Day 184, AT&T, FOPAL, upgrade, SYTYCD

Tuesday, 5/4/2019

Exercise this morning was a brisk walk to the Y and a round of exercise. The exercises I do there, that I think have the most benefit, are not possible with the equipment in the CH gym, so I will likely keep my Y membership.

That’s not a large expense but it annoys me because I thought I would be dropping it. But that annoyance was assuaged this morning when I had an

email from AT&T

saying that “my bill” was past due. No indication of which bill. So here’s the thing: for nearly a decade I’ve had DirecTV with auto bill-pay. A year ago AT&T absorbed DirecTV and its website, and now anytime you try to look at your DirecTV account, you end up being shuttled willy-nilly into myAtt.com account management. There it kept showing me that my $60 monthly bill for internet is paid up all proper. There is no freakin’ way to get from that account page to my DirecTV account, to check up on my bill or payment method for the TV service.

Well, there must be, because after I switched browsers and went through the sequence a fourth time, suddenly and magically I was looking at my bill for the month’s TV, $153. And I supplied the credit card data they already had and paid it.

One of the pleasures of leaving this house will the fun of calling AT&T and terminating both the internet and TV services. Saving me just over $210 per month, which more than makes up for the much smaller YMCA membership bill.

Now, true, at CH I will be what I have studiously avoided becoming for twenty years, a Comcast customer! Always avoided it because of Comcast’s horrible reputation for customer service. Hah! At CH, I’m not the customer; a medium-size business (Channing House) is the customer. I will be paying a small amount monthly for a Comcast, excuse me, XFinity, DVR, which costs extra. (I went over this in detail with Craig yesterday.) But that will be a pittance compared to what I’ve been paying DirecTV/AT&T all these years.

Anyway.

Yesterday when I spent time at

FOPAL

tidying the Computer section I was appalled at the flood of donations that came in and were piled up waiting to be sorted. Today another volunteer speculated that it was the result of the Palo Alto city-wide garage sale over the weekend — all the books that didn’t sell in garage sales, were boxed up and dumped at FOPAL. And some actually were “dumped”, about 8 boxes were just left outside the door, which is rather discourteous.

So I went down today again and spent another three hours sorting. Didn’t eliminate the backlog but took a serious bite out of it.

Then I bought a pound of coffee and some toilet paper (there wasn’t quite enough left to cover two more weeks) and headed home. From there I went over to CH to attend the

monthly Upgrade Update

meeting. This was to let all residents know the status and progress of the rolling floor-by-floor renovation. This meeting was particularly for the Seventh and Sixth floors.

The 7th floor people got their dates for when they would move back to their renovated apartments (August 12-23), and we 6th floors got the dates for when we would be moved out to temporary units (August 26 to September 9th). (Note to self: thoughts of taking some kind of cruise in the fall: book for mid-September.)

We also learned what our temporary units would be, and got floor plans for them. I will be moving to the 4th floor and the West side. The unit is almost the same size and layout as #621, so there won’t be any need to store any of my furniture, and most of it can go to the same relative position. The only problem I foresee is that my plants will have more light and heat from the Western exposure. Rather than hanging around an hour for supper I just went on home for a simple meal and to watch episode 1 of season 16 of

So You Think You Can Dance

Marian and I watched the previous fifteen seasons of this show and enjoyed them all. When I noticed the DVR had recorded SYTYCD I was a little worried, on two conflicting accounts. Would it be too hard to watch, being bothered by thoughts of “She would have enjoyed this so much”? And conversely, would I find out it wasn’t as good as I remembered, and wouldn’t be fun to watch when I didn’t share it with another fan?

Fortunately, neither. There were sniffly moments when I thought about how Marian would have enjoyed it, but they weren’t too frequent or intrusive. And the show was just as good as I remembered. Better than some years, in fact. In some past seasons they have tinkered with their format in various unfortunate ways. This year they seem to have gone back to the original format, augmented with a whizzy new stage — which incorporates a circle of cameras, so they can capture a dancer in the air and show them in full 3D — and new judges who aren’t embarrassing. So, yeah. Good watching.

Day 183, men’s group, FOPAL, tech, realty

Monday, 6/3/2019

The CH Men’s Group met at 10 and I was to introduce myself and “talk about anything you like”. So I gave a capsule autobiography with some pictures culled from my collection. Maybe I’ll write that into this blog at some point.

