Tag: FOPAL

Day 136, realtor, sale manager

Wednesday, 4/17/2019

First item was a run. Started early, 8:15, so as to be back in time for the 10:30 arrival of Chuck the realtor, Vassily his contractor, and Amy the stager. Before they arrived I had a talk with Richard the gardener about adding new bark mulch to the landscaping. We’d done that twice in the seven years since the 2012 landscape makeover, and the mulch was again looking thin and gray. He reminded me how I’d set down a big tarp in the driveway so the truck could dump two yards of mulch and he could get it up clean. Oh, yeah, it comes back to me now. And that big tarp is still in the garage.

So I priced bark mini-mulch at local garden centers and we decided to do it a week from Friday.

Then the realty crew arrived, and I introduced Richard to Chuck as a reliable gardener, and then Amy said, about the mulch, hold off on that until you know when the house will be on the market and do it just before so it looks its best.

There were extensive discussions between the three of them about how to re-do the kitchen and the bath. I tried to keep my mouth shut, with mixed success. Vassily wants drawings to work from. I was surprised that Amy said, “I don’t do drawings”, so that is something that somebody (not me!) will have to organize somehow. Anyway it was left that Vassily will get Chuck “some numbers” next week. So at least we’ll have an idea of how much renovations will cost, which Chuck can balance against an expected higher price for the house.

Possibly the most significant conversation happened in the driveway, after Amy and Vassily had left. I pointed out how good the garden was looking, with the iris all in bloom, and if we could just let people see the house it might sell as-is. Chuck said, well we can do that. And we agreed he would put up a local ad, without enough detail that people could find the house on their own but would have to go through him. And he would coordinate with me to let selected people, if any were interested (Hah! thinks I), see the house as-is.

Coincidentally that afternoon I got my monthly email from Zillow.com, giving their “Zestimate” on the house of 2.9 million. I am only hoping for 2.5 clear, or about 2.7 going into escrow. So. I have hopes this will all happen without the need for fussing around with construction mess and delay.

At 1:30 Deborah the estate sale lady arrived with Thor her son, to take some pictures. She shot pics and took measurements of the major furniture items.

Two items I still vacillate about: the bed, and the big room divider that is my media stand. Of the bed, Amy emphasized to me that my queen-size is about 6 inches longer than a “full” which I had planned to buy. In the night, I stretched out and my toes touched the footboard and there was about a hands-width between my head and the headboard. Hmmm. I’m just not sure. The queen width is much more than I need; I still sleep on exactly half of it, from long habit, and the other half is unused. Maybe if it was in the new location, turned a different way, I could get used to sleeping more in the middle. Fret fret fret. If I keep it, I am spared the hassle of trying to buy a bed, mattress and new linens.

After Deborah left I headed out to FOPAL and spent 2 and a half hours finishing the cleanup and reorganization of the Computer section.

 

 

Day 135, History SJ, FOPAL

Tuesday, 4/16/2019

First order of business was to transport our San Jose Lasers relics to History San Jose. Long story here. Back on Day 38 I mentioned sorting our memorabilia of the San Jose Lasers, a professional women’s team in the short-lived American Basketball League. The ABL folded in its second year. On day 60 I mentioned being astonished to find that, besides the team shirts and framed pictures, Marian had carefully curated two fat binders of paper items. One was from the first two seasons: ticket stubs, trading cards, press clippings and more. The other was from the last months, when the fans came together on the internet (in 1998!) to organize a final game, called HoopSalute.

I twice used the donation page on the History San Jose website to offer these items and received no reply of any kind. Fortuitously, last Thursday Dan, one of the curators at HSJ, stopped by the Shustek center for an unrelated matter. I accosted him with my tale and he said “email me your list”. Long story short, they did want the items, we set up a time, and today is the day to take the stuff to them. I drove to the HSJ office on Senter Road in the south end of San Jose, and went over everything with them. They were happy to get everything and thanked me. I’m delighted that these things are out of the house and into safe hands.

