Day 145, actual parking and stuff

Friday, 4/26/2019

Went for a run, fine. Killed some items from the every-growing to-do list, starting with reviewing the draft documents that lawyer Nancy sent. One of the documents is a complete rewrite of the “Cortesi Family Trust” which will now be named the “David Cortesi Survivor Trust”. The change of name, I suspect, will mean that I have to get my three Schwab Accounts, my bank account, and who knows what else, changed, because their nominal “owner” has changed name. We meet next Wednesday and do a whole lot of paperwork.

Second item was to arrange to get rid of a mattress. Back-story: when we first got our McCrosky mattress, Marian wasn’t happy with it. We added a padded mattress cover. Still not right. Noting that the foam mattress in the RV was just to her taste, we went to the foam store in Palo Alto — does that still exist? yup, Tallman’s House of Foam on Hamilton is still a thing — and bought a 3-inch thick queen-size piece. That, on top of the McCrosky and under the padded cover, was just right.

So now, I have after extensive dithering, decided to take the bed with me to CH. It’s a pretty piece of furniture and it’s here, no shopping needed. I don’t really need a queen size, but there’s plenty of room. But… somehow I felt I didn’t want to transport that foam sheet. I don’t need it; the basic McCrosky is fine by me. And it looks hokey. So, when I changed the bed linen last, I pulled it off.

Well, that left me with this very unwieldy, 3-inch thick queen-size piece of foam that weighs about 20 pounds and is very awkward to carry; it really wants to flatten out from any rolled or folded position. And it won’t fit a trash can. And it looks like shit leaning up against the wall of the house. So I went on Yelp and they have this marvelous way of getting quotes from multiple vendors, and quickly had a bid from JunkX to come and pick it up Saturday between 3 and 4.

Glowing with accomplishment I collected the new padlock for my storage unit, and a suitcase and my toolbox to store in said unit, and drove to CH. Parked in front, went in, picked up the magic sensor for the driveway, and drove around to the garage entry. The gates responded to my sensor and I went in and parked in my new stall. Schlepped the tool box and the suitcase through the winding corridors between the new building, where I park, to the basement of the old building, and to the Residents’ Storage section.

Used a tool from the box to cut the zip-tie on my storage cage, put the stuff in, and applied the new padlock. I had intended to eat lunch at CH but forgot all about that plan and just reversed my path to the house.

In the afternoon I went to a Stanford Baseball game. They weren’t doing well, committing four errors in the first five innings; I got bored and went home and caught up on some TV. Although I’ve been so busy, evenings, that I’m way behind my DVR.

Day 143, parking, filing, house ad, fopal

Wednesday, 4/24/2019

Opened the day with a run. Then I was about to set to work organizing files when I remembered getting an email yesterday evening about parking at CH. Checked the email, it was from a staff member named Payal, saying to call her to look over available spots. Oh! There are available spots? I called, she was at her desk, and we arranged to meet at 10am, it then being 9:40. She said, good, she had another person to show around at 10am also.

I zipped over to CH and said to the desk person I was there to see Payal. Desk person picked up the phone and called and said, “Mr. Cortesi is here to see you…” She knew my name! This is kind of neat.

Payal is a tall, 30-something woman with a pleasant manner (like every other staff member I’ve met). The other person looking for a parking space turned out to be Tammy, a diminutive Japanese(?) lady who like me is just moving in, to the third floor in her case. Together we descended to the garage to look at available spaces. After reviewing several, Tammy settled on one, asked my opinion on it, I concurred it was a good one. It’s just on the right of a pillar, and I pointed out she would always have room to open her door, nobody could get close on the left.

After Tammy left, I explained to Payal how I really want a spot within a few feet of an electrical outlet so I can keep the car charged. I would just hate to go back to driving a “normal” Prius, getting the ordinary 50mpg and toting around 100 lbs. of batteries I don’t use. So we looked at the available spots in this, the Tower garage (under the main building), and there was one that would do. However there is also the option of the Lee garage, under the new skilled nursing annex. OK, let’s look at those.

It’s something of a long and winding road through the basement of the Tower to get to the Lee garage, so that’s a bit of a drawback. OTOH, the Lee spaces are $10/month cheaper. And it turned out that there was a 110v outlet in reach of almost every space there. I picked #10, a wide spot with a wall on one side and an outlet right next to it. So that’s settled, and a great relief to my mind.