In order to get my usual exercise, I walked from Tasso street to Channing House and back again, net 10,900 steps for the day. Then I went to FOPAL to do the Computer section work. There were eight boxes of books waiting. I ended up keeping about 30 books, sending seven boxes to the bargain room. I ruthlessly discarded into the garbage can somebody’s donation of a bag of 50 or so, 3.5-inch floppies. Nobody cares and they aren’t recyclable. I also put in the recycling a complete FrameMaker product box, containing a set of manuals for that software. Nostalgia: there was a period around 1992-3 when I used FrameMaker 40 hours a week, writing manuals at Informix. It hasn’t been supported, or used, this century, and wouldn’t run on any existing hardware.

Pricing, as usual, turned up some “high value” (average online price greater than $25) books, including one boring looking little textbook whose prices ranged from $70 to over $200. Those went into the “high value” cart for those volunteers to sell.

From FOPAL I drove back to CH to attend a tech group meeting at 3pm. This was to introduce ClearPass, a system of access control for the CH internet provision, so that each apartment could have, in effect, its own little wi-fi network carved out of the big building network. In this way, your laptops, phone, desktop and wireless-connected printer can all see each other — you can print on your printer from anywhere, and your Macs can use Apple file sharing between them — but other users in the building can’t see them. It seems pretty slick, making a couple of hundred apparently unique wi-fi clusters out of one big system. They claim they use this solution for major universities so each student in a dorm has a unique “micro-net” for their devices. I took a bunch of notes on the phone.

Drove home via Safeway to pick up a few groceries. About six, Chuck called. He’d talked at length to the other agent. As was said before, the Lawyer Lady loves the house but is currently tasked with a huge responsibility for a “billion dollar contract” (probably an exaggeration) within her law firm and hasn’t had time to make any decisions. Her visit to the house on Friday was a success, she and her decorator friend love it even more.

I told Chuck I could sympathize with her having this huge crisis, and don’t mind her thinking about it longer; but on the other hand, I want to sell. We agreed he would re-run the ad in the Daily Post that he had suspended last week in respect of their offer. And we talked about how soon after I move out (in 12 days!) we can list the house. Sometime in July.

Day 176, FOPAL, realty

Cannabis report: 15mg/15mg did give me a slight buzz, a little hint of vertigo when moving or turning over, and that persisted until the small hours. I did not sleep any better. The only real effect of the THC was to increase the effect that I remarked on three days back: on the edge of sleep, I was treated to a wild show of abstract art on the inside of my closed eyelids. For several minutes — maybe? maybe only a minute or two, but long enough to think, “very pretty, but I’m not sleeping, go to sleep”) — was looking at fields of intricate patterns, or figures like claymation animation, in rich colors. The one definite difference that THC makes.

In the morning I had a dull headache and felt foggy for a while. A hangover? Or just coincidence, I can’t say. But definitely, THC intoxication is not worth pursuing for its own sake.

Monday, 5/27/2019

A day with no scheduled activities on the google calendar. I’ll have to meet with Chuck at some point and make up my mind as to whether to counter-offer the Lawyer Lady. I start the day by jogging a different route, down Oregon Expressway and over the pedestrian bridge to the SFCU office by the golf course, where I can deposit a benefits check. Yes, Via benefits is still sending paper checks even after multiple attempts to set up direct deposit on their website, and a call to customer support which got me a paper form to return, which I did. For some things they do electronic transfer, for others they don’t. I’m giving up on them.

Then I went to FOPAL where there were seven boxes of books piled up by the Computer section. I culled them and priced the better ones. This turned up three that were “high value”, books that have online prices of more than $25. That’s always fun. They go in a special cart to be dealt with by the volunteers who sell the high-value ones on eBay. I ended up with about 35 books worth reselling, and priced and shelved them. Then I spent another 90 minutes doing sorting.

I picked up a few food items at the grocery store nearby and brought them home. Chuck stopped by a bit after three and we discussed what to do next. He’d had no new calls despite the ad running over the weekend. He says that a year ago, such an ad would have produced several calls. I want to get the sale done with, so we agreed he would present the counter-offer we discussed on Friday, tomorrow. Hopefully they will react favorably and we will be on the way.

