Did the aerobics class. Then exchanged emails with Marcia, about two different projects. One is the request from Rhonda to rethink how the 11th floor sitters program works, with emphasis on providing what licensing agencies and health departments would call a “monitored space”. The other is of course this elaborate mask project, to provide masks to those who can’t order them, and train people in better use.
I then went for a longish walk partly to think about those things. When I was back, at 11:30, Wanda came to the door. Housekeeping has a meeting today, could she do my room at 1pm? Well, shortly after, I said, as I get my lunch about five minutes to 1. The irony is that I had booked myself to be an 11th floor sitter at 4pm, figuring that would be the time she would be in my apartment. Now I went and sat on the 11th floor from 1:30 to 2:30 anyway, against the rules (there was no sitter). And went back again at 4pm for my shift. I responded to Rhonda’s email, negatively, but with an alternate suggestion.
Marcia sent out her write-up on our meeting last night with people who like to cook. She made it into a nice proposal. We exchanged more email on how to do it, and then she sent the final version to The Powers That Be.
It feels as if I spent the day doing lots of things, but now I can’t remember them. More likely I spent large parts of the day thinking about what I needed to do, or should be doing, but not actually doing.
Watched Battlebots, my current guilty pleasure (since Naked and Afraid has gone away).
Today was the day I and Marcia presented our mask proposals to the RA exec. committee. They were well-received. This is turning into a thing, a lot more on Marcia’s shoulders than mine. She intends a display space, a card table with a couple of easels, to be manned in the lobby after Rhonda’s meeting Friday, and again on every Monday when there is COVID testing in the auditorium and people are passing through between 8:30 and 10.
I’ve got to finalize the sale end of it, the order form I drafted. She points out we don’t have to panic, we can take orders for a few days and then panic, depending on how many we get.
At 7pm Marcia hosted a Zoom call with a group of five people (plus me), people who have used the kitchens in the past and would like to cook again. It was an hour of brain-storming on how to safely open the kitchens on each floor, which then turned into general discussion on restrictions, and on the 11th floor access, etc.
Lots of work and thinking to do about this. Going to bed.
Did the aerobics class in the morning. After which I went for a medium walk, ending with a stop at CVS to pick up prescriptions.
Conferred with Marcia a couple of times about masks and the new rules for the 11th floor. Our “safety sitter” program continues, but with the new County shelter in place rules, it can’t be used for meetings of people from different households (apartment numbers). Only solo activities like reading are allowed. So later in the day I put up some signage to reflect that, and emailed all the scheduled sitters for the week about the change.
Rhonda asked us to figure out a way to open the communal kitchen on each floor. A surprising (to me) number of people like to cook. How to do this while complying with the rules? Marcia took on the job of scheduling a zoom among people she knows do cooking.
On my way out for a second walk (3.9 for the day) I talked to James Alvarado, the manager of the front desk crew, and he has no problem with the desk handing out free masks if the RA supplies them. So I ordered some more masks, even though Marcia had already ordered 100.
I forgot today was the day for the 6th floor meeting at 5pm, and I napped my way right through it. Embarrassing.
Went the jogging route at 8am, actually jogging in alternate sections, probably jogged 1/3 of the route.
Back home, during the day, I resurrected some how-to-wear-a-mask posters I made a few months back, and also found some new ones. There’s a person on Instagram who does really beautiful renditions of famous paintings with blue surgical masks added. Here’s one,
Paid a couple of bills. Exchanged a few emails regarding the executive committee meeting on Wednesday.
But mostly I just sat around like a lump consuming media, and now in the evening feel very dissatisfied with myself. Tomorrow we go back to going out twice during the day.
After breakfast and watering the plants and doing the crossword, I went for a simple walk: to the Palo Alto cafe at Midtown. I bought an almond croissant to go, and ate it sitting outside, well away from the few other customers.
On return I got a call from Marcia and we talked about the masks issue. This was raised at the open meeting: some people don’t have the means to buy masks online, while others need masks with something other than the little elastic loops, to be compatible with hearing aids or just to relieve painful stress on the ears.
Yesterday I had suggested to the president of the RA, that the RA stock and sell masks similar to how we stock and supply computer paper and ink for the 10th floor computer center. Tom liked it and said we could talk about it at the executive committee meeting Wednesday. Now Marcia and I worked out more details. Per the current plan, we will keep the front desk stocked with simple paper surgical masks. Anybody who needs one mask, can just ask for it there.
