Wednesday 05/07/2021

As planned I and Patty left at 8am and drove to Mountain View to pick up Jean Pawek. From there we drove up and over Mt. Hamilton past Lick Observatory. The Observatory, which we all remember touring at various times over the last 30 years, was of course closed to the public.

The car’s GPS directed us up Quimby road which is extremely steep. I was sure this was not the route I took the two times I rode my bike up to the Observatory. Eventually Quimby intersected the correct road, Mt. Hamilton road, which was the route I remembered. I remembered it particularly because it is not a difficult bike ride, because it was originally made for the mule trains that carried construction materials for the Observatory in the 1880s. Mules can’t handle steep grades, so the road is quite comfortable for bike riders too.

There was a fast-moving fire last summer that drove through this area. It destroyed one residential building but did not damage the several telescope domes, nor caused any harm to people. Blackened oak skeletons were all around.

From the top of the mountain we continued East and North another 40 miles to Livermore. This is very sparsely settled country, a ranch maybe every 3 or 4 miles. There were signs of the fire all along the first half of the route.

Downtown Livermore was crowded; we had a hard time finding a parking space and all the restaurants along the main street were doing well. We had Thai food for lunch. Then drove by freeways on to Mountain View to drop Jean and back to CH on El Camino. 147 miles, 55mpg (go Prius!), seven hours.

Thursday 05/06/2021

Not much, pretty ordinary day. Aerobics. Futz around the apartment. After lunch I went to FOPAL where there really wasn’t much to do. There is some kind of a hitch in sorting, so not many computer books to manage. But when I went to do some sorting, there weren’t any books to sort, either. Something’s off, but there was nobody around to ask.

At dinner there were three new faces among the servers and hosts, so they are indeed expediting the hiring process. Two of these who took orders at our table had clearly had restaurant experience.

Wednesday 05/05/2021

First thing today was to go downstairs at 8:30 to board a bus. The first Channing House Event Committee expedition since pre-Covid, a bus trip to the deYoung museum in the City. There are two exhibits going on there. One, Frida Kalo, is sold out. I’d rather have seen that but too bad. The other, PIcasso/Calder, was designed by the respective grandsons of Picasso and Calder.

The artists were contemporaries, and important and influential about the same time, but in fact they only met three times in their lives and as far as I can tell, didn’t pay much attention to each other’s work. But somebody (the grandsons?) thought it made sense to have an exhibit of some stuff by Picasso and some stuff by Calder. It was arranged so that works done in the same year were next to each other, but still, I didn’t see any relationship. I was not blown away by either, although generally I get more from a Calder mobile than a Picasso abstract. So I finished walking through in less than an hour and then I had two hours to kill until the bus departed.

I spent some time sitting in the sun (the fog was in, and despite the fact that I’ve lived around SF for going on fifty years, I didn’t think to wear a jacket to the City in the summer) and reading. Had a snack at the museum cafe, and then it was time to go.

Back at CH at 1:45, just 15 minutes before the Resident Association Executive Committee met. Nothing too important was discussed.

After that I finished getting a decent opaque coat of paint on the Golf model. Just in time; I had been working in the bathroom and I needed to move the spray stuff out to the balcony before Wanda cleans tomorrow. Now the Golf sits at least a day for the paint to harden. Then I use masking tape and set up to paint the black areas on it. There is black like eye-shadow around all the windows and a black stripe down the side and it is going to be fussy as hell getting it all on neatly.

Tuesday 05/04/2021

“May the Fourth be with you,” said a couple of people. Relieved of the responsibility of trying to make the dining room hosting effort work, I felt very loose all day. Did the aerobics, then put more coats of color on the model. (Decided I had thinned the paint too much, which was why the color wasn’t as strong as I expected. Added more paint and it went better.)

Had lunch in the dining room. Did not care for the daily menu, so opted for a dish off the “every day” menu: avocado toast. That consists of a slice of toast on a plate. On top of the toast is a sprinkle of greens and a fried egg. On that is about a third of a ripe avocado, sliced pretty and fanned out artistically. Later I found I could have asked for bacon, and a couple of slices would have been added under the egg. Nice lunch anyway.

Spent two hours at FOPAL. Because tomorrow, normally laundry day, is full of activities on my calendar, I ran my laundry this afternoon. Fortunately there was a suitable hole on the community schedule board for the 6th floor laundry. Bought a few groceries on the way back from FOPAL, and then decided to do my own supper, a lovely sandwich of thin-sliced salami, cheese and mayo, and a beer. (Beer not offered in the dining room, although now I think of it, I could bring my own. People bring their own bottles of wine all the time.)

