Day 273, Scottish games

Sunday, 9/1/2019

When I had supper with Dennis and Toni (Day 266), Dennis was enthusiastic about the Scottish Games held at the Alameda County Fairgrounds Labor Day weekend. He planned to spend all day there and suggested I join him. So this morning I left about 8am, driving first to the old coffee shop at Midtown. Had an almond croissant still warm from the oven, num! and read the paper. Then drove 35 miles in light Sunday morning traffic to the fairgrounds. Connected with Dennis by cellphone (what ever did we do back then…) and we walked about. Sat for part of one concert by a band that played “bare-knuckle pipe and drums” and part of another concert by a group that did Celtic derived music but with electric instruments and a drum kit. Walked through part of the merchandise areas. Boy if you need something plaid, this was the place.

Dennis likes that we have, through my mother, a sliver of Gaelic descent specifically from the MacNeil of Barra. (Barra is a lump of rock at the ass-end of the Hebrides chain. Note in that Wiki article that the MacNeils themselves emigrated to the New World along with all the evicted crofters.)

Anyway it was now time for events to start in front of the grandstand. Dennis had obtained very nicely placed seats in the stand. We went there to watch the opening ceremonies. Then Dennis went off to spend an hour tasting Scotch. I stayed and watched all the games, the caber tossing and other ways to fling heavy weights around. This went on pretty continuously until 4, when the closing ceremonies started. The main feature of this was to be the massed bands, about 700 musicians mostly bagpipers and drummers, but with a Marine Corps brass band mixed in. They strung it out for an hour of preliminaries before finally massing the bands. I took some cell-phone video but the light was very poor; the bands were partly in the deep shade of the stands and partly in brilliant sunlight.

Anyway after the massed bands played they announced a folk singer at which point I thanked Dennis and departed. Home before 7pm, fairly tired. Vertigo was better today, only present if I leaned over as to pick something up. Hopefully it will be gone soon.

Day 266, coffee, art fest, supper

Sunday, 8/25/2019

Coffee this morning at Mlle. Collette, who definitely have the best pastries. Walking across to there I was reminded that University avenue is closed off for the Palo Alto arts and crafts fair. I returned to that about 11am and walked the whole thing.

The first couple of blocks of this were somewhat emotional. Practically the only other times I’ve walked an arts festival I’d done it with Marian. And this time, of course, I was seeing things that she would have stopped for. A purple blouse, she’d have checked that out; every jewelry stand she’d have stopped to look over the earrings. So it was a bit sniffly walking along. But in a nice way, I guess.

I was taken with some hand-woven wool blankets. My one and only blanket is very utilitarian. I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond and basically picked one that was the right size and not ugly; but it’s plain and the fabric isn’t friendly to the hand. So at the end of my circuit I looped back to that stall and bought one. Back home I remade the bed with it and it looks very nice.

I also found a cheap broom and dustpan combo at Walgreen’s. I needed that mostly to sweep up the debris from repotting the wax plant yesterday, and in general to keep the balcony tidy.

I’ve been thinking about the tour I’m going on in just a month from now, and thinking how and what to pack. I think it is likely I can get everything I need into a single carry-on bag, not even my roller bag but a smaller one that fits under the seat. I also thought about what I wanted in my pockets, and the answer was: nothing. I don’t want to lose my phone, passport, and/or credit card to a pickpocket. Then I remembered that I still own a “man purse”, a nice leather cross-body bag about 6×9. I will carry passport, credit card and phone in that, clamped under my elbow; nothing in my pockets.

But what about clothes? The Road Scholar pamphlet actually advises having a few quick-dry garments and hand-washing them in hotel sinks. If I do that, I only need, besides what’s on my body, maybe three pairs of shorts, three of socks, two shirts, and a second pair of pants. Plus a jacket. Which all fits in that small bag.

But I don’t have any quick-dry pants. Mostly I have jeans. I don’t want to put my new slacks to this kind of rough treatment. So I sat down and poked around internet retailers and ordered a couple of easy-care chinos from Eddie Bauer.

