Thursday 08/08/2024

Took a shorter walk in the morning. Left in the car to pick up some groceries and drive down to Jean’s place for lunch with her and Marc, our nephew. Well, Marian’s nephew. He’s a senior radiologist with a group practice in Seattle. He was stopping off on his way to join a group of people for an 8-day backpacking hike out of Tuolumne Meadows. He looks great, fit and upbeat. He filled us in on all the doings of his sons and of Quinn, the son of his late brother Paul.

Evening, I did a technical thing, preparing a soundtrack for Mary to sing to, practicing for the folk fest next month. I found a website that does an incredible job of separating out the voice from an audio track, leaving just the accompaniment. Mary is leading a group who will sing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” in the style of the Carter Sisters. I took the audio track from the YT video she prefers, separated the voices out of it, and sent her the accompaniment track.

Bored with the CH menu, I went out to eat at a place I hadn’t tried before, Curry Up Now, Indian with a California twist. It was pretty good food, but the restaurant was almost entirely empty, and the cashier and cook were Latinx and argued with each other in Spanish the whole time.

Wednesday 08/07/2024

Did the laundry in the morning. Played the guitar. After lunch, met with Mary to work on You’ve Got a Friend. Later, figured out how to do something on the Mac, for the benefit of Dr. Margaret. Had dinner with the Mary and Andrew and Martha.

Evening, changed out my bedding. This is a semi-annual, no, tri-ennial? job, changing the blankets I have on my bed. Went from the big beige one to the smaller blue wool one. I have three different colorful crocheted throws, and I rotated the one from the bed to the couch, couch one to the closet, closet one to the bed. Exciting times around here.

Tuesday 08/06/2024

Worked up something for the writers group on the theme of “someone’s leaving home”. Since I had already written about my moving to CH, and couldn’t think of anything else except the 1967 Beatles song “She’s Leaving Home”, I wrote about that, and read the lyrics as a poem.

Edited the video from Gigi’s book talk of yesterday. Late in the day I get an email from her requesting some changes. So that’s to do tomorrow.

Met with Peter to be interviewed; he is starting a series for the newsletter on people’s outside volunteer activities, with me as the first example among many.

Met with Dr. Margaret about various Mac issues. We had a fun time getting rid of files to help relieve her over-full hard drive.

Listened to the Philadelphia speeches by Harris and Walz. Good stuff. “Mind your own damn business,” indeed.

Monday 08/05/2024

Went for the standard walk, which is always pleasant, listening to a podcast, stopping at Starbucks at the 3/4 point for a cup and a cake. Back by 9:30.

At 10 I went down and set up the auditorium for the First Monday book talk. Gigi Tsai, who has been organizing this series now for a year, had scheduled herself in. She is married to Tom Tsai, who published his autobiography a year ago. SInce then Tom has been losing mental capacity, so Gigi read excerpts from his book for him.

After shutting down the auditorium and copying the video recording to my laptop, I stowed it in my room and headed off to FOPAL. There I processed several boxes of books and prepped my section for the upcoming sale weekend. Back home about 4 for a nap. Had dinner with the neighbor Brian and with Sophia and Mark, relatively new residents.

Later in the evening I was reminded of another event video that needed processing, so at this point I have the old laptop working away on processing one and the newer, and much faster laptop zipping through the other.

Sunday 08/04/2024

Took a lovely day off. Easy start, lounge around the apartment, play a little guitar, watch videos, chill out. I liked it.

Saturday 08/03/2024

Once more out the door at 8am, pick up Frank, drive to CHM. Unload the two boxes of books I got last night, arrange our display with some fresh books.

And spend 9am to 5pm standing around selling books. Boring and tiring. Then pack all the remaining books into boxes and schlep them down to the car. Took two cars to bring the books to the sale, but only one car to take the remainder home.

Back to FOPAL and unload. Meet up with the John the treasurer and turn over our cash box and credit terminals. Drive Frank to his place, drive home, crash.

Bottom line: we took in $1,800 dollars, and sold well over 500 books. Double last year’s performance. Looking forward to a day off tomorrow.

Friday 08/02/2024

Left at 8, picked up Frank at 8:20, got to CHM a few minutes later. Worked hard with volunteers Frank, Tony, and Arlette to set up our display of lots of “vintage” books and software.

Then from 10 to 6pm it was really quite boring, sitting around, while the other volunteers — some of them are teens and I got to sign their public service credit sheets, I’m not sure what agency gives them credit for this, but whatever — took care of the actual sales. Mostly using the cute little Square terminals, which are very slick, handling all types of sales.

After 6, Frank wanted to take part in the official social hour for exhibitors, outside on the patio. I spent the time chatting with Laurel, who is starting to come to terms with Bill’s death.

Then off to FOPAL main sales room where I selected two boxes of books from my regular shelves to spice up our sale tomorrow. Left Frank there, came home and made myself a sandwich for supper.

Thursday 08/01/2024

Down to FOPAL at 9:30 to meet with John the treasurer to pick up the Square terminals and cash box. Then I loaded 16 bankers boxes of books into the Prius. Intern Arlette joined and volunteer Amy showed up and at noon we drove down to CHM. There we loaded our 30 boxes of books in, but, as in prior years, we couldn’t set up. There was another event happening this evening that prevented setting up our tables. So we will have to set up in the hour before the show opens tomorrow. On the positive side, Eric the organizer agreed to give us 4 tables, more than I expected, and very welcome.

So back home by 3. Got a phone message from Dennis, call Laurel. Did; her husband Bill had died, while at work. She was just in the beginning stages of getting her head together. Bill’s health was not the best, but still the sudden event is a bad shock.

Wednesday 07/31/2024

A quiet day before the big VCF weekend. Took a standard walk in the morning. During the day of mostly lounging in my chair, I exchanged a dozen emails regarding different aspects of our VCF sale.

At 4pm, there was an open meeting to introduce some changes in the housekeeping department. Mostly small things, although there may be a change in our 6th floor housekeeper, from Wanda whom we all love, to who? Also, they will no longer supply toilet paper; we have to buy our own. Well, I’ve been buying my own TP since shortly after I moved in; the house version is too thin. Also they won’t be supplying plastic bin liners for our wastebaskets. Well I’ve been stocking and using my own plastic wastebasket liners for some time, because the standard size they use is too big. So the changes don’t effect me.

Tuesday 07/30/2024

Went down to FOPAL at 9am to meet with Frank and decide what to do about some bulky hardware items. People donate stuff like this, we don’t normally take it but somehow these items were accepted. Now do we want to try to sell them at VCF? I am concerned about how we really don’t have enough table space for our books let alone these things. Specifically two modern-ish office typewriters. From the 80s, I would guess? Daisy-wheel printers with keyboards and some amount of brains, little LCD screen with menus. 20 or 30 bucks on ebay. We decided we would maybe bring them the second day, if we sold enough stuff on the first day to make room on our table.

The other item was an original Osborne 1 computer. The person who donated it told somebody that it was working. It isn’t, now. We powered it up. The screen lit up and it spun the floppy disk we loaded in the A drive, but it didn’t display anything or try to boot from the disk. So we will take it and offer it at $100 as-is.

Talked about some other things. Later in the day I made some “all sales as-is, no returns” signs. Tomorrow I have nothing to do, yay; then Thursday the busy part starts.

Talked briefly to Dennis; Toni is not well at all.