Monday 05/03/2021

Today turned out to the be the end of the volunteer hosting program. At 7:30 I went down and with Marcia, performed hosting while also training Nancy. Kim the HR came by at the start of breakfast and agreed to talk to us at 10am.

We presented that we weren’t getting the number of volunteer sign-ups we needed, and that she and I were going to have to alternate working the meals for a week to get everyone trained. I urged that all they needed was about three more Alfonso’s. Alfonso is a 20yo college student that was hired to do the hosting job on weekends, and we found him a pleasure to work with. Kim agreed, and said she’d talk to Rhonda and other staff.

An hour later she emailed to say that yes, the volunteer program should end, and staff would take over Tuesday morning. I composed an email to everyone who had signed up thanking them. Marcia worked lunch, I went back to work the dinner shift along with our last volunteer, Colin (Colin is our 90+ tennis player). And that’s that for the Host program, which I found to be quite a relief; I was getting quite tired of it.

Also during the day I got in a medium walk and a couple of more coats of color on the Golf. For some reason the paint brand I’m using needs more coats to get a solid color. Or maybe it’s my spray technique. In either case, the new spray box is working very well.

Sunday 05/02/2021

I had to work the Breakfast and Dinner hosting jobs, training the one or two volunteers we have. Volunteers are not flocking to the sign-up sheet, for several reasons. One, in my opinion the feeling is different from last year, when staff shortages were due to a real peril, covid exposure. This staff shortage is due to a voluntary change in the dining services. One person said to me, “what are we paying for?”

Another is that hosting for 90 minutes or so is a real physical challenge for a lot of residents because they just can’t stand on their feet and be walking for that long at a spell.

Tomorrow I will talk this over with Marcia and I think we will ask management to bring back one or two of the staff people we are relieving. And strongly urge them to expedite the hiring process.

In between meals I worked on the Golf model. It is nearing completion. I have begun painting color on it in the revised spray booth.

That’s about it. I did some Sunday stuff, the puzzle, watering the plants, went for a walk.

Saturday 01/05/2021

Today was the start of the new volunteer business, acting as hosts or greeters in the Dining Room, and both Marcia and I worked all three meals, to support and train a few other intrepid volunteers. So that amounts to about 6 hours of standing around at the entrance to the dining room.

In between I finished the spray box. Here it is complete.

The fan pulls the cloth in. I will probably add two pieces of cloth flat on the sides. They don’t have to be sealed tight, just loosely attached flat to the box. When the fan is running it will pull the cloth tight against the open seams you can see.

Later I used the box to spray a first coat of color on the VW Golf GTI.

Friday 04/30/2021

Took a slightly truncated walk for the morning, then had coffee-and in the dining room. Following that I had an entirely open day until 4pm, and I had resolved to clean up the projects that were hanging around, and was very pleased with the progress I made.

First up was the Golf GTI upholstery. Since Day 2.133 I had been trying to reproduce the tartan seat pattern from a restored GTI. A decal didn’t seem to work, because the bright orange parts went all gray and blah when the wet decal was put on black plastic (see Day 2.138).

A few days later it dawned on me (well, I’m slow) that the problem was not the decal but the black background. If the decal had a white background…

And indeed on that background the orange stripes of the decal looked not bad. Here are the front and back seats with their upholstery, ready to install.

Yeah ok they look like shit, except the one front seat. Decals are really hard to place correctly. I am counting on these being completely enclosed by the body of the car, viewed only by peeking through the windows. They should pass then.

Next was to finish the spray box by making a fabric cover which will engage with velcro around four sides to close the front of the box, with slits for my hands to come through. I couldn’t get anybody around with actual sewing experience to do it, but I had managed to borrow a sewing machine.

I didn’t mention yesterday, that before going to FOPAL, I had detoured to Joan’s Fabrics and Crafts in Redwood CIty, and after much thinking, selected a piece of fabric that looked like it would be lint-free and I could work with it. It has a camouflage pattern, which is nice.

I figured out the dimensions including a hem; cut it out; hemmed the edges; installed velcro loop material; made slits and hemmed them. I had to replace a bobbin and had to thread the sewing machine twice. Got all that done in a couple of hours.

I used Marian’s sewing scissors and lots of pins from her pincushion, making me glad I’d kept a minimum of sewing supplies (see Day 131, April 2019.) Discovered another drawback of taking Plavix blood thinner: if you prick yourself with a pin, you have to stop and put on a band-aid, or you will bleed all over your work.

