Day 75, Esthetic Education

Wednesday, 2/13/2019

My plan was to drive to Alameda on the other side of the Bay to attend the free appraisal event at Michaan’s Auctions. Bring up to five items for free verbal appraisals, anytime between 10am and 1pm. This turned into a bit of an adventure because of the weather. A “pineapple express” rainstorm blew in. I heard heavy rain several times in the night, and wondered if I wanted to make the long drive in traffic, in the rain. Instead of departing at 8:30 as I’d originally planned, to arrive at the 10am opening time, I left at 10 in hopes of easier traffic. It was a slog but only really slow for a couple of miles in Oakland, and I arrived at 11:30. The auction house is a classy-looking place with lots of impressive antiques and cases of pretty things around the floor. About ten people were ahead of me.

IMG_3603a — The guy with the pink tie is Frank, the appraiser I dealt with. Frank by name, frank by nature, too.

Two older women were seated near me. One was called out to talk to the jewelry appraiser who worked in a different room. When she came back she told her friend, “She said it’s all costume jewelry.”

You could bring pictures or objects. I took a good print-out of my oil painting of Yosemite — have I included that before? Well, here it is again. Besides that I took a picture of an elegant 4337722_orig ceramic piece we bought in England and brought along two Eskimo soapstone carvings.

Taking these in reverse order, the soapstone carvings, despite being esthetically pleasing, nicely made, and by identifiable native artists, would likely bring $25-$40 dollars each.

The ceramic piece was signed by the artist, Sandra Eastwood, and I had done the research so I could tell Frank when she worked and the kind of things she did in London in the 70s and 80s. However, he was only interested in one thing: could he find auction records of sales of Eastwood ceramics? No. None at any of the sources he could check. So although he agreed the piece was charming, he doubted it would bring more than $20.

OK, quick check. When I google “Sandra Eastwood” indeed nothing turns up. But when I search on “Sandra Eastwood ceramics” I find references to her and her work. She was a teacher of pottery in the 70s and had a studio in Teddington (just down the road from where we lived in Twickenham, so very possibly the piece I have was bought there!) until 2012. However: no auction records or sales info at all. So nothing that would change the appraiser’s mind.

And the painting, for which I had rather high hopes. Here again the problem is that the artist, Dean Linsky, has only a few traceable auction sales, and they were all in the low hundreds of dollars. Very low, like $200. That was for a smaller painting than mine, but still, that was … a disappointment. (Like finding out your family heirloom necklace was costume jewelry.)

What to do next? Well, as to the carvings and ceramics: they will go in the estate sale. This is the sale I anticipate will happen around the time the sale of the house closes. And some people will get some very nice bits of decorative art for not very much money.

The painting? Well, I’m of two minds there; no, three. I could offer it back to the artist. In his email he mentioned he’d buy it back if he “were in a position to do so”. I wonder if he’d give me $500 for it? Two, I can try an eBay sale, with, say, a $500 reserve price.

Or three, I can keep it. At every ILF I’ve visited, the halls are decorated with art and photos belonging to the residents. I can see it hanging in Channing or Webster House for others to enjoy. Or hanging in my own unit at one of those places.

Got home, ate a sandwich, tossed three boxes of books in the car and went off to sort at FOPAL. Home and tired to eat blog and relax.

Day 73, waiting for Godot

Monday, 2/11/2019

As I expected, when I checked at 8am, the FedEx tracking for my new laptop said “end of the day Monday”. So I need to be home, ready to sign the package, until the white truck arrives. At 8am, the package was “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” out of Newark, just across the Bay. So it might arrive any minute, or 9 or 10 — right? Ergo, I couldn’t go for a run at my usual 9am, because sure as eggs is eggs, once I am out of sight of my front door, the truck will come.

I put a bright yellow post-it on the door-post with an arrow pointing to the doorbell button, and the text “I am home!”. Then I began filling time doing things I had mentally scheduled for later, Tuesday or Wednesday. I patched together some beat-up cardboard boxes I had picked up at FOPAL so I could bring three boxes down there on Wednesday. I filled the boxes with books.

Painting etc.

I took down the big painting of Yosemite, took it outside and posed it in good, but indirect, light, and took a good picture of it. I also took a picture of one of the tchotchkes I had inventoried back on Day 32. The reason for these photos is that I have decided to attend an Appraisal Event at a local auction house . One can bring up to 5 objects or pictures, and they will give an opinion on the likely auction yield.