Actually I’m feeling better about CH for several reasons. Night before last I had a middle of the night tossing session, feeling some buyer’s remorse about this large step. But after the very friendly floor meeting yesterday, and yet another pleasant and productive interaction with the staff today (plus getting the exact right parking setup), I’m feeling happier about it all. It ain’t cheap — it’s about the daily fare of a cruise ship, which offers about the same level of service — but I have to remind myself that not only am I getting a comfortable residence, food, and service out of it, I have the assurance of lifetime care if (when!) my health deteriorates. Never to be a burden on, nor dependent on the good will of, my few relatives? Priceless.

So home from that to finish up the file organizing. Penda-Flexes in a banker’s box, but all ready to drop into the file cabinet I bought, which is still in its cardboard box over there, waiting to be unboxed after it gets moved to my unit. Whenever that happens.

Chuck called saying he’d just emailed the copy for the house ad! I made a few comments, and asked that he change the specific street address to just “Old Palo Alto”. This is very exciting. I am expecting he will be bombarded with queries. I hope I won’t be disappointed in that.

After a quick lunch I was about to leave for FOPAL when I checked my calendar and realized I have an appointment for a hair cut at 12:30! Glad I looked, off I go for that. Chris was enthusiastic about Channing House. From there I went to FOPAL and spent 90 minutes pricing and shelving books for the Computer section, and another 90 minutes doing sorting. Home to chill and hydrate and perhaps nap.

Day 142, dentist, lunch, floor meeting, dinner

Tuesday, 4/23/2019

Began the day by walking to a mile-plus to my appointment for dental hygiene, and walking the return, stopping at C.H. en route to check my mailbox. Disappointed that with all that walking, the phone shows only 7,000 steps.

Spent some time organizing penda-flexes. (No, auto-correct, it is not panda flexes!) I like making sense of all these old files, discarding outdated and irrelevant stuff, organizing the remainder into simpler categories that will be easier to remember.

Then it was time to meet Scott for lunch. Pleasant meeting, I’d say just-ok food at Dan Gordon’s, who, Scott pointed out, was presumably half of the former Gorden-Biersch Brewery, whose restaurant was once in that same space.

On the way to lunch I stopped at MaxiMart Pharmacy to get a refill of the antibiotic pills I take before any dental procedure (to protect my replaced aortic valve). Oops, prescription expired. Leave it, we’ll apply for a renewal, check back tomorrow. They know me by sight, partly because I’ve gotten meds there for 20 years at least, but more because I was in there what feels in retrospect like every other day all last fall, picking up one or another med for Marian. It was probably only once a week, really, but I had some bad emotions walking up to the door, from all the associations with her long illness. But now, this is for me, and I’m not ill, just getting a preventative med. So it was alright.

On the way back I stopped for a few groceries, including the indispensable peanut butter. Should I get a big jar? I’ll be on a full meal plan in a few weeks. Oh hell yes, I can have peanut butter in my room, to eat at my own bistro table in my kitchenette.

Soon it was time to leave again for the Sixth Floor Meeting. Craig was in the chair and did a good job. There were 30 or so people there; I learned the names of about five, and was pleasantly greeted by all. The topic of the meeting was the upcoming move off the sixth floor so the great rolling renovation can have it. Here’s the time-line:

August 12-23, the seventh floor people move out of temporary units and back to their renovated permanent units.
Temporary units are cleaned.
August 26-September 6, sixth floor people move into temporary units.
Around January 2020, sixth floor moves back, fifth moves out.

Angela, who I met with a week ago to choose decor options for my unit, is in charge of this. So far they have done the in/out swap for the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors and have it down to a science. She explained the process in detail and pretty well satisfied everyone.

From there I went to supper with Craig and Diane, and damn it four other women whose names I didn’t get. Wait, one was Eva. I also met Jerry and his wife (name?) and saw their apartment, on which they did an extreme renovation when they moved in two years ago. It’s very attractive, extremely “modern” with gray and black cubes and track lighting. Jerry is very technical and has a complex computer setup with multiple large monitors. I’m going to like him, I think; I certainly intend to call on him as a resource getting my various devices working with the CH systems.

I excused myself after one cup of coffee to go to a Stanford Baseball game. Got there at the bottom of the second, Stanford behind 4-1. The next two innings Stanford hit three or it may have been four homers and went ahead 9-4. I left after two hours and it was only the sixth inning.

Day 141, ‘nother day of doin’ s**t

Monday, 4/22/2019

Began the day by watering the plants. There are only six, but they are all doing well. I haven’t managed to kill them. I look forward to having their company at the new place.

Then I went for a run; 38 minutes of steady (if slow) jog, felt good all the way. God bless podcasts, though. I doubt I could do any kind of exercise if I had to do it without distraction in my ear.

