Friday 09/05/2025

Took the usual Friday morning amble with Joanne. This will be the last one for a while; next Friday she flies off to the great pacific northwest for a couple of weeks.

Met with Tom in the auditorium to practice “Try to Remember” and for him to get used to the grand piano down there. I recorded a video of myself, which is still sitting on the hard drive down there, I need to take my laptop down and copy it and actually look at it.

I started assembling the video for the Broadway show and immediately ran into problems and sent emails and made calls to find out what to do.

Took my guitar down to the music practice room and practiced music for an hour.

Visited Pam. She’s alert but very weak. We’ll hear about her passing any morning now.

Thursday 09/04/2025

I started the day in the gym, doing (for the first time in forever) two full rounds of the HUR machines, which felt like a solid workout. I went a little later, 8:15 when I had been going at like 7:30. The earlier time seems to clash with 3 or 4 other people who like an early start. If they came today, they were gone by 8:15, so, good.

Then I sat down to edit the video of a talk last Monday by a resident, Dean Forbes, about his life-long avocation of Biblical Linguistics. (His professional career was manager of medical instrumentation development for HP.) This was a talk I couldn’t go to, as I was leading a tour at the museum. Bert ran the AV and got the video recording, but he screwed up. Well, not entirely; plus Dean didn’t help him by wandering all over the front of the room, mostly out of range of the camera. So what I had to work with was a video of the stage, with the projection screen in the center showing Dean’s slides, and Dean’s voice on the sound track giving his lecture. Once in a while Dean’s head would appear in the bottom of the frame.

So it was work editing the video (here it is). What I did to keep it at least a bit interesting, was to crop the image to show the key part of each slide as he talked about it. At least it was interesting to me doing it. The talk, not so much. It’s a very dense topic and he did not (IMHO) do a good job of introducing it, just jumped into some details.

Anyway that passed the time to 12 when I drove Fred to Chef Chu’s for lunch with the IBM survivors, organized by Scott. Tom Daniel, and I was happy to hear that his wife, who was very ill last time I talked to him, was much better. Denny Sargent, always the happy-go-lucky bachelor. Diana Bloch, whom I last saw in about 2002? and who has changed so much I would never have recognized her. And Zoe Leptourgos. She, like Scott and Denny, does still look enough like my memories that I would recognize her. Anyway, nice conversation, not totally about nostalgic memories.

Back to CH for a quick nap and then down to the auditorium for the annual Resident/Board meeting, where the audited financials for FY 25 (our fiscal year ends in February, so March 24-Feb 25) are presented, and put in context with prior years, and compared to the numbers for the first half of FY 26. Bottom line, we have finally juuussst squeaked over the line to have a tiny surplus of operating income over operating expense, for the first time in several years. We’re handling our depts and look like staying at break-even or better next year. Then they went over projections for if/when we go through with the purchase of a new building, a “satellite” campus. Which is in progress, but still secret, they still can’t tell us where this building is, for fear of upsetting the seller. Anyway, if or when that goes through, we will add another 10-15 life plan contracts, greatly raising our capital assets while still, they assume and hope, bringing in more monthly operating revenue than it costs. So we are sound for the time being.

Afterward there was a nice reception on the patio with lots of cute little nibbles, with a couple of nibbles and my big lunch, I’m skipping supper. I might regret that decision around 9pm, we’ll see.

Wednesday 09/03/2025

Headed out at 9am to lead a 10am tour at the museum. This was a large group of elders from one of the local YMCAs. Nice folks, who remembered some things, like slide rules.

This afternoon I met with Jerry who has had a lot of singing lessons, so he’s like a semi-pro vocalist. He heard me complaining about not being able to hit some lower notes and he wanted to share some exercises that would help. Which they might.

I spent an hour helping Leon, another tech squad member. He has a real tangle of problems with his Microsoft email accounts. Multiple accounts, none of which he can his iMac to sign in to, so he can’t read email on it, even though he can, on his iPad. Man, what a mess. I gave up, told him try Leah Lin. I don’t know if she’ll thank me for the referral.

Tuesday 09/02/2025

Between 8 and 9 I wrote something. The writers group prompt for the week was, “What do Bonnie and Clyde (the robots that deliver our meals in the dining room) do in their time off?” And I wrote a little story about that.

