Day 160, deck, tour, book sale

Saturday, 5/11/2019

Today was the originally-scheduled day for me to move into CH. Well, hopefully the new schedule of June 15th will hold. One item on my to-do list for Monday is to settle with a mover, one from the list in the CH orientation book.

But this was the day for the museum tour, the scheduling of which has been so fraught because I have not been getting any response from museum paid staff. Thanks to Steve, who took the initiative to email the 1401 docents on Thursday, it all went off very nicely. The students were to arrive at 11:30 and remarkably, most of them were there at that time. Kim and I chatted with the early arrivers about what they were actually studying: they had been lightly introduced to transistors and logic circuits, then machine design, and were currently studying the MIPS architecture. Whoa, that’s a 64-bit RISC machine, quite a step up from learning AND and NOR gates. Anyway, they knew the lingo.

I took the first group of 15 or so, while Kim waiting for the stragglers. When we finished, about 12:30, we led them into the 1401 lab where docents Jack and Bill gave them the 1401 demo, with special emphasis on what developing software was like in the 1960s. Bill remembers working for a bank when the 1401 was first installed, and writing their programs for checking and loans. (He didn’t mention having to work with the OCR check-reader, I forget its model number; must ask him about that.) Anyway the students got a good tour that meshed with their class pretty well, so that was good.

Back home to change clothes and chill for a while. I changed clothes twice, in fact. Out of my white chinos and red “Computer History Museum Docent” shirt, into work jeans. Then I put the oil on the two back stoops. It really only took half an hour to do this. They look much better, not so obviously dried out. But really, they should be sanded down and re-stained. Shameful neglect, but IOMISEP.

I changed to nicer jeans and out again to walk through the FOPAL book sale and see how it was going. Seemed well; people had as usual messed up the neat shelving of the Computer section and it looked as if some had been bought.

Home again and I got texts and then a call from Chuck. Tomorrow he will be showing the house twice, at 5:00 and 5:30. The second is the previous viewer, the Lawyer from Canada who is a single mom and this time will be bringing her daughter. The first is a realtor Chuck knows — he went out of his way to emphasize she is a long-time Palo Alto realtor who is really nice, “some realtors aren’t, but she is” — who is representing a woman who works at Apple and, he says, is the daughter of a well-to-do family. The other realtor told Chuck her client “has the means” to buy in Palo Alto. So. Good.

Day 149, iPhone, fitness, showing

Tuesday, 4/30/2019

After breakfast I tidied the house, partly because the cleaning lady is coming, and partly because some stranger will be looking at it with Chuck at noon. I left Suli’s check with a note warning her that Chuck would be coming by at noon.

At 10am I had a date with the fitness director at CH, to be given an orientation to the fitness center and sign a waiver so I can have a key to the place, so I can use it. Beforehand I loaded several items in the car destined for my storage cage in the basement: my toolbox that I had out for the Repair Cafe; my old IBM CE toolbag which now contains my cordless drill and an assortment of attachments and bits; a backpack I found in the garage and want to keep.

Oh, and five large plastic bags of cables: USB, HDMI, Cat-5, digital optical, and audio cables. They had been neatly sorted in the Red Chest and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t sell in an estate sale, and would get trashed. I had emailed Craig asking if the Tech Committee at CH had a stock of cables, and he said they did, in “the tenth floor computer room”. I must check that place out.

Anyway, parked in the underground garage (for the second time) and schlepped all that stuff to the storage unit in two trips. There is an amazing long winding path from the new underground garage, down a short flight of stairs, through four doors (one which has a camera and has to be opened by the desk person) and around several corners, to reach the Resident Storage Area in the basement of the older building. Well, that’s conveniently close to the Fitness Center, so fine.

I was disappointed in the Fitness Center. It has a rather thin assortment of machines. In particular the two pieces of apparatus I like to use at the YMCA are not there. I had expected I could drop my YMCA membership, but now I’m wondering.

My iPhone battery has been a concern for some time. It’s showing that annoying trait of failing batteries, making a sudden, unpredictable drop in power. It was fully charged at 10pm last night, and was only 15% at 6am. OK. So from CH I went to the iPhone fixer guy I’ve used before on El Camino near California. He could do it by 1pm. Good. I left it and walked to California avenue and found some lunch.

After lunch I went to pick up the phone with its new battery, and got a reminder of just how deeply that little device works its way into your life. I’m walking along and realize, Oh No, I’m making all these steps and they aren’t being recorded in the Health App! I won’t get credit for this walking.

