Monday 04/28/2025

Took an early morning walk. Picked up a prescription at CVS, which turned out to be spironolactone, the drug that I cut back from 1/day to 3/week some time ago. So I still have not only 20 or so still in the working bottle, but discovered that I also had another full bottle in the spare-pills drawer. ‘Scuse me a sec…

switches over to CVS.com and turns off auto-refill for that drug…

Now then. At 11 I went down to the auditorium and set it up for a test of monitor speakers. This was because Bert’s friend Larry was going to come by and give advice at 1pm. The problem at hand was that professional musicians are used to have monitor speakers that point back at them so they can clearly hear what they sound like. When I tried to do that for the Keller Sisters, anytime I got the monitor up loud enough to suit them, I would get feedback.

While setting up I noticed that the feedback frequency was very low. Just short of feedback the sound would get deep and echo-y like talking into a deep well. So ok if it wants to feed back in the low tones, let’s cut the low tones. The sound board has a four-band equalizer for each mic, and I just rolled the 100Hz knob over to zero. Bingo, no feedback.

When he got there, Larry concurred with what I’d done. He had some other suggestions, and told me some great war stories about being sound man for bands. After he left I had Jerry come down and try it out, he’s the one CH performer who wants a monitor. We got it to work for him, too.

Then I put everything away.

At 4pm was the Common Spaces Advisory Group. Patty and I presented our proposal for the 11th floor tv area. Everybody seemed to like it. Rhonda said she would start getting prices.

Mary Beth, head of the Treasure Trove (gift shop) asked me to look at a donated iPad, so now I have to figure out how to reset to factory, an iPad for which the former owner is no longer able to remember anything like a passcode. I looked it up and will do this tomorrow.

Also an old Kodak Carousel slide projector. My goodness, all through the 60s to the early 00s, we used our Carousel a lot. Been 20 years since I touched one. The owner of this one had stashed two spare bulbs in the box. Good thing. The one in the projector burned out as soon as I turned it on. Power switch on, flash, dark. And the first spare was also kaput. But the 2nd spare worked. Bulbs cost $25 for 2, on amazon. The projector sells on eBay for around $30-$40.

Sunday 04/27/2025

Usual Sunday morning. In gardening news, all the four dragon-wing begonias have put out leaves. However the daphne has signs of a fungal infection again so I sprayed it.

Walked to the Cal ave farmers market (3 miles for the day). Bought cherries and dried apricots for myself.

At 1pm brought the car up to be part of the car pool caravan of CH residents attending Henry V at The Pear. Interesting production. The play has 30 characters at least, but they did it with a total cast of five actors. Plus king Henry was played by a woman. She did a great job, really nailed the famous “we few, we band of brothers” speech.

Saturday 04/26/2025

Tired of thinking up title lines.

Walked up to Douce France, Joanne’s favorite coffee shop, with her. Spent the rest of the middle of the day doing not much. At 3pm I drove down to FOPAL and was able to turn in the 5 boxes of books from Phil, and get a bunch more flattened boxes. Tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll get the rest of his donation.

Quiet dinner with Edie, Sophia and Marc.

Friday 04/25/2025

Started the day with a lovely walk with Joanne. Back by 10, then to Line Dance class at 10:30.

In the afternoon I helped a neighbor, Phil, pack up 5 boxes of books to donate to FOPAL. Put them in my car and drove down there, and found that some stupid construction…

FOPAL occupies a building that is part of what once was Cubberly High School. 20(?) years ago it was closed as a school, then the campus of many buildings was reopened as a community center. Now a local fire station is being remodeled, and the powers that be have decided that they would give the FD a new temporary home in the middle of the parking lot in front of the FOPAL building. Bad enough that we lost about 30 parking spaces, but today I found construction fencing completely closing off — or so I thought — access to the building.

Went home with 5 boxes of Phil’s books still in my car, wrote an email. Got a response that yes, it is possible still to get to our door, there’s a gap in the fence. Wasn’t obvious to me driving by but whatever. Anyway.

Dinner with Carolyn and new residents Liane and Weldon.

Thursday 04/24/2025

This was going to be the day where I was to perform a half-hour set at 2:30pm for the folks in the assisted living center. Jerry and Kay were scheduled to perform (vocal and flute) at 10:30am. So I went over there — across a second-story “bridge” to a different building — to hear them. On the way I passed a TV screen that showed the day’s activities, and while Jerry and Kay were listed, I wasn’t.

So then I tried to find out what was going on, but the Activities staff person was out, and her manager was out, and the regular aides only knew that there was a birthday celebration at 2 which might run to 2:45.

So I rehearsed a couple more times and at 2:15 went back with my guitar case and music stand, and found that the birthday celebration, organized by the resident’s relatives, involved cake for everybody, and a dude with a guitar and a list of songs for sing-along. At 2:30 he was half way through his song list and said “everybody just enjoy your cake and when you are finished we’ll sing some more,” so I could see that was going to be going to maybe 3pm, and if I played then I’d be rather redundant, let alone my audience would be full of birthday cake and falling asleep. Fortunately the activities director showed up and I arranged she would book me in some later week, and I went away. So that was a big nothing after days of rehearsing.