Back home I killed time laundering the bed linens until the cleaning lady arrived. I told her that I hoped she’d come just twice more. Also I gave her a little gold chain and medallion from Marian’s collection. She’d said last time she wished she had something to remember Marian by, so there.

Then I headed down to FOPAL to do post-sale-day cleanup of the Computer section. I got some advice from a couple of ladies who were doing the same for their sections. You can tell from the way we write prices, how many months, or sales, a book has been on the shelf. If it has been on the shelf unsold for two months, mark it down by half, and if that takes it below $2, send it to the Bargain Room.

I sent four boxes of books to the Bargain Room, and also found myself reorganizing the categories on the shelves. I didn’t finished, but left after 2 and a half hours. I’ll finish tomorrow.

After a short rest at home I went out to an early supper at Hobee’s. I talked to them about brunch for eight or so, around 11:30 Saturday, but they don’t do reservations. “Call a little while ahead and we can probably fit you in.” Well, I really didn’t like the atmosphere that well anyway. So, where? I want someplace close to Bol Park and easy to get to from there, i.e. no left turns across El Camino without a signal, or U-turns. I tried Cibo, a would-be upscale place in a good location, but it felt too upscale. I don’t want to host a fine meal, I just want a casual place for friends to stop by if they feel like it.

I finally settled on the decidedly down-scale Corner Bakery. It’s just a chain but it has plenty of space and parking and is dead easy to get to from the park.

During the evening, Deb the sale lady texted to see if she could come take pictures tomorrow at 1:30. Later, Chuck called to say he and Vasilly and Amy would come around tomorrow at 10:30 if that was OK. Sure.

Day 129, cleanup, forms, FOPAL

Wednesday, 4/10/2019

I woke up with a lot of anxiety, based I think in the general level of upheaval going on. Going through all the memorabilia yesterday, and scheduling the estate sale with Deborah, left me feeling that I’ve got a big, vague, mass of things to do in order to get my possessions in order, and the “keeps” separated from the “sells”.

Then there was the realization that Deborah had suggested a sale the weekend of 12 May, while my (still tentative) move-in date for C.H. is 18 May. Where will I be in the meantime?

Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up and fussed for half an hour about how both the entry price and the monthly fee that I’ve been quoted to enter C.H. is around 20% higher than I’d anticipated. I eventually worked out that, even without the sale of the house, I have enough assets to pay that monthly fee for… about 40 years. But still it was a worry.

So I was fussed. I deliberately went to bed early, and got up early, so I could get a jump on … something. I pulled together two or three to-do lists and made a merged one that encompassed all the shit I need to get done. Then I went for a run, which improved my mood.

Back home I tackled the number one item: to set up a clear “sequester area” in the back of the garage where I can store boxes and objects that I am definitely taking to C.H. I moved some things into it; and moved sellable things (garden tools, etc.) out of it.  This alone, getting some definite physical sorting done, had a calming effect on my mood. In the rear of the garage is a big shelf where I’ve always stored the original boxes for products we bought. Most are now irrelevant, and I spent an hour breaking them down and putting them in the recycle. Boxes for things I’m keeping, like the scanner and the iMac, I dusted off and set aside.

While doing all this, Richard the gardener was working, and I gave him the update, the news that his services will be needed through May but probably no longer. In the course of this it emerged that he wasn’t aware that Marian had died! I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t thought to tell him. Anyway, we agreed he would be adding a new layer of bark mulch, as he has in years past.

I boxed up the scanner (don’t plan to do any scanning for a while, but I mean to keep it) and put it in the sequester area. Now I really felt like I was getting on top of stuff, so I took a break. Shortly after, Chuck arrived with lots of realtor documents for me to sign. There’s an amazing number of disclosure statements that realtors use for legal CYA. We talked further about possible dates for staging and selling the house. It will probably get pushed into June.

While we were chatting, Deborah called. She was worried about the sale date she’d set. “I’m thinking, I’m going to sell your bed, where are you gonna sleep?” I said I’d been having the same thoughts, and we agreed to push the sale date to a week after 18 May, the 25th. This took another load off my mind!

