Went for the usual walk (although for some reason the iPhone chose to call it 2.4 miles instead of the usual readout of 3.1 for the exact same route). Jogged two stretches of it, which felt fine.
Joined Margaret at the coffee hour at 9:30 and spent an hour consulting again on how she can arrange the illustrations for her pelvis talk (see 2.109). I had been directing her to use Pages, but she hates Pages and just doesn’t have a feel for arranging text and images in a word processor. Then she mentioned Keynote and I realized I’d been directing her completely wrongly. She wanted to make a series of slides not a document. Switched to using Keynote and things went better.
Spent time working out how to convert the open spray booth to a closed one. This is going to need sewing skills which I don’t have. Anyway I marked off two pieces of plastic. Took them to the small hobby shop on the 5th floor to find a box cutter, and cut them out. Next I need to attach them, but how? Finally decide, epoxy. Walk to Ace Hardware and buy some.
Got a call from Susan and Harry, would I like to come have a drink around 5pm? Sure. Do that. Tom and Nancy also there. Pleasant talk with nice people.
Dennis and I had arranged to meet at the Baylands parking at 7:30 am. I needed to leave by 7:10. So of course this morning I slept until 6:40. Well, time for coffee and to dress, and that was about it.
Had a pleasant walk seeing all the birbs hanging out doing nothing. I had thought I would bring the Nikon with the 500mm lens but at the last minute decided it was too clumsy to walk with the camera on a monopod (five-foot stick). And I didn’t see anything to make me regret that decision. The tide was out further than I’ve ever seen it, and there was nothing but mud as far as you could see.
Talked blood pressure, as both of us have an issue with it. I had to report that one week of Keto diet had not changed my BP at all. I am going to continue for the second week, although mainly because I canceled in-house meals for the coming week so whatever, I would have to feed myself. Might as well feed myself no-carb food. I will write up a report a week from now.
Back home I puttered around until noon when it was time for the Stanford Women to play their “sweet-sixteen” game against Missouri State. They had no trouble at all and won by nearly 30 points. Next up, Tuesday, is the “elite eight” game against a much stronger team, Georgia.
Felt low in the morning so was sedentary until lunchtime. Then I went out to a place I haven’t been in years, TAP Plastics. I have this notion about making my little model spray booth dustproof and that will need a piece of clear polycarbonate. So I went to TAP plastics with my dimensions, and they made it in ten minutes.
Stopped also at Safeway for some odds and ends, and Ace Hardware for some velcro. And that was about it, spent the rest of the afternoon reading and watching a couple of games of the NCAA Women’s tournament. Arizona did a terrific job to beat Texas A&M by ten points. Tomorrow it will be the turn of Stanford (at noon) and Oregon to try to advance.
First thing I went for my usual MWF walk, except this time, for the first time since October, I wore my sneakers. Not shorts, but the running shoes, and for two quarter-mile stretches of the walk, I jogged. And I felt fine. Better than I did on Monday or Wednesday as a matter of fact.
This might indicate my metabolism has shifted gears fully into ketosis. It definitely indicates that I’m adapting to a diet of Keto Chow shakes, with sides of protein-rich stuff like sausage, boiled eggs, roasted cashews, safeway chicken and canned tuna. Also peanut butter. Although when I googled “peanut butter keto diet” I was advised that most commercial PBs have a couple grams of added sugars (OMG carbs!) per serving. PB is compatible with a keto diet when it is only PB, and the “calories from carbohydrates” on the label are mostly “dietary fiber” and no “added sugars”.
Unfortunately my blood pressure, the factor this diet shift might, hopefully, address, hasn’t changed, at least not significantly. But I turned in next week’s menu with “no thanks” all over it, so I’m committed for another week at least.
I was back just in time to join Dr. Margaret on the 11th floor coffee serving. She is preparing to give a zoom talk on the pelvis (she gave another talk a few weeks back) and was having trouble working out how to collect clip art from the network and assemble it into a document. So we spent an hour doing that.
