Tuesday 5/5/2020

Started the day with Victoria’s step-aerobics at 7:15. This time there were four attendees, up from one (1) last Thursday. It’s a gentle workout, but it is a workout.

Did a little desk work, paying an insurance bill, and entering the end of month values for my various Schwab accounts in the spreadsheet. I note that I created this spreadsheet back on Day 31, early January 2019. This gives me an overview of the state of the Nest Egg. The total as of 3/30, was down %20 for the year. In April it recovered some, and is now down only %13 on the year.

Through the day I was fielding emails about our weekly 6th floor shopping. I ended up with a list of nearly 20 items — after everybody said “nah, nothing this week” and then had second thoughts next day. This week I am trying Errand.com for shopping instead of InstaCart. The actual shopping will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big day for other reasons. (Not really.)

Did three computery things in the day. An hour on the Affinity photo book (dodging and burning, three different ways, including one I’d never heard of); proofed three pages for Distributed Proofreaders; and did some study in Crafting Interpreters. The latter got my nickers in a serious twist, because I strongly disagree with the way the author is presenting the information.

I was listening to a podcast where they were going on about the movie, His Girl Friday. I think I’ll try watching that on Prime Video tonight.

 

Monday 5/4/2020

Went for a run; it felt fine. Divided my non-fiddling-around time between crafting interpreters and studying Affinity. That was about it.

OK, editing. Couple of things worth noting.

One, little flashes of grief. Haven’t been troubled by these for some time, but somehow, looking at the plants reminded me of Marian, and later something brought up recollections of trips we had taken together. Not grieving so much for the person, as for the entire life as a couple that ended. I remind myself that I’ve done a good job of crafting a safe, comfortable, moderately interesting new life, and that’s great. But the old one is gone, never to return, and that makes me sad when I dwell on it.

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In the area of not-dwelling-on-it, I spent some time with the game, Hiveswap. I “cheated” by watching a video walk-through to get past the latest snafu, getting Joey (not Josie as I wrote before) past the latest snake-lizard monsters and into the safety of the attic. Where she is shortly sucked into a bizarre portal and the “swap” of the title happens: Joey is transported to another world, and we see a different character, a sort of evil Joey?, being transported the other way. I believe the game maker’s plan was to have a second game about that character, but they didn’t finish it?

Anyway I stuck with Joey through the first couple of scenes in the new place, which included an amusing puzzle. She picks up a bizarre alien ipad thing and tries to log into it. The log-in process involves playing a game of “snake” — remember that old game from the 80s? If you can get the snake to eat five targets, Joey is logged in to the pad. That only took me about 6 attempts.

Sunday 5/3/2020

I used to maintain a varied structure to my week. Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon, working at FOPAL. Thursday, artifact work at the museum. Friday and/or Saturday, lead a tour. Sunday morning, coffee at a coffee shop while reading the paper; also watering the plants.

All that’s wiped away now, so every day is pretty much like every other. We try to keep up some standards, anyhow. Sunday I still water the plants and do the big crossword. Other than that, it was pretty similar to Saturday, and Friday, and…

Well, next Saturday morning I will do my laundry, so I  have that to look forward to.

The programming book that I’m working through, Crafting Interpreters, gave me a little bit of mental work. I’m finishing up chapter 9, and at this point have the skeleton of a programming language implemented, with variables and if-statements and loops working. So at the end of each chapter the author has these “challenges”, basically extra-credit puzzles. The one at the end of chapter 9 was, “Ok, you have loops working. In many programming languages there is some kind of a break statement that terminates a loop early. Add a break to your interpreter. It should be a syntax error to have one outside of a loop. Inside a loop at execution time, it should end that loop only.”

Working out how to do that took me a few hours on Friday and again Saturday. Then while taking a walk today I figured out what I was missing, so finished that task and tested the code.

Fun, right? Fascinating? Well, better than doing another crossword puzzle. Which I also did.

 

Saturday 5/2/2020

All days are quiet now of course. But when I got up I decided I would not go for a walk today. Spent the day entirely in the room. Did some coding.

Played a little of Hiveswap. I’m ambivalent about this. The game is cute and inventive, but it’s basically a puzzle game. I don’t mind solving easy puzzles, but the hard ones are just so arbitrary. Example. In this game our adorable avatar Josie is trying to thwart some multi-legged serpent monsters. One traps her in the basement. Command Josie to  thwack it with her flashlight; that doesn’t help. OK, what else do we have? She has some doggie treats, have her throw some at the monster. Monster eats treats and says something snappy, but isn’t defeated. Josie is proud to be a dancer, click to have her put on her ballet shoes, click the monster. Graceful Abscond! says the game, but no, she bumps into the monster and hurts her knee. Have her put on her tap shoes and do her tap dance. Monster says something scornful. But now if you try the ballet shoe escape after the tap dance routine, now she gets by the monster and up the stairs. You have to do it in the right order, or it doesn’t work. Arbitrary.