Settled down to the killer to-do list. First up: apply for a residential parking permit for downtown Palo Alto. Have to upload a picture of my driver’s license, which of course has Tasso Street on it, plus some document that shows the new address. I make a PDF of a couple of pages of the CH contract I just signed. Upload these, click “apply”, it comes back and says, that address isn’t eligible for a parking permit, or no permits are available. Uh-oh. Do the whole process again just to be sure; same result.

Call the number given, get nice woman who says, “Yeah, Mister Cortesi, I was watching you upload these, I was just waiting for you to call.” OK, that’s weird. Bad enough I have Google looking over my shoulder at every email. But whatever; she takes my email address and says “OK, you’re all set” and gives me some directions on how to download and print a temporary permit.

I email Craig asking how to get a login for the CH resident’s web portal. He replies almost instantly, get one from the front desk. I email Kim asking what I need to do, to get the process of applying for a parking space started.

Friday I received a long letter from my lawyer. I’ll call her Nancy because in fact that is her name. Anyway, it had endless details on how as an executor I should go about making an inventory and valuation of Marian’s estate. So I wrote an email back saying, in short, “She owned nothing that wasn’t part of the trust, why I gotta do this?” More nicely phrased with specifics of course. But in fact I found our “Community Property Agreement” in which we each said, “whatever’s mine is yours, too”; and also a separate agreement in which we both said that whatever possessions we had or would get, clothes, jewelry, whatever, was part of the family trust. Plus her will making me her heir. So if I’m satisfied with no detailed inventory, shouldn’t nobody else need one. We’ll see if Nancy agrees.

Cleaning out the garage, I found an old iPhone 5s. Apparently when I got my newer 7s, I put the old one in the box. OK, now what to do with it? Search for “donate old iPhone”, find Secure the Call which repurposes old phones as 911-callers for homeless people. They provide an address label, but clearly I need a padded envelope too. So, time to go out and stuff.

Stop one, the local CVS to buy a small padded envelope. Stop two, the hardware store to buy a padlock. Stop three, Channing House. Talk to the girl on the front desk. She doesn’t remember how to create resident logins, and who does it out for lunch. We arrange she’ll email me about it. Then I go in to the dining room and have lunch: salmon, and a nice mixed-veg sauté.

During lunch I get an email from Chuck; they are going to put up an ad as we discussed Friday, would I please take some pictures to use in it. OK, another thing for the list.

Then I go down to the basement to see if I can find the Fitness Director, so as to sign a waiver, so as to be able to use the gym excuse me, Fitness Center. Fitness director appears to be out. Also, oddly, the door to the gym appears to be locked, although I can see someone inside using equipment. My room key doesn’t fit the door. What’s the deal there? Well, next time.

I go into the garage and check it out. There are 51 spaces, about a fourth are empty in the middle of a weekday. When I try to go back into the basement, the door is locked. My room key fits the handle but doesn’t operate it. Then I spot a camera and a button and a sign, “please stand on the yellow spot when pressing the blue button so we can see you.” I stand on spot, press button, almost instantly the door clicks.

I take the elevator to the top, the 11th floor, and have a quick look around this public space. It’s a large-ish room with a rather large (72-inch?) TV at one end, lots of armchairs, and some tables. Windows on three sides with a view of the hills to the west and the east. Big open walking decks on each side.

Nothing left to do, so I head out and make stop four, my bank to deposit a Via Benefits check. They promised to send a direct-deposit form to me; it hasn’t come yet.

Back home I take pictures of several rooms. Unfortunately I got rid of my wide-angle lens some time ago and I can’t get a picture of the inside of the bathroom. I use the iPhone’s panorama feature to get the kitchen, but the bathroom is just too small, the panorama looks bizarre. I do not take a picture of the outside, because at this stage I don’t want people to be able to identify the house and come knocking.

I set up the new padlock, it has a four-letter combination. I had planned to set it to DAVE but alas! it has no V! So I set it to DALE instead. Now I need to go back to CH install it. Later!

I rewrite the much-shortened to-do list, adding a couple of items. I print the mailing label for Secure the Call and tape it to the padded envelope and put the old phone in it and seal it. Aha! In the mail is the deposit form from Via benefits. I fill it out, put it in a stamped envelope, address it. Now I need to go to the P.O. and also, wash the car. Out again!

I drive to the Post Office and mail the Via Benefits envelope and the old cell phone. Drive to the car wash and buy the Prius its first bath since it got polished on day whatever? And to the grocery store for a few necessaries. And home. I need to put together the pictures I took to mail to Chuck. But I want a nap, too! What will I do?