I see I mentioned on Day 68 that, after two fine-art galleries had stiffed me on a consignment sale of the painting of Yosemite valley, I had resolved to contact the artist himself. But I see I did not mention the result: Dean Linsky replied very promptly but not with good news. He agreed that galleries are always reluctant to deal in consignment sales, but he couldn’t offer any help with that. He recommended I look at auction sales, even eBay, provided I set a good reserve price. That set me looking for local fine-art auction houses, and found the one linked above, in Alameda, with the offer of free appraisals.

I need to get those pics into Photoshop, then print them. But that would be in the office at the back of the house and I want to stay in the front so I can spot the FedEx truck. (Not trusting them to actually push the doorbell button even though I flagged it.) So now I got out slide boxes and reviewed about 10 groups of slides, capturing another dozen socko images for scanning. Then I listened to some podcasts, and ate lunch. Then I took a nap.

Godot

About 3pm I decided that when the new laptop arrives, its system name on the network is going to be Godot, because I have done nothing but wait for it. It is now 4pm, and I am still waiting.

Oh geez

At 4:30 the FedEx truck rolled up, I signed, I happily opened the nice box and found… not a Macbook Pro, but a Macbook Air. I already own two Airs, the one Marian wore out and the one we bought to replace it. I had fully intended to order a refurbished 2016 Macbook Pro, but apparently after having a dozen of them open in different browser tabs, I finally clicked on and bought… an Air.

I seriously wonder about myself. Am I losing it? Anyway, messaged the seller, who is a dealer with dozens of refurbs for sale, asking if I can exchange it. Gosh I feel pretty bad.

Day 71, slides, tour, fedex fandango

Saturday 2/9/2019

I spend a couple of hours reviewing two groups of slides, and select out about 2% of them for scanning, either because they are particularly fine scenics or because they show Marian and me in not-bad poses.

About photography and slides before 2005

There’s time to mull some more on the contradictory problem of why we kept the slides all those years and so rarely looked at them. In fact, one group I went through, “116 Eastern Canada 1996 (328 slides)” I am pretty sure had never been seen since 1996. It was a nice trip: in a rental car we hit Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. On return we would have spent several evenings going through the slides and discarding at least half. Then Marian would have spent a couple of days cataloging and numbering them. Then we would have had Jean and Bill over for an evening and projected the final show for them.

Then they went into a box and probably stayed there undisturbed until today. So, why did we even bother? I can come up with an answer, not a good answer, but an answer. It’s that the taking of the pictures was an important, satisfying hobby for both of us. Looking for picture subjects added a lot to the experience of traveling. It helped us remain aware of the quality of light, the texture of the sky, the shape of the land. So did the activity of taking pictures, trying different angles and zoom ratios and ways of framing a scene, looking for just the right composition.

In those days the payoff for this effort was delayed until weeks later when the slides came back and we could project them. Then we could go through and critique what we’d got, congratulate each other for the good ones, select the best, decide how to sequence them for a nice program. That was fun and satisfying. And showing the final product to our relatives that one time, that was validation for our work.

From today’s perspective, having to finally do something with these relics, I kind of wish we had just dumped the slides into the trash at that point. But we had two reasons for keeping them. One, the finished set of slides represented so much time and care and effort, it would have been unthinkable to just throw it away. And two, there was always the possibility that someday we’d pull the set out, put the slides back into carousels, and project the show again. A few trips, we did show more than once. Very rarely more than twice.

This particular show, Group 116, seemed really flat. The scenery wasn’t dramatic; we didn’t get any super shots of quaint Vieux Quebec or anything. I set aside five (5) of the 328 for scanning.

Slides in the digital era

One huge difference in digital photography is that you know immediately, on the back of the camera or the face of the iphone, whether you got the shot you wanted. If you didn’t nail it, you can frame it up and take it again. Well, for scenery at least. People and animals may have moved away or stopped being cute. A second difference is the freedom to shoot many more exposures. We were always aware that every slide ended up costing 25 cents or more by the time it was processed; and always aware that the camera only held 36 exposures before you had to reload. You were miserly with your shooting.