Phone comfortably back in pocket, I went off for another deferred errand. It’s already past the time of year when I (we) have traditionally changed over from a feather duvet, to a blanket and a knitted bedspread. The duvet cover has needed laundering but I’ve been putting the change-over off, because we had only one blanket, and I had long disliked it, and that blanket was one of the first things I discarded as part of the cleanup right after Marian’s death. (I see I didn’t mention it, but it went in the trash early on.)

So today I drove down to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a simple queen-size beige blanket. Back to the house. Suli was just finishing up, she said Chuck and someone (she didn’t describe who or how many) had come and gone. I made up the bed with clean sheets, a blanket, and our colorful crocheted bedspread. That makes it properly summer.

I spent an hour continuing the project of printing pictures and putting them in frames. Here’s the one I worked on today:

I’m really pleased that I’ve got my cheap little Epson printer tuned so that it produces very nearly that depth of color, when printing at best quality on good paper. The rose really jumps out of the frame. I am not quite sure how I’ll make use of these at CH but most other residents have art on their walls and I will also.

I drove to CH to eat supper and check out two things. First, my apartment. It still pleases me to walk into it; it is just a pleasant, welcoming space. However, it doesn’t have what I was hoping for, a place to hang the two wax plants that are thriving in hanging pots, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. They are just coming into bloom, tiny star-shaped white flowers with little translucent amethyst gems in the center. Really. I’ll post a picture soon. Anyway, how to keep them over there? I need some kind of plant hanger. I think I’ve seen such things, but…

The other thing was to check the tenth floor computer room. Yes, the tech committee has a stock of cables, a few, on a couple of shallow shelves. I guess my collection will stay in the basement for now. But there was a sign up that gave me a chuckle:

Day 110, many appointments

Last night’s play, at local playhouse The Pear , was the world premier of

Sojourn

by Evan Kokkila-Shumacher. It was… interesting. The staging was clever and attractive. The acting was competent. But it was a lot longer than it needed to be. I almost left at intermission, but stayed for the second half to see if they could resolve the many issues; in the end I don’t think they did.

The setup is that two astronauts have been launched on a no-return mission, to pass Jupiter, then Saturn, then apparently to just keep going on toward the Oort Cloud. They have aboard fertilized human eggs and incubators and are supposed to keep decanting babies to be raised up as replacement crew members. This whole mission plan seems, in hindsight, screwy, impractical, and pointless, but it is revealed gradually through the first act so the screwiness doesn’t really hit you until you’ve left the theater. On the ship, things have gone profoundly wrong. Back home at NASA, the management wants to cut funding. But all the stage time is taken up by endless, repetitive arguments. The two astronauts argue in circles about the mission plan. Back home the mission director and a nasty manager argue in circles about funding and the value of the mission. It was all quite tedious and I thought, even as it was going on, that the main points of debate could have been conveyed in a third the amount of dialogue. But then you’d have a one-act play, I guess.

Friday, 3/22/2019

Today is full of scheduled to-dos. After a shower, shave, and dressing in my Museum Docent clothes, I sat down to assemble some

financial documentation

that I was supposed to have included in my initial C.H. application! I was politely reminded of the need for this stuff in an email from Kim, just after the email telling me I could have the nice 1BR unit. It took a while to assemble the needed documentation (basically, proving I had as much assets as I claimed).

One item wanted was a copy of “the first few pages” of our 2017 tax return. I thought I knew exactly where to lay hands on that. There is a small banker’s box with a folder for each of the last five year’s tax returns, organized meticulously (of course) by Marian each April. I opened it, there was the folder for 2017, but it only included the supporting documents — not the actual spiral-bound return document from the accountant. The folders for 2016, 15, and 14 had their returns, but not last year’s. Thinking about it… the taxes would have been finished just about when Marian got her pancreatic cancer diagnosis. We got really busy around then, with lots of doctor appointments and procedures. (I commented more than once that, when you get cancer, you have a new job: you are “doing cancer” for the duration. It just occupies your life.) So not too surprising that, either we didn’t keep the spiral bound printout, or more likely, we didn’t ask for one because the return was e-filed.

At 9am I sent an email to Cindy at the financial advisors’, and at 9:40 she had emailed me a PDF of the 2017 return. I’m getting great support from that outfit. Printed out the first 8 pages, added it to the other copied statements showing the value of various accounts. I had promised this for Monday but I think now I will drop it off on my way to the Museum for an

11:30 tour.

Which was a bit of a mess. On the volunteer scheduling site it was given as “11:30” but in fact the group arrived at 10:30. I got there at 11:00 but Mike, the second docent, didn’t show for another 15 minutes. I had the group of 40+ herded into the 1401 lab and vamped about that machine until Mike arrived. Then we split the group up and started our normal tours — he very generously offering to do his in reverse, from the present backward, so we wouldn’t conflict.

