Day 282, quiet Tuesday

Tuesday, 9/10/2019

For exercise I ran my series of this and that, but I need to either increase reps or add things. Then I had breakfast here, apparently for the first time ever on a Tuesday. I know that because at supper last night, we were talking about the meal service and I mentioned that I never see pancakes or waffles at breakfast. Nobody then at the table had any thoughts other than “they do sometimes — I think?”

But this morning there were waffles on offer. I said “oh boy, waffles” to the guy in front of me in line, and he confidently informed me, there are always waffles on tuesday and pancakes on wednesdays. Well, Wednesday I usually run, and have breakfast in my room for an earlier start. But I guess on Tuesdays I’ve always done that also.

During the morning I spent an hour and a half on Lisp, doing the exercises at the end of a chapter of the book I’m using now. (It is a print book, ANSI Common Lisp by Graham, not the tutorial etext I mentioned earlier. Graham’s is a college-level text and quite challenging.)

I also spent an hour working on the outline of my YA novel. I started this back in 2016 or so, and have over two-thirds of it done. When I re-read what I’ve written, I like it a lot; it’s really good writing, and for tone and character it accomplishes just what I wanted to do. But there are structural/plot issues that I need to correct, and in particular I need to work out a clear outline for the ending.

In the afternoon I thought about actually buying some things. I have a list of things I’d like to splurge money on: a TV, a sound bar, and a printer. I went to the local Best Buy to eyeball some of these things. I was able to see the particular TV model, but mounted about 8 feet up on a wall in a dark room; and actually listened to the sound bar, which sounded good. I almost bought that, but couldn’t quite pull the trigger on it. They didn’t have the printer on view, although I think their website said they did.

At 4:30pm was the monthly fourth-floor residents’ meeting in the lounge. Everybody welcomed me and Patti, their new 6th floor “campers”. After the meeting, the floor rep, Mary Beth, had reserved a big table for 18 in the dining room. Made pleasant conversation with people until almost 7pm.

Day 274, FOPAL, lunch

Monday, 9/2/2019

Today, Labor Day, the kitchen staff is to get off early. At breakfast they offered a “sack dinner” service where they made a sandwich to order and bagged it with a container of fruit or potato salad, a cookie and chips. I got my bag and put it in the fridge.

I opted not to do a run today, as I still feel vestiges of vertigo especially when I lean over, and I didn’t want to risk a fall. Before I went down to breakfast I did a set of the exercises I collected off the internet a few days ago, focused on core strength. It’s a start, but I need to develop more.

About 9am I went to FOPAL and processed the waiting computer books, then did a couple of hours of sorting. From there I picked up some groceries, mostly my no-calorie drinks, and went to get the car washed. While there, Scott called wondering where I was, or rather, why I wasn’t at the restaurant we’d agreed to meet at. Well, because I messed up the time, and thought it was 1:30 not 1. No harm done. Had a pleasant lunch and chat.

Back at C.H. for a quiet afternoon, although I did spend an hour studying Bridge Defense out of a book I snagged last week from FOPAL. It’s amazing how much you can derive logically from the bidding and the first trick, if you actually count and think. But it’s hard. Thinking, that is.

Then to watch SYTYCD and to bed.

Day 263, Shustek, dinner

Thursday, 8/22/2019

In the morning I did a fifteen-minute workout based on a couple of online tutorials. It was enough to bring up a sweat and addresses my main concerns about core strength. I’ll keep adding to it over time.

Then I brought up the three drawers from the woodshop and put them back. Five of nine drawers refinished inside, and I’m not sure if I’ll bother with the remaining four, as I don’t use them much.

Off to a day at Shustek. Toni and I worked all day cataloging more of the collected donation of the Mother of Multimedia at Apple (Day 235).

Back to C.H. at 4:30, just time to change into my new blazer to attend the Sodexo Stop Hunger Dinner. This was a special annual event; I had to sign up and pay $80 in advance. Sodexo (our food contractor) donates the meal, all the money goes to local charities that feed the poor one way or another. The menu was elaborate, five separate courses, all very well presented and attractive to the eye. Flavors, not so great. But pretty to look at.

