Sunday 11/14/2021

First thing after watering the plants and feeding the birds, I drove down to FOPAL and tidied the shelves of my section. Got back by 10, leaving the car in the front lot.

At 11:15 I met with the people who wanted a ride to the game, Jerry and David G, and off to Maples for the first “real” game of the season. And it was a dismal loss. Texas, whose #25 rank is going to get a boost when the next rankings come out, mounted a very active, disruptive defense, and Stanford (whose #3 rank will drop a couple) completely lost track of the basket from the three-point line, hitting 2 of 23. Two excellent defenses frustrating each other. The score was 10-10 after the first quarter, and 25-25 at the half. Eventually Texas hit a couple of timely 3s for a lead and held it.

Following the game in a mercifully brief ceremony they handed out the championship rings from last season’s win. Possibly they will win again this year, but they have some work to do.

Saturday 11/13/2021

For lunch I went down and visited sister-in-law Jean. We went to my favorite Mexican place, Casa Lupe on Castro Street. Jean is doing fine. She has completed several major downsizing projects, organizing and then disposing of the huge collection of images that she and her late husband Bill had created.

In the evening I decided to do the battery replacement on my old Macbook Pro. This machine, Godot, entered my life on day 0.73 of this blog, 02/17/19. It was not new then, being a refurbished 2015 model. I opted for a 2015 refurb because it was the last one with a good keyboard, adequate ports, real function keys and a magsafe charging cord. Following that year Apple went to a couple of USB-C ports for everything including charging, the “touchbar” instead of function keys, and what was reported by many to be an unreliable keyboard.

Over the past year Godot has several times complained that its battery was in bad shape. Now that Apple has regained their senses and produced a new MBP with several ports, magsafe, and function keys, I ordered one and am using it (but it doesn’t have a good name yet!) Now I feel confident it is working and all my files are safe, I felt safe enough to take down Godot to install the new battery I ordered months ago from iFixit.

That took a couple of hours, but when it was back together, it booted and ran! I had prepared a thumb drive with an installer for the current MacOS Monterey and I used that to erase Godot’s internal 1TB drive and install Monterey. That went fine, also. So now I have a nice clean 2015 MBP that needs a home.

Friday 11/12/2021

Went for a walk first up. Then among other things, I clicked “List Item” on the eBay listing for the IBM manuals.

At 2pm it was time for the “survival celebration”, starting with a presentation by Rhonda and other staff members in the Auditorium, followed by snacks and drinks for all in the dining room.

The point of the party was to celebrate a whole list of milestones:

The four-year-long upgrade project has wrapped up, with the last “campers” returning to their permanent apartments at the end of July. There were lots of pictures of this process: every apartment on every floor had its ceiling opened up, new heat/cool piping installed, new wiring, sprinklers and fire alarms, new double-glazed windows and doors, new carpet and paint. That’s about 180 apartments on 8 floors.

This job was finished ahead of the planned schedule — despite the pandemic freezing all action for several months.

Completion of HVAC repairs on the second floor. The second floor was newer than others and wasn’t to be upgraded, but its coolant piping had to be completely replaced because it wasn’t done right 5 years ago when it went in. Every unit had its ceiling cut open and then repaired.

Also finished ahead of schedule.

As part of refurbishing the third floor, half of it was converted into “IL+”, or assisted living lite, expanding our service offering (more income!). This included moving the nursing headquarters and office to the 3rd floor.

Transition from Sodexo to our own in-house dining services, and from cafeteria service to table service. This involved remodeling the kitchens while still turning out meals, and training new staff in new procedures and methods. Still in progress, but getting better and (I hear on the grapevine) now running at about the same cost as we paid Sodexo before, after an initial overrun.

Implementation of electronic health records, replacing manual folders and files: just completed.

And of course, surviving two years of Covid pandemic.

And finally, in researching for the presentation, Rhonda had discovered that the original ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of Channing House was almost exactly 60 years ago this week!

So this was a big deal day

The dining services staff had worked hard to present a wide assortment of attractive snacks, so many and so tasty that pretty much everyone was saying, “won’t be down for supper tonight”. I didn’t, although about 7pm I got a bit peckish and had a slice of cheese and bread.