A third difference is that you can fiddle and fudge and crop and edit the images after the fact, while a slide was a final product, unchangeable, its exposure and framing fixed at the instant you took it. One satisfaction of scanning old slides is that if I want to take the trouble, I can improve contrast or brightness, even edit out annoying wires (or people). So over the past decade I’ve moved quite a lot of our better work into the digital domain, on disk and into the cloud. Here’s one slide from Group 101, for example.

Hawaii 1982 (and 1988 and 2001)

Of the groups I’ve gone over in prior years I’ve scanned anywhere from 50% to 100% of the slides. I’m applying a much finer comb to the unexamined groups I’m going through now. Partly it’s impatience; I want to get this job done. Partly it’s that I feel quite ruthless; if a picture doesn’t engage me strongly for its own sake, it doesn’t make the cut. Previously I kept more pictures because Marian liked every picture to have a context, be part of a sequence. She’s not here to comment now, so I’m keeping only the ones that really pop visually, or really tell a story about us; and narrative be damned.

Docent Tour

Normally there are two docents for the 2pm Saturday tour and we can split the groups. When I walked into the lobby today I could see the place was busier than usual. There was only one person on the front desk, so I helped for a while doing the bag-check thing. I was hoping another docent would show, but nope. So when I started I had a tour group of more than 40 people. I’m pleased to say that at least 30 were still with me at the end, an hour later, and several thanked me for my interesting talk.

Fedex Follies

My new/old laptop was to have been delivered Friday. Signature required. So I was home all day and it didn’t come. Tracking said it would be delivered “Tuesday by end of day.” But of course when I got home from the museum there was a FedEx tag on the door. Shit.

I tried to get into “my” FedEx online account to get more info. It has been a year or more since I last used FedEx. Apparently at that time (whenever it was) I created a FedEx account. I use LastPass, and it had a record of my FedEx user ID and password. FedEx recognized the user ID but said the password was wrong.

Ohhhh-kayyy, now what? Well, I can answer a security question. Good! “What is your father’s middle name?” What?!? My father never had a middle name, that I know of, and I would never have set that as a security question. Never mind, click the option to send me an email to reset my password. Ten minutes later — no email.

Ohhhh-kayyy, I will call them. Call the customer service number, which is answered by a pleasant female-voiced robot with a zero IQ. Please say, she coos, what you want to do. “Hold a package.” She gets that, but then, she wants me to “say” the door tag number. I read it out, “D T 7 3 3 0…” etc. “Sorry, I didn’t get that. Please say the tracking or door tag number.” “DEE. TEE. SEVEN. THREE. THREE…” “Sorry, I didn’t get that.” I start mashing the zero button until she deigns to connect me to a guy with a strong east-asian accent.

He is able to tell me where the package would be held, if it were held: Newark. If I want to hold it, he’ll have to transfer me to a different department! If I don’t hold it when will it come? He says because it is “FedEx Home Delivery(tm)” they deliver Tuesday through Saturday, so, Tuesday. Can he give me any time window? No, just before 8pm. I point out this is a twelve-hour window. (I don’t mention how it was supposed to have arrived before 8pm Friday and didn’t.) He can’t do anything.

I decide I will take my chances on delivery (but I double-dog betcha it comes Monday, not Tuesday); can he help me get a new password? No, that’s technical support, would I like that number? No, not really. I give up on the phone.

Back on the web, I just create a new “personal” FedEx account, different user id but all other info the same. FedEx has no problem with this; it is not bothered that the same address and email are (I assume) already registered. Well, perhaps not, as that password reset email never arrived (and yes, I did think to check Marian’s email account too). Might I have possibly created that account so long ago that I had a different email? It’s been at least five years since I had a different one. Who knows.

Day 70, old pics and a game

Friday, 2/8/2019

When I went out to pick up the paper at 6:30 the sky was clear, and the TV news said the rain wouldn’t come until the afternoon. I assumed I could do a run, but it started to rain just as I was ready to leave at 8:30, so instead I drove to the Y and ran on the treadmill.

Then I set out to tackle those boxes of slides that I mentioned on Day 67. The slides are exquisitely organized and cataloged into “groups” where a group is usually one trip, but sometimes a category. There is an index file that lists each group by number and topic and shows which box it is stored in, as well as a catalog that lists each slide by its group and serial number and its subject.

Over the past decade I’ve spent many hours scanning slides from various groups. I would inspect a group, and scan the slides that were either emotionally significant, or pictorially fine. For some groups that was most of them; other groups just a scattering. Those scans are now on my main computer as well as in the cloud. But now I need to get serious about finishing this job: looking through each unscanned group and deciding which, if any, slides in it deserve to be retained.