Clear Bloody Mary Consommé (juice of cherry tomatoes with tiny chives and vodka)
Ahi Crudo: small slices of almost-raw Ahi with chopped hazelnuts. I really don’t like raw fish so this pretty dish was wasted on me.
Arroz Caldo: basically a nice risotto decorated with chives and bits of pork belly
Adobo & Gnocchi: five-hour ox-tail braised in ginger and vinegar, with gnocchi made of sweet potatoes. The orange gnocchi were pretty but just a touch leathery; the meat was good.
Coconut Lychee Aspic Cake with passion fruit.

So they were really trying. I give them a 9 for imagination and for presentation, and about a 7 for flavor.

Anyway I was invited by Craig to join his table, which included his wife Diane, Kathleen (a different Kathleen from Day 260), Joanne, Connie, the other David, and a guy whose name I didn’t get although I’ve met him once before. Lot of pleasant conversation for about 2 hours, and now I’ve had my quota of socializing for a while.

Day 261, dumping the Y, drawers, docent, dinner, laundry

Tuesday, 8/20/2019

First thing, I drove to the YMCA and did my few exercises. But while doing them, something crystallized in my mind: surely I can achieve these same effects one way or another with simpler exercises. I’d been putting off doing anything until C.H. gets a new fitness director but that’s dumb. I’m done with this place. So on the way out I filled out a cancellation form to terminate my Y membership.

Back home I took out the three drawers from the kitchen area, which have a particularly strong fusty odor, and took them down to the shop. I sanded them and put on a coat of Varathane. That took less than two hours all told. I left them to dry. I changed into docent clothes, my red Computer History docent shirt and slacks, and after lunch I went to the museum to do the 2pm tour. Mike, who had answered the last-minute appeal for a docent to cover the noon tour, said his group was over 20 people. My group was only five, and only two of those stayed close to hear my golden prose. The other three orbited at various distances. Whatever.

Back home I changed back to regular clothes and had supper, along with Craig, Diane, Sue and Kent. I ran my other (non-bleach) load of laundry after supper.

Day 254, quiet day

Tuesday, 8/13/2019

Started by driving to the Y for a little exercise. On the way back I stopped at Tasso street, where I found the cleaning crew at work. My only reason was to check on the oval mirrors. Back when we remodeled the bathroom in 1974, the wash basin was built into a custom triangular vanity in the corner. Rather that putting up conventional sheet mirrors making a right-angled box of mirrored wall, we (with some trouble) managed to find large oval mirrors for the two walls above the basin. g901p20220marian201989-m

Here’s a picture from 1989, showing the mirror on the right. There’s a matching one on the left. So during the current work the painters had taken the mirrors down, and I wanted to reassure myself they were still around. They are, stored in the walk-in closet in the back. However the painters removed the hooks they were hung on, and patched the wall. So new hooks have to be put up to re-hang them.

I let Chuck know about this, in case the buyers asked, how are we supposed to comb our hair, then?

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. I spent about three hours collecting links to a variety of online Lisp based ebooks. I sat down with my Lisp IDE and worked through the first chapter of one tutorial, and then of another, trying to judge which was the better. Neither is good, but the worse one, unfortunately, is by a fellow author on the Leanpub platform. Ya know, I’ve written a few user manuals, including tutorials, plus done a little bit of programming, so I can tell when I’m in the hands of somebody who understands the material and knows how to present it. I haven’t found a really good Lisp intro book yet, but so far the Lisp Primer by Colin Allen and Maneesh Dhagat is the least bad one I’ve found.

I also ordered replacement checks from Schwab; their reorder function was back and worked smoothly. And paid a bill and watched some TV. For supper I looked at the offerings in the dining room and decided they were boring, so had a meal replacement shake in my room, capping off a quite hermit-like day.

Day 248, real estate, FOPAL, lecture

Wednesday, 8/7/2019

Started the day with a drive to the gym for exercises. Then I headed over to Tasso street. There I gave Paul a check for part-payment of the flooring, and folded up the big tarp from which Richard had removed all the mulch. He’d come up just a bit short on mulch. I figure to buy a couple of bags of the stuff and he can finish the last little corner next week.

Then I went to Chuck’s office because I wanted to discuss the disclosure forms that his office guy, Andrew (also his son), had sent yesterday. Chuck and I had a long and productive discussion on the marketing of the house, and about pricing. I am very much letting him handle this, as he has the depth of experience with real estate in this market. His approach is to set the initial asking price a bit low, and count on the charm of the place to inspire enough competitive bidding to raise it. So we will be asking $2.49M, and feeling pretty confident that it will be bid to something over that.

