Wednesday 07/16/2025

Took the standard walk in the AM. Did some reading. Edited another 2 chapters of Joyce’s book. It continues to be good, well-written and affecting. These chapters were about her entry into Catholicism and leading up to her entry into the Poor Clares. Her religious feelings are completely foreign to me, but I can appreciate the detail and sincerity with which she recounts them.

She talks about how, when she was ready to enter the monastery, Cecil came down to SF, and that “David loaded my two suitcases into a gold Cadillac borrowed from the Zone Office and Mother, David, Dennis and I drove to Aptos.” I do not remember this at all. You would think I would at least remember getting to drive a new gold Caddie a couple hundred miles, but no. I do remember driving down with John Snow to bring her back when she left the monastery. But that will be the next chapter, which I haven’t gotten to.

Did a little music practice in the afternoon. Then right after supper, met up with Joanne and we drove over to the Stanford campus for a concert, Ruth Davies’ Blues Night. It was pretty good, Chris Cain is a true virtuoso of the electric guitar and the rest of the band was top rank. It was a little too loud for me, and a lot too loud for Joanne. I had warned her to bring earplugs and she had meant to, but forgot. So she spent a lot of the evening with her fingers in her ears. But she said she liked the music anyway.

Tuesday 07/15/2025

First thing, out on foot to an 8am appointment to have my teeth scraped. The dental office was for decades on University, but this spring moved to a new office a whole block further away from me. Anyway, routine thing.

Back in time to tidy the apartment for the cleaning lady who comes at 12. Then started to put together a brief slide show explaining the vintage computer fest, for the FOPAL volunteer zoom coming up tomorrow. Then the writers meeting at 10:45 to 12. And right after, the cleaning lady ringing the doorbell.

After that, I spent some time on the phone with Dennis, and then time on the phone calling the Clipper Card customer service. (For anyone not in this area, the Clipper Card is the access card for all public transit, bus, train.) I had a regular one but Joanne had pointed out that with that, I pay 3x as much as I would if I had a Senior card. So I applied for a senior card and it finally came, but it doesn’t have any money on it; my $50 balance had not moved over. So I spent time on the phone with the nice lady who got that straightened out, hopefully.

Then I did my laundry, interrupting that process to attend the Car Free group meeting at 3pm. Then finished the laundry and had a little time before dinner. Then time to attend the monthly movie, this time it’s Broadcast News from 1987. Report on that tomorrow.

Monday 07/14/2025

Down to the Resident Association meeting. Sat beside Joanne, which was nice. Nothing of supreme note in the meeting. Then I took Fred down to FOPAL and did my post-sale cleanup and processed 3 boxes of donations. Kind of spectacular donation was two fat binders of the collected algorithms of the Association for Computing Machinery,

Dates? 1961-1972 inclusive. Page after page after page with descriptions of code routines, mostly in FORTRAN.

Yes, the Computer Museum has this, I just checked. Kind of thing I would just hate to throw out, but OTOH, who the F would buy it?

Back home, played a little guitar. Then made myself a nice supper in my room: microwaved two ears of corn, ate them both, along with hunks of sourdough bread.

Sunday 07/13/2025

After watering the plants, and discovering that the San Jose Mercury had reprinted last week’s NYT crossword (a major screwup), I decided to walk the mile to the Palo Alto Clay and Glass festival. This is an annual thing that I’ve usually gotten an email about beforehand, but not this year. I noticed the cluster of tents and marquees when starting for San Jose yesterday.

Anyway that was a nice walk and a tour around looking at all the pottery and blown glass craft stuff. Nothing worth buying or photographing.

After lunch it was time to join the carpool to the Pear theater, this time as a passenger not a driver. The play was Constellations. That linked Wiki article has a terse synopsis of the plot but doesn’t give the flavor. The idea is there is a multi-verse, where on different time lines the same people might make different choices, or not. There are at least three time-lines with scenes repeated almost but not quite word for word. It was complicated. Interesting, touching sometimes.

That was about it for the day. Quiet evening reading and TV.

Saturday 07/12/2025

In the morning I walked to the Saturday market, bought some apricots and bread. Spent a little time editing a couple more chapters of Joyce’s book. Practiced a little music. Had a pastry from the market for lunch.

At 2:30 I met with Joanne and we drove down to the Obon festival in San Jose. This is a big annual street fair in Japantown. Marian and I went to one probably 10 years ago and I remember it has having several cultural exhibits, flower arranging and such. This time not so much, it seemed to be all about food and drink, nothing else. Also crowded and hot. However we stuck it out to 4:30 when San Jose Taiko performed and that was good. Joanne had only a vague idea of Taiko drumming and was pleasantly impressed. So we made our way back home just in time for dinner.

Friday 07/11/2025

Started the day with a nice walk up to the Town and Country center with Joanne. Walking back, got a phone call from Dennis with some not-so-good health news.

