Friday 03/19/2021

Went for the usual walk in the morning. Later sat down to do something I thought up in the middle of the night two days ago. Thinking about being treasurer of the Residents Association and realizing I wasn’t keeping good records, more like a manila folder of unsorted documents. I should set up some kind of spreadsheet as a cash journal, and also regularly save it to an external thumb drive that could be handed on to the next treasurer.

Sat down to implement this, and realized it was a bigger job than I’d thought. Then also realized I had been given a spreadsheet by the prior treasurer. I’d given it a cursor look a year ago and then forgot about it. Looking at it now I see that it is pretty much the cash journal I’d been imagining. But I need to bring it up to date from my shamefully scattered records. Fortunately there is maybe two dozen transactions over the past year.

After fiddling with that for a while I set it aside in piles on my desk, where the MG model was spread out last week. It will probably be as long a job as the MG was. Well, hopefully not. Especially hopefully not as tonight I ordered two more 1/16-scale models: a 57 T-bird, and a 78 VW Golf. (What? Why a Golf? Because a 77 Golf was what Marian and I drove while we lived in England.) So I have all told four model kits stacked up in my closet: those big ones, and in the standard 1/25-scale, a 55 Chrysler and a 56 Dodge. No good reason for those.

Dinner was pizza shared among four of us. Gwen ordered from The Midwife And The Baker, an artisanal bakery whose stuff I have bought from the California Ave. farmers market. They do pizzas in their bread ovens on Fridays only. I and Patty drove down to pick up the pizzas up. Phil made up the foursome. Phil’s wife Ruth was just persuaded to move to Assisted Living, a bit stressful for both her and him.

The pizza was good, but in fact in future I’d prefer ordering from the New York Pizza house a few blocks away.

Thursday 03/18/2021

Did the aerobics and then set myself to tidy the apartment. I had a week’s worth of recycling and trash collected in my little recycling-and-trash corner, which I toted down the hall to where the recycle bins were already pretty full. And as usual picked up a few out-of-place things, and closed all the closet doors and so forth, in general cleaning the house before the housecleaner comes, as one does.

I also came to a decision. My blood pressure has been sitting 10-15 points higher than it should be, and higher than it was a month ago. And I’ve been using a Keto (low carb) shake for my breakfasts for a while, and like it and its range of flavors. I know the Keto fanatics make all kinds of claims about reversing Type II diabetes and so on. So I wondered, suppose I went 100% for a couple of weeks, long enough to get into ketosis for a week, and see if the BP turns down in that time.

The complication here is that we turn in a marked-up menu with our food choices for the week, Sunday through Saturday, and my menu for next week is due today. So I have to decide, am I going to do this? If so, I have to mark the menu “no meals this week” right now. OK, going to do it. Marked up the menu “no thanks” for the next week. So that’ll be a new adventure, starting Sunday.

Next I went down to FOPAL and did an hour tidying the computer section. On return I had lunch, a short nap, and then it was time for Wanda to come in and clean, so I went to the 11th floor for an hour.

While there I figured out a constructive approach to a wee controversy that is brewing around here. Every floor has a spare room in the central core that can be used for some common purpose. It’s about 12 x 20, not huge, can be locked. On the 5th floor it’s a workshop for handcrafts, with a nice bench and lots of cabinets with donated tools and parts. On the 8th (I think) it’s a sewing room.

And on the 10th, it is a computer room, with two Macs, two PCs, 2 or 3 printers, all for the use of people who don’t have adequate computer resource in their own rooms. The computer room is managed and maintained by Bert, and last week Bert started an email chain saying, the room was getting less and less use because people moving in are more computer savvy and have their own systems. He’d like to either shut it down, or scale it down and move it to a corner of some other room, like the Library or the 5th floor shop.

Lots of comments on this thread, many opposed to any change, but in general the whole issue is headed for the Residents Association who are ultimately the managers for all these common spaces — not the paid staff, who don’t have anything to do with them. I have not contributed anything to this email thread. Keeping a low posture so far.