On the way to his office I got a call from Chris the hairdresser. I’d blown it, my appointment was for today. I knew it was today; it was in the calendar for today. Well, now it is for next Wednesday. Insert head-bang gif here.

From there I went to FOPAL and tidied up the Computer section ready for this weekend’s sale days. Then I started sorting, and when I quit at 4pm, I was very pleased and surprised that we sorters had actually sorted “everything”. Well, every box of donations that were in the Sorting room today, and the dozen boxes and bags that came through the door between 2 and 4pm. Of course, Frank reminded me that there are a couple hundred boxes of donations in the other building. But clearing out the Sorting room is an achievement anyway.

Back home, I got a call from Helene; she has a couple more questions for the piece on me for the newsletter. We agreed to meet for supper at 6. The questions didn’t amount to much but I got to talk about myself, always a pleasure. We talked about her, as well. Compared notes on grieving. She lost her husband at age 58, so she’s been a long time widowed, but still gets occasional bouts of grief.

At 7pm there was a talk by Palo Alto’s relatively new Chief of Police, describing the changes he’s initiating in the department. He seemed a very genial, but highly competent person. They just started the body-cam program. Each patrol car has a total of five cameras mounted on it, three outside and two inside. Then when the officer steps out of the car, his body camera is automatically triggered. No more forgetting to turn it on in the heat of the moment.

Chief Jonson initiated a citizen advisory board, and their first priority message to him was the need for traffic enforcement. At that point, mid-2018, the PAPD didn’t have a traffic “unit”; they just relied on patrolling officers to enforce traffic laws. But he has set up a three-officer unit that is dedicated to traffic enforcement (two motorcycles, one car) and doing “strategic” enforcement. Which seems to mean, focusing on specific streets? Anyway Alma and Embarcadero were mentioned specifically.

Day 233, bball camp, book

Tuesday, 7/23/2019

I started the day by driving to the YMCA, doing 15 minutes on the treadmill and my round of strength exercises. Back home I did a bit of office work, filing some things and trying to make sense of my Channing House billings. I can’t get a clear picture of how much I am paying per month. When I first signed up, they received my initial buy-in by electronic funds transfer from my Schwab account. Twice in the three months since, they have again tapped that account, but not for the whole amount of a monthly rental, but rather a bit less than half that. I don’t know why. This month, they didn’t. I don’t know why. I have been paying the amount due on the bottom line of the monthly invoice by EFT from my SFCU (Stanford Credit Union) account and I guess the numbers are working out because they haven’t called me up to say “you’re in arrears”. But I would like to set up a single, monthly, auto-pay order at SFCU. Only I don’t know how much that should be, given they might choose to pay themselves some of it from my Schwab account.

I keep thinking things will clarify with the next month’s invoice. But I guess I will have to make an appointment with somebody in the accounts office.

About 11:30 I took a Lyft to the Stanford campus where I was to assist in registration for Tara’s basketball camp. This time I was assigned to the “A-to-E” registration table along with Nancy. It was fairly complicated as each camper got a name sticker and checked off on a list, then they (or their mom usually) paid some money into their “camp store” account, so they could buy souvenirs and snacks without having to have money in their dorm rooms. Then they got their lanyard and key to their dorm room. We divided this work among us and managed not to mess anything up or distress any campers, so that’s a win.

We were all done by 2:30. I bummed a ride back to CH with Nancy, who had just bought a new Lexus and was happy to show it off to me.

Now I sat down with the paper copy of the book and kept reading, finding several more (very minor) typos. I have a few more chapters to go. Then I’ll make a new text PDF and update the Kindle Direct page with it, and officially “publish” it on Amazon. I’ll have to go back and re-publish the Leanpub version also. With that out of the way, I will start on another project, probably in early August, about the time the house is finally ready to sell.

Day 226, book, lunch, money, concert

Tuesday, 7/16/2019

In the morning I drove to the YMCA for some exercises. This strikes me ever more strongly as a waste of money. Especially so when, in the evening, I found a letter from the Y saying they were unable to process my monthly payment against the credit card on file. When I logged on to their site, which is apparently a new one to which all accounts have been recently transferred, I found the records in some disarray. First, they had the user’s name as Marian Cortesi. Marian may once have briefly had a Y membership but I’m dubious about that; and the access to the account was via my email address, not hers. Second, when I tried to update the account info, I was able to change the mailing address, but not the name. The account showed a list of four credit cards, all out of date. I was able to remove three of them, but the fourth–actually Marian’s old BofA card which should never have been in there–could not be removed because, the site claimed, a charge was pending against it. Well, duh, you can “pend” against that card as long as you like; it was cancelled six months ago and will never pay.