The most interesting thing Chuck had to say was a very intriguing fact: he has had a casual discussion with a woman who’s getting divorced. She and her soon-to-be-ex live in a 5-bedroom house about seven blocks away from mine, which they’ll sell. The woman wants to find somewhere smaller to live, but would like to stay in Palo Alto. Helloooo! He let her know he might have something that would suit. It would be fabulous to have a private sale, possibly with minimum remodeling. But this is still just a vague chance, not least because the divorce proceeding complicates the financing.

After Chuck left I took a box full of empty three-ring binders (from yesterday’s memorabilia triage) to FOPAL and did two hours of sorting.

Back home I worked a while on a more fun project. I have a stack of nice color prints I’d made over the years from our best photos. On impulse I ordered a pack of simple frames from Amazon and they came today. I had in mind making a matched set of nice pictures to decorate a wall at C.H. I quickly found that I’d have to reprint them to get them to look right in these frames. Or buy different, smaller, frames. Easier to reprint the pictures — or is it? Because as usual, it’s a struggle to get Photoshop and the printer to agree on color values. But a fun challenge. I got one picture printed the right size and good color, in a frame by supper time.

And now, in the evening, I feel remarkably less anxious, more comfortable, than in the morning.

Day 127, history triage

Monday, 4/9/2019

Began with a run, 37 minutes, felt good. At home, suddenly wondered, all those paper manuscripts from the 80s — don’t I have those on disk? Sure, I must do. They were computer files right from the start, typed into Word Perfect under CP/M and saved on 8-inch floppy disks. At some time in the 90s, I remember getting ready to shut down my CP/M system for the last time, and cobbling up a serial connection from it to my then-new Mac, and moving the files across. I must still have these files.

And of course, I do, or most of them. They are sitting quietly in the Documents folder on the Mac. One story appears to be missing, and one major fragment. I’ll key those in today. Then I can recycle all the paper. I plan to keep paper only of the two stories that sold to a major magazine, along with the copies of the magazine itself.

Next project: dumping the slides. I decided to take some pictures of this process. Concentrating on that helped avoid excess emotion.

pics_dump

The slides more than filled the can and the slides from the last boxes went into bags.

pics_in_canSo that’s done. Major check-mark on the to-do list. Major milestone in The Transition.

There remains a large shelf of saved memorabilia that I need to triage but I think I will wait on that until tomorrow. I am really close to being done with clean-outs; close to the point where I could walk through the house filling a few boxes and pointing to a few bits of furniture to be packed, and know that everything else is for the sale.

Today I am going to type in two stories that I want to preserve digitally, and then go have a look at FOPAL, make sure the Computer section is squared away for the sale this weekend.

Later: I did type in one of the stories. Of course as I was entering it, I couldn’t help myself improving it with lots of little tweaks. So I made the copyright line, “Copyright 1986, 2019 David E. Cortesi” which is kind of cool.

 

Day 122, anxiety, discards, cardio

Wednesday, 4/3/2019

Woke up to some anxiety this morning. Odd, because I had a very good night’s sleep, up once about 2am then slept to 6:30, eight hours total. Six-thirty is unusually late; all through the winter I woke up when the furnace fired up. The thermostat is set to start heating at 6:15. Yesterday and today, the furnace never started. Why? Because for the first time in months, the internal house temperature at 6:15 was 69º, the set-point for 6:15am. This is the true mark of the changing seasons, that no heating is needed in the morning. Another month and it’ll be time to switch over to cooling.

Oh, wait… another month and I won’t be here, probably.

So I arose to anxiety,

a vague feeling of wrongness that I think is associated with yesterday’s final acceptance at C.H. That’s a big commitment to a whole new mode of living. Am I doing the right thing?

To “not be a home-owner” was, as I’ve written before, probably the first decision I made when I began thinking about becoming a widower, a year ago, when Marian was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My thoughts then were theoretical, speculative, but this stood out as a firm conclusion: if she goes, and I’m a widower, I won’t stay in this house. Researching ILFs and choosing Channing House is all the natural consequence of that decision.