During the party, Frances, head of the very active Racial and Social Justice Committee, buttonholed me to tell me that she had just secured Judge LaDoris Cordell, a local celebrity, as a speaker for next February, and that she expected we would be able to have her speak live in the Auditorium but also appear by Zoom to residents of seven other local senior residences. OK, Frances, no pressure there.

Coincidentally I, Bert, and David M are to interview IT director Vanessa tomorrow, who specifically wants to talk about zoom simulcasts. I had sent her The List a couple days ago.

For entertainment I rummaged around in my box of DVDs and noticed I had a two-disc set of Led Zeppelin. Which I don’t remember buying and certainly have never played. So I listened to Led Zeppelin at Royal Albert Hall in 1973. Going to be “Dazed and Confused”.

Thursday 11/11/2021

First up, returned to the gym. This time I did three rounds of our 8 machines, 20 reps, 20 reps, 10 reps. It took a half hour and although it made me tired, I didn’t get that “gotta stop” feeling of before. Bodies. What you gonna do?

Then I did a whole lot of little things. At some point I thought to myself, I’ve been doing one thing after another, for an hour and a half, busy busy busy, and I won’t remember any of it when it’s time to blog. I really should have made a list. For example, a couple of plants were dry, I watered them. I folded the blanked off my bed because I want to switch to my snuggy duvet. Got out the duvet from the closet and put it into its cover. Discovered that I had a conflict between a concert and a play, so emailed the box office to change the date of the play. Other emails. There were more.

Afternoon, I talked to Wanda about how she wants my carpets cleaned, and how I’ve scheduled it. By happenstance the guy who does carpet cleaning came down the hall and we discussed carpet cleaning.

At 3pm it was time for SWBB which I couldn’t attend, but I watched their live stream until just before 4pm, then switched over to Zoom for two hours of the Strategic Planning Committee. Henceforth SPC. I made a nuisance of myself, a bit, but mostly just listened.

That was about it for the day.

11/10/2021

Went for a walk, 2nd day in a row, tomorrow I mean to get back on schedule with a gym session. At 10:30 it was time for a haircut from Leah in the house salon. I felt like my hair had gotten a bit too long this time, with a 6-week interval, so scheduled for five weeks, mid-December.

At 1pm I met with Carolyn and Joan and we went off to the new-ish movie place in San Antonio place, to see Dune. I haven’t re-read Dune since the first time in — checks Wikipedia — 1966 or 67. I did see the 1984 movie. This one is beautiful to look at. The designers worked really hard to design sets, props, costumes in amazing creative detail. (I appreciate this sort of thing more since watching Adam Savage videos, where he shows how props are built, and how much effort goes into them.)

Oh, about body temperature. I’ve noticed for a long time that my body temp runs around 97.6, a full degree below the supposed average. Today I saw a post in a blog I follow about lower temperatures. He cites this Harvard medical post on the history of body temp, and on how average temp has been falling generally over recent decades. I’m right in the middle of the new average.

11/09/2021

Went for the benchmark walk this morning. It was ok.

The writers meeting at 11 was interesting. I hadn’t written anything (I’d written lots this week, but not for them) but several good pieces were read. One by Connie was particularly nice.

At 1pm I joined Bert and Rich in the auditorium to watch Florrie rehearse the vocal concert she will present soon (tomorrow? if so, I’ll miss it). I got some more info and then went and finished, almost, the List of auditorium issues.

Monday 11/08/2021

Don’t blame me; it was the internet. I’m posting this on Tuesday morning because last night there was a Comcast outage through the evening.

Because of the 9am Residents Association meeting I didn’t do any exercise. I know, lame. The only memorable news at the meeting was that the bridge is open again. This is a big deal around these parts.

Channing House has two buildings, the 12-story Tower where 200+ people live independently, also the site of most common rooms like dining, auditorium, and others. Adjacent, but separated by a courtyard about 50 or 60 feet wide, is the Russell Lee Health Center, a three-story brick building that houses mainly a floor of AL and one of SN. The buildings are connected at the 2nd-floor level by a wide Bridge floor that also contains several offices, meeting rooms, a large Activity room, the beauty salon.