Day 138, signing at Channing House

Friday, 4/19/2019

Showered, shaved, dressed as formally as my wardrobe allows (slacks, sport coat, gray turtleneck) and at 10:15 drove to C.H. where I sat down with Rhonda Bekkedahl, currently COO, also incoming CEO, to sign all the various contracts involved in becoming a member of a Continuous Care operation. Done! Well, it will be done when they have successfully tapped my Schwab account for the six-figure entry fee. Let’s see… nope, hasn’t happened yet. Not my problem.

Got my room key; got shown my mailbox and my storage locker. The latter is a large (roughly 3×4 feet and 8 foot tall) wire cage in the basement.

Got a parking sticker for the car, however it is not clear yet whether there is an available slot in the underground garages. In any case I need to get a Palo Alto resident’s parking permit; with that I will be able to park anywhere on the surrounding streets and ignore the 2-hour limit signs. But I seriously don’t want to leave the car on the street all the time. We’ll see.

Declined the opportunity to have lunch there. I am now able to eat any and all meals there but I won’t start doing that before next week. This is a stressful weekend and I’d like to not start on that whole new to-do list until later. Right now I am going to sit down and read through all the bumf I’ve been handed.

Well, there is a lot to know. It’s going to be like living in a nice resort hotel. I’ve got lots to do, starting next week, to begin moving in, emotionally if not yet physically. Today I ate a simple supper at home, but tomorrow, or Sunday for sure, I need to go have supper over there.

One piece of furniture I didn’t secure yesterday is a desk. This afternoon I spent a lot of time searching the web for an L-shaped desk — because I want an L-shaped desk, damn it, for the corner of the bedroom — that had a keyboard tray — because I want my keyboard lower than the standard 30-inch desk height — and also a file drawer and a drawer for stuff. This is a combination of features that is not common. There are stark, modernist L-shaped desks that have keyboard trays but no drawers, and L-shaped desks that have pedestals with drawers but no keyboard tray. And then filter those by color, didn’t want black or dark brown or white. Finally found one, sold both at Walmart and Amazon for $100 more. But Walmart’s web page said, sorry, we can’t ship that to your Walmart. So I ordered it from Amazon; the box of knocked-down parts should arrive next week.

Big day. Vegging out with a book.

Day 134, planning the unit

Monday, 4/15/2019

Started with a run, very comfortable. On return, showered and dressed, I spent time on the phone with Via Benefits. For the third month in a row they had ignored my information on direct deposit and had sent me a check. The phone rep said she would send me a paper form that I could return to request direct deposit. Hopefully that will be more effective than repeatedly putting the bank numbers into their web site and clicking “submit”; that hasn’t achieved anything.

Then spent an hour doing stuff–triage of the “shop”, the enclosed room in the garage building. That’s where the brown steel cabinets are that I emptied over the last two weeks. Now I worked on the cabinets up the right side, primarily paint and related chemicals (paint stripper, thinner…) and plant pots. Lots of plant pots. Those I left for the sale manager to price.

I spent some time with decorative pebbles. Back last summer, with Marian in the hospital, I tidied the three big “porch pots” of bedding plants by pulling the dying plants and, rather than replant, I put in rounds of green netting and covered them with the shiny decorative pebbles Marian used to discourage squirrels. In the winter, I moved the pots to the garage.

Now, cleaning out the shop cabinet, I found a half-bag of shiny pebbles and remembered the others, so I gathered all the pebbles together, and then noticed they were dirty and had leaves mixed in, so put them in a plastic tub and washed them.

Well, such fussing brought me to noon and shortly Amy the Decorator appeared right on time. We walked around the house and I pointed out the few bits of furniture I meant to take, or that we could take. She took pictures and noted dimension on her iPad.

Then we went to Channing House for a scheduled meeting with Angela the Upgrade Manager. She and Amy got along great and we all spent nearly two hours in unit 621. Much of the time was spent choosing materials from Angela’s stock of carpet and counter-top samples, paint chips, and photos of cabinetry and sinks.

One problem emerged: Angela just lost her in-house cabinet maker, and is not sure whether the bathroom cabinetry that I want can be done in the next few weeks. Possibly it will have to be delayed until the 6th-floor upgrade late this year. To be determined.

Amy dropped me off at home. After she left, I drove up to Bol Park where the tree planting for Marian is to happen Saturday. On the map it had looked unfamiliar, but in person it was “Doh! of course!”. I had ridden my bike along the edge of this park many many times; it’s the bike-path from Oregon Expressway over to Arastradero.