We will also have packets of 20 masks, mask extender straps, cloth masks, and a couple other things, for sale. I spent the afternoon making a mask order form. Marcia spent it going to Michael’s hobbies and buying three foam wig heads to display masks on. We plan a static display in the lobby, with a pile of the order forms. We need to recruit a couple of volunteers to manage order fulfillment.
I also need to reproduce some of the funny mask wearing signs I did a few months ago.
At 9am I and my neighbor Patty got in my car — we are still allowed to ride 2 people in a car, the passenger in the back seat, all masked, ventilation — and drove down to the Baylands were there were two, yes two, parking spaces. So hooray for an early start. Walked a while (2 miles in all) and back.
Following lunch it was time to maybe watch a Stanford Women’s Basketball game. Maybe, because they are improvising their schedule. The team has relocated itself to UNLV in Las Vegas, where the newly-hired head coach is Lindy LaRocque, former Stanford player and for a couple of recent years, assistant coach at Stanford. The team moved out out of state to avoid the shelter-in-place pandemic rules that forbid all play and practice of contact sports. I personally think they are taking a big risk by exposing the members of team and staff to possible contagion. (It’s all fun and games until Tara Vanderveer comes down with COVID.)
Today Stanford played UNLV and in theory the game video would be shown on the Mountain West TV network. Except the link given in the schedule didn’t work, it gave a lame error message about being able to find something. I made myself a hero to a small group of fans by getting into the Mountain West website and burrowing around until I found the stupid telecast, on a completely different URL from the one given. Sent that out to the CHBB and some individuals and we all saw the game losing only a couple of minutes.
Supposedly Stanford will play UW tomorrow, at the same home arena; but there is no video stream promised in the schedule. I think it will likely turn up on the PAC-12 networks, although the schedules for those channels don’t say anything about it today.
Anyway that was about it for the day. I did a little work on the car model, including using a teeny hand-drill to hollow out the end of the exhaust tailpipe, so it can have a realistic hole.
Walked the jogging route. Jogged about one block, to pass someone who was a teeny bit slower than me.
Then I worked on the “no-gathering pledge”, changing the text to be more inclusive and general. The idea, broached by Rhonda a couple of weeks back, is for residents to take a similar no-gathering pledge to what the staff took. I had posted a survey form a couple of days ago, received positive feedback, so need to get the text right, and get with Marcia to talk about her idea to display people’s signed pledges.
At ten, talked to her on the phone. There are in fact three issues we need management input on, so she will set up a meeting with Kim Kurtis the HR for, it turns out, 1:30.
At that time we met in the lobby, me with my freshly printed pledge text and she with some simple candle shapes made of craft paper. Her idea at that point was to distribute the pledge printed on a candle, to all 200 mail cubbies, collect the signed ones, and arrange them artistically around one or more of the big columns in the lobby. This is all moot now.
We went over our items with Kim. Re the pledges: Rhonda herself has prepared a pledge form and will be presenting it at her open meeting this afternoon. I left her a copy of my text to use as input if anyone wants, but that basically squashes Marcia’s idea and my text.
Second, one of our most active meal delivery volunteers asked, what about meal delivery Christmas day, volunteers or staff? Kim took it as an item to check with food service staff, but almost certainly they will want to do the deliveries, as they did at Thanksgiving. Christmas will be like Thanksgiving, normal breakfast, special menu for lunch, and a brown-bag supper so staff can leave early. Possibly they will agree to let volunteers deliver the brown bags around 3pm, letting staff go earlier.
Third, the 11th floor. We had a report that multiple people were using it when no Safety Sitters were there, which is a big no-no. But we get really few safety sitter volunteers. I referred to my experience of yesterday (which I didn’t mention): when I got back from a 2pm walk, the housekeeper was still working on my room, and wasn’t done until nearly 4pm.
Recently the common spaces on all floors (lounge, dining room) have been closed off for COVID reasons. So I had nowhere to sit and wait for the housekeeper. I ended up spending 45 minutes on a tiny sofa facing the elevators. During which it occurred to me, if I had volunteered to sit the 11th floor during this time, I’d have had a comfortable place to sit and read and done some good as well.
Kim liked this, passed it to Rhonda, and at the start of the 4pm open meeting, I was called on to explain this idea. Which I did. Got a couple of friendly questions from the 150 or so attendees.