I made a copy of the index, and emboldened the entry for each group that hadn’t been scanned, and printed it out. There are 20 or so, for example group 102, “New England Fall 1972”. Sitting in a chair that faced a window, I popped each slide into a hand-held viewer and made fast editorial decisions. No; no; no; don’t care; why’d we keep that; no; hm that’s nice; no;… I set aside a few to scan. On to the next group.

I’d gone through quite a few when Marian’s sister Jean arrived at 1pm. I’d asked her over to go through the memorabilia I had that was purely Lacrampe family stuff. Jean’s attitude toward old stuff is very pragmatic (the Lacrampe women are all unsentimental). Anything she wants to keep, she scans into her computer, “then I toss it.” For this exercise we went through several piles of stuff, mostly pictures. She recognized most of them. “I’ve got that. I have that. Huh, I’m not sure I have that, I’ll take it and scan it.” I set aside a few pictures of Marian that I didn’t have already. Jean built up a pile of 25 or 30 things to add to her collection. The great bulk went into the “recycle” pile.

The mound of pictures for the recycle bin.

The only part of this that had much emotional impact on me was going through a fat envelope of memorabilia from Marian’s trip around Europe. She toured Denmark, Italy and England for a month in 1960. In the folder were all the letters she’d exchanged with her mother and brother, and about 40 postcards which she’d bought along the way and used for notes on each day’s activities. Of course, I felt guilty consigning all this to the recycle bin. It crossed my mind that I could read all these letters, transcribe them into a text file, and have a complete journal of that trip. But then I thought about how the envelope had sat in a drawer in the closet for forty-plus years and, as far as I can recall, she never got it out to look at it. And, as far as transcribing it — there was nobody in the world better qualified to transcribe that material into a computer file than she! And she didn’t. And who now who would want to read it?

There’s a SWBB game at 6pm. Just time for a nap before that. Results tomorrow.

Day 68, a damn good day’s work

Couldn’t exercise this morning because the car-detailing crew showed up promptly at 8 to start on the Prius. So I settled in to gettin’ shit done in the APR. First up, a few financial details. Brokerage statements are in for the various accounts, so I could update the portfolio spreadsheet that I had created, following Marian’s design on Day 31. The news is good; the total is about 7% up from year-end 2018.

Next I tackled a heap of my personal memorabilia that had accumulated in a binder and a big plastic envelope for years. I really didn’t know what I would find. There were a few keepers.

IBM History

One was a letter I had written to my mother from San Francisco at the end of 1966. At the time I was working for the phone company, and I detailed how in the new year I was to start a “ten-week course” to become a full-fledged “inside wireman”. What I hadn’t known then was that the ten-week course would be the most boring, leaden, plodding thing imaginable, taught by a crusty old guy who was marking time to his retirement and who had no real insight into the complicated systems he was supposed to teach. Before two weeks had passed I was looking for new work, and stumbled hopefully into the local IBM branch office. Because IBM was just in transition from older systems to the new 360 line, they needed people, and hired me.

The sent me to Rochester, Minnesota to be trained on the older electro-mechanical systems. Another keeper was a hand-written letter by me to my sister, dated April 24, 1967. (Of course in the present era, this would have been an email and probably lost forever.) In it I wrote in part,

We took a quiz on the 514-519 machines today after closing up the local night club the night before. (Shame on us.) I got a 90, top grade in the class. Also showed expertise in lab sessions, so should get a B. … Tomorrow begins 6 days instruction on another machine (085) followed by an 18-day course in tab machines…

When I give tours at the CHM, I point out those machines, the 085 sorter and the 403 “tabulator”, as historic, and try to explain how they were the essence of “business data processing” for fifty years.

Niece stuff

Most of the rest of the pile I discarded. However, I gave each letter a cursory glance, and noticed in several of them between 1961 and 1963, my mother mentioned my niece Laurel. She was living with my parents, her grandparents, during that time. Some of the mentions touched on things that were probably significant to her. So I set those letters aside, and put them in an envelope to mail on to her. I figure I can trash things about me that I don’t care to remember, but I didn’t want to make that call on her behalf. Not sure it’s really doing her any favor, as some of the topics may be painful memories. Hope it was the right thing to do.

