After that meeting by zoom, we had our 6th Floor meeting IN PERSON UNMASKED in our lounge. How nice that was.

Monday 06/07/2021

Morning temp was 98.8, so I am not really finished with the whatever I had last week. Kept my morning walk shorter. During the day I worked on software and on Pelajis.

At 7pm I set up the Stanford baseball game on the big screen on the 11th floor. Several people watched the game with me. Stanford finally won, 11-8, but the nine innings took 4:10 to play and I am going to bed now.