Thursday 05/26/2021

Did Veronica’s aerobics for I think the last time. From now on it will be led by AJ and not on zoom but locally on the 11th floor.

Tidied the apartment. Did a bit of desk work. Then noticed that 23andMe had sent its usual monthly email, “You have new DNA relatives”. At this point I have a couple of hundred “DNA relatives” with whom I share 2%, 5%, similar small bits of DNA. “Third to fifth cousin”. Except for about 3 people who are second cousins or such, and whose names I recognize as distant relatives.

Today was something new, a first cousin, that is, technically the child of a sibling of one of my parents. My parents don’t have siblings. But this guy, born in 1949, has an almost identical X chromosome to mine. Males inherit the X from their mothers only; and indeed, when I used 23andMe’s DNA comparison tool, he has zero percent common DNA with my second cousin Gino, who descended only from my father. So this guy is not at all related on my father’s side, but strongly related on my mother’s.

I passed this info to Laurel who has made a serious hobby, or part-time paying job, from tracing ancestors and family trees. I also cc’d Dennis who responded with what was complete news to me — although apparently he and Laurel had discussed it — that his mother, my half sister, had borne another child at some point. If the dude on 23andMe is that person, it perfectly accounts for the DNA match.

In the end what does it matter? Probably nothing in practical terms. I would have no interest in meeting the guy. Dennis might, but that would be his decision. But it is an interesting example of how the DNA tracing websites can sometimes upset family histories.

After lunch spent two hours at FOPAL sorting books, while Wanda cleaned my unit.

In other news, I bought a four-person “pod” ticket for Stanford Baseball’s post-season games. It is not certain Stanford will host post-season, that will be announced Monday. If they do I and three of my neighbors can attend a total of 7 games weekend after next.

I have an even more exciting outing planned for this Sunday. I’ll let that hang for now.

Wednesday 05/26/2021

Got up at 4am, dressed and stepped out into the fire escape. The moon was just visible from there, around the edge of the building, but partly blocked by a tree. So I took the camera up to the roof and got a couple of pics.

Later in the day I put the final touches on the Golf GTI model. The following pictures show its best angles. The paint job is a disgrace, I really hacked it up in several ways. Not my best work, by a long way.

Tuesday 05/25/2021

After aerobics class I had to hurry to shower and dress and it was time to head out for the 1-mile walk to PAMF for a scheduled echo-cardiogram. Routine and all. From there walked to Peet’s coffee, and thence back.

After lunch I met up with Sandy who runs the library to pick up a box of books for FOPAL. They used to collect donated books and FOPAL volunteers, the “pick-up crew” because they used an actual pickup to pick up donations from people’s houses, would stop by. That ended with the pandemic of course. So our library stopped accepting donations but they still had some. So I took a box down with me.

Feast or famine; after 3 weeks of no computer book donations, today there were 5 boxes. I spent 2 and a half hours getting them all processed.

Lots going on tonight. One, from 9pm to 5am, they are shutting off the water to replace a bunch of old plumbing valves. So I set an alarm on the phone for 8:30, to remind me to use the toilet then.

Then there is the lunar eclipse happening at 4am to 4:15 about. I have the camera all set on the tripod and an alarm set for 4am. I think possibly I will be able to get a view and pictures from the fire stair at my end of the building. If not I will have to go up to the roof.

Monday 05/24/2021

Went for a walk, felt fine. Polished two pairs of shoes. Otherwise basically fiddled the day away. Hoped to put the final touches on the Golf model but didn’t quite. Maybe tomorrow or more likely Wednesday.

My new kettle arrived. Three years ago or so, when Marian stopped wanting morning coffee, I had purchased a small electric kettle, just held about 12oz of water when full, which I have used every morning since to make my one cup of pour-over coffee. Last week I got irritated that the translucent strip up the side, which shows how much water you have in it, had gotten cloudy so I couldn’t judge the water level well. I took the top off the kettle to investigate, and made the accidental discovery that the metal plate in the inside bottom, which gets hot and heats the water, was about half covered in little rust pits. Another few months maybe and it would have a pinhole leak into the heating element. So I ordered an exact replacement off Amazon. It arrived yesterday and today I picked up the package and put the new kettle to work. Big milestone.

DInner had been arranged by Patty, she hosted me and the Plocks, a couple who will be moving into the 4th floor in August. Stew had been in IT management for among other companies, Tandem, back in the day. Didn’t get around to what Kathy did, other than that her volunteer work in recent years has been in schools, helping grade school teachers in the classroom, and that all ended with the pandemic and she doesn’t know when it will restart, if ever.

Sunday 05/23/2021

Watered the plants. The dragon-wing begonias that I cut back to a little cluster of brown sticks 2 months ago have grown up a thick 2-foot cluster of big leaves already.