So I was thinking about this and anticipating a long and circular and repetitive and boring discussion in the next RA executive committee meeting. How can we make this more interesting. And the idea of co-working spaces crossed my mind. Suppose instead of computer room which we really don’t much need, we had a real co-working space with copier, and a table to spread things out on, and stuff like a three-hole punch and a scanner &etc. Here I was thinking of the marketing stuff I’ve been reading, and how this could be a lovely very modern and trendy marketing asset to help sell Channing House to retiring Boomers.

So I put that out as my contribution to Bert’s long email thread. Probably the most constructive thing I’ve done all week.

Wednesday 03/17/2021

Nothing much of a day, really. Took the usual walk in the morning; it felt fine. Elsewhile I spent some time taking good photos of the MG model. Using the Nikon so I could control the aperture, set it to f/16 and get enough depth of field that both ends of the little car would be in focus at the same time. Which meant that the shutter speed was like a second and a half, so the camera had to be on the tripod to avoid motion blur.

Then take the Nikon raw file into Aperture (what I’m using instead of Photoshop because I will not pay Adobe a continuous subscription fee) and tweak it all nice. Might as well put a couple of those shots in here, nobody else will ever see them.

Sometimes while making this thing I would think “how fun it would be to own one of these”. Actually in my childhood, a friend of the family owned the next car in the series, the MG TF, actually prettier with the headlights faired into the fenders and slightly longer. I can remember being allowed to sit in it, but I don’t think I was ever given a ride.

Anyway, then I would think, uh-huh, noisy, hard-riding, no climate control except the wind through the gaps around the windows when the top is up… Nope. OK I just checked, clean restored MG TFs are selling between $25K and $35K.

That was about it in terms of doing anything productive. Read a little, napped a little…

Tuesday 03/16/2021

After aerobics I futzed around for an hour, among other things trying to shoot pictures of the MG model, all of which I trashed later. You would think…

For the writer’s group at 11, the cue was to write something about your name. Since I don’t have any strong feelings about my name in itself, I wrote about the guy who has been having a political career for the last 20 years under my name, almost: former San Jose City Councilman, former president of the Santa Clara County board of Supervisors, and currently State Senator for District 15, Dave Cortese. With a brief mention of Emilio Cortesi, who was the mayor of South San Francisco 1953-54, while Emilio Cortesi was living in Washington raising me.

Oh, the writing cue for next time? Write about what happened with you on 3/16/2020, the day Santa Clara County shut down. Hah, I will have no trouble with that, it was Day 1-105 appropriately titled, “Shit gettin’ real”.

Right after lunch I drove to FOPAL and worked on the computer section for 2 hours. Later in the day I got a call from someone who knew I lived across the hall from Florrie, saying she was in the hospital and did I know why? Well of course not. But later I heard voices in the hall and it was Florrie coming home. She’d had a fall in the afternoon, didn’t break anything but had some contusions.

Monday 03/15/2021

Took the standard walk which came to 3.2 miles about. The only thing I did the rest of the morning was to take a few pictures of the MG model, which I later threw away as not good enough. Then cleaned my desk, organizing and putting away all the modeling tools and equipment. A clear desktop, yay.

In the afternoon, I wrote a short thing for tomorrow’s writers’ group. I felt like I had to, because I’d blown them off the last two sessions. The cue was to write about your name. I didn’t want to do that, so instead I wrote about my nonexistent political career under the name of Dave Cortese, a well-known career politician in the San Jose area.

In the evening it was the NCAA selection show, announcing the brackets for the Final Four in San Antonio. Stanford is a #1 seed. They will have to beat either Georgia or Louisville (the CardinalS as in birds) to advance to the final four.

Sunday 03/14/2021

Up at 6 (allowing for DST of course) for coffee and the paper and a shower, and at 7:30 downstairs to wait for Dennis, who rolled up shortly and off we went for our Forest Walk. That is a supposedly restorative procedure which is really just “take a walk in the woods and appreciate it”.

Up to Huddart Park and off we went. Nice trails through dense patches of second-growth redwoods alongside a tiny creek. We did about 3 miles total, out and back. It was fun being in a damp woodsy woods. There were trilliums, which I remember growing in the ditches along the road to the old ranch.