After lunch and a nap I decided to stroll the half-mile to Whole Foods and buy a jar of natural PB-that-consists-only-of-peanuts. That brought my mileage for the day to 4.2. And now I know why Skippy and Jif add those grams of sugar to their products. Because they taste a whole lot better that way.
At the weekly 4pm meeting, all the news was basically good: reduced restrictions on visitors, promises that in a few days the pool will open, and so on.
Today I had planned with sister-in-law Jean to go for a drive hoping to see wildflowers. It is California spring, the hills are green, flowers should be out.
Jean suggested I bring somebody from CH so I invited neighbor Patty, figuring she would get along with Jean. She and I drove to Mountain View and picked up Jean, and off we went down 101 past Gilroy to San Juan Bautista. We walked around the mission exterior. The church and mission garden were closed.
We walked around SJ Bautista’s tiny down-town. A couple of its restaurants were actually doing ok, selling sandwiches to go.
From there we debated whether to go west toward the coast, or east toward Hollister and drive some of state route 25. The latter was the choice so we did that, going south on 25 almost to the entrance to Pinnacles National Monument. Stopped at a county historical park to eat our sandwiches, and the drove home, arriving back at CH at nearly 3pm.
I did not set a trip odometer but it was probably close to 200 miles for the day, certainly the longest I’ve driven in two years. And it generally felt fine. I can still drive; my passengers agreed I was driving safely.
Only thing was, while there was lots of green grass on the hills, the only flowers were mustard plants, which grow as a weed in cultivated fields. A couple of patches of California Poppies, probably planted by the highway department. But there was nice mountain scenery.
Went for the walk and did not feel any need to curtail it, as I had on Monday. This day was also notable because for the first time since October, I went out at 8:30am without a jacket, and didn’t feel chilly.
On return I had two tech emails waiting. Helene is having a problem with her Alexa Clock, and Maggie wants some help managing clip art. Maggie I put off until Friday. I went up to Helene’s place — we can enter other people’s apartments now — and fiddled with her Alexa alarm clock. It’s a pretty thing, a truncated sphere about the size of a softball. She showed how she ought to be able to tell it, “Echo,” (she chose to call it Echo not Alexa) “Set an alarm for 6:30 am.” It mulls for a second and then says “I’m having trouble connecting, but I’ll keep trying.” Why?
I didn’t even know how to get to settings, but Helene remembered something about “swipe down” and in fact that did reveal some icons, one being a gear, the universal symbol for settings these days. I looked at all the settings under it and the one for Network showed it was “connected” to the proper wi-fi with “excellent” signal strength. So what’s the problem? I told it again to set an alarm for 6:30 and it did that with no fuss. Apparently my magic fingers had fixed it, or soothed it, or something. Case closed.
That was about it for practical activity. Well, I did my bi-weekly laundry. And since I plan to be out all day tomorow, I did a bit of tidying in advance of Wanda’s visit tomorrow afternoon.
Discovered yet another, this is the third, series on Amazon Prime about living in a narrowboat on the English canal system. So that’s nice.
First thing this morning, almost immediately after the aerobics class, was a monthly lecture and concert by Stephanie Trick. Neat music.
At 11 it was time for the writers group. This was an easy one, the cue being, write about 3/16/2020, the day we started officially sheltering in place. I just read from my blog entry for that day. I left a bit early because I needed to meet with Marcia. There were some questions about future volunteer activities and we needed to work out how to say politely to all concerned, we didn’t want to do that any more. That took a while.
Then I went to FOPAL where it almost always takes me 90 minutes to “do” the computer section, surveying all the books that have come in from last time, pricing and shelving the keepers.
At 6pm it was time for Stanford to take on Oklahoma State in the second round of the NCAAs. OK State although an #8 seed, was a challenge, and the first quarter ended in a tie. Then Stanford broke it open to a 20-point lead, and ended the game up 12. So on to the “Sweet 16” round, which will be on Saturday I think.
