Did the aerobics class. Afterward, treated myself to coffee and a croissant in the dining room. There I was waylaid by Grace, who has a new iPhone SE which was sent to her by ATT, because they are withdrawing support for her old phone. That was nice of them.
What wasn’t nice was, that the box contained no charger, only a cable. The cable had the usual Lightning connector to go in the phone’s butt, and on the other end, a USB-C connector suitable for plugging in to a MacBook maybe. Only problem is, Grace has a wall adapter to charge the phone, which has a standard USB-3 connector. So she couldn’t charge the new phone, which had her troubled in mind, because Last week she had made a date with me to help her transfer data from the old phone to the new one, tomorrow. But the phone wouldn’t charge.
Not an issue, I went upstairs to my room and got one of the several Lightning-to-USB cables I have in a drawer and took it down to her place and bingo, the new phone was ok again.
Messed around with the spray box. I had to take my larger pieces down to the shop and cut off a corner with the jigsaw. Next I can glue some parts together, but I didn’t feel like it.
Attended the writers group although I hadn’t written anything.
Ate lunch and supper in the dining room. The servers are getting more and more like real waiters, and the food is coming out faster.
Drove to FOPAL and spent two hours processing five boxes of computer books.
Went for the walk, wearing tennies and jogging approximately half a mile of the distance. A few weeks ago I found a piece of art on a limb stump alongside the creek (Day 2.124). Today I found another one, half a mile away.
I wonder how many there are?
Yesterday the sheets of plastic I need for the spray booth came, so today I took them down to the Residents Workshop in the basement and cut out my pieces on a jig saw.
I also re-made my tartan pattern using drawn lines and brighter colors for better contrast. It still didn’t work. I don’t understand how a bright pattern that looks contrasty against white paper can just disappear when on transparent film and a black background. It looks bright and contrasty against a black background on the computer screen or when printed. I am going to try making a decal with a black background (instead of transparent).
The crossword tournament resumed at 11am EST with puzzle #8, which was the puzzle that would be given to the three top scorers to determine the winner. For us not-top-scorers it was just for fun and would not alter our final scores. It was a bear, I thought, and 25 minutes in I just gave up and clicked “submit”, getting 36 correct out of 90 words.
That left 3 hours before the final segment of the tournament where the top 3 solve a final puzzle. I wanted a walk, after spending all day yesterday in my room, so I walked to the farmer’s market on California Ave and got a pastry from The Midwife and The Baker’s booth, then walked home (4.1 miles, go me!).
It was quite astounding to watch the final showdown between the three top scorers. Their screens were recorded while they solved the same puzzle. They were not informed of their times right away. Instead, their work was replayed as part of a webinar with live commentary from a couple of NPR people.
So picture three crossword puzzle grids across your screen and you can see the letters as the three guys type them in, and their cursors sweeping back and forth, flitting from word to word. They filled in that 15×15 grid only a little slower than I could have typed it, if I were copying from the solution sheet. The same puzzle that I gave up on, half filled, after 25 minutes? The finished it in under 6! There were 8 seconds between the winner and second place. Actually one guy finished first by almost 20 seconds, but he had left a typo in the bottom right. That made two words incorrect, and by the scoring system they use, that cost him two minutes. He noted that if he had taken 30 seconds to check his work and fix the typo, he would still have lost to the guy who won.
How did I do? I came in at number 776, out of a field of 1,032 contestants. So, you know, not last. I think I could do better, maybe making it to the 600s with a little luck, but winning? No bleepin’ way! The people who ended up in the top 10, the top 50 even, are just in a completely different league. Seriously, like getting to play a little basketball in the backyard against Steph Curry and Draymond Green.
I had skipped the dining room for breakfast and lunch, but went down at 6pm as arranged, with Patty, Gwen, and Dr. Margaret. The dining room is trying hard to be classy. Tonight’s special was prime rib roast, and they had an actual cart with a shiny chrome hood that they rolled around to the tables to carve off a slice of the roast to your order. They still have a bit to work out though, as first, one cart was not enough to keep up with a full dining room, and two, they didn’t coordinate the cart with the delivery of the plates with our veggies and starch, which sat and got cold while the cart wandered around the other side of the room. Well, the new director and chef were making the rounds and we discussed it at length when they got to our table. Feedback.