Anyway at the end I had reduced a large pile to a wispy handful which I distributed into the pages of a family album, and there: done. All the Cortesi family history reduced to one smallish box.

I was on such a roll I tried to tie up more loose ends. I emailed my sister-in-law suggesting we meet to go over the pile of Lacrampe family history that I hope she’ll take over from me.

I called IBM benefits, the ones who wouldn’t talk to me about Marian’s account, even to say if it was closed, until I proved I was her executor. This time the phone rep didn’t have anything to say about that; either she didn’t know that rule or else the account had been marked for me as executor. Anyway, all is well there. That was the last loose end of red tape needing to be tied up. Marian is quits with the world.

Finally I followed up on that painting I discussed on Day 46. On Day 54 I mentioned my impatience with the one gallery who wouldn’t return my calls or emails, and said I would contact another. Well, two emails to them had gone unanswered now. So this time I emailed the artist himself, reminding him of the painting, how he had toured Yosemite valley with us before making it, and asking if he had any idea how I should go about consigning one of his works. Hopefully he will be able to light a fire under one gallery or the other.

Afternoon

The detail guys didn’t finish until 12:30. I decided that, since I didn’t have any boxes, and since it was just before the biweekly sale so FOPAL would be jammed with stuff, I wouldn’t take any books down this time. I’ll take 3 boxes next week, maybe. Anyway so I will go to FOPAL on foot, a 40 minute walk, then take a Lyft home.

Evening

Which I did. Sorted. Appropriated a couple of New York Times crossword puzzle books that came in. Had an early supper, then out again at 7:15 to a play at the Bus Barn in Los Altos. Review tomorrow.

Day 67, dashcam, memorabilia

Tuesday, 2/5/2019

First thing this morning was to present the car at the Car Audio Specialties at 9am for installation of a dashcam. That’s the first of two things I’m lavishing on the Prius now I’m settled on keeping it. Tomorrow it gets a polish job.

The installation was smooth; the guy took great care to get the front and rear cameras installed where they were out of the way and had a good view. He took me through downloading the phone app and basic usage, but I still need to get on the company website and review the features, of which it has many.

At home I tackled more of the infamous APR closet. This has been our low-use storage area for decades. Periodically Marian, or sometimes I, would go in and organize some part of it. But basically it was the place where we kept stuff-to-not-throw-away-but-also-to-not-think-about-just-now. Assorted items of family history. Photos. Collected things.

I declared the shelf on the right wall was “things for the estate sale”, and the shelf on the left wall was “things I will keep”. Stuff to discard went on the floor until there was a mound, then I carried it to the garbage can or recycle bin.

To the right went the Kodak Carousel projector, a lamp shade, some stadium seats, other marginally valuable stuff. To the left, quite a pile of family memorabilia. Eventually I broke that down into three piles, “my/our history”, “Marian’s history”, and “Lacrampe Family” (Marian’s relatives and ancestors). The latter pile I will go over with my sister-in-law. Hopefully she’ll take at least some of it. (Mind you, she’s likely to have to do her own downsizing soon. Sorry, I’ve got my own problems.)

Some things were easy to throw away. There were several pillows that we’d used on the rare occasions we had guests. Old, used pillows: trash. There was a drawer where Marian had put all the medical braces, slings and wraps that either of us had needed, like my sling from when I dislocated my shoulder about 25 years ago, and her wrist brace from some RSI problem at least as far back. All trash. A folder of news items about the great Oakland Hills fire. A folder of news items about the ’89 earthquake. Recycle. One drawer held assorted exercise equipment. Some of that, small dumbells and so on, went on the right shelf; some like elastic exercise bands, to trash.

Then it got harder. One drawer was all kinds of stuff from our times in England: guides to various castles and stately homes, guidebooks, maps. All of no use to anyone. But we’d accumulated all those on the spot and saved them — why exactly? Not planning to go back; but neither of us ever went to that drawer to review places we’d been. Harder even was another drawer where Marian had saved a thick stack of SWBB memorabilia: programs from the last dozen end-of-year awards banquets; programs from Final Fours we had attended; newspaper and magazine clippings.