About 4pm I drove to San Jose to meet with Dennis and Toni for supper at their favorite weekend restaurant, the Black Sheep in the Willow Glen area. Nice supper and conversation. Dennis is a great fan of the Celtic Games which are next weekend, and I’ll probably join him there on the Sunday.

They also reminded me of the upcoming wedding of daughter Denise, which reminded me I need to make some kind of wedding gift. So when I got home I looked up their registry; a very practical couple, they are registered with Crate and Barrel and Target. I bought one item off their list, a camping tent.

So between the packing and the pants and the wedding gift that was a bunch of niggling frets off my mind, with not even the satisfaction of a to-do list to check off.

Day 234, tree guy, FOPAL, book

Wednesday, 7/24/2019

Went for a run. Ended it with coffee at a new spot, not only new to me but I think quite new at all: Verve Coffee at University and High street. Looks like a winner, lots of space indoors (but music a little too loud) and in a nice patio outside; and decent pastries.

Spent an hour editing the paper copy of the book. Amazing how many tiny edits I’m making, replacing an emdash with a comma and such profound changes.

Drove to the Tasso street house to meet with an estimator from Davie Tree service. Chuck had texted it was 11am, but in fact the guy had come at 10 and gone, but left his card. I called him, and he was able to double back. Nice guy, very knowledgeable. Later he sent an estimate that was only $100 higher than the prior estimate, and it looks as if they will be able to do the work in a week or so.

While waiting I had a nice chat with Gloria from across the street. I showed her the “red” chest in the garage that didn’t go in the sale, and suggested that if it works in their garage, they take it.

From there I went to FOPAL where I found five boxes of computer books waiting. This haul was quite rich, over half of them were worth pricing (i.e. from the past 10-12 years or a subject that doesn’t date), and I ended up shelving two full boxes of priced books. There was quite a jam with four other section managers using the computers to do pricing. Then I did sorting for an hour and a half, when I felt quite tired from toting boxes around and bailed a little early. I have to say that sorting, in the summer, feels like bailing a sinking ship. You barely get the table cleared when another donor shows up with half a dozen shopping bags of books, or needs to borrow our dolly to bring in four or eight boxes. I’m going to bring this up tomorrow when I attend a FOPAL brunch for volunteers.

While I was sorting, I got a call from Jean, saying she thought her iMac was dying. I volunteered to come down and take a look at it. It booted right up and seemed normal. She said yesterday it would get stuck during boot-up. I don’t know; hard drive getting tired? She thought it was quite old; I was able to show it was a “late 2015” model. So if it has a problem again, tote it to the Apple store, it’s worth fixing.

Another problem was that her Comcast modem wouldn’t come up. In the ten minutes or so I waited, it just cycled its little lights in a repeating pattern, never settling down with “two blues” as she said it usually did. I power-cycled it again; no luck. I left it that if it didn’t come up overnight, she would have to call on Comcast for service (and good luck with that). She says she’s seen the Comcast truck around her trailer park often lately, which I think is suspicious.

Oh, this morning around 4am I realized one possible reason that C.H. has been tapping my Schwab account for only a bit less than half of the expected amount. That amount is probably the amount of my monthly fee that is allocated to health care (and deductible from taxes as such), while the remainder is for food, rent, maid service and garage, i.e. non-medical. The questions remain, (a) why did they do this without my permission, (b) why did they not do it this month, (c) how do I get it arranged to make a single, auto-payment? I’m probably going to kick this can down the road to August anyway.

I left the annotated book in the car when I came up and I’m too lazy to go get it, so I can’t finish editing it tonight.

Day 209, Dennis, bookcase, concert

Saturday, 6/29/2019

I started out the day with the plan to go to Cost Plus and buy that damn bookcase. I was getting ready to do that when Dennis called and suggested I give him a tour of C.H. Sure, when? and we settled on 11:30. That left a small window between 10am when Cost Plus opened, and 11:30. Could I go get the bookcase? Probably. Could I assemble it? Probably not (but almost did).