Then Rhonda took over with bad news, starting with staffing:
As of today, we have 7 staff members who are Covid-positive. And, zero residents. Most of our staff members are symptomatic. One had a visit to the Emergency Room. All are currently recovering.
In addition to the staff members who are Covid-positive, we have an additional 17 staff members who are out due to known exposure, travel, or gatherings. So, 24 employees currently are unable to report to work. This represents approximately 15% of our workforce. Each day we seem to be adding to this total.
As a result they have gone to their “emergency staffing plan” which means, among other things, all facilities requests are deferred to February, and housekeeping is back to a bi-weekly schedule.
Then she got to the really bad news,
One of the things that makes the near future feel so grim is the communication that we have received in a number of formats this week from the California Department of Health and other … organizations. The message is that we need to be prepared for a surge. And, we need to be prepared for the hospitals denying our transfers when demand exceeds capacity.
In addition, we have been advised that the resources for Emergency Staffing through the State and County Emergency Operations Centers have already been depleted… In the conference call with California Department of Public Health earlier this week, they stated that they are working on an arrangement to bring nurses from Australia to provide emergency support.
In order to prepare for additional surge, and assuming that our ability to transfer to the hospital is limited, we are adding 6 beds to the Covid Wing. Bringing the total there to 16. That work has begun. This is a priority and we are diverting all available resources to completing this as soon as possible.
Get that? We are upping our in-house COVID wing (present population zero), anticipating that if we do get any cases, we will have to nurse them here; we won’t be able to transfer them to Stanford, or El Camino, Sequoia, or any other local facility, and won’t be able to get added nurses from the County or the State. Channing House is on its own — if it gets any resident cases. So far we have none.
Rhonda went on at length about how the battle to keep our staff un-infected cannot be done just by staff, it requires the whole community to limit social interactions. On that basis, she has a letter with a no-gatherings pledge that will be distributed on Monday. The idea is, having a pledge on CH letterhead may help when dealing with family members who want to know why we can’t join them this year. (I forgot to mention: Kim Kurtis has two grown sons who, she said, are both mask deniers.)
During the usual lengthy Q&A session, the issue of masks came up. Where do people get more masks? Can we have training on how to buy masks online, because buying things online is foreign to some residents? This one got tossed to Marcia and me. I quickly found that masks cost just over a dime each bought in quantity on Amazon. Later in the evening I realized the best mechanism might be the Resident Association. We could stock masks and re-sell them at cost, or at slightly above costs. I will take this up with President Fiene soon.
In MG TC news, I completed the spark plug wiring as well as a few other things.
In the background, the exhaust manifold painted a nice gray-rust color. However, TRAGEDY, one of the two little black hold-down knobs has disappeared from the top of the rocker cover. I have no idea where this little black button less than 1/8 inch diameter could have gone. I may have to sculpt another one from a black plastic sprue.
Update: I failed to mention that in the middle of the day on this day, came another of those emails,
This is to notify you that we have two additional staff members who have tested positive for Covid-19. Anyone who has been identified as having had close or general contact with these individuals has been notified. …This brings our total Covid-positive staff members to 7. We currently have no Covid-positive residents.
Also, another item I forgot for the year-end wrap-up post: the little patch of psoriasis that has decorated my right hand for most of this century, finally disappeared. Just went away, replaced by normal looking skin. This is only “anecdata” but… it began to improve when I began dosing it with Bag Balm. Years of dabbing on steroid cream did nothing. Two months of Bag Balm, and it was fading out.
Wednesday 12/02/2020
I received a couple of nice birthday emails, which I appreciated. I have never paid much attention to my birthday as a marker, milestone, or celebration. And especially not since 2 December 2018 was the morning that Marian died and dropped me into… whatever this life has become. I didn’t choose it; the event chose itself as “Day 1” of my “transition to codger-dom”, and that has been its meaning for me in the two years since. Maybe after a few more years, assuming I have them, I’ll want to pay more attention to the annual change of my nominal age number. Today I’m officially 78. Meh. Talk to me when I’m officially 80, or 90.
After walking (only) the jogging route I settled down to doing stuff. Paid a bill. Dealt with some emails to Marcia about volunteers. Swept the dead flowers off the balcony and cleaned out a stack of recycle stuff. And the big project, annual charitable donations.