I saved the game and quit when she’s stuck in the kitchen with another monster who is keeping her from getting to the carrier pigeon with the marbles she needs to decode the…never mind. I will go back to a youtube walk-through to find out what arbitrary sequence of actions I have to do to solve that.

First thing, though, I coated the coffee table with generous amounts of Liquid Gold. Four hours later, the wood had entirely slurped up the oil. On the left, glossy with a coat of oil. On the right, later. I didn’t wipe it, it just drank up the oil.

 

 

I’m delighted at how the color has come back. See yesterday’s post to see how it was kind of yellow-gray. Now the deep red-brown I remember is coming back. It’s a nice piece. The top is made from four pieces of wood, with “book-matched” grain and almost invisible seams. The legs are pure “mid-century modern”. It is lightly “distressed”. You can see a black spot; that’s from a mistake with a sharpie 20 years ago. There’s a very small cigarette burn from the early 1980s when we still smoked.

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In the evening I watched some of a movie. I have this web page saved, “The 100 best movies on Amazon Prime tv”. One was The Thirty-Nine Steps which I watched Wednesday night. Tonight I tried Annihilation, Natalie Portman agonizing over a strange DNA-morphing alien thingy. So slow. Nice that the adventurers are a bunch of women. But it gets dreary and threatening and I got impatient. I pause the movie and take a look at the Wikipedia article. Oh goodness. That’s stupid. I exit the movie and watch a Rifftrax short feature instead.

Friday 5/1/2020

At last, the first of May! (Memory brings back from my college days, “Hurray hurray, the first of May, outdoor screwing begins today” — as if any of us were doing any screwing in any locale. But I digress.) No, the first of May means, it is not a fashion faux pas to wear straw hats in public! (Only a boor would be seen outside in a panama hat before May Day or after Labor Day.) I own a couple of very nice panama hats, and I’ve been putting off wearing them on walks until now.

I don’t wear any hat on my runs, which I took one of this morning. Then back to the cell, oh get real, it is a very nice and comfortable apartment. Did some coding. Then at noon came the email from Ace Hardware, so after lunch I walked up there (in my straw hat) and they brought out my bottle of Liquid Gold. I did a test application and it looks good.

Couple coats of that and the table should look a lot better. However I decided to wait until tomorrow to apply it. This morning I had taken all my recycling to the collection area down the hall, so I have no newspapers to put down. Tomorrow’s paper will serve to protect against spills. Ok I was smart enough to move it off the carpet, but I don’t want oily stuff getting on my vinyl plank floor either.

Later the bluetooth game controller I ordered last week arrived. I paired it to the big iMac and was disappointed to find that Vendetta didn’t respond to it. I have a couple of other games to try with it.

Friday brings CEO Rhonda’s 4pm phone meeting. It’s actually a zoom meeting but most people attend by phone. Anyway the big news today was that with the modification of the shelter orders, construction can restart on our 5th floor upgrade. That’s very good news. Doesn’t affect me directly, but there are a lot of 5th floor residents who in early February moved out to temporary quarters, and suddenly found themselves with no schedule for when they could move back.

In response to a question from someone else, Rhonda clarified that only contractors who could be limited to the 5th floor would be coming back. They can enter and exit via the freight elevator and never interact with residents in any way. But there is no unlocking for the contractors who would enter current units. Which means, sigh, the Valet company, to whom I paid a sizeable deposit back in February, can’t come in and remodel my closets.

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In the latest Channing House newsletter there is a timeline of our virus response. It is amazing how much has gone down in two months:

• 2/28, first confirmed case in Santa Clara county
• 3/2, dining room stops all self-service, removes anything multiple people would handle
• 3/4, limit of 3 people per elevator
• 3/6, library, gift shop close; dining room limits to 3 people per table
• 3/9, 9 cases in SCC; residents must sanitize hands before entering dining room
• 3/11, all outside visitors banned
• 3/12, NBA and NCAA seasons canceled
• 3/14, start checking staff temperatures on entry
• 3/15, begin checking residents’ temperatures on entry
• 3/16, official “shelter in place order” announced; new hand-washing room installed and residents wash hands before entering dining room
• 3/17, dining room closed; residents pick up take-out meals in brown paper bags; gym closed, fitness classes canceled
• 3/22, no more entry from the garage, those who want to use their cars must park on the street
• 3/25, start of food delivery to each resident’s door; first fitness classes on zoom

So that was “a year in a month”, says Rhonda, of the staff handling all those changes so fast.

 

Thursday 4/30/2020

Started the day with Veronica’s early-morning aerobics class at 7:15. I was the only attendee, so I had a personal trainer, in effect.