I’m not quite sure what experiment to make next with cannabis. Two gel-caps, 20mg CBD, didn’t have a soporific effect. I am not interested in upping the THC. The only thing that might have made me sleep better was the time I took two of the gummies. That was 12mg CBD and 3mg THC. I think tonight I’ll take three gummies, 18mg/4.5mg. That should be comparable to the two gel-cap dose, and do nothing, but maybe there is something about the gummy formulation that is different.

Day 171, smoke alarms, lunch.

Cannabis report: took one of the 5mg:5mg chocolates at 8:30. Nice chocolate flavor and some aroma of espresso. As of 10pm I felt exactly nothing. And my night’s sleep was typical/normal, woke several times.

So I guess I have shown, one, that I am insensitive to THC at the 5mg level. I am curious to know how much it takes to feel any intoxication. And two, that 10+mg of CBD may have improved my sleep. I need to think about which of my purchases I want to double-up on tonight.

Wednesday, 5/22/2019

Started with a run, as usual. Fiddle-farted around with something, I don’t remember what, until 12:30 and time to meet Scott for lunch. Afterward I realized I was not too late to do sorting at FOPAL. Yesterday I did extra time there assuming I would skip today, but in fact went down and did some sorting anyway.

This evening, I belatedly realized, is when I’d booked myself for Mama Mia! at the Hillbarn. I think I’ve only been to the Hillbarn one other time, several years ago. It’s a nice venue. They had steeply-raked seating around two sides of the room, and an elaborate Greek Taverna on the other two. The house was packed and very enthusiastic. The lady next to me insisted on sharing with me all the other times she’d seen this show, and often urged me to have fun. The large cast worked very hard through a whole lot of choreography, my goodness so much dancing. The two female leads had good voices as well.

Heading home at 10:30, highway 101 was down to two lanes for construction. I didn’t get home until 11:30, so did not take any cannabis. I want at least an hour before bedtime to assess any effects.

Day 170, FOPAL

Cannabis report: The Kiva gummies are fairly large. It occurred to me when I took two at 9:15, that a gummy, which largely dissolves in the mouth as you chew it, should be processed a little faster than a soft-gel or a chocolate. However, I felt no effects at all in the following hour.

Did the 12mg CBD/3.6mg THC dose affect my sleep? Possibly! I only woke up enough to check my watch one time (12:45), as opposed to 2-3 times in a typical night. I slept soundly from then to 6:10am. Now, how can I get a clearer picture of the situation? Should I not take any tonight? Unfortunately, sleep quality is so subjective that the placebo effect, or its inverse, is inescapable. The only way to be sure would be to have identical-looking gummies and have someone randomize them for me.

I think I’ll just continue with the third preparation I bought, the Kiva chocolate which has 5mg/5mg. That’s 40% more THC. Possibly will edge the THC level to where I’ll feel a buzz? But half the CBD.

Tuesday, 5/21/2019

Sent off an email to the advisors, saying I want to move on the infamous Form 706, estate tax portability. Walked to the YMCA through light rain showers, and back.

Since tomorrow has several things happening, I decided to do my FOPAL work today. I found 6 boxes of computer books waiting. After culling and pricing I shelved maybe 40 books, and sent four boxes to the bargain room. Then I did an hour and a half of sorting.

Bought a few grocery staples, then went home via the hardware store where I bought two, combination smoke and CO detectors, with voice alarms. A tinny little voice, based on what I hear pressing the Test button, but certainly if this voice starts squawking at you about smoke in the middle of the night, you’ll wake up. Tomorrow I should find time to mount them.

Tonight is a presentation of 42nd Street in the CH auditorium. There’s a resident, Robert, who is a film buff and organizes series of films. This is the first of an American Musical series. I had supper, and in the supper line was greeted by a couple of women as “the new man”. OK… Unfortunately the film didn’t really hold my interest. I left after about 40 minutes of it.

Day 162, Documents, FOPAL, realty

Monday, 5/13/2019

Watered the plants, then went for a run. On return I opened the big envelope of documents from the Lawyer, and brought the

fireproof box

out to the table.