Then, five minutes in, a CHM staff person interrupted me to remind the group that their lunch would be ready upstairs at 12:00. Only now it was 11:20 and I was barely started on what is usually a one-hour tour. I edited myself severely and managed to get them off to their lunch about 12:05 but it was not a relaxing experience. For me; they seemed to enjoy themselves well enough. But seriously: this is the second time in a month that the museum staff has screwed up the scheduling of a custom tour.

I stopped on the way home to buy coffee. I use three scoops for my morning cup, and had only enough left in the canister for tomorrow. But I’m getting to be such a

short-timer;

everything I do has a resonance of, will I do this again? Will I finish this pound of Peet’s Gaia Organic in the old house, or will it last until I’ve moved to C.H.? I bought a pound of bacon because I like to fry up a couple strips and an egg for supper. Will I actually finish that pound, or will I have to throw some away because I’ve moved to C.H. where meals are laid on? It’s an uneasy, but exciting way to live.

Next event was the 2pm arrival of Chuck

the realtor

We reviewed the termite report and he confirmed the low price of fumigation and the reliability of the company he’d used. So it really isn’t a big deal or problem for the sale. He still hasn’t gotten input from any developers. We went over my likely time-line: that I could be signing for my C.H. unit as soon as next week or the week after, and when that’s done, I can begin moving things out of the house into C.H. Which means that almost surely by May he can have the house to stage and sell. He was taken aback by the speed of events but accepted it. I also asked if his stager, Amy, whom I met back on Day 94, would be open to my paying for design assistance in fitting out the new place. He said she did do that and he would let her know I was interested.

I also googled the niece of Chris the hairdresser, who she had recommended as a designer two days ago. She has a small website touting herself as a designer. However she had not responded to the voicemail that Chris left for her two days ago. I sent an email to her business address. We’ll see who responds quicker.

Then off to C.H. to meet with

Ilsabet

who is a resident of C.H. and a client of Chuck’s. I’d asked to meet her because she has an “Alcove” (large studio) and at the time I thought that was what I’d be offered. Now I’ve been offered a 1BR I don’t care so much, but I kept the appointment just to begin making acquaintances in that community. She’s a very pleasant lady and we chatted about room decorations and antiques for a few minutes. She had an idea of what I might do with the numerous decorative objects that aren’t valuable enough to sell. She suggested I donate them to the C.H. Gift Shop, which is run by residents to generate money for the library and for newspaper subscriptions for the lobby. They give a receipt for tax purposes, she assured me. I think this sounds like a grand idea.

two scratches

Louise the gemologist was to come by at four, but she emailed earlier saying she wasn’t done with my report, so we postponed to Monday.

I had planned to go to a Stanford Baseball game at 6, but light sprinkles of rain continue, so I passed on that. No fun sitting in the open on a wet plastic seat — assuming they even hold the game. That left a whole afternoon open to install the

sound bar

which I did. I removed the receiver and its subwoofer and five speakers from around the room, and connected the DVR directly to the TV. Connected the sound bar and it works OK, definitely better sound than the TV itself, definitely not as good as the old 5-channel system. However, the sound bar has an output to drive a separate sub-woofer, so I brought back the woofer and hooked it to the sound bar. That helps, adds “meat” to the sound even when the woofer is set low.

Fed myself and watched some TV. Quite a day.

Day 72, game and crafty stuff

Sunday, 2/10/2019

Sunday breakfast at the PA Cafe as usual. Home to plan out a craft project. At the museum the Education group has their own collection of artifacts. Items in the “real” collection are handled sparingly, with gloves, then packed away in archival-quality materials never to be touched again unless brought out for someone doing research. Items in the EDU collection are kept on shelves in a closet and are available to be handled (pawed, mauled) by school kids during various classes. I know about this because sometimes I help another volunteer who’s been building a catalog of the EDU collection.

Two weeks ago we cataloged a couple of real core planes, which are insanely delicate. I recalled that in the 1401 lab, they hand around a core plane during their demo, but it has been sandwiched in clear plastic — a good idea, given how easy it would be to poke a finger right through it. Toni and I thought it would be a good idea to put plastic on these also. We drew a plan for the pieces. She went to TAP Plastics last week and had the pieces cut. I picked them up when I was at the Museum Saturday and today was the day to assemble them.