Then, after a suitable time reading the internet, it was time to clean! Thursdays have been the usual day for cleaning. When I first moved in, Wanda, the housecleaner for the 6th floor, asked what day I would like my room done, and I opted for Thursdays, because I was usually away all day Thursday, doing artifact stuff. So for months I would come home to a clean apartment with vacuum cleaner tracks on all the carpets, like the mower stripes on the outfield before a baseball game.

Then came the virus, and Wanda got promoted to apprentice nurse’s aide, and I went without cleaning for a sad amount of time. Then last week I got my DIY vacuum and swiffer, I wrote about that. So today was DIY cleaning day. I have a checklist of all the surfaces that need to be (a) dusted (with or without pledge), (b) sprayed with cleanser and wiped, (c) swiffered, or (d) vacuumed. It’s a long list. Plus changing the bed linens.

However, I got through the whole thing in 2 hours, before lunch. In the afternoon, a little coding, a little Affinity Photo review, and that was the day. I didn’t even turn on the TV in the evening.

I finished reading The thirty-nine steps, which is really not a good book. So much casual cultural stereotyping. Some quite unbelievable coincidences. At one point, Buchan has written himself into a box: he’s set a big deadline in mid-June but he started the action in late May. He’s got over a week to fill before the next thing can happen. How does he pass that week? His hero has had malaria in the past; he has a malarial relapse and spends a week in bed in a conveniently safe cottage. One week of narrative time, compressed into a page. Problem solved, for the author.

One thing I want to do is to get some life back in the wood of my coffee table. It’s a beautiful object; I’m sure Marian paid a bundle for it back in the 60s; but it really has dried out and taken on a gray tone. I know it would come back to a deep reddish brown with some oil of some kind. I sought The Google’s advice and it comes down to either Scotts Liquid Gold or Old English Lemon Oil. I opt for Scotts. But for some reason the shipping time on Amazon is weeks.

Well, somebody mentioned recently that Ace Hardware was doing curbside pickup; I have a nice Ace Hardware just up Channing Street. So I go on the Ace website, select “my” store, and order and pay for one can of Liquid Gold. Email: order received. Please wait for the “order ready” email before coming to the store. Expected date: 4/30.

However, the email doesn’t come. Tomorrow, one hopes.

Evening, I try out a game, HiveSwap. It’s cute, and has actually amusing dialog. It’s one where there’s a plot, and you advance the plot by walking your character around various rooms, clicking on things to look at them and solve puzzles. I get frustrated early by not being able to solve a puzzle, so I go to the YT and watch a walk-through of the first bit. Oh, is that what it was. Actually it looks kind of fun, and I think I’ll go back to it and play some more.

 

Wednesday 4/29/2020

Didn’t mention that last night, I watched the Hitchcock Thirty-Nine Steps on Amazon Prime. Oh, I just realized that in the movie, they refer to “thirty-nine steps” but they never explain what they are or why they are significant. They talk about “warning all thirty-nine steps” as if they were agents or something. It left a bunch of other plot threads dangling, as well.

That said, I have to say the movie was better in several ways than the book. The long sequence of Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat handcuffed is still entertaining.

Today would have been shopping day, when I compile a 6th floor grocery order, but nobody wanted anything, or at least, nobody filled out one of my order forms, so I didn’t do that.

Today was also car freedom day, when I could take the car out briefly; but I opted not to. There just isn’t anyplace to go, and still be back in the garage by 11:30. We are allowed to go out before 11. Maybe next week I’ll take the car out at like 8am, go down and walk the baylands trail, and be back by 11:30.

Last week when I turned in my menu, I canceled out Wednesday supper, planning to treat myself to pizza. During the emails between neighbors about shopping, Patty suggested canceling dinner next week and splitting a pizza. Then it emerged that she had actually canceled her tonight’s dinner as I had, so we are doing that. This is better than doing it solo, as I won’t have half a 14-inch pizza in leftovers, as I would have doing it alone. So, tonight is pizza and beer night. And it was delicious.

 

Tuesday 4/28/2020

Today is the weekly CH Writers’ group, a lengthy Zoom meeting at 11. I’m not enthusiastic about what I wrote, but whatever. Maybe I won’t read it.

I was thinking this morning: as we come out of quarantining (late this year or early next), what changes will there be in popular opinions? There are so many customary things we are not doing right now, and we are getting along without them just fine. Afterward, when those options are open again, how many will we just not bother with?

I think grocery shopping will come back with a bang. People are going to so savor the experience of wandering the aisles of a grocery store at leisure they’ll do it more than ever. Instacart et. al. should be planning now for a precipitous drop-off in business. Bank the cash now, kids, because lean times will be coming.