I got very emotional flipping through this stuff and carrying it to the recycle bin. I was both crying and raging, repeating what’s the point of fucking memorabilia if you never go back and fucking look at it? I did not want to deny, or to denigrate, the care and effort Marian had put into keeping this stuff, yet I cannot accept the alternative, to retain it all indefinitely, packing and moving and finding storage space it in whatever new home I get. I would feel stupid trying to carry these memorabilia onward when I know I’ll never look at them. I don’t want them; they have zero value to anybody else; so they have to go — but effecting that puts me in the position of being the executioner, in effect, killer of a part of her life and our lives together. Not a job I asked for, but here I am, doing it.

There’s another hard part coming:

About thirty years of photographic slides, from 1973 when we first started serious shooting to circa 2003 when we went digital. Somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 probably. Now, (a) they are all organized and cataloged in detail, and (b) quite a few of them have already been scanned and digitized. My next big job is to inventory which of the catalog groups have not been scanned, and of those, which are actually worth my time now, to scan them and preserve them (if any are).

Marian and I had several conversations over the years about the value of the slides, debating why we took the trouble to catalog and keep them, when (here’s a familiar refrain!) “we never go back and look at them”. Yes, that was said, by both of us, more than once. She was sure that when we were gone, nobody would give a shit (her words), they’d just be thrown out. So why keep them now? And we never had a good answer, really; yet we didn’t toss them — then. I’m pretty sure they’ll be tossed soon, but I need to review the un-scanned groups first.

Day 61, book sorting etc

Wednesday, 1/30/2019

Went for a run and it felt good. It’s amazing how different these runs feel, when there is no obvious difference in any other factor. Same amount of sleep, same time of day, same air temperature, feeling just as healthy — but today I felt comfortable and confident and just cruised along. Monday it was a slog, effortful, not painful but felt right at the limit of my oxygen intake.

Back home I spent an hour going over my program to make sure all the copious comments — I wrote it in “literate” programming style so it reads like an article with code interspersed — were readable and accurate. Then I posted it to the learnPython subreddit and awaited the awed and admiring comments. Yeah. At the end of the day I had exactly one, and no up-votes. Pbtbtbtbtb…

Went to FOPAL with two more boxes of books, including a complete run of the “Miss Read” books. Well, maybe not a complete run, looking at that wiki page, but more than 25 of them. Two and a half hours with four people sorting and we could just about keep up with the stream of donors coming through the door. Made barely a dent in the 5-box high wall of boxes with books donated from previous days.

Day 60, programming, museum, cleanout

Overnight I thought of some ways my living cost estimate could have gone so wrong. One, I had the taxes at 1/2, forgetting there’s another $1K payment to make (tomorrow!). I had not included TV and internet in the utilities, another $2K+ per year. Also it had not occurred to me to think about how our monthly bill on the main credit card is always over $1K, so we pay out at least $12K-$15K per year just via that route. Of course that includes almost all food, but it does not include the gardener, taxes, or utilities, which are paid directly via the bank bill-pay app. But the simplest approach was just to realize that our expenses had matched our income for years and years, so our income was a very good ballpark estimate of our cost of living. And that number is in the same ballpark as the monthly fee at many ILFs.

Tuesday, 1/29/2019

Walked to the Y, did my round, walked back. Did computer work: running virtual Windows and Linux machines to package my game for Windows 7, Ubuntu, and Mac. Here are the executables. The source is here. Tomorrow I’ll think of where to post to invite people to try it.

Decided to go visit the Hiller Aviation Museum. Spent a couple of hours there. I was nearly the only visitor so could play with a couple of simulators freely. In one, you are supposed to land a Boeing 737 at SFO. I was disappointed to find if I increased throttle and raised the nose, I couldn’t just fly around the Bay Area ad lib; the simulator got funny and stopped.

Two days ago on impulse I stopped at an “estate sale” sign on my way home. Browsed around a house where, I learned, nine siblings were trying to clear out the house their late mother had lived in and they’d all grown up in. There was stuff, stuff, stuff. Someday in the not too distant future I will have to clear this house out, and I won’t have the help of any siblings.

So on arrival back home, with this in mind I stepped into what we called the APR closet. (Because it is the closet that opens off the APR, i.e. the room whose purpose we could never settle on, so it was the all-purpose room or APR.) This is a closet I’ve been dreading because there is so much stuff there I need to decide what to do with. There are family memorabilia that I’m sure other relatives would want (heck, things I want: high school annual?) (On the other hand, Seriously? What is the possible point of keeping a high school annual that is fifty-fucking-nine years old? A good fraction of the Bethel High School graduating class of 1960 are dead, and the rest wouldn’t remember my name, nor I theirs without a program.) Memorabilia aside, there is a lot of stuff that is trash and needs to go.