It was easy to identify the place for the tree planting; I could see the clear signs of Canopy having prepared the ground for one of their community plantings. It’s just in front of the pen where for years a donkey lived that everyone treated as a Palo Alto mascot.

From there I drove less than a mile to Hobee’s, where I am thinking people can have brunch after the planting. Unfortunately they close early on Mondays so I couldn’t get in. I’ll have supper there tomorrow and make a reservation if I can.

Day 128, unit walk-thru, more history

Tuesday, 4/9/2019

First item today was to meet with Angela Lamothe, the “upgrade manager” at C.H. We viewed my

unit #621

in detail and talked about what they would do standard, and what they would do that would cost me extra (but no numbers yet).

We decided that the kitchenette area will be remodeled with a new microwave, new fridge (both the extra-cost stainless steel instead of the standard white) and changed cabinetry. The existing cabinetry is not exactly crude, but not elegant and the paint is somewhat worn and chipped.

I decided to have the bathroom vanity redone. This isn’t part of the standard move-in upgrade. However I thought the present cabinetry was ugly and outdated, and it will be well worth some money to make it nice.

In both cases there will be several choices to be made of finishes and materials. I said I want to have my decorator along for that conference. Later we settled on Monday afternoon, and I talked to Amy on the phone and that works for her. So next Monday I will finally get a decorator really involved. (By the way, last I heard from Chris’s niece Tyra was a vague, “not sure this will work with my schedule” and no follow-up since, so I’ve basically written her off.)

There will be more work done, specifically new floor covering and paint on all surfaces. I elected to postpone that work until after the major sixth-floor remodel that will happen beginning in August. They would normally re-do the floor covering then because they pull out the floor-mounted heating/cooling units, replacing them with ducts in the ceiling. That leaves holes in the floor covering. I decided that I would have a hard floor (faux wood) in the living half of the unit, and new carpet in the bedroom half. In the meantime I will live with the beige carpet that exists. They will do a thorough clean of it hoping to get out a few of the dents and stains from the prior tenant’s furniture.

Paint is also re-done after the big remodel, so I will also live with the existing beige paint until then. However, I will have Amy select the colors to be used now, along with the flooring choices.

So, home to start doing more

memorabilia triage.

I’m trying to empty the bottom two shelves of the last cabinet. First up was a box of Marian’s memorabilia from her school years. I swear she never looked in this box all the years we were married. (Maybe she went out and looked in it when I wasn’t around? But I doubt it.) There was the Oakland High School annual from her graduation year, and mementos of proms, and a whole pack of report cards from middle school. (Somewhat to my surprise, she didn’t get all-As. There was a fair sprinkling of B and B+ grades as well.) I winnowed out documents showing her high school and college graduations and saved them. There was the 1952 Cal Blue and Gold in which she appears as a postage-stamp sized headshot in the hundreds of graduates in the school of Arts and Letters, but there was only that one tiny picture in a volume an inch and a half thick, so I didn’t keep it.

A box labeled “Work Misc” had assorted memos and–I cannot fathom the reason for this–desk calendar pages. Marian had a calendar with month-pages on her desk where she noted all her meetings and to-dos; and she saved them. Here were the 12 months of each of several years from 1990 through 1996, her final work year. If anyone had ever wanted to know, they could learn when we went to Chris for haircuts or she had meetings or work deadlines. To the recycle.

Also in this box, though, was perhaps the only extant copy of the manual she wrote, Introduction to IBM Direct Access Storage Devices. She wrote it while working for IBM in Honolulu in 1965-8. She was running customer training classes for the new IBM 360 line, and many customer programmers had never been exposed to disk drives, so she wrote this manual explaining their principles and how to write code to use them. It was widely praised, and here were letters to Marian from IBM managers and from customers praising the manual, saying how clear and helpful it had been. I kept the manual and tucked the letters inside it.

Next up, a stack of fat three-ring binders that contain software manuals she contributed to. Hundreds of pages of detailed software reference and usage info for systems that nobody uses or even remembers now, like OSI/CS or the EDX Communication Facility. Oh, and APL for VSPC, a product we both worked on for several years here and in England. All computer industry veterans suffer from this irony, looking back on the hard, diligent work they poured into brilliant projects that after only a decade or two are completely forgotten and irrelevant. All these pages go in the recycle. The three-ring binders I can take to FOPAL where they have a special spot for binders that people can take free.

But there was another binder, with a nice padded cover. Not containing manuals, but containing all the letters she had received from various IBM managers and co-workers on the occasion of her 30th anniversary, in 1991, and on her retirement in 1996. I’m pulling the letters out of the clear plastic sheet protectors. I’ll put them in a single envelope and keep them.