I didn’t analyze it at the time; it just seemed right. I’ve explained it to other people since as not wanting the responsibility of a house, tired of worrying about maintenance and insurance and property taxes. That’s all true, but not complete. Analyzing it now, as the coffee water heated this morning, what came to mind was that I really wanted to break with the past. I don’t want to occupy a truncated partnership was the sentence that bubbled up out of my subconscious. (Whoa! Go my subconscious!) To unpack that sentence, I don’t want to continue to live as half a couple, alone in the shell once occupied by the tight little corporation of Dave’n’Marian. The house is the physical representation of that shell.

There are other life styles I could have picked. I could live in a regular apartment. I could become a world traveler, flitting from hotel to hotel with the seasons. I could buy a nice RV and become a “snowbird”, traveling to Alaska in the spring and Arizona in the winter. But C.H. has many practical advantages: it is comfortable; it offers a new community in which I’m pretty sure I can come to be an influential and helpful member; and the continuing medical care means I will not have to be a burden on any of my relatives as I age. The one time I talked with Marian about my “being a bachelor” notions, her only concern was to urge me to keep in mind that I wouldn’t have someone to take care of me the way I was taking care of her. C.H. answers to that issue.

Mulling all that I went for a run, which felt excellent. After a shower and shave, I did some

more cleanup.

I tackled two more shelves of the big steel cabinets in the shop. Here’s what I saw first.

check_boxesThat’s right, two nice banker’s boxes labeled in Marian’s neat hand as you see. Seriously, we have been saving cancelled checks from 1965??? Oh yeah; and old IBM pay stubs, too:old_pay_stubI was getting $405.95 each pay period, which I think was bi-weekly, so over $800/month, not bad for 1965! (Plus, I see, $25 for “local travel”, i.e. mileage for driving around SF.)

Ignoring the wails of imaginary historians appalled at losing all that good data on the spending habits of mid-century Yuppies, the whole thing went into the recycle bin.in_the_boxThat exposed two shelves of my published books, multiple copies of each.my_booksI won’t throw all of them out, but I fetched a box and put one copy of each book in it. The rest will go into the blue bin tomorrow.

About 1pm I went off to do three hours of sorting at FOPAL. One perk of that job is getting first look at all the donations. I pocketed a copy of On the Road, which I’ve been meaning to re-read, and one of Vonnegut’s Mother Night. I’ll read them (or anyway sample them, I’m not sure I’ll want to read all of Kerouac) and put them back in the stream another day.

At home I found an email containing the standard

Channing House contract,

a 51pp PDF. Sent copies to the financial guys and also to Chuck, who was curious about it. Need to read it carefully myself! Here’s the meat of it, from article I:

In consideration of the Entrance Fee, Monthly Fee and other fees payable by you under this Agreement, Channing House will provide you with residence, care and services at the Community for the rest of your life, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

Also got a notification that my

Ziopatch results

were back, and: no Afib detected. I have rare PVC’s (pre-ventricular contractions, which I’ve had since the 1980s) as well as rare “premature atrial complexes”. But these little blips of irregularity I notice are not of concern. That’s a relief.

 

 

Day 120, day of doing stuff

Monday, 4/1/2019

Monday tends to be a “day of doin’ stuff” because I think of things I need or want to do over the weekend, and write them down on a list on the kitchen windowsill to tackle on Monday. I think I will just describe all those things.

First up, a run. That went and felt well, which was good news. The slight arrhythmias that I’d noticed, and were the reason for wearing a Zio-patch last week, were more noticeable over the weekend. As usual, I don’t feel them at all when exercising, and in fact didn’t notice them anytime today. But it is a relief that a heart symptom is not exercise-related.

Next, started

laundering

the towel and bed linen. It’s been two weeks (which I know because tomorrow is the day for the cleaning lady) so it’s time for that. With the bed stripped, decided to rotate the mattress. Funny story here. When Sheri the estate sale lady was here, she and I and Chuck were talking about estate sales, and she mentioned that you could sell a bed, but by law you can’t sell a used mattress. “So you strip the bed and leave your McCroskey mattress on it and say, well, you can have that with the bed if you want it.”