Went to the line dance class, held for the last time on the 11th floor. At 1pm, went to the opening of our new Fitness Room on the second floor. This is the former Activity room, now expanded and remodeled into a big room for exercise. There is a wide variety of fitness classes, averaging 2 or 3 per day, most of which I do not attend. They have been held in various venues around the building but now will be concentrated here.

Spent the afternoon hours continuing to edit the chapters of my sister Joyce’s autobiography. I think I must not have read it when it was given to me, because reading it now, I am really impressed. This is a really good read. She has detailed recall of everything, and tells it all with absolute frankness. Some of it makes you weep.

Thursday 07/10/2025

Off in the morning in Fred to PAMF Los Altos for my annual Medicare Wellness Exam, aka physical checkup. Dr. Julia Marx was as pleasant as always. She didn’t find anything to complain about with me other than my kidney function which is below normal, although not changed from last year. Re-check creatinine level in November. Talking to Joanne as we passed in the lobby, she said “I have a fix for your creatinine.” You what? “Tell you tomorrow, it’s easy.” I have no idea what she is talking about.

After lunch I put on my red shirt and went to the Museum to lead the 2pm tour. For this I took Lyft. I just felt squeamish about using Fred twice in a day, which I’m sure Joanne will tell me is ridiculous. Anyway I took Lyft both ways.

The tour went well. There were several people who just locked eyes on me as if they couldn’t get enough of my well-practiced spiel. Nice round of applause.

Wednesday 07/09/2025

Took the standard walk in the morning. Spent most of the day working on four projects.

One, Bert asked me to try again feeding all the comments from the Dining Services Survey into Claude.ai and get them analyzed and sorted into categories and themes. Which I did and Claude handled pretty well.

Two, I spent half an hour with the guitar (not enough).

Three, I fixed up and printed a nice set of pictures of the striped cathedrals of Orvieto and Siena, Italy, and put them in my hallway gallery. Took down the close-ups of flowers that had been there for a few months.

Four, I edited another 4 chapters of Joyce’s autobiography. Her books was certainly different from her mother’s book. Cecil wrote about people and events. Joyce did that too, but she also puts in a lot of sensory detail. She remembered her childhood from age 4 on, colors, tastes, sensations; and she is very frank about her emotions.

Then went to Rhonda’s open meeting, a special one, where she shared some information about the “satellite campus” the board is about to buy. By that they mean, another building, said to be “10 minutes walk” from 850 Webster. It can house “up to 30” people in units that each have at least 2BR, kitchen and laundry. So that would be — 15 units? She went over the financials in detail which seem to work out very well, although they are predicated on filling the place over 90% full in one year.

Of the many questions after, she had to say no comment to many because the specific address can’t be disclosed until the sale is final. A major question in my mind, which she couldn’t answer, was: if this is a completed apartment complex in Palo Alto, does it have existing tenants? And if so, how do you get them out so you can sell the apartments in a year? Guess we’ll find out.

I will now go to a lecture by Paul Saffo, on the future of Silicon Valley. Expect to be underwhelmed.

Tuesday 07/08/2025

At 7am I went down to the gym. I was doing that on Tuesday and Thursday for a while, a while ago. How long ago? The computer never forgets. I waved my gym ID card at the computer and it was pleased to tell me that I last checked in August 2023. Oops. Oh well. So I did one round of the machines.

Then I cleaned up the room for the cleaning lady coming at 12. Attended the writers meeting, which didn’t have the usual amount of good stuff, and nothing from me.

In the afternoon I edited the video of Colin’s book talk from yesterday. That was easier than most as he had no slides or anything. Just straight video of him talking, with a few shots of the audience. Also did a little editing and printing of pictures for the next hall gallery.

At dinner people asked about my going car-free and the car-sharing deal. There are several people who are in the situation Joanne and I were in, owning cars but using them 2 or 3 times a week if that. Talking to Joanne later, she said there was a suggestion that car sharing would be a good article for the newsletter (she’s on the newsletter staff) and would I write it. Aw shucks, ok.

Monday 07/07/2025

Started with an early walk, out the door at 7:30. Back in plenty of time to set up for a book talk at 11. This was my neighbor Colin, who is in remarkably good shape for being 96 years old, presenting on a book, Heels to Hiking Boots, written by his daughter in law.

When that was over I headed down to FOPAL in Fred. Here I found 9 boxes waiting for me, the bulk of which I sent to the bargain room as too old and not of interest. Two and half hours. Back to CH in about 3. At 4 joined the Poetry Out Loud group. I read an e. e. cummings poem.

I was bushed and had an hour nap. Then it was 6 and I didn’t feel like going down to dinner. However I had in my fridge an ear of corn, and a box with the leftover guacamole from last night’s dinner at Del Sol. That made a nice supper.