Today was the real start of the crossword puzzle tournament. Between 8am and 1pm we — about 1,000 people who had signed up — did six crosswords, ranging from hard to very hard. The scoring is based on time and accuracy. There is a maximum time for each puzzle, between 20 and 30 minutes typically. For every minute left on the clock when you click “submit” you get points. But you lose points for every incomplete or misspelled word.
After all 6 puzzles, my total score had me firmly in 723rd place, out of 998. So, I’m a leader in the last quadrant.
Other than the tournament, I went to two meals in the new dining room. It is kind of annoying but interesting to watch the ex-sodexo people trying to learn to be real waiters. Some of them don’t seem to be catching on. Like, at supper, a lady at my table had finished her soup. She moved the bowl aside, and said to a server who was standing beside our table, “I’m finished with this.” The server smiled, looked confused, and walked away. The bowl was still there several minutes later when I excused myself and left.
I mean, this is Waiter 101 stuff. A diner says, “I’m finished,” you automatically say, “Oh, let me take that away for you” and move it.
In model news, I now have the stuff to make decals. I had a last-minute thought about the tartan pattern. My image had black with orange lines, but the decal will be going on a black plastic seat, so shouldn’t I remove the black and just print the orange lines on clear? So with some screwing around I managed that,
I printed that on the decal paper, sprayed it with sealant. After it dried I cut one out and made it wet and slid it onto the rear seat.
Well, that sucks. The orange hardly shows at all. Also, the decal is just a little bit too stiff to settle into the grooves of the seat. This is all very disappointing.
Went for the usual walk, this time ending up in our dining room for coffee. Later I sprayed the Golf body with primer. The plastic sheets to finish the spray booth will arrive tomorrow but for primer, I don’t care so much about dust.
Arriving today were another pair of jeans, this time Levi’s 501, the original fit. I didn’t like how they looked, so that’s another pair to take back to the Levi’s store. The issue here is that with my post-operation body I really need a 35-inch waist. Not all Levi’s lines offer 35 waists, and even when they do, they are not usually stocked in stores. So I order online and then find out they look like crap on my bod. I have a pair of jeans from Bonobos that look good on me, the only thing wrong is they are a little bit hard to take off. But you know? That’s not such a problem.
I had lunch in the dining room, new-england style clam chowder (as is Friday tradition) and a slice of pizza that was really, really good. For supper I tried the take-out option. I ordered their burger, to go. I only had to wait a few minutes and they brought out a take-out box with my burger and fries. It was a decent burger and good fries.
The reason I took take-out is that I haver registered for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I’ve wanted to do this for many years, but it was only held in Stamford, CT at a time that usually conflicted with the end of basketball season. This year it’s virtual. Today was the intro, from 5-8pm. It was a lot of history and chit-chat but I didn’t want to miss it; so, take-out.
After aerobics, I opted not to eat breakfast in the dining room, and also flouted their request to call to let them know I wasn’t coming. I don’t think they notice or care if someone doesn’t show. Instead I went out for a moderate walk, mainly to go to CVS to pick up some Famotidine (generic Prilosec).
Parenthesis: Years ago I was prescribed Ranitidine, basically the same thing, and it was wonderfully effective. I was getting heartburn almost every night and diagnosed with GERD. One pill with my evening pills and the heartburn vanished. Forget my evening pills, and invariably I will wake up around midnight with heartburn. Then, a couple of years ago, Ranitidine was withdrawn because of some unlikely problem and I was switched to Famotidine. Fine, but at the time I had three bottles of Ranitidine. So I kept using them. Until they finally ran out this week, and I had none when I reloaded my pill cases. So last night I wake up with heartburn, and today make an urgent run — well, walk — to CVS.
My route took me past the front of the Apple store, and there was Baranduin Briggs in an Apple shirt. She is a big SWBB fan. We worked with her for several years because she is a superb photographer. Her action shots of basketball players were featured on our fan website. Anyway, today she spotted me and told me about how she had gone to San Antonio to see the recent final four games. The NCAA would only allow a pocket camera in the arena, but she still managed to get some pictures.