Thinking about it, I speculate that when the Y set up their new website, they merged a very old, inactive account of Marian’s with my current and active account. That would explain all the dead cards in the payment method list, and the use of her name with my email.

So I paid the pending amount using a different card (one that I am almost sure I gave them the last time they couldn’t charge a dead card, but it isn’t in this diary). But with pending balance 0, it still can’t delete that old card because of “open charges”. Bad website. I really need to transition to things I can do here in the C.H. fitness center. But still waiting on C.H. management to select a replacement fitness director.

Back to the unit, and now I was able to actually order two proof copies of the book from Amazon. They won’t arrive until next week, but, yay. Looking forward to that. I spent an hour doing classifications on Zooniverse. Then went out to lunch with Scott at Gombei, where I haven’t been since… Marian and I might have gone there once in 2018 but I’m thinking it was probably 2017. We used to go there on an occasional Sunday night when we felt like eating out, and most of our regular spots were closed.

At 2:30 I went down to the lobby to meet Deborah. We went up to the penthouse and sat down and went over the accounting from the sale. It was a very successful sale, in her opinion, and in mine. My net take from it, including the money that people paid me directly when they picked up the bed and the desk, was just slightly over $2,000. Deborah had brought my share of the weekend sale in cash! So there I was holding a wad of $1650, feeling like a drug dealer.

I thanked her profusely. She was fun to work with, honest, good-natured. And she saved me a ton of effort and stress. If I’d tried to price and sell all that stuff, oh what a job that would have been. She earned every penny of her share.

At 6 I went out to Stanford for a concert, one more in the Stanford Jazz Workshop series. This was “Sarah Reich’s Tap Into Jazz”. Here she is in performance. There were a few problems with this concert, not her fault. I see in the video she is wearing the same mic, but at Stanford she had consistent problems with it, going dead, or crackling when she moved. There was a video to introduce the show and whoever ran the projector had the sound up way too far, unpleasantly loud and distorted on the highs. And the floor of the stage at Campbell Recital Hall was not as resonant as a good tap floor should be. She soldiered on. The band, only a four-piece group, was tight. It was an OK show but for a fan of Gaby Diaz, just OK.

Day 214, a walk, grief, fireworks

Thursday, 7/4/2019

Good night’s sleep, pleasant quiet morning. Edited two more chapters of the book, then at 10am decided to go for a walk somewhere. Where? Some years ago we had a nice outing in Edgewood Park, on the west edge of Redwood City. However, this being a holiday, no doubt the parking lot will be full already, so: take a Lyft. Which I did.

Edgewood park’s trails all start with a stiff climb of about 300 or 400 feet. I do not think Marian could have managed those anytime in this century, so my memory of a pleasant outing there must date back to the 90s. Today was one more in a series of just beautiful days, temperatures in the low 70s, clear and sunny. I went up the hills in decent style, feeling normally strong.

After an hour or so, I called a Lyft and headed back, in time for a special lunch here, barbecue on the patio. Very decent ribs. Got invited to sit with Nancy, Tom and Karen, all retired from the medical field, working at Stanford or PAMF, I’m not sure which.

Played my space game for a couple hours (it’s wearing thin, I think I’ll toss it), and then Deborah texted with a picture: do you want the stuff in this drawer?

What the heck drawer is that? She was working at the house, so I went over to see. It was a shallow drawer in the top of the bedroom cabinet that I’d simply overlooked. Apparently Marian had used it as the place to keep… stuff she didn’t want to throw away. Mostly SWBB memorabilia, but quite a few other things, like the wrap-around sunglasses she used for a while, and her Stanford Blood Center Volunteer badge with its 750 hours endorsement. Deborah suggested I bag it all and sort it later, which I did.

Back at C.H. I went through it and set aside a few items as meaningful to me, like the orange button, “Croix de Candlestick”, for surviving an extra-innings night baseball game there, and some other pins. Several things seemed particularly meaningful for Marian’s life, and I put them in the box of her memorabilia I created some months ago. The rest went into the trash.