At 6pm I set up the auditorium for a talk by the founder of the Magical Bridge Foundation. They make innovative, handicap-friendly playgrounds. The presentation went off well enough, but I fucking forgot to un-pause zoom recording, which is a rookie mistake. So there is no recording. No big loss, I don’t think there will be any demand for a replay. But damn, son. You know better.

Wednesday 04/23/2025

Well, the most exciting thing was doing the laundry. In between loads I edited Patty and my document on how the 11th floor TV lounge should be renovated. Later in the day sent it off to Rhonda’s PA Alejandra.

The other night something Joanne said reminded me of flight simulators. I had a good flight sim app once, didn’t I? I little poking around. Oh, right, I was playing around with X-Plane on my old desktop machine. Do I still have it? Yes, it had been transferred like everything else to the new mini. Last used in 2023? I had it update itself and it runs fine. The new machine has a better screen and better sound even than the old one. And I still don’t know how to fly.

At lunch neighbor Phil asked if I could help him dispose of a bunch of books. After getting a guesstimate of how mnay books he was talking about, I estimated 4-5 boxes. So I left early at 4pm and stopped at FOPAL and got 5 boxes. Flattened boxes, I’ll assemble them later.

Where I was headed was the CHM Volunteer Appreciation party. This was coincidentally a big day for the museum: it was the subject of an article in the New York Times. Whoopee, but ok.

When I arrived there were maybe 30 people milling around the open bar talking to each other. Almost nobody I recognized. There were tables set up in the hall, and a stage with a mic on it. Food service setting up. So I was standing there with a coke in my hand thinking, this is everything I hate about parties. I don’t feel like making conversation with strangers. Which table shall I sit at? Nobody would notice if I just crept away. And I actually did go back out as far as my car. Then thought about it some more, and went back in. Scott showed up and Steve and a couple of other people I actually knew, so it was alright finally. But boy, for a while there I was in full introvert panic.

Tuesday 04/22/2025

Tidied up for the cleaning lady. Attended the writers meeting at 10:30, and read my little piece on a memorable relative. Practiced my musical set twice during the day. At 5, joined Joanne to walk to Tacolicious, where I’d never eaten before. That was about it for that day.

Monday 04/21/2025

Took the good old standard walk in the morning. Later attended the Event Coordinator’s meeting. Now I need to update the AV spreadsheet and schedule an AV meeting.

Down to FOPAL to process computer books for a couple hours. Later practiced my set of songs for Thursday. I sounded terrible, I don’t know what was wrong with my voice.

The writers group prompt for tomorrow is, “a memorable relative”. I wrote something like that about my sister Joyce, back in 2023. So I dug that out and edited a bit.

Sunday 04/20/2025

Usual Sunday morning stuff. Also practiced music.

At 11:30, joined a lunch party organized by Betty and Jerry. As usual on big holidays, the lunch service was special. A table at the entry to the dining room offered salad plates and a puff pastry and glasses of wine. Our party of 6 was Betty and Jerry, Dean and Ellen, and me and Joanne. Very pleasant group. I had not interacted much with Dean or Ellen before; they are nice people.

Then a quiet afternoon until 5pm when Joanne and I met in the lobby and started our outing, walking to the train and off to the City. Waymo driverless cab to SFJazz for a concert by Hiromi. This was in part a disappointment. I’ve heard Hiromi multiple times before and enjoyed her extravagant crazy piano skills. But this time she had a trio of other musicians and they played very long complex pieces that had a lot of trumpet and drum sounds. They were extremely well rehearsed and played very complex music with great precision. But the trumpet seemed harsh and the drum too intrusive and there wasn’t enough Hiromi piano. Still it was OK, and we had a nice long chat on the train home.

Saturday 04/19/2025

A mostly-unscheduled Saturday. By 10am I was bored and thinking, I should go for a drive. Where? Then I thought, how bout go visit Dennis, who is dealing with some bad medical news. So I did, and we went out for a walk and a coffee. I was back to CH in time for a late lunch.

In the afternoon I practiced my set for this coming Thursday. Then at 4:30, by arrangement, I went down and set up a microphone in Quad IV of the dining room. This was to support a big birthday dinner for Andrew. His wife Mary (I’ve performed with her and she is the producer of the annual music shows) had arranged this and managed to keep it a surprise to him. There were eight tables, so something like 35 guests. Several of their children and grandchildren and lots of residents. The entertainment was, believe it or not, a couple of opera singers. I didn’t get their names but they were very good, singing arias from a couple of Puccini operas. And the food service was special, not the usual menu.

Dinner started at 5:15. It was after 7 when I put the microphone away and 7:30 when most people were leaving.

Point being, this kind of party is organized by the residents themselves, in this case, Mary with the help of a couple of friends. And of course they paid extra to dining services for the special menu for 40 people, I wouldn’t care to guess how much.