I goggled at her and said, “How did you know?” Chuck was puzzled; he’d never heard of McCroskey mattresses. Sheri laughed and said she hadn’t known, it was just the kind of expensive mattress people in Palo Alto often had. Guilty as charged, I guess.

Anyway, that conversation reminded me that you are supposed to turn your McCroskey every three months, which Marian had marked on the calendar and insisted on. I’d skipped the last turn, which came up in December, on the general principal of ISMISEP. But if it was a sales asset, I might as well take care of it, so I heaved the heavy thing around 180 degrees. This might have been the turn interval at which you are supposed to flip it over, but that’s way too much work.

With the laundry in process I watered the plants. That takes only a few minutes; so I turned to the first real task, working out the IBM

SHAP issue.

One problem is the number of agencies involved. My pension is paid out of Via Benefits, who administer the IBM benefits program. But the SHAP is administered and paid out of Acclaris, who apparently manage that particular piece of IBM’s benefits. But I needed first to know if I was in fact eligible. I called Via customer support; the very pleasant rep put me on hold for several minutes while she consulted, and finally said I had to call IBM directly, and gave me that number.

So I called IBM and that customer service rep looked up my and Marian’s accounts and said yes, as a survivor I was eligible for SHAP. But she couldn’t advise on how to fill out the SHAP form, which I some questions about. So now I called the Acclaris help line and that person (again, very sympathetic and helpful) talked me through it. I must say that the phone reps for all three agencies came across very well.

Now I filled out the SHAP form, and made a copy of the completed form to use for reference next year, assuming this one is accepted (we’ve had them bounced before for some minor omission), and put it in an envelope with stamp and address. Phew.

By now the bed linen was dry so I made the bed, then turned to two more items,

two “nudges”.

I sent a short, polite email to Kim at C.H. asking how the process was going. She replied a couple of hours later that she should have an update “in a couple of days”. I sent a ditto to Howard at the financial advisors. They had advised a meeting with the attorney who prepared our Trust documents, and had sent an email to said attorney on March 20th, and I’d heard nothing since. Howard replied later suggesting that I contact her directly, so I sent an email to the attorney.

Now it was early afternoon and everything on the to-do list had a line through it, so I drove down to FOPAL and spent an hour culling and pricing books for the Computer section. Came home and made some supper and sat down to watch

Stanford playing Notre Dame

in the Elite Eight game.

Very much against my expectations, Stanford started well, stifling the Irish offense and holding a small lead in the first half. Alas, Notre Dame found how to break through the Stanford defense in the third quarter and went on a run to take a ten-point lead that Stanford couldn’t close. So Alanna Smith’s college career ends (as does Shannon Coffee’s). Next year’s SWBB team will be quite different but likely even more exciting with a great recruiting class.

It pleases me that I remain interested in the team. Following SWBB turns out not to be one of the things, like TV cooking shows, that I enjoyed primarily because Marian liked them and I enjoyed sharing her enjoyment. My emotional involvement in the Cardinal is not as deep as hers, but I do still like watching them.

 

Day 115, glasses, FOPAL, burger

Wednesday, 3/27/2019

Started with a run, 37 minutes, felt fine. I’m sure I did something for the next two hours, but don’t remember what. At noon I set out to take care of a thing that had been bugging me for three months. For all that time, two pairs of Marian’s glasses have been lying in their cases on a bedroom dresser. I’d see them, think, “trash them”, then “no, donate them”, then “but where?” and then “deal with it later”. Over and over for 100-odd days now.

Well, yesterday I finally got around to an internet search for where to donate used eyeglasses. Everybody knows the Lions Club has that as their special charity, but it turns out they don’t have any local drop-off points. Further searching reveals all LensCrafters stores accept glasses for their OneSight program. And I know where there’s a LensCrafters. So I drove to Menlo Park and dropped off the glasses. Done.

From there I went to FOPAL and did 3+ hours of sorting. That’s damn hard work. I counted; I moved about 35 bankers-boxes of books from sorting to the sales room. I didn’t count the books I handled, but it was a lot. Per the Health app I walked 4.7 miles, 12,000 steps yesterday. A bit less than half of that would have been my run, but a lot was going around and around the sorting and sales rooms with boxes and cart-loads of books.