During all of that I was sniffling. I haven’t mentioned grief much in the past couple of months. That’s because it has not been a common problem. It hits at widely separated intervals, triggered by quite unpredictable events. This was an obvious one. But anything that recalls the life we used to have, the comfortable, interesting life of “Dave’n’Marian”, is cause for a deep wave of regret. I’m not going to compare my present, very comfortable life to that one; they exist in completely separate compartments. They aren’t commensurable. But the old life is gone forever, and every once in a while I get reminded of that and get a spasm of emotion.

I also still get occasional, brief twinges of the anxiety that I noted in the first weeks. I’m pretty sure it is based in the fact that for 45 years I had a smart, diligent person double-checking me and calling me on my bullshit and catching my oversights. Nobody around to do that now. What am I forgetting to do in a timely fashion? Well, actually, nothing. Nothing I’m aware of, anyway — but that’s rather the point, isn’t it?

So the transition continues. Later tonight C.H. gathered on the 11th floor deck to watch fireworks in all directions. I stayed at the party for a few minutes, had a delicious rootbeer float (thanks to the Fourth Floor which were the nominal hosts) and looked at distant sparkles. But it was chilly out on the open deck, and crowded inside the penthouse, so I went back to my room. Not without some guilt; I really should stay up there and “network” but I don’t feel like it.

Distant artillery noises–the sound of a distant fireworks show travels better than the light–continued until 11pm.

Day 212, book, museum

Tuesday, 7/2/2019

I began the morning by driving to the Y for a small workout. I departed late enough that the dining room was open, and I picked up a bagel and banana to eat while I drove. However, I want to be able to do my workout here, and drop the YMCA membership. However, that will mean changing the workout, as two apparatus that I use, aren’t in the C.H. gym.

Right now, the fitness director has announced her departure, and a new one hasn’t been appointed. There is a buzz of email on the house list of people lobbying for the director’s assistant, Clark, to be promoted. He’s apparently very popular with the residents. I have no opinion; he seemed nice enough when he evaluated my fitness back on Day 152.

Anyway, when that is resolved I intend to get with whoever is director and ask for help in mapping out an exercise routine that will strengthen the particular muscle groups that I’m concerned about, and that I can do here.

That done, I edited another chapter of my book, and explored one of the websites where I might get hard-copy made. That would be Blurb, which I used to produce two photo books for the Cardinal WBB team back in 2012 and 2013. I still need to check out Kindle Direct, because why not be able to sell through Amazon?

During this I was getting emails from Chuck with documents to e-sign and return. We are finally and definitively separated from Lawyer Lady, and good riddance.

I had a quick lunch and headed off to the museum to lead that tour that I accepted yesterday. Stopped briefly at Tasso street to sign Deborah’s sales agreement. The tour were a dozen residents of The Terraces at Los Altos, another upscale senior residence. They could have been a random selection from C.H. Anyway I had fun with them and they seemed appreciative.

Back to C.H. in time for the monthly Upgrade Progress meeting held by Angela. She went over again the timeline for the 7th floor moving back and the 6th floor moving out. No changes but a little more detail. Our common areas, except for the laundry room, will be closed for renovation starting later this week.

Between 3:30 and supper time I began to explore a replacement for PhotoShop. I am a bit of a PhotoShop power user, very familiar with it, have used it to process hundreds of scanned slides etc. A couple of years ago, Adobe changed their pricing so that one no longer could own the latest PhotoShop (or Bridge or LightRoom, etc) but only leased them via an annual payment for Creative Cloud membership. I put up with this while finishing up my slide scanning, but did not renew when it came due this spring, and all that software has stopped working. Actually I still have a five-year-old PhotoShop that works, but it would be nice to have something current and supported.

There’s The Gimp, the open-source image editor. I picked up a book on it last week at FOPAL, so downloaded the program and checked it out. It lacks several features that I used heavily, as well as having a confusing UI (and the book wasn’t very good either). No.

For certain things, GraphicConverter is very useful and I have it on both computers, but it isn’t my favorite tool for image editing.

Some time ago I bought a copy of Pixelmator and it would probably do most of what I want. However I recently heard of Affinity Pro and decided to try their trial download. And Wow! am I impressed. For $39, here was a program with every feature of the latest PhotoShop, and more. I watched a couple of their tutorial videos, tried out a couple of things, and immediately bought it. Yes. Nice.