I cut the morning walk short, 2 miles instead of 3, because I felt a little less than 100%. Felt fine later in the day. Finished fiddling with the RA Treasury spreadsheet, and set up its folder of documents and backed that up to the new thumb drive.
Fiddling with this I completely forgot that there was a Zoom meeting of FOPAL volunteers at 10am. So another meeting blown off. I felt like a right stoop.
In the afternoon I drove to the big Safeway in Menlo Park and bought a few things to supplement the protein of the Keto Chow shakes, including a whole roasted chicken. A piece of that added satiety to my evening shake.
I was just taking a first sip from my morning cup when my phone rang, which it hardly ever does. It was Dennis, proposing a walk on the coast at Half Moon Bay. OK, why not. So he came by at 8 and we did that, walking along the cliff top.
This was the first day of eating only keto food, mainly three shakes. There are several things at play here. One is the freedom from the fixed meal schedule. No longer do I have to be sure to be home around 12:45 or 5:45 when the cart comes around. That’s nice. When I’m hungry, I eat, otherwise not. The shakes, although tasty enough and with a variety of flavors to choose from, do not behave the same as meals. This was already true, from my experience with them as my regular breakfast. I forget to drink the shake; then later feel hungry and go back for a few more swallows; and forget it again. I also had snacks of cheese and salami. Keto is fun. All the protein and fat you want. My complete lack of any means of cooking (and I’m not complaining about that) means I have to stock only pre-cooked stuff, but I had the brilliant idea that tomorrow or Tuesday I will buy a whole cooked chicken at Safeway, and have that to nosh on.
Stanford kicked off the NCAA tournament in good style, pretty much overwhelming the 16-seed Utah Valley U. Who? It is a large University in Orem. Stanford ran out a 16-1 opening and ended up 40. Next game on Tuesday.
Had a bit of a walk with a stop for a hazelnut chocolate swirl at the farmers market. The last one for a while, as such a big gob of carbs does not work with a keto diet. Nor a little gob, for that matter. Later in the morning I mixed up 6 shakes, two day’s meals. And moved all the non-keto food items I have into the small closet by the kitchen counter.
I spent an hour going through a mess of receipts and the RA checkbook. The spreadsheet that I inherited turned out when I really looked at it, to be over-complicated, and only one sheet out of four had been maintained. So I made up my own RA Cash Journal Numbers file with sheets for 2020 and 2021. Then I sorted out all the documents for years before 2020, and 2020, and 2021. Got the 2020 sheet complete and organized and my goodness it almost matches the balance from the 12/31/2020 bank statement. Close enough. Tomorrow or Monday I’ll do the 2021 sheet.
I think I mentioned that the motivation to do this came in the middle of the night, several nights ago. Then I worked out how to do it and rather than just forget it, I got up in the dark and found a pad and pen and wrote down notes on what I thought should be done. Then I could go back to sleep.
Part of the midnight mulling was, how to hand stuff on to the next Treasurer, more suitably and more neatly than stuff was handed to me. I worked out that I wanted to have all relevant docs in a folder, and copy that to a thumb drive periodically. So I have ordered a nice new SanDisk 32GB USB drive (all of $5). Also in the night I realized, what if the next treasurer has a new mac with USB-C ports? So I also ordered USB-3 to USB-C adapters, two of which cost more than 32GB of storage. O.M.G. I am picturing screwing a disk pack the size of a wedding cake into a 2314 drive.
What I looked like in 1967, loading a whopping 29 MEGAbytes of data
32 GIGAbytes is the smallest cheapest USB drive you can get. Sigh.
Anyway, Scott got me curious about how hard it would be to match the Ford “Dark Rose” color of a 1957 T-bird in available model paints. Turns out, not that hard. I believe this one, with some added white to lighten it, would do. It only took an hour of clicking and browsing to find that. Does this commit me to work on the 57 T-bird kit next? No, it does not. I will have four kits to choose among and haven’t made up my mind yet. Also I have some ideas about how to improve my miniature spray booth first.
So on my morning walk my eye was caught by some just about to open magnolia buds. Just begging to be photographed.
Codgerville 