They really handle an amazing quantity of books. One cheerful donor yesterday brought in 25 boxes, which pretty much wiped out the gains we sorters had made in the hour previous. The donations vary immensely. Some people drop off boxes with mostly recent hard-covers. Or a box will have somebody’s accumulation of years of computer reference books (Windows XP Secrets, How to use MS-DOS, etc.). Yesterday there were a couple of boxes of very old paperbacks, many with cover prices of 50 cents and 75 cents. That keeps the sorting process interesting; you never know what the next box will have.

At 4:30 I left, stopping to buy a few grocery items. I decided to go and eat out for a change. Specifically, I decided, a burger and a beer. I went to Kirk’s Steakburgers in the Town and Country shopping center, but when I walked in, their drinks fridge had no beer. “Yeah, we ran out,” the counter person said. Well, a beer was an integral part of my plan so, feeling distinctly curmudgeonly, I turned around and left. Now what? Ah! I drove back to California Avenue and (with difficulty) found a parking place, and went to The Counter, where in fact I sat at the counter and had a beer and a burger.

When I got home I was quite tired; watched a little TV and went to bed at 9:30, and slept until 6, so that was good.

Day 113, jewelry, FOPAL, basketball

Monday, 3/25/2019

Began the week with a run, 40 minutes of my 4.5mph pace, felt just fine. I had a list of things to get done. One was that Louise was coming with the jewelry she’d taken for appraisal, at 10:30. Two were online, so I did them while waiting. One was to review my museum schedule and sign up for docent tours for the month of April.

The other was to go to Apple’s trade-in page, and arrange to trade in three Macs for apple store credit. The process is simple; you enter the serial number of the device and answer a few questions about its condition. Then their recycling vendor sends you an email to confirm, and later a custom box to return the device. When it is received, you get a gift card in the amount. I’m returning Marian’s old Air, which was made in 2006, I learned after entering the serial number. Got lots of good use out of that one! The other two are my old 2011 MacBook Pro, and Marian’s 2017 iMac which sits on her desk. (It was a recent replacement for a Mac mini that served her a long time; and it was preceded by a Cube — remember the Apple Cube?)

I realized from the email that the return offer is only good for 21 days. I’m not sure I’ll be ready to send off the iMac in 21 days. I use it for all financial stuff, bank statements, reviewing brokerage accounts, credit card bills. Just because the Chrome browser in that system knows all the passwords for those accounts and fills them in. Silly! I have the passwords; there’s no danger of getting locked out. I can do that work equally well from laptop Godot or my big iMac.

Louise texted she’d be an hour late, so I zipped out in the car to take care of two more items. One was to go to the Stanford ticket office and make sure that my WBB season ticket account was alright. Yup, it turns out I had indeed unsubscribed from emails from them (while shutting down all Marian’s email subscriptions). That’s why I never had a chance to buy a good seat for this weekend’s games. Fixed now.

The other job was to return some fluorescent bulbs to the hardware store for recycling.  Back home, I had an email from Canopy about the memorial tree planting for Marian, now with a time and other info. So I composed an email to the people who wanted to attend. While I was working on that, Louise showed up. So I answered the door sniffling and had to go blow my nose before talking to her. She’s done a marvelous job documenting Marian’s bling. We talked about how to sell some of it, and she will get back to me with more info.

After she’d gone, I headed out, first to Office Depot because I wanted to see what kind of office furniture they had. For the new place, I want some kind of cabinet to set the printer on, with space for printer stationery and hopefully a file drawer. And I looked at desks, because initially I’d been thinking I’d keep Marian’s desk, but now I’m inclined to want something a little lighter, more open. Office Depot stuff didn’t attract me. Ikea’s desks are better.

From there I stopped at FOPAL to check on the Computer section. There were several boxes waiting, so I culled them and priced the keepers. Two hours logged in the book. I learned something today about the bargain room, where I send the unsaleable Computer books. But time presses, I’ll record it later.