Delving further, I found two boxes containing all our credit card statements from about 1987 to some recent year. In the desk I keep the statements for the past 12 months. Each time I pay a credit card bill, I put it on the top of the stack, and throw away the matching one from the bottom of the stack. I suppose I knew we had these historic records. I think I recall once in the late 90s I got out a year’s worth and did a summary of our annual spending, just to reassure myself. After that, nobody touched them. They would have nicely filled the gap between the end of the hundreds of cancelled checks I threw away last week, and the present day. Keep? Nope nope nope. Out.

Final box on the bottom shelf: old tax records! The bundles of tax-related documents for each year from about 1979 through 2013. In the closet in the house is a small box where we have kept the most recent five years’ returns. I’m writing to my financial advisor now to ask, how much of this is really necessary. I’m guessing, none of it, but we’ll see what he says. Later: the advice is to keep the last 7 years complete, i.e. the return and the fat envelope of 1099s, supporting receipts etc.; but keep just the actual return document for prior years. On examination of the box, it appears that Marian was doing that; the returns up to 2010 had been stripped of the supporting docs.

I managed to get all the tax returns from now back, into the one banker’s box. Next year may overflow. Or next year I will accidentally lose (“oopsie!”) say 1970-1980. While working on that, got an email saying this year’s tax return is ready. I’ll have to go pick it up and pay the preparer tomorrow or Friday. Then came

Deborah

and this day is getting crazy long. Deborah is the woman I tried to contact to run an estate sale, and hadn’t returned my message. Now she did, and came over at 3pm to look the house over. Like every other person who sees the house for the first time, she loved it. She was complimentary on how far I had gotten at de-cluttering and organizing. She looked the goods over, opined that the sale might generate $3000, and we would do a 50-50 split. She’s going to come around Monday afternoon to start pricing. Which means I’ve got to move on with finishing the garage triage and as much as possible, get the things I mean to keep sequestered into one marked-off area.

Day 124, finances, docent, cleanup

Friday, 4/6/2019

Began with a run, which makes this the first week in a long time when I’ve actually run three times, M-W-F, which is my nominal goal. I cut the route a little short because of impending rain, but still, over 30 minutes of jogging.

Spent a little more time going through the box of old notes and files from my career as a free-lancer in the 1980s. Most significant were the notes and other items from my attendance at Clarion West, a six-week residential science fiction writer’s workshop. I took some very nice pictures of my classmates, who I now barely remember. I had saved notes from talks by several visiting lecturers, established authors like Norman Spinrad and Suzy McKee Charnas. The primary thing I now remember from that intense six-week immersion in writing and critiquing is that it ruined me for reading for enjoyment for a long time. It was more than a decade before I could pick up a science fiction book, or any fiction book really, and just read it. Well, it also taught me that I didn’t have what it takes to write fiction, although that didn’t stop me trying (and hasn’t yet).

Next up, I sat down with my laptop and updated the Portfolio spreadsheet I created on Day 31. This meant opening the Schwab month-end statements for the four remaining accounts (two accounts for Marian’s IRA now having been merged into mine), and copying figures from them into the spreadsheet.

This was the final thing that I had been using Marian’s iMac for. I have demonstrated that I can use Godot to open all financial websites and update the portfolio info, so the machine on Marian’s desk is now superfluous. The obvious next steps are to format its disk, and put it into the nice Apple return box that’s waiting on the floor by the desk. I stuck the Mac OS boot USB stick into a USB port on the back of it and then stopped. I was starting to cry, and damn it I have to go and do a Docent tour in an hour.

This shit is not getting easier with time and practice. Bleagh.

I went to the museum and led the noon tour. Attendance was light and my tour group had just four people!

On return I spent some time reading more of my writing from that mid-80s period when I tried to be a science fiction writer. I did some good thinking then, and came up with some interesting ideas. What I didn’t produce was any good characters or plots. Nor do I like the prose style I was using to describe my ideas, stuffy, pseudo-academic.

Driving to and from the museum I was recalling how Marian would have felt about my sentimental regard for her computer. I believe she would have said, “That’s pretty silly.” So, channeling her pragmatic personality, I booted the iMac from an install USB stick and formatted its drive. Then I packed it up. The Apple return program provides very nicely designed packaging with a clear instruction sheet. It took five minutes to have the machine securely boxed up and ready to go.

I got an email from Channing House: my walk-through and meeting with Angela, the manager for upgrades, will happen at 10am Tuesday. After that I should know for sure when I can start moving in.