Restaurants will come back strong, also. Bars, too, I imagine, though I don’t frequent any. I miss the experience of eating out and I’m sure lots of other people do as well. So Doordash and Uber Eats will fall off a cliff. Another business that will come back fast is nursery outlets. Gardeners are suffering right now because they can’t go browse the perennials and bedding plants, and as soon as they can, they will.

I think that online ordering of everything else, however, will remain high. All the people who never, or rarely, ordered stuff online, are now finding that eBay and Amazon and all the other outlets are so easy, so convenient, so responsive. You realize you need something, and instead of adding it to an errand list for getting tomorrow, you just reach for your computer and in a minute that item is on its way to you, no further thought.

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Did the morning cardio session by zoom. Veronica was pleased we had 3 people for this 7:15am meeting. Did some coding. Took a walk. That was about it.

 

Monday 4/27/2020

Went for a run. Was on the street by 7:20 and felt great all the way.

Rest of the day was pretty much standard: some coding, some writing. The writing was for tomorrow’s writer’s group meeting. The cue this time was, review some cultural experience you’ve had in the past two weeks. So I wrote a review of a fantasy novel I’d just read. That’s it. Here’s my fuschias on my spiral plantstand on my balcony.

Sunday 4/26/2020

So I’ve been tracking my weight and it’s creeping up, I’ve gained a couple pounds in a month. Not a catastrophe, still juuuust under 175. I used to weigh in the high 180s for years, although I didn’t weigh myself very often. Then in the middle of 2018, I discovered I was down to 175, a full 10 pound drop, which was verified when I had a physical in early 2019, and the doctor commented on it. That was probably due to stress, dealing with Marian’s illness. I certainly changed my eating habits drastically while she spent weeks in the hospital; and when she was back home, and we were back to our usual meal schedule, we both ate more lightly than we had in healthier times.

I’ve been pleased that I kept to that 172-174 range since. I was under a fair amount of stress still, in the transition year of 2019, and as I noted in this blog then, eating adequately but very minimally. But now, for going on 10 months I’ve been settled in comfortable circumstances, with no stress and regular food service on tap three times a day. And I still hung in that range — until the last couple of weeks. What up, body?

Actually it took only a very few seconds of thought to realize what up. Or down, rather. Since early 2019, I have been spending about 6-10 hours a week at FOPAL, much of it on my feet, often carrying boxes of books. And I’ve been spending about 6 hours a week at the CHM warehouse, mostly on my feet. And typically 2-3 hours a week at the museum,  giving tours. Call it 15-20 hours a week of light exercise. Now? Maybe four, one-hour walks a week, so my exercise is down by 11-16 hours a week.

That’s a fair number of calories that I have not been burning for the last month. Really,  the only surprise is that I haven’t gained more and faster. Light exercise burns 250-300 calories an hour. To compensate for my lost volunteer work I need to reduce my intake by, roughly, 250*15~=4000 calories per week. Divide by 7, call it, oh, at least 500/day less intake.

I’ve already put in my weekly menu request for the next seven days. I’d like to get it back so I could X-out all the desserts that I left in. I had already canceled breakfasts, having instead a 400-calorie low-carb shake. “For the duration” I must eat only the protein serving and the salads in the house dinners and lunches. Also the veg, when it is not (a) overcooked or (b) carrots. (Our kitchen loves carrots.) Skip the rice, potatoes, other carbs. And the desserts, dammit. Well, their desserts are not that wonderful. I can deal.

So, at supper, I dumped the dessert, which was some kind of blueberry pudding and really not appetizing anyway. Also the veg, which was overcooked.

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Today was gardening day, i.e. the day for watering the plants. I have fuschias! Two of the plants I bought the last time I was able to go to the nursery are fuschias, of quite different looks. Both of them started blooming this week and very prettily.

A couple of weeks ago I took some cuttings from one of the old wax plants and put them in water, hoping for roots. They’ve stayed green, but no roots. Oh, well. Today I potted them anyway. Somebody gave me a nice-looking hanging pot; it hangs nicely from my spiral plant-stand. I thought I’d use that. Then I noticed that it looks nice but it has no drain hole. That’s not acceptable; what to do? I remembered that in my drill kit, I have a small masonry bit. So I took the pot down to the storage unit in the basement, hauled out the drill, and started drilling. I wasn’t sure the pot wouldn’t shatter, but if so, eh. But it didn’t; the bit went right through it in three places with hardly a chip. So, drain holes.

Back upstairs, load it with potting soil, stick in the cuttings, water, hang. Good luck, wax plants. We’ll see.

Did some programming which was fun. The interpreter code that I’m translating is in Java, a very verbose language. I was delighted to translate a many-line function into a slick recursive one-liner. Shades of APL days.

And that was Sunday.