Had a few hours to relax and eat some supper; then it’s out to the Stanford second-round game against BYU. I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Day 108, a room of one’s own

Wednesday, 3/20/2019

Morning rain precluded a run, so I drove to the Y, did 20 minutes on a treadmill and some exercises. Back home I fixed a problem with

my iPhone!

For weeks it has bugged me that the “lightning” plug doesn’t want to stay in the phone. I use a lightning-to-USB connection to listen to podcasts while driving, and a lightning-to-audio “dongle” to connect my earbuds to listen while exercising. And the damn little spade connector wouldn’t stay in. I supposed that I would have to get it repaired at one of the independent shops, or maybe I would have to trade the phone in at the T-Mobile store, such a pain.

But on a whim I picked up the computer and googled “iPhone lightning won’t stay in” and of course, the internet knows all about this and the second or third link was how to fix it. With a toothpick! It turns out that the little rectangular hole in the bottom edge of the phone likes to pick up pocket lint. And each time you cram the connector in to charge the phone, it just tamps the lint down to the bottom. Gradually you build up a springy little pad of fluff at the bottom of the hole. Two minutes carefully probing with a wooden toothpick popped out little wads of lint. A shot of canned air, and boom! The plug stays in!

So in a good mood I set off for Channing House where — not to bury the lede — I was

offered a unit!

Not just a unit, but a very attractive, corner unit that just glows with sunlight. I walked in and said, “oh, wow.” Here is a pair of snapshots to show the impression on walking in.

Looking left – bedroom and bath over there
Looking right, kitchenette and side window

Well, ok, beige room. But lots of light. The outside deck extends across both rooms, and can be accessed from both. And it is about 6 doors down from Craig, the ex-IBMer who first showed me around C.H. back on Day 50!

When talking about the cost of entering C.H. I had been talking about the fee for a large studio on a lower floor, which is what I had been shown at first, and was all I thought was available. This is a large 1BR on a higher floor, so the entry fee (and the monthly rent) is about 20% higher. I don’t think I’ll put the amount here. But I can afford it, and this is a really nice room, I think. I can make a life here.

There are a couple of drawbacks to it. One minor one is that I’ve put in a couple of hours moving bits of furniture-shaped paper around the floor plan for that large studio. That time, and the uncounted minutes of imagining life in that space, are out the window. All to be done again.

The one real drawback is the rolling renovation at C.H. Right now they are moving people back to the 8th floor and off the 7th. Around the end of August, they will finish with the 7th floor. They will move the 7th floor back and at that point, probably September, they will evacuate the 6th floor, and I’ll be moved to another unit. Sometime around a year from now, they will be moving the 6th floor back and the 5th, out.

Among the changes in the renovation are that they place all the HVAC in the ceilings. Notice the heating unit to the right in the picture? That disappears, as does a similar one in the bedroom.  Right now some of the electrical wiring is in visible channels around the top of the walls; that also disappears.

Well, this was a surprise, I expected to be told it could be weeks or months. But it appears that, pending a couple of more bureaucratic steps, I could be signing for this unit in a couple of weeks. Which means that probably early next month I can begin moving stuff I mean to keep out of the house directly to there; and hopefully turn the house over to Chuck and Amy to “stage” and sell in April; hopefully to close in May.

From there I went directly to my haircut appointment with Chris. I told her about all this, and how I really feel I

need a designer

to help me choose which furniture items to bring from home, and what to buy to complete this much larger space and how to arrange it all. Chris said, heck, my niece is a good designer, let me put you in touch with her. So that contact may turn into something.

From there I went to spend 3 hours sorting books at FOPAL; and then home to write emails to the tax person, to the financial advisers, and to the realtor. And then to do this blog. Hmph. Such a day.

 

 

Day 106 – plants and books and termites

Went to the Creamery for a burger and coffee. Breaking with tradition I did not order a chocolate/chocolate shake. Just a burger with coleslaw (not fries) and coffee.