Last year I discovered Charity Navigator, a site that keeps track of almost every charity, with detailed info on their effectiveness. Using Charity Navigator I had set up a list of a couple of dozen charities that I wanted to support, and was able to donate to all of them in one operation, with a nice printout I can use with my income tax. I spent an hour going over the list from last year and donating, more to some, the same to others. And there; my giving is done. Well not quite, there are a couple that I do separately, like the Insight Meditation Center, the Internet Archive, and Wikipedia. But mostly done.
Between everything else and a well-placed nap, there was no time to work on the model. For entertainment I listened to a live stream from Club Fox, a concert by GG Amos, a blues guitarist from San Francisco.
Started to do Veronica’s aerobics but it was just a recording so I gave myself a pass. Which is stupid but somehow it feels fake to be following the directions of a recording. Went for a walk instead. Between that longer walk and a shorter one in the evening, I topped 4 miles for the day.
Worked on the model car, and solved the spark plug wire issue. I held each of the four plugs in the tip of a pair of hemostats and used sandpaper to reduce the tip of the little black “L” shape. Then I used a large sewing needle to stretch the tip of the tubing (yes it is that small) and worked the stretched tip onto the sparkplug. So now I have four spark plugs with wires hanging from them. I will later glue them in place and run the wires to the distributor. I have to look into where the coil sits and run a wire from the distributor to the coil.
Nothing much else for the day. So, let me take a minute to look back on the preceding 365 days.
In January, I was still doing volunteer work at CHM 2-3 days a week, and FOPAL another 2. On February 1, I moved from my temporary unit #435 back to my refurbished permanent home #621. A week later I bought the large painting, Leap #2, which hangs in the hall outside my unit now.
A week after that I headed out for ten days in London, a trip that I planned, booked, and executed myself, and which went very well indeed.
Those events seem much more than a year ago to me now! A couple of weeks after I got back from London, the first of the pandemic restrictions clamped down. The volunteer activities ended, giving me four days of the week to fill. Socialization ended with the closure of the dining room. And there really isn’t much to say about the rest of the year! Well, in late September I had my aortic dissection, from which I have pretty well recovered. That’s about it.
Looking ahead, I expect sometime in January or February they will administer vaccine to us elders, and after everyone in the building has received both shots, some of the restrictions will be lifted. I’ll feel empowered to resume volunteer work outside. We’ll start eating in the dining room again. and so on.
In the meantime, the pandemic continues, and likely worsens over the next months, as the post-Thanksgiving spike is over-topped by a post-Christmas spike.
Wearing sneakers with street clothes because it was 41ºF I headed out at 8am and jogged 2/3 of my route. I could have jogged more, I think, but didn’t. So anyway.
At 10am I met with Marcia to discuss two issues. One, we’ve had some mixups in the meal delivery and we need to clarify some things to the volunteers. She took that on. Two, what about a resident’s no-gathering pledge for the holidays. I took that on, and realized what we needed was a poll. Quickly worked out you can do a poll using Google Docs. Set that up and sent the email with link to Marcia for comment.
At three I met in the lobby with my neighbor Eva, about her Mac. It’s a 2012 Macbook Pro and it is just dog slow. Almost anything you do turns on the “spinning beachball” cursor. I immediately assumed it was a problem with the hard drive, but when I ran “Disk First Aid” the disk utility didn’t report any issues, which was a surprise.
She has many GB of photos and no real backup, so I encouraged her in the idea of buying a new machine. I walked her through store.apple.com for buying what I recommended, the new Air, but she prefers to have another MacBook Pro, so we walked through the buying choices for that. Over to her to execute.
Did some work on the MG model. I have gotten to the point in assembling the motor, that it is time to worry about spark plug wires. This is a 1/16 kit, so the engine is big enough to make that realistic, where it isn’t really in the usual 1/24-scale kit.
The kit supplies four tiny spark plugs (actually, black L-shaped pieces which kinda sorta look like the right-angle rubber boots that I see in photos of real MG engines) and a tiny distributor with four poky little nubs. And a piece of a very fine (maybe 0.5mm?) plastic tubing. I think the idea is to slip the tubing over the nubs, but it is too small. Except maybe I can stretch it with some kind of very fine, pointy tool.
By the way, that picture shows a major mistake. The rocker cover is on backwards. The big shiny oil filler cap should be at the rear of the engine, not the front. Unfortunately I did such a good job of cementing it in place that I can’t now pop it off and reverse it. Yes, I tried, several times.
Codgerville 