I started with a trip to ACE Hardware to get the needed bolts nuts washers. Then it turned out that TAP had misread my drawing, or something, and some holes didn’t line up and two pieces were too long. Fortunately I still have tools. I used a carpenter’s square, two C-clamps, a box cutter, and my nifty little Bosch drill that Marian gave me Christmas 2017. (This helped clarify how much of my tool collection I should retain in The Transition. Quite a bit of it.) By the time I had the plastic pieces cut and drilled it was time for

Basketball

On Saturday I was so into getting down my thoughts about photography and slides that I forgot to report the result of the Friday night game, which against OSU. It started badly when the Beavers were ahead by 6 after 1 minute. Then Stanford’s defense woke up and they shut OSU down. After five minutes the game was never in doubt and Stanford won by 25.

Today was not so much fun. The Oregon Ducks are ranked #3 in the country — Stanford is #11 but likely to go down after today — and they played like it. Oregon dominated at both ends of the floor, were up by 24 at the half, and finished up by 35.

After the game I made one more stop at the hardware store and then did

more crafty stuff

producing two nicely encased core planes. Here’s one.

This is a 1960-era plane, perhaps from a 1401 or some other IBM machine of the very early 60s. The other plane has amazingly tiny “donuts”, a quarter the size of these, and probably comes from a minicomputer of the late 60s. Anyway, no grubby-fingered student is going to be poking at this one, but they can still see the toroids and the wiring.

I made a bit of supper and sat down to watch TV.

Day 59, a button and a money rethink

Monday, 1/28/2019

Started with a run, which was ok. Then ran a string of errands: to DiMartini’s for some fruit; stop at Trader Joe’s; stop at JoAnne’s Crafts; Piazza for a few other groceries. Wait, crafts?

My favorite jacket has a broken button. I’ve been keeping the jacket alive for years; in 2017 the lining started to fall apart and I paid to have it relined, as the shell is fine. I’ve replaced buttons on it before, the buttons on the cuffs tend to snag on things. Just as I decided to do something about this broken one, I realized that our collection of spare buttons went off in the sewing box that, along with the sewing machine, I gave away yesterday. There was probably a match for this button in it, but now it’s gone. Well, it’s not an odd button, I’ll get another. And I did, going into the craft store near Trader Joe’s, 5 minutes looking through the button racks, there was a card with buttons close enough to the originals. I spent longer waiting in line to check out than I did finding the button.

Home, put away groceries, sewed on new button. Fortunately I did not give away all the sewing equipment. There was a separate drawer where the pincushion, scissors, a few spools of thread lived. I actually had the thought yesterday to gather those up and dump them in the sewing kit, but decided no, hang onto basic tools I might use. And the next day I used them.

Money money money

While driving along earlier I’d been mentally reviewing what I wanted to talk about with our financial advisors — excuse me, my financial advisors — when we meet in March as scheduled. The most pressing issue I thought of was to address the change in income. In round numbers, Marian and I had a combined income of about $6000/month. Her social security and IBM pension were both higher than mine. Now that she’s gone, my monthly income is about $2000. But my expenses are only slightly reduced. (Food a bit less, one less person wanting shoes and clothing and books, etc., but those don’t add up to $500 per month. Utilities, insurance, maintenance all continue virtually unchanged.)

I’d got that far in my thinking when I realized that for at least two decades we had been living on that combined income and it had been just right: money out was usually equal to money in. If we took a trip or made some other big purchase we’d move money in from one of the investment accounts. But we never moved money back to an investment account. Net cash flow pretty close to zero.

Now, I realize, my net cash flow is roughly negative $3500/month. I’m not worried by this; I have ample reserves to make up the difference for many years to come. The question for the advisors will be, what accounts to take it from, and at what intervals. However, this realization that we’d been spending just what we made at $6000/month cast a whole new light on the analysis I made on Day 43.

Staying, Going

Back on Day 43 I did a rough calculation of how much it cost me to live right here, and I came to a number of $25,000 per year. But that can’t be right! Because for the past two decades Marian and I have been living right here and spending $72,000 a year, the amount of our combined pensions. We are not known for riotous living, either. No big parties. And the major vacations, and the two cars we bought over that span, were paid for out of investment accounts, not by saving up. So when I figured my cost of living I was low by a factor of almost three. I had to have been! Where did I go wrong?

Well, never mind that; what about the sticker shock I got, when I thought about the monthly costs of ILFs? They looked so expensive in comparison; the least expensive charging double what I thought I could live on.

They don’t look so expensive now, do they? As a couple we were living modestly on $6000/month. As a bachelor, history says I would need only a bit less, say $5000/month.

What does a 1BR unit at Channing House cost? $4650/month.

Hmmmm. Not such a rip-off after all.

Pulling chains

Sent some emails to people to remind them I’m waiting. To my niece to see if she wanted the china set. (She quickly replied with an apology, and no, they can’t use it.) To a friend who had a friend who might be able to appraise Marian’s jewelry. To a friend who has a friend at Webster house.