Including this one, of the final shot in the championship game. Stanford is up by 1, Ari McDonald of Arizona has launched a final shot, the buzzer has sounded, the ball is in the air:
If the ball had gone in, Arizona would have been national champs. It bounced off the back iron, and Stanford was national champion!
I had lunch and dinner in the dining room. The food continues good. Tonight was a choice between mussels and chicken. I took the chicken. It was good. My table-mates took the mussels and were rapturous. “Best food I’ve ever had here,” said one.
But in mid-afternoon Rhonda dropped a bombshell: in an email she announced that Josh Aranda, who was hired in February as Director of Dining Services, was no longer an employee of Channing House, as of two days ago. Whoa! The guy who supervised the transition from Sodexo to our own setup, is out? And not with “best wishes for future success” or anything nice. Just “no longer an employee”. What happened? We’ll never know, of course. But wow.
I spent 90 minutes at FOPAL pricing and shelving a couple boxes of books. Found one that should bring $95 on Amazon.
I took a nap about 5, and woke up with… a nosebleed. Absolutely no cause, just a little dribble of blood. (yes, I checked my BP, 135) But that’s a problem because of the Plavix. I clearly remember a few months ago when a nosebleed wouldn’t stop, and I finally went to Urgent Care, where a ham-handed ignoramus of a doctor shoved an extremely uncomfortable wad the size of a tampon up my nostril, which I finally took out myself in the middle of the night. Yeah, I remember that.
Following that experience I acquired some liquid styptic stuff, which I have used several times for small scratches. But this was what I got it for. Fold up a postage-stamp size piece of toilet paper, saturate it with styptic juice, slide it up my nose. It worked! I could even breath around it. I refreshed it after supper. It should be good for the night and I expect things will be ok in the morning.
Today was the day when the new food service system began. I went down at 7:30 for the grand opening. The dining room had been somewhat remodeled. Mainly the large cafeteria serving area in the center was gone, replaced by a lounging area with chairs, couches and low tables, plus a cart with coffee urns and pastries.
The areas that formerly had tables had been rearranged, mostly to use smaller tables. Formerly there were some 6-tops and I don’t think any of those remain. It was all hands on deck for staff; administrative people were acting as hosts and directing us to tables, while people I recognize from the facilities staff are working as servers along with the former sodexo people.
My breakfast was the featured french toast with berry compote. For lunch I had clam linguine, which is a dish that I used to make back in the day. In fact, I made it better. I filed a feedback form saying it was too dry, needed more sauce. For supper I had braised short ribs, which were pretty good and plated very prettily on a bed of broccolini.
I must note that about 8pm I had a bit of diarrhea. I hope that wasn’t directly caused by the food…
Also during this excitement I did my laundry and worked on the model car. About four I drove out to Stanford shopping center to return a pair of jeans. I had ordered them online and when they came, I immediately disliked them. Turns out you can return at a Levi’s store, and there’s one in the shopping center very hand. So now I have a $45 credit in my paypal account.
Just after aerobics and showering and dressing it was time for the monthly concert and lecture by Stephanie and Paolo. They ran a little long and I had to bail from that to see the Apple Event. (Actually neither of those were zoom, the pianists on YT and Apple streaming from Apple.com.) Anyway Apple had a lot of new things I don’t really care about. Except for the redesigned iMac which is beautiful, but I can’t really justify replacing my 5-year-old one. That nearly ran over and I bailed to join the writers group at 11, which ran to 12:30.
Right after lunch I went to FOPAL and found only one box of computer books. Apparently the sorting process has been held up for lack of volunteers. However one book among the donations is on Amazon, used, at several hundred dollars. I’ve no idea why; it was just a technical manual for an obsolete system. But that’s a fun discovery. I usually find half a dozen “high value” books, meaning over $25, each time, but this was a record.
Back home I futzed around, among other things watching videos on how to use Affinity Photo filters. From that I was able to achieve my goal of getting the VW Golf GTI upholstery pattern cleaned up and scaled down. Check this:
This is a proof sheet, where I printed out three versions of the pattern. First one is too big; second one needs more color and contrast. The one on the right is what I wanted. I can’t make a decal yet because my can of clear sealant is in transit. The ink jet decal paper process is, you print your art on it, then you seal it with sealant spray. Then you can cut the art out, dip it in water, and slide art off the backing onto the object. In this case, imagine the tartan strip, wet and flexible, slid onto the little seat next to it, and carefully pressed into the creases. If I can do it without totally breaking it into bits, it will look great.