So that was that. Back at CH I spent some time off and on through the day finishing up the MG model. It is 99.9% done. Here are a couple of quick pics of it.

The wheels turn and the front wheels steer. If you lift one edge of the bonnet and fold it back on its hinges, there is a fully detailed engine with spark plug wires. I need to go over it carefully, dust it off and get my fingerprints off it, touch up a couple of paint nicks, and that’s it, put the cover on the display box and set it with the other models.

This has been a frustrating build. Partly because of all the trouble I had learning how to use the air brush to get decent coverage. Partly because I kept spoiling the paint after it was on. That was due to the Tamiya clear being too soft, and also to my being a klutz and not thinking things through before doing them. Partly it was that many of the little pieces didn’t quite fit together as they were meant to do, and the instruction manual was not always clear, and … whine snivel complain. Never mind, I learned a lot from doing this model, lessons I can apply to the next model.

Saturday 03/13/2021

Quiet day, mostly in my room. Took a moderate walk in the morning, passing the farmers market for a pastry. The rest of the day alternated between working on the model (soon to be completed), reading, and napping.

Friday 03/12/2021

Started the day by going for the walk, which felt quite good. Any day now I am going to go out in shorts and try jogging sections of it again. (I haven’t since the Dissection at the end of September.)

Or maybe not. My BP has been annoyingly high, and trending up. Out of frustration I bought yet another BP monitor, this one a Welch-Allen semi-pro one rather than the Omron which is the usual consumer BP monitor. Nope, it reads the same as the old one within a couple of points. I will track it closely for another few days and then maybe talk to the doctor.

I worked a bit on the MG, assembling the windscreen and putting yet another coat of clear on the bonnet. The bonnet was looking great few days ago. Then while attaching the hinges and the side panels, somehow I applied some pressure and the clear coat took on the texture of the cutting board I was working on. After this model I won’t be using Tamiya paints, or at least, Tamiya clear. Even after a week of drying it is soft enough to take on fingerprints or other texture, which totally fucks it up so you can only sand it and respray it.

At Rhonda’s weekly 4pm meeting we learned of more eased restrictions. We can now be up to 4 in the elevator (up from 2, which was up from only 1 per car just a couple of weeks back). And the use of masks when meeting with other vaccinated people indoors is now optional.

Thursday 03/11/2021

Light day. Did the aerobics class. Drove to FOPAL and did 90 minutes tidying the computer section. If they ever have a live sale again, it will be ready. The way they are doing it now, people sign up online for an individual browse, where they meet with a volunteer and get to shop alone. Nice for some, but not a big revenue stream.

In the afternoon I did a bit on the model car, and read a book. Easy day.

Wednesday 03/10/2021

My right foot was feeling sore this morning, for no reason I can figure. So I passed on the usual walk. About 8:30 a facilities guy came around to shut off my bathroom water again. It was later turned on about 12. About 12, two facilities guys came around to do a visual inspection of my fire alarm and sprinklers, which took all of a minute.

Around 10 I went out to the UPS store and had the two-page amendment to the trust notarized. Brought it back and installed it in the book, after making a copy to install in the spare copy of the trust. So that and the taxes, two long-pending chores, are out of the way.

I spent another hour studying strategic planning for elder care marketing documents. What a lot of platitudes. Did you know a whole bunch of people born a few years after me are now reaching the age where they think about moving into an elder facility? True fact. As a result, the market experts say, there is an unprecedented boom in new construction of such facilities, so you have to watch out for all this competition coming your way. Uh, guys, have you seen what land and construction costs around this neck of the woods? Ain’t no bunch of new construction happening close to Channing House. Shit, the combined efforts of the state and the county can’t seem to get any more single family homes built, let alone any elder campuses.

From 12 to 3, did the laundry and worked on the incredibly fussy and mistake-prone MG TC model. I keep screwing things up and having to back out and re-do. I’ll spare the details.

At three one of my newest neighbors, Leon Beeler, gave a talk (zoom) on the history of Sunset Magazine, where he worked for 30 years, from the 70s through its demise at the hands of venture capitalists. And that was the news of the day.