Then I created, or re-created a video for one of the performers in the Broadway show who wanted their video to sound different.

Writers meeting, read my piece, there were several other amusing contributions. After, I headed right out for FOPAL where I found about 10 boxes waiting and spent a solid three hours on them.

I had been asked by the movie committee to help with the movie tonight, the Astaire-Rogers Top Hat, so I ate supper early, but when I got to the auditorium I found that David M was in charge already and I wasn’t needed. Oh well. The movie was fun although very very silly, the plot and the sets both. Still, how can you complain about dancing like that.

Monday 09/01/2025

There was a lot going on in Palo Alto today. There was a big demonstration along El Camino. Quite a few people from CH walked to that. There was a First Monday Book Talk in the auditorium, which ordinarily I would do the AV for, but this time it was Bert doing it. The speaker was a resident, Dean Forbes, who had a long career in tech management but a sideline or avocation studying biblical history and archaeology. He gave a very erudite survey of some highly arcane hebrew linguistic controversies, or so I hear from people who attended.

I didn’t attend either event because I had signed up to lead the 12pm tour at the Museum. They had asked for extra docents because they expected a large holiday crowd. That didn’t happen, I led a tour for a nice group of 15 or so, and the second docent who signed up for 12pm, went home early.

I got back to CH at 1:30, just in time to take part in the Labor Day barbecue lunch. Nice ribs and beans and such. Then did a couple of other things and had a nap and then it was 5:30, which is when the Sixth Floor was to meet for supper. On holidays as I have mentioned, Dining Services goes home early. For supper you can pick up a brown bag picnic at 10am. Or, as we did this time, your floor can order pizza. I had put in the pizza order, and it was due at 5:45. They were just a couple minutes late this time but no harm done. Jerry and I carried the 5 boxes of pizza up to the 11th floor where we had a long table. I had meant to order 5 large pizzas to feed the 15 who had signed up. I had accidentally ordered two of them as Mediums, but no harm done, there was still leftovers. Note for next time, 3L + 2M feeds 15 or even 16 of our group.

Sunday 08/31/2025

Usual Sunday morning rituals. At 9am I met with Patty on the 11th floor to see if her Android tablet could drive the 11th floor TV, to show a movie. The 11th floor TV was not having it. The tablet recognized an external monitor, and in fact audio from the tablet played over the speakers, but the TV screen said “no signal”. Same story using my new iPad, audio (showing the device was connected to the Yamaha receiver) but no video (showing that the Yamaha receiver was not giving the Samsung TV what it wanted). I am so sick of that combination of a 10 year old Yamaha and a smart-ass Samsung TV… Anyway Patty went back to plan B, she would show the movie in her apartment.

Conferred with Stew about a couple of videos. After lunch I met with Joanne to drive to a concert. Not in Fred, but in neighbor Prue’s Prius. She is away for a month and had asked Joanne to drive the Prius. So we took it about a mile to the Congregational church where there was a really fun concert: a large chorus presenting Songs of the Sixties. They did a really good job, very tight, well-rehearsed presentation, some sing-alongs for the audience and some solos by the chorus members. With ice cream after.

Back for supper and then I, Joanne, and Mildred went to Patty’s apartment to watch the Netflix movie, “The Thursday Murder Club”. That was pretty good, too. I read the book a couple years ago, remembered it as really complicated, and the movie did a good job of keeping all the different murders understandable. Fun performances from great actors in their 70s.

Saturday 08/30/2025

I needed to confer with three different people about various items of the Broadway show, so I had just sent them all an email saying I would have open house 10-12, stop by any time. Before 10 I finished some editing tasks. Right on the dot Lynne and John arrived, then Sandy, and minutes later Susan. So I got all that conferring out of the way by 10:30. Did some more organizing of videos and stuff.

After lunch I got out for a walk, but was still exchanging emails about the show all afternoon.