Today was scheduled for me, Phil and Patty to drive to HMB for a walk and lunch, leaving at 10am. At 9am I remembered that returning from my scenic drive yesterday, I had noted the car was low on gas, and did nothing about it. So now I went out to gas the car, and was back in plenty of time.
Patty nor Phil is an energetic walker so we didn’t get anywhere near as far on this walk along the cliff top as I did with Dennis a few weeks ago.
For lunch Patty wanted Diana’s Fish Trap in Princeton by the Sea. I’d never been there. Been to Princeton to eat a couple of times, but not that restaurant. Which it turned out was serving and even had indoor tables. I had good fish and chips, but the serving was so large I brought half of it home and had it for supper, and didn’t finish that.
At 4pm there was a Zoom meeting of volunteers at FOPAL. They are planning resume their regular book sale weekends in August, probably.
Afternoon and evening I struggled with Affinity Photo. Some time back Adobe switched to a subscription model so you only rent their software, you don’t own it. At which point I gave up using Photoshop, which I had used for many years. Affinity Photo, I think I’ve mentioned before, has all the features of Photoshop and more besides, and they sell it for a quite reasonable one-time price.
Except whenever I try to do something with it moderately complicated, which I know I could do zip-zip with PS, I keep running into user interface issues with AP. Yelling things at the screen like, “Why won’t you do this?” and “Why did you do that?”.
What I wanted to do today was to make a pattern for the seat cover for the Golf. Pictures of restored ’78 Golf GTIs online show it came with a tartan insert in the seats, like this.
Note the golf ball gear shift. German humor.
The model only gives me boring black plastic seats. No problemo. I have water-slide decal paper for my inkjet printer. All I have to do is take the image above, isolate the best part of that tartan pattern on the passenger seat, rotate and distort it so it is nice and square, duplicate it a few times to make a strip about 4 times as long as it is wide, scale it to print at 1/2″ by 2″, print it on decal paper, cut it out, and slide the decal onto the seat. Which I could have done in P.S. in an hour? About. A.P. is fighting me all the way.
I read the paper had my coffee watered the plants did the crossword and it was just after 8am. OK, now what? I decided to take a scenic drive. I drove East over 237 and continued on Calaveras road, which winds into the hills and past a reservoir.
Back home by lunch time. Added a bit to the current model.
Red brake calipers, blue coil-overs
In the afternoon it was the SWBB annual honors dinner, only it was a Zoom webinar. Which was fine. Years past, and probably this time next year, this event is a real dress-up dinner at the Stanford Faculty Club. Barring funerals, my only excuse to wear a tie. But fun because you get to ogle the players wearing their best prom or party dresses. (And let me tell you, a 6-3 athlete in 3-inch heels and a red cocktail dress… is an eyeful.)
But this was just a webinar although they had arranged for a lot of team alumnae from years past. I remembered seeing most of them play, back into the late 90s. Tara said they were lining up a tough schedule for next year, with a visit to South Carolina (who they just beat in the national semifinal; “they’ll be circling that on their calendar I bet,” Tara said), Tennessee, Gonzaga, and starting with a tournament in Hawaii.
We’ve been to games in all those places except S.Carolina. Been to two of the season-opening tournaments in Hawaii, but I’d go again. Been to games at Tennessee at least twice, I think three times. We attended one game at Gonzaga itself, and we have been to Spokane at least three times for NCAA Regionals as well. So, if travel is not impossible next fall, I’ll attend some or all of those.
The upcoming team is going to be a powerhouse. Their leader, Kiana, has opted to play professionally; she’ll be with the Seattle Storm. (I wonder, is the Key Arena back in operation yet from its remodel?)
However, due to Covid, the NCAA has said that players do not have to count this year against their elegibility. So our two other seniors have the option of staying for a fifth year. And why wouldn’t they? Get a good start on your Masters degree, basically for free? Plus there are four quite promising freshmen joining the team. So this team could Go. All. The. Way. Again. It might be fun to say I saw every game of a championship season…
Codgerville 