Walking from my car to the Creamery I noticed

Mac’s Smoke Shop

and remembered the many times Marian and I would browse the magazine racks there. It’s been a long time since I bought magazines on a regular basis; I stopped doing that even before I stopped buying physical books. But I remembered one of my favorite magazines for occasional purchase, WoodenBoat. I think I bought WoodenBoat for the first time in an airport gift shop, and bought occasional copies for years after, when traveling, or at Mac’s. I always found the highly detailed, loving accounts of boat restoration to be deeply relaxing. I could sink into (well, poor metaphor there) a copy of WoodenBoat for a couple of hours.

So for the heck of it I walked into Mac’s and scanned the magazine shelves. I wasn’t even certain the magazine still existed, but on about the fifth rack I checked, there it was, and in good health, too, a hefty perfect-bound block of pages, solid in the hand, full of ads for WoodenBoat classes and WoodenBoat boat plans and even WoodenBoat t-shirts and hoodies! It is clearly surviving in the Internet age. I bought a copy, and  one article occupied the whole of my dinner.

On return home I found an email from Katie the

tax person

, saying that my submitted workbook and documents look good. Yay me!

Watched a documentary on the fall of Theranos, then took WoodenBoat to bed with me.

Monday, 3/18/2019

Up and about. Started the day with a run. Then wrote checks for the cleaning lady coming tomorrow, and while I had the checkbook out, one for the hairdresser I’ll see on Wednesday. (Now if I can just remember to take the check with me on the day.) Watered

the plants;

I’m happy to say all the remaining ones are doing well. On day 2 I threw out the bathroom ferns I’d never liked; and of course Beau and two philodendrons went to Liz’s place. Of the remaining eight, I’m pretty sure I will take at least four with me when I move.

Spent two hours

scanning

20 slides; only about 40 left to do. The slides in this part of the pile were from a trip we’d taken across Canada in our first RV back in 1989. That slide group had never been scanned, which surprises me; I had scanned the groups for all our major road trips, I thought. But not that one. Well, getting to it now. Somewhat emotional viewing this group; they were from a time when both of us were strong enough to go for reasonable-length hikes, something not true in the past decade.

After lunch I decided to drop down to

FOPAL

and see how the Computer section was doing. The sorters had delivered four boxes since I was last there, so I culled those and priced the better ones. Most of the 50 or so books I priced I marked for 3 or 4 or 7 dollars, but four were “high value”, meaning they had market prices over $25. These go on a special shelf to be sold separately. One little pocket-sized “reference book of graphic algorithms” has a going price over $75, who’d’a thunk it? With the — or, I guess it is now “my” — computer section tidied up I came on home.

There I boxed up all the remaining books from our collection of paperbacks. There is one tiny section of stuff I need to review, and a collection of Women’s Basketball books that I need to think about, and that will be it. All the, what, something like 1,000 volumes that we’d saved because we might want to re-read them “someday”? Gone.

I also cleaned out a drawer of computer-related stuff. Man, how many USB cables does one person need? Some items to trash; some for the sale; a few set aside to keep.

Termites.

About 3pm there was a knock at the door; a young man with not great English, and a car that had “Fumigator Services” on the side, said he needed to measure the house so that the termite inspection report could be completed. Uh? I said go ahead, then emailed Chuck. He replied quickly that yes, the termite inspection had found termites, and it was legitimate that an estimate for a fumigation would be in the report. He apologized for the lack of notice, said he’d tried to tell these services to contact him before going to the house.

Well, so there are termites. No huge surprise; we had a termites in 2005 and the house was tented then. Our first clue then of a serious infestation was when we noticed little crumbs of dark-brown sawdust piling up on the table beside Marian’s favorite chair. They were working in one of the exposed beams that make our living room ceiling so charming, and crapping down on the table.

Nothing so blatant now; I presume the inspector found their little tunnels running up the inside of the foundation, perhaps. However, this is a serious strike against the idea of selling the house to owner-occupiers, and greatly raises the odds of selling to a developer. The cost of a fumigation will surely be in 5 figures. I could look up the receipt from 2005 but you know? I don’t care. IThMISEP and they’re welcome to it.

Supper; a bit of television; now I think I’ll go to bed and relax myself by finishing that issue of WoodenBoat magazine. (Hey, better than alcohol.)