Friday 08/29/2025

Started the day with the usual Friday morning walk and coffee stop with Joanne. We lamented how little time we get to spend together, and decided to go out for dinner. Back at CH I did a little bit of fast video editing, then hit the line dance class at 10:30. This was the last such class for at least some time. The instructor, Will, is tired of the long commute up from below San Jose, and says he wants to spend time home-schooling his daughters. The small class, 7 or 8 people at the max, are very sad and thanked him a lot.

Then a quick lunch and then met with Stew to talk about the videos for the upcoming Broadway show. We straightened out some mutual misunderstandings, and each took a bunch of notes on things to do.

After that I took a tech squad call, Nancy couldn’t get any email, ho hum. Stopped by for a short visit with Pam, who seems concerned that she’s in hospice care but not getting worse. “Nobody’s going to complain if you stay around,” I and her friend Judy assured her. Actually I would say she is declining.

At 5:30 I met with Joanne and we walked to her favorite restaurant, Vino Locale. It’s a very nice place with an inventive menu of good small plates. I fake-complain that I have to compete for her attention with the owner, who knows her from way back and always greets her with a big hug. “Hands off my date, dude” — I do not say, because he’s bigger than me and has a lot of tattoos. What did we have? An appetizer, sour cherry brie, which is slices of brie melted in a little fry pan with sour cherries stirred in, and a pile of french bread slices to spread with the melted cheese. Brussels sprouts, which they cut in half and sauté with almond slices and cranberries and bacon bits. And thai-style chicken skewers served with a delicious peanut sauce. Split a tiramisu for dessert.

It’s a very folksy place. Joanne forgot her colorful jacket on the back of her chair. Half way home she remembered so we went back. Coming toward the restaurant, the couple who had been sitting next to us were coming out, and said, “hey, you left your jacket.” Approaching the door the four women sitting at a table in the front garden said, “oh, hi, they’re looking for you, they have your jacket.” And the waiter, and the owner. Everybody knew about Joanne’s jacket.

Thursday 08/28/2025

I spent much of the day, several hours, at my desktop computer, getting the videos for the 17 songs in the Broadway show collected and in order. Jerry had already processed the six that need sing-along lyrics on the screen, and did a great job of it, better than I could have. Anyway I got all the videos ready to put together into single movie. But I didn’t start that, because Stew our producer wants a last look at them, tomorrow.

That aside I did a little music and set aside some time for reading, trying to reduce the backlog of books that I “should” read.

Wednesday 08/27/2025

Well, that was a day. I shall attempt to list it all. To start with, Joanne had organized a hike. I brought Fred up at 8:45 and I, Joanne, Martha, Joanne the other and her partner Erika piled in and drove off to Wunderlich park. Three mile hike with a lot of elevation gain. Moderate temps and mostly shaded, but got good and sweaty.

Back and went to my room to wipe down and change shirts, then to lunch. After lunch had a break before a 2pm appointment. Craig called and asked for help assembling his new TV. At 2pm went to Tom’s apartment where we practiced me singing “Try to Remember” to his piano accompaniment.

At 2:30 went to Craig’s apartment and helped assemble his TV. Then at 3 went down to the dining room where, Wednesdays at 3, they serve coffee and pastries. Caught up with Lennie who has just received her Captify glasses. I got to try them on, they really work. What your phone can hear, is transcribed and the transcription is shown as glowing green letters hanging in space in front of your eyes.

Then over to Skilled to visit a few minutes with Pam. Back to my room to relax. But about 5, neighbor Eva called, her Mac wouldn’t show her emails, would I help. Sigh, sure. So spent an intense half hour trying to get the Mac to connect to Google Gmail. Why did it ever forget? Why didn’t she know her Google password? Good questions. But eventually got the damn thing working again.

Just in time to go down and join Joanne, Jerry and Betty for dinner. Except as we were sitting down, David M, in charge of AV for the lecture tonight, accosted us. Did we have any idea where the podium had gone? What? The podium that is always always sitting on the stage in the auditorium? So the great podium hunt began. Green room? No. Various conference rooms, music practice room, exercise room? No. After 20 minutes running around the ground floor we thought to look on the second floor where there was a photo shoot today. There was the podium, neatly parked in the fitness center. DM took it back to the auditorium and Jerry and I rejoined the ladies in the dining room.

I attended the evening’s lecture remotely via Zoom. And that was a day.