It was 7:30 and I felt like getting out so I took a Lyft down to Byxbee park. Walked the full Baylands trail down to San Antonio road, which turns out to be just 2.5 miles. Took a Lyft back and was home again by 10am.

Played around with various hobbies the rest of the day. Wasn’t thrilled with the supper menu so had a cheese and baloney sandwich in my room.

Fiddled around. Went for a medium walk, ending with picking up the usual nummy pastry. Worked on some hobby projects. For lunch, passed on the daily entree (pepper steak) and had Avocado Toast instead, a really nice light meal on the backup menu.

More fiddling around. For supper decided I didn’t want the evening entree either (baked chicken) and decided to walk out up University Ave. Downtown PA was jumping, with lots of people out, many with masks but not all.

The Apple store was fully open, so I went in and got fingers-on with the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Apple has kind of shot themselves in the foot with the latest machines. Both the Air and the Pro use the identical silicon, the new M1 chip. Possibly they have lowered the clock rate in the Air? But there are very few differences between the two. The Air costs $200 less, has 2 hours less claimed battery life, the screen has 400 nits of brightness versus 600 nits for the Pro. They both come with exactly two USB-C ports, incompatible with anything. That’s it. Well, the Pro has the “touch bar” in place of the top row of function keys. I need to go back and try the keyboards, but I think they are the same. So why get the Pro?

The new iMac is pretty but only has a 24-inch screen where my 5-year-old one is 27″. I’ll wait for the follow-on there.

Friday 05/21/2021

It is getting easier and easier to go to bed (usually around 10pm) completely forgetting to do a blog entry. I really don’t want to admit defeat and give up doing this diary, or to let it become intermittent with ever-longer gaps. Dunno. Maybe shorter entries.

This day was the first meeting of a small critiquing group, different from the CH writers who meet weekly on Tuesdays. That group expects a new, short piece each time, on a given topic, and you read it aloud, and get generally nice strokes for it.

This one is for people working on longer stuff of their own choosing. We are supposed to read the material and mark it up with comments beforehand, and say what did or didn’t “work”. I tried this out on the first 1000 words of Pelajis as I am rewriting it. Of the others, Prudence also presented the opening of a middle-grade work. It was quite good. I can imagine collaborating with Pru sometime.

Thursday 05/20/2021

After aerobics I hastily tidied up the apartment, since Wanda was coming in at 9:30 to clean. Then off to FOPAL for a bit of sorting (still nothing for the computer section). The boxes I was sorting, along with two volunteers named Helen and Dennis, were from a single donation and they were about 2/3 full of popular books about business and management, and 1/3 of general psychology-self-help. All from the past decade and all in pristine condition. Somebody was spending lots of money on books to help him be a better manager or entrepreneur, and reading them once if that.

Back to the barn, and my room was all tidy. I looked at the lunch menu on the way up from the garage, and decided I didn’t like what was on for lunch, so I had a nice PBJ in my room.

Afternoon I worked on the Golf model. It’s at the point where I’m trying to carefully paint black on the window surrounds and the wheel arches (that’s how it looks in auction photos). I’d masked very carefully but off course… well. Also worked on the software project. Had supper in the dining room, at the 8-seat “open” table. Evening serving was a not very good meatloaf, mashed potatoes with no gravy (why? just a mound of mashed potatoes.) And some veg.

Wednesday 05/19/2021

Went for the standard walk, felt fine. Wanda stopped me in the hallway coming back, wanting to know if it was ok to clean my room at 9:30am tomorrow instead of the usual 2pm. She has some kind of meeting to go to. Ok, sure.

Neighbor Dr. Margaret called to say, she’d gotten my book out of the library and it was great, and she had questions, could we lunch together. At lunch she praised the book extravagantly. We talked about some issues in it.

Ran my laundry from 12 to 2. Then worked on hobby projects until 5. That was the time I’d been invited to drinks before dinner with Jerry and Betty, and coincidentally they had asked Dr. Margaret. So we chatted over drinks, then went down to dinner.

That was about it for the day. I have been warned that they will shut down the CH intranet tonight at 10 for maintenance, so I’d better get this posted.

Tuesday 05/18/2021

I was the only one to sign in to Veronica’s aerobics, so like a personal trainer. She and I discussed how she is going to handle the class with her upcoming pregnancy leave of several months. Probably it will be picked up in June by A.J., a staff member, who will lead it on the 11th floor at 8:30am. Would that suit me? Sure. And being in-person instead of remote, it might pick up more people.

Then it was time for the weekly writers meeting. Again I had no contribution to read. The cue of “sky high or down to earth” didn’t spark anything in my mind, although others had some really nice things from that.

After lunch I went to FOPAL. Curated a box of books, but only one box. My shelves are starting to look under-stocked. No idea why no computer related donations are coming in.