And a second email to the gallery in Monterey that I contacted on Day 53. You send an email using their web form, and you get a cheerful automated reply, “We’ll get right back to you.” But they don’t. I’m really forming a bad opinion of the art gallery business.

Computer stuff

Spent some time working on the computer. I need to transfer my game to Windows and package it there. I run Windows in a virtual machine in my “big” Mac system. But it’s been months since I fired up the virtual machines, and of course now Windows wants to update itself with months of maintenance. After the usual amount of fiddle-faddle and rebooting I got the job done, a working game on Windows.

Day 50, CHM and Channing House

Saturday, 1/19/2019

I started the day by leading a tour at the Computer History Museum for 15 comp. sci. students from Santa Clara U. When talking to people all of whom were born after Amazon.com was, I keep catching myself. There’s a point where I explain about vacuum tubes and how unreliable they were in the early computers. I say they are like incandescent light bulbs, they have a filament that burns out. Well you know, these students may have seen an incandescent bulb at some point, but a bulbs’ unreliability isn’t part of their daily experience.

So I managed to keep their attention for my 50 minute tour, then handed them off to the live demo of the IBM 1401 that starts at 11am every Saturday. I hung around to watch that; the docents who run it do a great job.

Home again and I put in about two solid hours adding some near-final touches to my program. It’s a game, and what I was doing at this point was adding sounds, bleeps and clicks and bonk noises. That entailed spending a lot of time prowling websites that offer free downloads of royalty-free sound effects, listening to various sounds and trying to pick out the right ones. But it all went together and now my game makes noises. There’s a couple more minor things to do and then I’ll let people play with it. When that’s done, I will turn to the two partially-completed books that have been simmering quietly on the back burner of my mind for months. However today at 4:40 I left for the short drive to

Channing House

and dinner with Craig and his wife Diane. They’ve been living at Channing House (click for official website) for six years, since they sold their home in Professorville. That’s the name for the residential part of Palo Alto on the North side of Embarcadero Road. I’m on the South side of it, and tonight I learned that because of that, my house will sell for more money than theirs. It seems that houses in that older part of town can’t easily be “scraped” and replaced with McMansions, like the place next door to our house was and like this house almost certainly will be shortly after I sell it. Fewer speculators are interested. But that’s by the way.

Financing and Governance

Unlike some other ILFs, Channing House is run by an independent, non-profit corporation. It isn’t part of a chain or owned by a for-profit corporation. A paid CEO runs the in-house staff under direction of a board of trustees. Two residents are nominated to the board, and also the president of the resident’s council — who is currently my hostess of the evening, Diane — sits in on board meetings to present resident concerns.

The organization is funded by people’s buy-ins and monthly rental. They have and are continuing to do extensive and expensive renovations; these are funded in part by contingency funds and in part by long-term bonds. Diane says the board includes a number of financial people who have worked out how to keep it solvent.

One of the renovations done just after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was a seismic retrofit. In the basement you can see massive flexible joints that were installed in the building’s support structure. It should be able to function after an earthquake.

Layout

The House is eleven stories high. The top floor is a glassed-in penthouse used for social events. The ground floor has a large lobby, dining room, a performance space, and other public spaces. There’s a pool and fitness facility in the basement (Craig led me on a tour of all these areas). The second through tenth floors are divided into 2- and 1-bedroom and studio units, each with a balcony, looking West or East over Palo Alto depending on which side it’s on. Every floor has a pleasant public living room, a laundry, and a dining room with kitchen so you can entertain a group (something I’d never do, but there you are).

Originally, the second floor was a medical facility for rehab and assisted living, but just a few years ago, they built a new, separate, two-story health care center. Current residents can and do move back and forth between the IL part and the assisted-living part as their health varies. Craig had a medical incident recently that needed rehab so he slept in the health care wing for some nights to have access to an on-call nurse, but returned to their apartment during the day.

There was an unintended consequence of splitting out the medical facility to a separate building. The main building, when it housed a medical operation, had been under the jurisdiction of the State of California. When it became 100% residential, it moved into the jurisdiction of the City of Palo Alto, and in particular, the Palo Alto Fire Department. They recently decreed that the building needs to have a sprinkler system for every unit. That meant tearing out the ceiling on every floor.

The board decided that, since ceilings had to be opened up, they might as well replace the HVAC ducting and the electrical, tv and internet wiring at the same time (much of which dated to the original 1961 structure). This renovation is being done floor by floor, from the top down. Currently it’s the 8th floor that is closed off. People on that floor had to move to other units for a few weeks. I had a quick look at the refurbished tenth floor; it doesn’t look a lot different except that lighting in the halls is better.