I was at Cost Plus when they opened, and quickly obtained the large and heavy flat pack, about 6 foot long, 18×8 inches around, and over 100 pounds. It fit easily in the Prius, but was far too heavy for me to tote alone. On the way back I stopped at T-Mobile and returned the micro-cell thingy. Back at C.H. I went to the basement office of facilities and the on-duty guy was happy to get a dolly and help me run the big box up to my room. It was now 10:45, and I had a go at assembling the thing, but it was still half-assembled on the floor when Dennis called to say he was here and had his visitor’s badge.

So I showed him around, he was favorably impressed, then we decided to have lunch. At first I was going to eat in the dining room but the offering really disappointed me. A vegetarian Rueben sandwich or an uninspired looking pasta dish. I said, let’s go out instead, and we bailed. We ended up at Joe and The Juice which was ok.

Back home I finished the bookcase and now could unpack all the decorative stuff that had been in boxes in the bedroom. No packing boxes left! Here’s how it looks.

The only disappointment is that the shelves are just too close together to let some books stand up. The tall books on top are my growing collection of print editions of online comics.

I had an early supper as soon as the dining room opened, and then headed out to attend one of Palo Alto’s open air free concerts on California Avenue. Unfortunately there was a major league soccer match at Stanford Stadium at the same time and I got caught in some nasty traffic. But I got there in time. The main act was “Fleetwood Mask”, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band. They were just OK and I didn’t stay for their whole set.

The in-house email list had alerted us that there would be a fireworks display after the soccer match. I was sitting watching TV when the artillery barrage sounds of it began coming in my open balcony door. I’m on the opposite side of the building. I kept thinking, I should go take a look, but then thinking, nah, it’s almost over. But it went on and on. I finally went to the common dining room which is on the West side and watched the last several minutes. (It must have run 15 minutes in all.)

Day 200, Yosemite, Jean

Thursday, 6/20/2019

Drove to the Yosemite ave. warehouse for a day of artifact work. This was the first time I did this starting from University Avenue downtown, instead of from Page Mill Road. An extra half-mile of slow traffic. On the other hand, this was the first time I started from inside a covered garage. The Prius hardly knows what to do with itself now it is living inside a building instead of being exposed to birds and oak leaves 24/7, like it was for the previous 7 years.

During lunch with the rest of the artifact volunteers, I engaged in a long text conversation with Deborah, who had someone that wanted to buy the washing machine, but had only a pickup truck and wanted help loading it. Eventually it was settled that I would meet them Friday morning for this. I was not enthusiastic about this, and was pleased when a few hours later, Deborah texted that the person had canceled out.

From Milpitas I drove to Mountain View to pick up sister-in-law Jean. She wanted to see Channing House. For her age of 92 she is remarkably healthy. She uses a cane for balance and admits to no longer walking the mile to her church for daily mass. She drives instead.

She was favorably impressed by my new context. She got a free dinner because there was nobody at the entrance to the dining room to whom I could report I was bringing a guest. Her white hair and cane were sufficient camouflage that nobody suspected she might be a visitor.

I am concerned about what she may do going forward. She has about sufficient income to continue living in her current situation, but if she needs more care… And what kind of obligation do I have toward the support of my late wife’s sister? These are not easy issues.

Day 181, Docent, Jean

Saturday, 6/1/2019

Two weeks from now is moving day to Channing House. I could probably move now, it the apartment was ready. I only need to repot the wax plants. I have a couple of attractive small hanging pots from Amazon to put them in. I am waiting for them to finish their current bloom, then I’ll prune them and repot them and they will be ready to go. Pretty much everything else is ready as well.

I conducted the noon tour at the Museum today. Had a good crowd, 25 or so, and most hung with me to the end. Later I called Jean suggesting dinner. I want to talk F2F about this wedding trip. She didn’t pick up, so left a message.

I did get in touch with her and we went out to supper. She brought up the wedding trip and said it did seem like too much trouble for the benefit. Excellent.