Nerds that we were, we kept reference material — maps, brochures, guides — from every trip we took. After the trip, we’d used the material to organize the 35mm slide show for a trip. Then Marian would neatly (of course) organize it in folders by region. Here’s about 2/3 of them:

The only justification for this was that we might go back there someday, and we wouldn’t have to scrounge for maps and info. The only folders that ever got used that way were the first four. We often went back to Washington or Oregon, and could go into the APR closet and dig out a useful map before each trip.

Of course all of this is just so 1990s. Paper maps? Really? Beyond that, most of them are literally from the 1990s or earlier, and hence out of date. It took half an hour to sort all this out, pull the bear clips and paper clips out and put the paper in the recycling bin, and the plastic folders ditto. In a few of the folders I found real nostalgia-inducers. The Germany folder, for instance (about five folders off the right edge of the picture) had my complete trip plan, 20+ pages of detailed info on the stops we would make, with notes. The New Zealand folder had Marian’s trip plan, ditto. But we documented those trips with pictures and with blogs and I have all the images stored on the bigger Mac. None of this paper had been looked at since a week after the relevant trip ended, at least ten years ago and in some cases, twenty. Out! Just the same, it hurt.

I was astounded by one find: two fat binders in which Marian had collected a ton of memorabilia about the San Jose Lasers, the professional women’s basketball team that lasted only two years. I had no idea she’d done this: game programs, media guides, and pages and pages of news clippings, all organized by date. I don’t think she ever referred to the material after 1998; she certainly never mentioned it or shared it with me. It’s a potentially valuable historical collection and I set it with the other Lasers memorabilia that I already knew about. Which reminds me, that I’d submitted a donation form to History San Jose offering that material a week ago, and have had no reply. I need to follow up on that, even more now.

Also in the APR closet were some garments of mine I rarely wear. (The APR closet was to us what an attic might be to others.) Two pairs of Expedition-brand trousers, light, no-iron, can be washed out in a hotel sink and be dry the next morning. Last worn on the trip to Italy in 1999. I tried them on. They fit, but frankly look as unstylish as shit. I’m embarrassed I toured Italy in them. Put them in a pile for Goodwill.

Next up, my one sport coat. It’s OK, it fits, but it’s kind of tweedy and bulky. Probably a real fashionista could identify the decade I bought it. (I wouldn’t doubt it was the 80s.) Anyway, I am not throwing it out but have made a mental note to replace it.

Finally, my one suit. Quite a nice one, a Borcelino, but… it doesn’t fit me! I currently find a 38 waist a little bit loose, and I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t fit in 36 jeans. But this suit: no way, I could not possibly fasten that waistband. The jacket has a rather nipped waist and although I could button it, it was clear in the mirror that it wasn’t happy being buttoned. I’ve been my present weight and heavier for a long time. When did I buy this suit, that I fit a 36 or 34 waist? When might I possibly have worn it last? It’s a mystery. Well, it is possible that my body has changed shape, thickening at the waist with age. Maybe I could have worn it twenty years ago, weighing as much as I do now or more, but having younger, springier abs to hold it in?

I looked carefully at the pants and jacket, wondering if a seamstress could let it out. Looking at the pants seam, it might yield another half-inch maybe, no more. As for the jacket, you’d have to open up the lining and fiddle with curved seams. So, never mind; the suit has to go.

Day 58, Repair Café

The play was well done, lots of clever stagecraft, complicated blocking and dance routines, all very skillfully done. The lead part, Shakespeare, was very well played. I like the female lead less well. Whatever.

Sunday, 1/27/2019

For the first time in a long time, I stayed home on a Sunday morning, breakfasting on a meal replacement shake. I don’t mean to establish a new pattern. It was that I needed to leave by 10am to attend the Repair Café. I enjoy these events in part because I like fixing things, and in part because as a “fixer” I am also a “mentor” of some college student “apprentice”. My apprentice this time was a pleasant young woman named Leela who has a Master’s in electrical engineering but felt she lacked hands-on experience. She was eager to get those hands on, so I mostly just stood back and advised. She had never soldered before, and one fix involved soldering some wires that had broken off a battery holder. I showed her one joint before handing it over to her. She was delighted with the way solder melts then instantly freezes when you take the iron away.