Pre-pandemic, the Bridge was a main travel way. To get between buildings you would go up or down to 2, walk across the bridge, then go up or down to your destination. Then came the pandemic, and as part of infection control, transit across the bridge was closed. “Single point of entry” was the rule from the Health Dept for each building.

The door at the Tower end was physically sealed. The Activity room was converted to an isolated Covid Ward, reached only from the Lee building side. For a while the only way to get between buildings was to cross the courtyard and enter by an outside door. Then one elevator was unsealed so staff and people accompanied by staff, could go through the basement and take an elevator that led from just outside the underground garage, to the Lee Center. Recently that elevator was allowed to everyone, which is why a couple of months back, I was able to reach the reopened Beauty Salon for a haircut.

Well, the announcement today was, the Bridge is open again! The 2nd floor Tower door is unsealed. The beds etc. are being cleared out of the Activity Room, which to me means, soon I have to go check out what’s left of its A/V equipment. Wednesday, I can cross the Bridge for my next haircut.

After that, I went on down to FOPAL for the final time before the upcoming sale weekend. Tidied my shelves; took a pre-sale count. On the way home, picked up some essential groceries, namely, coffee and peanut butter.

Neighbor Margaret asked for help; she wants to be sure any pictures she takes with her iPhone and/or iPad, show up automatically on her Macbook. This involves stuff I’ve not dealt with before, and the Photos app which I don’t know well (and what I know, I dislike). We didn’t make much headway.

Sunday 11/07/2021

I was determined to make some progress on a couple of stale projects, and did a bit. I went over my records of my Part D insurer and made sure that everything I want to keep was filed in the right folder. I created my account with the new Part D plan. I paid a couple of other bills, too.

I’ve had this set of IBM 7040 manuals (circa 1962) that I meant to try to sell on eBay. They’ve been stacked on my coffee table for weeks. So today I took some pictures of sample pages, which took a while, and filled out the lengthy eBay listing form. Kinda got stopped at the end, though.

eBay dis-aquired PayPal years ago, but now is enforcing a new system under which the seller (me) no longer has any control over how a purchase is made. eBay takes the money using any method, PayPal, credit card, whatever, and reimburses the seller supposedly by direct deposit to the seller’s bank. Which means giving eBay the ability to transfer money into my SFCU account, for instance. But would that imply eBay has the ability to debit my account, too? I need to talk to somebody, perhaps Frank at FOPAL before I go ahead with this.

I worked a little bit on the list of Auditorium issues. I discovered I had some video I shot, from when the vendor was here showing us the system back in the summer. It had some interesting tid-bits so I went downstairs to re-check the details of what the guy told us. And emailed Bert with a question.

This was “fall back” day. It’s only 7:30 but I feel like it’s much later.

Saturday 11/06/2021

Went for medium walk, mainly to pick up some kind of snack food to share at the house concert tonight (“bring something to drink and something to share” said the invitation).

At 11:15 met with Jerry and Patty and drove to Maples pavilion for the first official game of the year for the somen’s basketball team. The visitor was Clarke U., a Catholic school from Dubuque. They played hard but were completely outclassed. The final score was 105-35. Everybody played and most people scored.

At 7pm I met with Sandy who I had persuaded some time back to sign up for the Dirty Cello concert. They put on a great show. Back at 10:30, the latest I’ve been up in some time.

Friday 11/05/2021

Since I went for a walk yesterday, I decided to do the gym today. This was not a success. I couldn’t finish the second round. I can’t explain why. Just my body very clearly tells me, “nope” at certain points. I don’t know what’s going on.

At 11am I had a date to help Edie with her mail. I resolved a couple of her issues easily.

After lunch I went down to the auditorium to play around and verify a couple of the items on my issues list. On the way I got a text from Apple saying my order had been delivered. Oh, that’s my new MacBook Pro! Later in the day I set it up and I am writing this on it now.

In the auditorium I found answers to 2 of my issues and deleted them from the list. Bert joined me and again persuaded me to add some more of his issues. So that means another editing session. Which I will not have time for tomorrow.

After supper I checked in with Ian who was to do AV for a concert. He was doing fine and didn’t need me at all. The concert was by a 17yo pianist, an Evergreen High student who played 8 pieces, by Bach, Liszt, Handle, Chopin. Generally the kid was most impressive, handling big showy piano things with a lot of style.