Day 180, dining table exit, real estate

Friday, 5/31/2019

I went for the usual run in the morning. I don’t recollect now (24 hours later) what I did to pass the time until the scheduled feature of the day, the arrival of the people who’ve bought my dining table and chairs (day 164). They showed a bit ahead of time and we loaded the table, the two leaves, and the six chairs into their rather large SUV. It all fit well, and off they went.

I felt a bit emotional about seeing this furniture go, but not as much as I feared I might. It was one of the first things Marian and I bought together, but I cannot now remember the actual buying of it. I’m sure it came, like most of our furniture, from Danish Concepts or some similar Scandinavian-flavor place. The round table occupied the center of our octagonal dining room for about 40 years. At least 15 years ago the table top had accumulated some scratches, and we sent it out to be refinished.

The leaves got little use. For maybe 20 years, through the 90s, we hosted a party of five every other month when we would meet with the Kellehers and our mutual friend Randy. To set for five required putting in one of the leaves. I have a couple of pictures of times we hosted Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner for more people, and put in both leaves to seat eight or nine, but those were rare events, a dozen times at most.

After Randy died we continued to alternate months between our house and the Kelleher’s but with only four diners, no leaf was needed. For the last few years, since the Kellehers moved into a retirement home, we didn’t do any hosting, and only used the table as a convenient place to set things. We ate our own meals in the living room, watching TV.

Once the table was gone, I proceeded with the plan I’d had in mind for a week, since Deb texted to say the table was sold and would go on this day. Namely, I moved all the boxes of furniture I’ve bought for the new apartment, into the dining room, and stacked the other things I’ve already packed for my move on them. It makes one compact cubical heap about 4 foot on a side. That cleared out the spare room, and there I have collected all the things that are also going with me but which need professional packing by the movers, art work and such.

During this Chuck texted to say that Lawyer Lady’s agent had been in touch. Her client has apparently been working 20 hours a day on a major project at her law firm and hasn’t had time to ponder our counter-offer; could they have through Sunday? Sure, no problem. And also, she would like to visit the house one more time with her friend the decorator. Could they do that today at 4? Yeah no prob.

So I tidied up a bit, and left the house at 3:30. I sat for a while in the car near Peers Park, then drove over to CH and sat reading in the lobby until the dining room opened at 5:30. After supper I came on home.

In the evening Jean emailed to ask if I would be willing to drive her to the wedding of Robert Lacrampe. Robert is probably late 20s, early 30s? He is the youngest child of Pierre Lacrampe, Marian’s and Jean’s cousin. I last really interacted with him when he was a teenager. I remember him as a cheerful and intelligent kid who liked to pronounce his name the French way, hhhrrro-BEAR.

Anyway he is getting married on July 20 in Calistoga. Ceremony at 5, then “cocktails (formal)”, then dinner. Google maps says 2:30 to 3:00 hours drive time on a Saturday. That means a 1pm departure for me, pick up Jean, drive to Calistoga, and even if we skip the dinner and leave after an hour of schmoozing, probably a twelve hour round trip, 5-6 hours of driving. Plus, I no longer have a suit; and if I have a necktie I probably don’t have a good shirt to wear it on. Nearest I can get to “formal” is a brown sport coat with gray slacks and a black turtleneck.

Well, I spelled this out to Jean in an email, not saying “no”, just saying here’s the deal. We’ll see.

Day 131, more tidy, Chabot

Friday, 4/12/2019

Should have gone for a run but decided instead to do more — I need a word for, sorting through possessions, deciding what to keep, putting those bits in one place, the other bits in the trash or a different place — downsizing. I went through the sewing bits, collected a little kit that would handle buttons and simple repairs; put the rest in a nice basket to go in the sale. Stayed busy until 10am, time to leave for Oakland where I had a date with Darlene and Jessea. They’d invited me to go with them to Chabot space and science center, up top of the ridge above Oakland, for the planetarium show, and then lunch.