The fireproof box was a purchase of a decade ago, when we were separating ourselves from Wells Fargo. This was actually before Wells Fargo got in so much public scandal; they just did a few things that annoyed us, and we moved our money to SFCU. That has worked out very well, the local Credit Union gives excellent service, and their web interface is very usable. But besides our money account at WFB we also had a safety deposit box. What to do with the birth certificates, car pink slips, etc. from there?

Turns out, you can buy a heavy box that will resist a house fire for 40 minutes or more. It probably couldn’t survive the kind of ashes-to-the-foundation fire we’ve seen in the major California wildfires, but it could stand up a typical single house fire where the fire department can give it its full attention. (It should certainly survive any kind of fire that might start at CH, a cement building with sprinklers.) We got one and gave up the WFB box.

The main tenant in the box is the Brown Binder, the binder of estate documents: the Trust, the Living Will, Power of Attorney, Burial instructions — basically, everything my successor Trustee needs to take care of me if I’m completely incapacitated, or to wind things up after I’m dead. Previously, these were all about Marian and me as a couple, with each of us naming the other as heir, conservator, etc. Now they have all been redone simpler to handle just my affairs as Survivor Trustee.

I went through the Brown Binder and replaced all the old docs with new ones. There were a couple of informal docs I write. One is the Document Locator, which explains all the others as well as listing things like credit cards and bank accounts and so on — key facts the Successor Trustee needs. Another is my Digital Directive, listing all the online accounts and passwords to be shut down. Both were much out of date and I spent an hour editing them and printing them and putting them in the binder.

Finally I went through all the contents of the box, moved a couple of things out; Marian’s birth certificate for example went to the Marian History folder elsewhere. And put it all away with a sense of accomplishment. I also paid the

utility bill

but was brought up short when looking at it, because there was a $36 balance still due, and a $0.70 late fee. What? Simple explanation: the prior bill was for $284, but when entering it in the bill-pay app, I apparently keyed in $248. Hmmph.

Anyway, off for FOPAL, where I spent two hours culling the Computer shelf. Sent books that had been there three or more months to the bargain room; lowered the price on some that had been there two months; moved some sub-sections around. Then went to help with sorting as a flood of donations were coming in the door. I could only do an hour because I got a text from

Chuck.

We were to meet at 4, but he asked if I could come earlier. Sure, no prob. I drove over to his office near California avenue. He had some news from the two showings yesterday but nothing firm yet. The Canadian Lawyer lady has been shopping, it seems, since 2016, and greatly regrets having missed out on some small cottage on Webster street nearby. Chuck knew that house and said mine is much better. Also the C.L.L. had brought her daughter and also a friend who is a decorator. This decorator friend, Chuck says, went on at length about how handsome the house is. She was still verbally pointing out its highlights when the next party arrived at 5:30, and Chuck says he was delighted because “she couldn’t have given a better sales pitch” for that party.

The second party is a single woman, 30-something Chuck estimated, who works at Apple. She came with her realtor and her mother, who is apparently ready to finance, or help finance, a purchase. They also went on at length about how charming the house is.

So the odds seem good that we should get an offer or even two this week.

I also talked to him about the IRS Form 706 that the Lawyer and the Advisors want me to file. The point of it is to preserve half of Marian’s Estate Tax Exemption so I, or more properly my heirs, can use it to shelter more of my estate. The tax accountants have quoted $3500 to prepare this form and I kind of choked on it. But with Chuck we penciled some numbers, trying to forecast what my estate will be if I live another 20 years. Would it be big enough to exceed my own exemption? Yeah, under some assumptions, as much as a third of it could be exposed to Estate Tax, which would represent a considerable tax bite on the final value of the Trust.

Home for a very casual supper (I’m getting pretty lazy about feeding myself) and some TV.

Day 157, will signed, FOPAL

Wednesday, 5/8/2019

Went for a run. The sat down to do a couple of things. Changed my address with my health insurance. Then checked something because I woke up fussed about it at 4:30am. I’m developing this bad pattern of waking up around 4am and, even though I get up and pee, I don’t go back to sleep but instead fuss and fret about something. Today it was wondering if I had the documentation I needed in order to set up my T-Mobile micro-cell at CH. What?