I planned to go to a Stanford Baseball game starting at 6pm, leaving at 5:15. To pass the time I read the first three chapters of On the Road and for fun, read it aloud, which suits Kerouac’s prose. Then I left, stopping at the FedEx office to drop off the iMac.

I stayed at the game to the seventh-inning stretch, but the Candlestick-like chill had me shivering and yawning so I left with Stanford ahead 1-0, listening to the game on KZSU going home and at home. The rubberized drawer liner I ordered was on the porch, so I lined the drawers of the new toolbox while Stanford got ahead 2-0, and then UCLA tied the game in the top of the ninth. Now it’s after 9pm, and the bottom of the ninth, and I’m so glad I left early… ok, it’s a tie game, bottom of the ninth, two on, two out, full count. Here’s your live play by play: foul… ball four. Bases loaded, winning run at third. Ball. Ball. 2-0 count, hit into left, it drops! Stanford wins, 3-2.

Still glad I left.

Day 122, anxiety, discards, cardio

Wednesday, 4/3/2019

Woke up to some anxiety this morning. Odd, because I had a very good night’s sleep, up once about 2am then slept to 6:30, eight hours total. Six-thirty is unusually late; all through the winter I woke up when the furnace fired up. The thermostat is set to start heating at 6:15. Yesterday and today, the furnace never started. Why? Because for the first time in months, the internal house temperature at 6:15 was 69º, the set-point for 6:15am. This is the true mark of the changing seasons, that no heating is needed in the morning. Another month and it’ll be time to switch over to cooling.

Oh, wait… another month and I won’t be here, probably.

So I arose to anxiety,

a vague feeling of wrongness that I think is associated with yesterday’s final acceptance at C.H. That’s a big commitment to a whole new mode of living. Am I doing the right thing?

To “not be a home-owner” was, as I’ve written before, probably the first decision I made when I began thinking about becoming a widower, a year ago, when Marian was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My thoughts then were theoretical, speculative, but this stood out as a firm conclusion: if she goes, and I’m a widower, I won’t stay in this house. Researching ILFs and choosing Channing House is all the natural consequence of that decision.

I didn’t analyze it at the time; it just seemed right. I’ve explained it to other people since as not wanting the responsibility of a house, tired of worrying about maintenance and insurance and property taxes. That’s all true, but not complete. Analyzing it now, as the coffee water heated this morning, what came to mind was that I really wanted to break with the past. I don’t want to occupy a truncated partnership was the sentence that bubbled up out of my subconscious. (Whoa! Go my subconscious!) To unpack that sentence, I don’t want to continue to live as half a couple, alone in the shell once occupied by the tight little corporation of Dave’n’Marian. The house is the physical representation of that shell.

There are other life styles I could have picked. I could live in a regular apartment. I could become a world traveler, flitting from hotel to hotel with the seasons. I could buy a nice RV and become a “snowbird”, traveling to Alaska in the spring and Arizona in the winter. But C.H. has many practical advantages: it is comfortable; it offers a new community in which I’m pretty sure I can come to be an influential and helpful member; and the continuing medical care means I will not have to be a burden on any of my relatives as I age. The one time I talked with Marian about my “being a bachelor” notions, her only concern was to urge me to keep in mind that I wouldn’t have someone to take care of me the way I was taking care of her. C.H. answers to that issue.

Mulling all that I went for a run, which felt excellent. After a shower and shave, I did some

more cleanup.

I tackled two more shelves of the big steel cabinets in the shop. Here’s what I saw first.

check_boxes That’s right, two nice banker’s boxes labeled in Marian’s neat hand as you see. Seriously, we have been saving cancelled checks from 1965??? Oh yeah; and old IBM pay stubs, too: old_pay_stub I was getting $405.95 each pay period, which I think was bi-weekly, so over $800/month, not bad for 1965! (Plus, I see, $25 for “local travel”, i.e. mileage for driving around SF.)

Ignoring the wails of imaginary historians appalled at losing all that good data on the spending habits of mid-century Yuppies, the whole thing went into the recycle bin. in_the_box That exposed two shelves of my published books, multiple copies of each. my_books I won’t throw all of them out, but I fetched a box and put one copy of each book in it. The rest will go into the blue bin tomorrow.

About 1pm I went off to do three hours of sorting at FOPAL. One perk of that job is getting first look at all the donations. I pocketed a copy of On the Road, which I’ve been meaning to re-read, and one of Vonnegut’s Mother Night. I’ll read them (or anyway sample them, I’m not sure I’ll want to read all of Kerouac) and put them back in the stream another day.