Chabot was rather busy with several busloads of kids. We checked out the exhibits, then watched the show, which was not a planetarium display but an iMax-style movie about the search for dark matter. Watching the kids boisterously bouncing around the displays, and watching the filmmakers trying to get across a fairly difficult concept, reminded me of how hard museum people work to produce relevant displays, and how often they fail, in my opinion. The software exhibit at the Computer History Museum is like that. They tried really hard, but it ended up more about the things people do with software, and conveys almost nothing about what it is, or the process, difficulty, fascination of trying to make it.

Nice lunch with two cheerful people. Got to talk about myself and my adventures, which is always enjoyable, so grateful for that.

Back at home I spent a couple of hours getting one our better images to print properly, and made something of a breakthrough controlling the printer. I think following images will be much easier to print with good color.

And only now I realize, I had a baseball game I could have gone to. Oh well.

Day 121, life is just packed

Tuesday, 4/2/2019

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll be fine. Onward.

Got an email from designer

Tyra;

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

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

Debra,

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

Got a reply from

the Attorney,

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

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

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

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

tool chests.

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

Errand three was to run down to

Jean’s place

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

Back home another email arrived: congratulations, you have been

officially approved

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

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

Day 119, art, visits

Sunday, 3/31/2019

Coffee and newspaper at the usual place. On impulse, I purchased a “cappuccino card”, a discount card where the last two of twelve drinks are “free”. Then I wondered, will I really be back here for twelve more cappuccinos? Or, if I’m living a mile-plus distant at C.H., might I come back here for Sunday mornings anyway, or would I find a nearer coffee shop? Transitions: breaking old habits, or adapting them. Ch-ch-ch-ch-CHANges! Thank you David Bowie, back in your box.

At 10:30 drove to Menlo Park to meet with Darlene and Jessea, who had invited me to join them looking at an exhibit of Ansel Adams photos being auctioned to benefit the Sempervirens fund. There were about 20, pretty much the gamut of Adams’ standard subjects, breaking waves, Sierra mountains, trees. It all seems very familiar now; partly because we’ve seen his pictures over and over, and partly because we all take these same pictures now, over and over. Adams showed everybody how to see these things, what to look for through the viewfinder, and the views are now clichés. But for any cliché, somebody had to coin it.

We talked about the technology changes. Take this shot, his Timber Cove breaking wave,

ansel_adams_timber_cove_coast_storm_c_1960_d5479140g

He did this with a big old wooden box on a tripod and a plate. How many very expensive 8×10 negs did he expose? Mind you, he wouldn’t have known what he had before he was back in the darkroom. (And maybe he didn’t go out to shoot a breaking wave; maybe he was there for the rocks, but back in the darkroom, he discovered he’d gotten lucky.)

Today, you’d sit on the same bluff with your digital camera, trying to time the waves, click, look at the back of the camera, nope, that wave doesn’t perfectly echo the shape of the rocks, do another — until you had the right one. And walk back to the car with your camera with its 128GB micro-SD card capable of holding a year’s worth of zillion-megapixel images, in your pants pocket.

So we had lunch at Anne’s Cafe, a throwback to the 1950s, which they enjoyed, talking about cameras and slides. Darlene and Jessea have the same problem as I, with thousands of slides, and not sure what to do with them. We talked about scanning, and they came back to the house and I showed them how I did slide scanning, which was fun for me anyway. But it emerged that they have a bigger problem in that their slides are nowhere near as well organized as mine were. They don’t have a catalog file saying what every slide is, organized by groups. More like, organized by rubber bands and shoe boxes. So just as they were leaving I remembered something: the slide sorter Marian used. A collapsing box, that opens to support a translucent screen with a bulb behind it, so you can move slides around, arrange and cull them in a batch. It would be worth nothing in an estate sale (not many buyers would even know what it was), but they could use it. So I pulled it from the back of the closet and handed it over.

Later in the day I ran the recorded game, #2 Oregon vs. #1 seed Mississippi State. Oregon won, and will face UConn in the Final Four on Friday. I have no plan to go to Tampa, but if Stanford should (against all odds) sneak by Notre Dame… nah. Probably not.