Food Service

The dining hall serves cafeteria-style. (Note that at the ILF that I visited for New Year’s eve on Day 31, the dinner service was restaurant-style. The staff came to the table to take your order and bring your food to you. I think actually cafeteria style is more to my taste.) The evening’s menu was interesting and seemed well-prepared.

There’s no opt-out of paying for meal service unless you are going to be away for a week or more; then you can apply for a refund for that period. On the other hand, Craig said the actual amount you pay is calculated on the assumption that the average resident eats only 1.8 meals a day.

Social

Both assured me that the other people living at Channing House were interesting, including many retired medical people and Stanford professors. There are active committees to organize musical performances and other entertainments. Craig is on a committee of resident nerds who help others with their computer, internet, and cable TV problems. “We take maybe two calls a day”.

Costs

Channing House is a “buy-in” place, where to enter you pay a sizable fee (on the order of $1M). If you leave during the first 3 years, you can get back a prorated portion of that fee. After that, not. And unlike some buy-in places, you aren’t actually buying anything. When you die, none of the buy-in fee will be available to your estate.

The reason is that your use of the attached assisted living and skilled nursing facility, short- or long-term, is included in the standard rental. There is no extra fee for assisted living care, nor for help with the medications or other nursing visits. (That’s not the case with other ILFs.) Basically, this is where your buy-in has gone; in effect, you’ve paid up front for a long-term care insurance policy.

Summary

As I said to Craig, this evening certainly set a high bar for other ILFs to meet. I already had a requirement that an ILF be easy walking distance to a town center. Channing House certainly meets that requirement, being only a couple blocks off University Ave. Besides that I will now be looking for:

Access to “continuing care” both temporary and permanent, the convenience of it and the cost to use it.
Ownership vesting: whether local corporation, regional or chain corporation, whether for-profit or non-profit.
A seriously good story on seismic safety (can you imagine your ILF being red-tagged?)
Resident participation and influence in governance.
Active resident-run committees for entertainment and other activities (as opposed to everything run by paid staff).
(late edit) Parking! since I mean to keep my car.

Channing house has basement parking but it is charged-for separately. I didn’t ask how much it was; but I don’t like paying for parking, nor do I like the idea of parking on the streets of Palo Alto as some residents do.

Day 23, Calendar, Cushions, Varnish, Amazon, Good Grief

Monday 12/24/2018

My Calendar

It’s Christmas eve, and as of the morning my calendar for today and tomorrow was completely blank. This did not perturb me. I have intentionally, deliberately ignored everything about the holiday season this year, first as Marian was getting sicker and neither she nor I wanted any celebration; and of course after she died I did not want to go through any empty motions.

In an academic sort of way I thought it might seem sad to have nothing to do Christmas day, not so much because I desired company, but because if someone asked me later in the week, “What did you do on Christmas?” I would have to say (no doubt in an Eeyore-like monotone) “Ohhh, nuthinnn.” Which would be embarrassing, and would provoke entirely unwanted sympathy from the questioner. Or maybe I could lie, invent dinner with a relative the questioner doesn’t know.

I went for my customary run, which felt fine. During it, I got a text from my friend Suzanne, very graciously inviting me to share supper with them on Christmas day! I replied with a grateful acceptance, and now I have something on the calendar for tomorrow.

I texted back asking what I could bring, and Suzanne suggested “flowers for the table”. Sure, I thought, no problem… oh, wait. It’s Christmas bloody Eve and I have no idea where to get a flower arrangement, OMG OMG OMG what’ll I do? Yelp to the rescue; there are at least four florists within a mile radius. I walked into the nearest and the proprietor, a very pleasant woman, said, “Well, there’s this one I’m just working on,” and showed me a nice arrangement of red candles and red roses in pine branches (not botanically convincing, but a good color match). So I stood by and commented as she finished it with lots of sprigs of tiny white blossoms, so it ends up a bit like miniature fireworks. So that’s set.

Cushions and Varnish

After that I finished putting Leather CPR goop on all the green cushions for the second and last time, and put yet another goddam coat of urethane varnish on the little tables, because there were two little screw-ups in the previous coat that I couldn’t stop seeing.

Amazon Fail

Back in 2014 when I was an original backer of Soylent, my first order of Soylent came with a pretty Takeya pitcher for mixing a day’s nutrition. Last week, the plastic top ring split, so I ordered a replacement from Amazon. According to Amazon it was delivered to my porch Saturday at 5:30pm. That would be 15 minutes after I left the house to get supper and go to a movie. It wasn’t there, and didn’t show Sunday; then today when I got back from my run, on the porch was the empty box. It had been crudely ripped open, and inside was only the little air pillows for packing. Inside my mail slot was a business card of a Palo Alto police officer, with the note, “Inform Amazon your package was stolen, if that was the case.” I assume the officer had found the emptied package somewhere and brought it around to my house.