During Rhonda’s 4pm open meeting, I was called on to describe the new dining room host volunteer program. I gave it the best sell I could but so far the sign-ups have been underwhelming.

Thursday 04/29/2021

After aerobics I had some nice morning time to work on stuff. I did a little of this, a little of that. Worked on the car, worked on a programming project. Lunch was ok. The dining room experience is getting more and more like a real restaurant as the staff gain experience. (And as they hire more staff. I hear they took on six people this week.)

However, and I feel very guilty at being so ungrateful, I kind of miss the old cafeteria-style service. Not the Sodexo food, which was average at best and repellent at worst. The new food being served now is really well prepared and nicely plated.

No, I miss the informality and simplicity. I’d take my full tray and wander toward an empty table, maybe sit by myself, or sit with people I knew. The deal now is, you end up seated with whatever people came in just before or just after you. So it’s a mixer. And you make conversation, often ten minutes or more while you wait for your order to come. That wait, with nothing to do with your hands, nothing in front of you, just socializing — wasn’t there before.

After lunch I went down to FOPAL and found only a partial box of computer books. Processing that took 15 minutes. Then I spent half an hour sorting, which I haven’t done in months. I am not supposed to lift over 30 pounds, but I compensate. I move books instead boxes, and slide boxes along tables. And I lift some, for brief moments.

Then I realized that the CHM Volunteer meeting was just 15 minutes away. Ack! I drove back to CH, hitting a lot of green lights along Middlefield, and just made it into the meeting maybe 2 minutes late.

This meeting was a disappointment. They said nice things about the volunteers, and how eager they were to get us back to work, and how many donations had piled up that needed cataloging. But there was no timeline for that. Heck, we are all vaccinated. Let us in!

They talked vaguely about the new scheduling system that would replace Volgistics, the previous software we used to sign up for volunteer shifts. But they couldn’t demonstrate it, “it still has a couple of bugs we need to work out.” That has been in process for a year now! And they talked about the plan to replace Mimsy, the museum database we have been using since 2005 to catalog artifacts. Except that there still is nothing to demonstrate. The head of IT talked a lot of jargon about how they were “partnering” with Microsoft and a database company called Terentia to create a buzzword-heavy “cloud-based digital asset management platform” that will have an “API” and maybe will do automatic translation to other languages.. Also in the talking stages for at least a year. I smell vapor-ware and have great skepticism.

And the news about reopening the museum to visitors, and restarting docent tours, was even more vague, if that’s possible. I came away with no idea when that is likely to happen. And there were remarks about how they are rethinking the “museum experience” and there would be some retraining. I may never get to be a docent again. That’s a bummer.

Wednesday 04/28/2021

Went for the walk, with about a half mile of jogging in it. On return I was disappointed to find that the coffee and pastry service in the dining room was not on today. So I sat at a table for the proper breakfast which was a waffle with berry sauce. The staff are looking and behaving more like proper waiters every day.

At 11am I had a date with Grace to commission her new phone. This took a full hour. The very clever iPhone “quick start” thing at first didn’t seem to be working, but on the 3rd or 4th try it suddenly worked. Eventually, exchanging emails with Craig who understands our Clearpass wi-fi system, I got it all working, talking to AT&T and to the building wi-fi and all.

After lunch Marcia called with a wonderful new idea. I guess. To relieve pressure on the dining room staff we will enlist resident volunteers to act as hosts and seat people. It’s a call-back to the volunteering last summer and fall, with a sign-up sheet and everything. I am to compose an invite/announce email, and Rhonda will announce and appeal for volunteers Friday. Like the volunteers who delivered meals to rooms, this won’t be forever.

At 5pm I met with Marcia and social director Elizabeth to be trained in this job. It is extremely easy. As people come in, check off their names on the five-page single-spaced list of names — that’s the hardest parts, A, knowing the names, and B, finding the names on the list — and then grab a menu and seat them. Try to fill up a table before starting another, except if people insist, they can sit where they like, or wait for friends.

I worked at assembling the spray box. I decided that no, dang it, I want cloth to cover the front. I worked out a simple pattern, and in fact I think I can sew it myself if I had a sewing machine. Coincidentally Peter came to return the scanner I loaned him months ago. I asked if he had a sewing machine, and he does and is quite sure his wife doesn’t need it for the next month. So I went to his room and borrowed it; it is a tiny little thing. Now I just have to get a piece of cloth. I have thread and other sewing stuff.

I believe I have a breakthrough on the VW Golf upholstery but I will report on that tomorrow.