At home I found an email containing the standard

Channing House contract,

a 51pp PDF. Sent copies to the financial guys and also to Chuck, who was curious about it. Need to read it carefully myself! Here’s the meat of it, from article I:

In consideration of the Entrance Fee, Monthly Fee and other fees payable by you under this Agreement, Channing House will provide you with residence, care and services at the Community for the rest of your life, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

Also got a notification that my

Ziopatch results

were back, and: no Afib detected. I have rare PVC’s (pre-ventricular contractions, which I’ve had since the 1980s) as well as rare “premature atrial complexes”. But these little blips of irregularity I notice are not of concern. That’s a relief.

Day 121, life is just packed

Tuesday, 4/2/2019

I am four months along as a widower. Yesterday I had a mailing from Pathways, the company that handled Marian’s Hospice period. They have sent several supportive post-mortem mailings over the months. This one had a particularly accurate section, headed “Grief Bursts”:

Grief bursts strike like a lightening bolt. You are driving, listening to the radio when a song comes on that you both liked, grief grips your heart, tears sting your eyes, and you wonder what hit you. Grief bursts may be more disorienting to those who have gone back to their normal round of activities and who feel “okay” some of the time… By acknowledging these feelings as normal you can recognize the progress you have made…

Case in point: Today was walking back from the gym and for no particular reason started deleting unwanted photos from my phone as I walked along. Lots of casual pointless pics over the past few months, delete, delete, … and then I hit the last couple I took of Marian, and choked up. And a few minutes later I walked in the front door and noticed the big box that is the Apple return box for her iMac.

Yesterday I carefully used Godot to visit the sites that I’ve been using her iMac to visit these past months: Chase credit card, Schwab, and the credit union. It’s been very convenient to just go to her desk and use her machine which “knew” all the passwords and filled them in. But now I’ve got all the passwords on LastPass on Godot, and have verified Godot to those sites (they all wanted two-factor authentication for a visit from an unfamiliar machine). That makes the iMac now superfluous. I can box it up and send it back and soon will receive an Apple gift card worth $250.

Between those two things, seeing those last pictures, and the prospect of disposing of her iMac, I am now an emotional wreck, quivering lip, sniffles, the works.

I’ll be fine. Onward.

Got an email from designer

Tyra;

she can’t join me Friday to look over the C.H. unit, which is probably just as well because I wasn’t positive I could make that happen anyway. Replied asking if she would have time next week.

Got an email from Chuck; his retired office manager has recommended a woman,

Debra,

who might be willing to manage an estate sale for me. I called Debra’s number and had to leave a message.

Got a reply from

the Attorney,

who didn’t seem to have read the details attached to my message, just asked “who is your accountant” and what number to call me on. Since she has received (1) an email from my accountant and (2) an email from me mentioning said accountant and including the text of their first email, I kind of wonder at her reading skills. But anyway, I replied politely with my phone number.

All this before 11am, such a life I lead.

Suli arrived about 12:30 and we talked about how she will probably come one more time, maybe two. Then I packed up two laptops in the Apple return boxes (but not the iMac yet) and headed out for a round of errands. Errand one was to drop off the two MacBooks at FedEx.

Errand two was to stop at the local hardware store and see what they had in the way of

tool chests.

I need a somewhat bigger tool chest. I have a small three-drawer chest that I’ve owned for decades, which holds the essential fixing stuff; I schlep it to the Repair Cafe sessions. But there are some more tools that won’t fit into it. For The Transition to Smaller Quarters (does that work as an acronym? TTSQ?) I want to, one, triage my tools, and two, fit them into one portable chest. The current chest, which is 19x9x8, is just too small, as well as having a broken latch. So I spent time on Amazon last night shopping. Finally thought I’d see what the one remaining local hardware store has (damn, but I miss Orchard Supply). They had basically nothing, some cheap plastic thing. So back to the internet for that.

Errand three was to run down to

Jean’s place

and drop off a thumb drive with a selection of the pictures from the recent slide-scanning orgy, pictures that I thought she’d want in her collection. Her news was that she’d received the printed and bound copies of volume 3 of the history of St. Joseph’s Parish in Mountain View. This is the church she and Bill attended for decades. Bill initiated the project of producing a parish history back in 2006 and did the first two volumes. He had a lot of material toward the third at his death in 2016. Jean’s been working on it ever since, and is very happy and proud to have it finished and done with.

Back home another email arrived: congratulations, you have been

officially approved

for residence at Channing House! Please make an appointment to walk through unit 621 with our Renovation Coordinator, Angela. All right! I reply promptly with my availability, which is tomorrow and Friday.

I think I’ll close this entry now; that’s quite enough news for one day.