Well, you know, Amazon offers no way to tell it, “My package was stolen.” You can return a shipment if the goods or the package are damaged. I started down that path but realized, how could I return an empty box? It would just confuse things. Back to the “where’s my stuff” link: nope; Amazon doesn’t give you any way to say, my package was stolen, please send another. At least, that I could find. It was only $18, I just ordered one.

Good Grief

Pathways Home Health, the company that provided home care for Marian after her operation, and again during her Hospice period, send me a brochure on Grief Support. Based on this I think I’m getting off pretty lightly:

As we grieve during and after the death of a loved one, we may feel numbness or anxiety, shock or fear, nausea or exhaustion. Confusion, denial, or disorientation are also common. … You may feel flooded with sadness, guilt, or a sense of being in a fog.

OK, I’ve recorded anxiety a couple of times, although not the last few days. Surges of sadness, definitely; although the strongest of these are associated, as I’ve written, with the loss of a lifestyle or life-pattern, rather than the loss of a person. When I think of Marian I feel pity and regret. But the sadness of bereavement is different, comes at different times and from different triggers. (I still can’t bring myself to take down that list of entrées from the bulletin board; and there is a whole closet I am carefully avoiding.)

Anyway they offer a “Partner Loss” group session on Tuesdays, resuming January 7th. I will think about this; maybe I’ll attend one.

Day 21, what will I do with myself?

Saturday, 12/22/2018

9am: In my Google calendar, today and the next two days (through Christmas) are blank. The first un-eventful days since… I don’t know when. How will I fill them? There are many possibilities… I’ll update this post later.

For a start, I made an errand run, first to the hardware store to turn in three fluorescent bulbs for recycling, then to Whole Foods for some groceries. I supplement the meal replacements with fruit, cheese, avocados, occasional bacon or sausage. Stuff that I can prepare in 5 minutes or less. While making this run I was hit with a couple of waves of deep sadness, not triggered by anything specific, just… sad.

Putting the groceries away turned into a further clean-out of the pantry. I’ve been nibbling at the edges of this job off and on. Threw out two more boxes of breakfast cereal that were lurking up there. Box of cake flour: out. I’m recycling these food items: the food itself is poured into a bio-bag and put in the green recycle bin; the box is flattened for the blue bin. I set aside quite a few unopened cans and bottles; I mean to find a food donation box for them. Saved a container of baker’s sugar because it will work in the hummingbird feeders. But I wonder how long the cake flour and baker’s sugar had been up there? I can’t remember the last time Marian did any baking.

Brought in the hummingbird feeders and filled them. The feeders tend to get patches of a nasty black mold inside and have to be thoroughly cleaned. We’ve been supporting several hummers for a couple of years now. I feel obligated to feed them through the winter, but come spring when blossoms appear, they’ll be on their own.

Finished painting the little tables. There are imperfections but I’m done. They look better than they did after 40 years of neglect.

I have several “real” projects, projects that might have meaning beyond my domestic room. Two software projects, two books. I haven’t “laid a finger” (to use a phrase of my mother’s) on any of those worthwhile projects in weeks. This afternoon I spent two hours re-familiarizing myself with one of the software projects — rereading the code, editing the comments, getting back into it. Two hours is about all the concentrated thinking my brain can stand, but I did that much, and it felt like progress.

Watched the rest of the Return of the King DVD special features, all about the making of that huge project. They wrapped in 2003, 15 years ago. Wow.

Went out for a burger at Gott’s, then to see Bohemian Rhapsody. So quite a bit of stuff in this empty Saturday. Just to make sure tomorrow isn’t empty, I scheduled myself for a docent round at the Museum. And so to bed.

Day 17, Shards keep falling

Tuesday 12/18/2018

I hit a couple of smaller instances today of the emotions triggered by the removal of “Beau” on Sunday, where the grief was not for the loss of my wife, but for the visible removal of a piece of the life I am leaving behind.

Similar thing today. I started by recycling a stack literally 6 inches thick, of paper transaction records and monthly statements from the early years of our managed accounts, and some other historical records dating back into the ’80s. When that wad dropped into the blue recycle bin it was like there was a mechanical connection to my sinuses. I just choked up. At old papers of no value, papers that we stopped accumulating over 15 years ago and hadn’t looked at between then and now?