I’ve been using T-Mobile phone service for years, but the service was always feeble around our house, two bars and sometimes only one. Last year I heard you could do this, and I went to the T-Mobile office and said, I want one of these things. They said, “sure” and gave me a box. It’s a box that acts as a local cell tower, using your internet. Once I installed it, I had four solid bars all around the house and out to the sidewalk.

But at 4am I was all fussed because I couldn’t remember how I set it up. How did it know the local wi-fi? Did I hook a laptop to it? I didn’t remember doing that. Shut up and go to sleep! So now at 11am I just go directly to the pend-a-flex folder where I stored the user manual for the device and look, and it’s a wired connection. It needs to plug in a cable to your router or modem or whatever. That’s why I didn’t remember connecting it to the wi-fi; because I didn’t have to. Just hook up its cable and that’s it.

Will that work at CH? Probably, but I will let that wait until I get there, get moved in, and can call on the local tech committee.

Next I emailed neighbors Thane and Gloria. I didn’t mention, on Monday, day 155, I had walked across the street and asked Thane if they would witness me signing my new will. (I did mention the new will on day 150.) Monday Thane said Gloria was away, but would be back Tuesday night. So now, Wednesday morning, I emailed to ask when would be convenient for this. Instead of replying, the two of them showed up at the door ten minutes later.

We chatted for a while; I told them about progress in selling the house; I signed the will and they signed as witnesses; and they left.

I put the will into the Lawyer’s prepaid envelope and took it to the actual post office to mail it. Then I continued on down to FOPAL and spent four hours sorting. It’s the days just before the biweekly sale and the sorting room is overflowing with books.

Then I bought some groceries, spending about twice what I spent the last two times. The reason is I bought a bottle of wine, a wedge of Brie, and some crackers. Why? Because on Monday, when Chuck texted that the potential buyer wanted to come back with her daughter and a friend (that hasn’t been scheduled yet; hope she hasn’t changed her mind), I texted back “great, I’ll set out cheese and crackers and wine” and a smiley-face emoji. Humor. Or not? Because Chuck texted back, “great idea”. Well… ok… So I bought some wine and cheese and crackers. Along with a pound of coffee. And my grocery supplies: a rotisserie chicken, which will supply meat for several meals, and some fruit, and a loaf of bread.

Got home at 5 planning to sit and chill. But looked at my email.

One, the invoice for taxes from the tax accountant. OK, print invoice and put on desk, will handle it tomorrow.

Two, quote from Angela at CH on my upgraded closet doors. I must sign and give back before she can order, with a 2-3 week lead-time. Print and set aside to take to CH… when?

Three, email from health insurance, two EOBs. I print them to file in the medical expense folder.

Four, email from Angela, the stainless steel sink I’m paying extra for, she only just noticed, is “tiny” at 14 inches wide. Is that ok? If not, she can look into alternatives. Why is this now an issue? I can’t get over there to look before tomorrow night. What size is the not-extra-cost sink?

Now it’s 5:30. Enjoying your time of chilling? Said “bleep it” and drove to CH to hand in the signed quote for closet doors, and to measure the existing sink. Came home and wrote to Angela about that.

I could have stayed over there to eat, but came home for a chicken leg, orange, and protein shake instead.

Day 155, FBC and FOPAL and mixer

Monday, 5/6/2019

Started the day with a run, departing earlier than usual, 8am instead of my normal lazy 9am departure. That was so that I could get home, shower, and get back to the local coffee shop to meet with Harriet at 10am to talk about Steve’s idea for a

revived Fast Break Club.

This was an enlightening meeting. Harriet brought her friend Leslie who is a Stanford WBB alum as well as having worked in the WBB office.

We all agreed that Steve’s ideas were a complete non-starter unless there was real, enthusiastic buy-in and support from the WBB office, and Tara in particular. Leslie explained how, since the program is now completely funded from the Athletic department, there is no real concern about attendance. Steve’s strongest argument for a new fan organization is the slow decline in average attendance over the last decade, but the department and WBB coaches and staff really don’t care. Their job performance isn’t rated based on attendance. Only if we can find out what they do want, or what would help them with things that do count, like recruiting, would we get support. So job one, she thought, would be talk to the coaches and try to find out what would seem like a benefit to them.