During our lunch break, Leela mentioned how her mother was a seamstress, and she’d like to do sewing herself, but didn’t have a sewing machine. I said, you want one? And ended up giving her Marian’s. Nobody else I had asked was interested; I was planning to give it to Goodwill. Leela was very grateful and I’m sure she will put it to good use.

In the evening I caught up on some of the TV that has been stacking up on the DVR. In particular I wanted to watch the US Skating Championship, where the Ladies competition was won by a new phenom, 13-year-old Alyssa Liu. This is a show I would have watched with Marian, and she would have been delighted to see a new skating star emerge.

Day 53, Pasta and Chateau Cup.

Tuesday, 1/22/2019

A chilly morning by California standards, 42º at 8am, and I was pretty cold as I walked to the Y in my shorts and a light jacket. Did my round and walked back, not stopping at the coffee shop (for once).

Passed the time waiting for the cleaning lady to show, shopping for a dash cam for the Prius. This is in line with my decision of way back there, to keep the Prius indefinitely (it has 57K miles now, and I doubt very much I’ll ever see 100K; and many of these “gen 3” Prii go 150-200K before needing a battery). If I’m keeping it, I might as well upgrade it a bit. Hence the dash cam. Yelp seems to agree that the best shop for this is one in Belmont. Maybe Friday I’ll drive up there.

Once Suli arrived and started work, I headed out to do things. First a stop at Fedex on California to fax a signed paper requested by our broker. Then to a car wash to get the Prius cleaned up. And then down to Cupertino to do a drive-by of Chateau Cupertino, the low-price leader among the list Alan compiled for me. At $3500/month they are the least expensive of the month-to-month places. As such they deserve a look-see and maybe a proper tour if I like the outside.

Alas, I didn’t like the outside. They are pretty close to the corner of De Anza and Stevens Creek, in an area filled with fairly new, multi-story condos and offices. The building itself has no charm; while not ugly, it is not a place I’d be pleased to come home to or to bring a guest to. Although their website claims that “Residents enjoy local mall shopping and restaurants of every flavor” in fact it’s more than half a mile to the nearest restaurant (The Counter) or coffee shop (Philz). I drove around a bit but the ambience was not pleasant. It would be no fun to walk these streets, even the smaller ones, never mind 6-lane De Anza or Stevens Creek.

Back home, I refreshed the hummingbird feeders. The plastic flowers on the three feeders are getting tatty, petals falling off etc. If I was staying I’d buy new feeders, but ISMISEP.

Then I tackled the shelf full of canisters of assorted pastas and grains that I mentioned yesterday. The concept that I’ll probably never cook another meal is not one of the things I had realized before Marian’s death. I’d anticipated a lot of things, but that aspect came as a surprise. Yet it follows inexorably from being single. I am feeding myself properly (weight stable at 175, no beri-beri yet) but I spend at most ten minutes preparing food; that’s how long it takes to mix up a tuna salad, or to fry two strips of bacon and scramble an egg in the grease while peeling an orange. Or I go out. And of course in an ILF the food is made for you.

Which leaves me with a full set of cooking utensils and a big accumulation of ingredients. The dry foods shelf had a dozen canisters: barley, couscous, lentils, at least six kinds of pasta, dried potato flakes. Microwave popcorn. I cleaned it all out, dumped the food into green bio-bags and put them in the green bin. Put the canisters into the dishwasher and ran it. They’ll go in the Great Garage Sale that I anticipate will happen sometime later in the spring. There was some emotion at dropping yet another shard of the old life, but there was a kind of triumph in it, too. Cleaning out. Making space. Along the same lines, I think I’ll go pack up two boxes of books to take to FOPAL tomorrow.

Realized that it’s been more than a week since Day 46 when I spoke to the owner of the gallery in Carmel about selling my Linsky painting. And he hasn’t replied. I wonder how he stays in business? Because frankly, he behaves like a jerk. How could I trust somebody to handle the sale of (what I believe should be) a $6000 painting, when that person doesn’t reply to emails or return phone calls? So there is a second gallery mentioned on Linsky’s website. I check their site and see that one of the principals is named Simic. One supposes this is somehow connected to the now-departed Simic Gallery where we bought the painting in the first place. I emailed them.