Here’s another trivial trigger: the corkboard in the kitchen where we thumb-tacked things to remember. I started pulling irrelevant stuff off it. Out-of-date notes about museum exhibits to see, phone numbers of vendors I’ll never use again. Stuff. And I got to the printed list of the thirty-odd dishes that we liked to cook. It was a reminder list, so when we were planning the week’s menu on Sunday, we could look the list over and say, oh, right, I’ll do that pasta, you can do this stir-fry. Won’t be doing any of those dishes again. I know this, in fact I’ve been living very contentedly and healthily off meal replacement shakes supplemented by fruit and the occasional can of tuna, for two weeks. But to pull down this visible reminder of the old life was just — hard.

More and more I am coming to grasp that as a widower perhaps the least of my bereavements is the loss of my wife. With her went an entire, carefully-crafted lifestyle. It doesn’t go all at once; it peels away in chunks, or shards as I found myself saying on Sunday. And each shard that drops away is a fresh bereavement.

A more direct trigger came a bit later. While organizing the now stripped-down file drawer in the desk, I saw yet another folder labeled “Stocks”. What? How many stock broker folders were there, for pete’s sake? It turned out, this one was possibly the oldest. It contained Marian’s records of her IBM Stock Purchase Plan purchases. Heart of it was a small spiral-bound leather notebook in which were her hand-written records of employee stock purchases starting in 1962, and continuing to 1980. There were other papers as well, a printed spreadsheet showing the purchases and changes in value over time as the stock split and so on.

Historically and financially these are of no value. All those shares were accounted for and sold in ’95, the capital gains taxes paid, and the money pooled in our managed account. I recycled the papers but I could not bring myself to trash the notebook. It was so typical of her that she would, one, keep a record in a journal in her neat draftsman’s printing over twenty years of employment; and two, retain that in her desk, ready for reference, for another thirty years. I put the journal into the “Marian” folder. I’ll probably never look at it again, but it is just beyond me to discard it, at least yet.

Anyway the cleaning lady came and went, the house is all spiffy. I stained the two table tops, got the car washed, and faxed my witness report to the insurance company for the lady whose Prius I saw bashed the other day. Takin’ care of bidness. Gonna take a nap now; and then going out with Scott for the evening. Report on that tomorrow.

Day 16, Takin’ care of bidness

Monday 12/17/2018

I suppose “takin’ care of bidness” could be the default title of a lot of these posts. Went for a run and was pleased it went well, 35 minutes of my gentle jog (4.5mph when on a treadmill) without stopping except for a couple of traffic lights, and felt good.

After a shower I spent a couple hours continuing to tidy and organize and discard stuff from the various file drawers. I’ve a 6-inch pile of Schwab monthly brokerage statements, and some other categories of paper financial records, all from the era 1997 (when we set up our trust and managed accounts) through about 2002 when it seems Marian decided it wasn’t worth it to save them any more. But I broke out some sub-categories, like the documents that show the history of how our respective IRAs rolled from company to company, or the documents that establish when we each bought IBM shares, and how much they sold for. I wrote an email to our financial advisors’ office listing these groups of records and asking if I can recycle them. I’m guessing all this stuff is dead history, but I haven’t heard back yet. (Later: yes; recycle the lot.)

I set up a wide pendaflex in which to collect everything related to getting Marian officially deceased, bureaucratically speaking. The Neptune Society docs, the notes from different banks, and so on. One section that looms a bit ominously is the inch-thick pile of Medicare EOBs dating back to spring when her illness began. So many services rendered by PAMF and by Stanford Health, each specified as “provider billed” (huge sum), “medicare approved” (1/4 that), “you may be billed” (a pittance). But the pittances add up, and so far as I know, I’ve yet to see any kind of bill from either PAMF or Stanford. So the thick wad of EOBs is the bulk of that pendaflex. I’d love to see it go in the recycle bin.

Spent an hour sanding the tops of the other two little tables, then put them away. Tomorrow looks pretty busy; I’ll try to paint them Wednesday, maybe.

Eduardo’s Gutter Cleaner crew indeed merit their 5-star rating on Yelp. They pulled up 15 minutes ahead of schedule and were gone an hour later. All the leaves are off my roof, my downspouts are sluiced clean, and the house looks tidy from the street. Good.

Got a head start on tomorrow by stripping the bed and washing the linens. This something I normally would do on “Suli day,” the day the cleaning lady comes, which is tomorrow. This was also the scheduled quarterly day to rotate the mattress, five minutes of heaving and hauling, and something I will continue to do (once more? twice?) as only one side is getting used anymore.

Emotionally a pretty tranquil day, which is welcome after yesterday.