After that, even with Office support, the problem remains of how to recruit new fans, especially younger parents with daughters. Here again Leslie knew something that I (nor I think Harriet) had known: that parents of high- and middle-school students, and the students, coaches, and teachers, all work off the school website and other social media these days. So if you can get any parent to post a fan-club event on their school’s site, that’s how to get things known.

We left it to Harriet to take these thoughts back to Bob and others in touch with Steve, and talked a little bit about Norway, where they want to tour next winter. My experience was only in the summer, and they’d read the blog, so there wasn’t much I could add, except to recommend Stockholm for a visit. Turns out Leslie has a relative in Helsinki, which is a reasonable ferry ride from Stockholm.

A bit later in the morning I found myself with

nothing to do,

and that’s a first! Almost nothing on the old to-do list. I’ve been expecting this time to come, but I thought it wouldn’t happen until I had moved in to CH. I pictured a day when I am moved in, all my furniture set up, I water the plants and then… nothing on the schedule.

That will be when I will have to start rearranging my days to apply time to three different long-term projects I’ve had on the back-burner for a year now, including two books. Well, fine, but not today. I decided to go down to

FOPAL

and make sure the Computer section was in good order. There were four boxes of books waiting. I went through them, sent ¾ on to the bargain room, and priced and shelved the rest. The section is looking quite good, if I do say so. I’ll hit it again Wednesday and Friday and it should be ready for the sale weekend. After an hour doing that, I spent another 90 minutes doing sorting, and had the sorting room almost tidy when the usual Monday volunteers showed up. So I came on home and actually played a computer game for an hour. Then I went over to CH to check the mail and for

supper,

which turned out to be a “mixer”. As you enter the dining room there’s a resident with a hat containing small numbers. If you are willing to participate you take a number, which is the number of a table. In this way you sit and eat with people you haven’t met before. I did it, although in fact I haven’t met anyone at all. But prior times I’ve eaten there, I’ve sat by myself and read a book. This time, I sat with — let me see — Carol, Julie, Betty, lady whose name I can’t pronounce, and Colin. Colin is a chatty guy with a bit of a British accent and wild bushy eyebrows. He just had a 90th birthday party last weekend; and he played tennis this morning. He said he always asked new residents some questions, I said go ahead, and asked if I play bridge (yes) but then he wanted me to play in his duplicate bridge group and I really don’t want to play duplicate. He asked if I sing, well, I can carry a tune, great, every Wednesday we have a sing-along over in the Lee Center, you must come. Do I play tennis? Sorry, no; this is where I found out he plays tennis regularly. Do I dance? Nope! I think I’m down as a poor quality recruit in his book.

And so home. Chuck messages that he has a potential buyer who wants to see the house, can I clear out around noon tomorrow? You betcha!

Day 148, first missed post

Monday, 4/29/2019

This is the first post where I didn’t write the post until late the next day. I’ve done some in the morning of the next day, but this is the first where I just forgot entirely. So sorry, Dere Diary.

There’s nothing in the Google Calendar for the day, either. I recall I went for a run, and afterward… oh, right! Afterward I sat down to begin the process of changing my address with various organizations, the credit card, the DMV, and so on.

I also finished cleaning out all the drawers of “the red chest”. This is an old, six-drawer, school file cabinet, sturdily built in fumed oak. My sister Joyce acquired it at some point. Then it went to my Mother who, in her inimitable fashion, brush-painted it in a deep red enamel. When my parents closed up their home to move to an elder facility, the red chest came to us. I recall that Marian and I spent quite a bit of time stripping the red paint off it to reveal the old finish. Then we stuck it in the garage where it has been used for miscellaneous storage ever since. Sunday and this day I spent time going through all the stuff in it, throwing stuff into the garbage, or setting it aside for the sale.

Some things in it might be use to a future owner of the house. There’s a plastic tub with miscellaneous hardware bits, the unique brass door hardware off a couple of the original doors, matching glass knobs for cabinets, etc.

After a couple of hours of that I realized that, owing to the planned visit to The Lawyer on Wednesday I wouldn’t be able to do the usual sorting at FOPAL, so instead I went down there for the afternoon. Priced and shelved some books in the Computer section, and did some sorting.

Chuck texted me to ask if it would be alright to bring a client to view the house at noon. Sure!

Day 143, parking, filing, house ad, fopal

Wednesday, 4/24/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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