Day 274, FOPAL, lunch

Monday, 9/2/2019

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

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

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

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

Then to watch SYTYCD and to bed.

Day 267, run, relief, bridge, shot, FOPAL, realty, dinner, outage

Monday, 8/26/2019

First thing in the day I went for a run. A bit over 30 minutes of jogging, and it felt good. Not just ok, actually good.

I was scheduled to play bridge starting at 10. I was showered and dressed by 9am so I sat down to face my fears, or at least, my discomfort: dealing with the rejection of that

Road Scholar (RS) insurance claim.

To recap, I had scheduled a tour starting September 6. Later I realized that was the day I had to transition to my temporary apartment for the upgrade, and also that the house sale might push toward that date. So I re-booked the tour for 9/28, but unfortunately did this just too late for it to be free. Instead, RS gave me half credit for the later tour and I had to pay the additional half, about $3200. So I filed a claim with the trip insurance I’d bought, and a couple days ago, got the rejection of that claim — even though I thought I had been covered by the RS “for any reason” cancellation policy.

Now I went deeper into the RS website and found that the “for any reason” clause is not part of the insurance policy, so the insurer is not required to approve the claim on that basis, only on the allowed reasons in the policy. The clause is a Road Scholar policy that applies to clients when they have bought a trip insurance policy at the time of booking the trip. The policy is, if you cancel a trip “for any reason” and the insurance doesn’t apply, they give you the value of the unpaid claim as a credit, under the small restriction it can only be used to book a different trip.

When I understood this, I called RS and a cheerful customer service rep looked up my account and confirmed that, yes, they did show a $3200 credit that I could use against any other RS trip in the next 15 months. OK. Done. I’m pretty sure I will want another RS trip sometime in 2020, so… ok.

This was a big emotional relief for me. I had been dreading trying to protest the insurance claim via email, finding documents to bolster my case, etc. That’s all off the table, I won’t lose the money and I don’t have to do any more to save it. So I went off

to play Bridge

with a light heart. Craig is a serious bridge player and, since we were bottom pair last time I partnered him, he wanted to meet before the scheduled 10:30 start so we could go over our convention card. There have been a number of small changes and tweaks since Marian and I studied bridge techniques.

Craig’s group plays tournament style bridge, with pre-made hands in “boards” that are played by all tables, with your standing at the end depending on whether on at least a few hands you did better (e.g. an overtrick) or worse (e.g. going down on a game contract) than the people at the other table. Table singular since we only had eight players, two tables.

Almost to lunch time one of the other players announced he didn’t feel well, and went off to the Wellness Wing to get looked at. So we went early to lunch and Craig scared up another player, Ruth. She was glad to join us because it was her move-out day, and she had been looking at a boring day sitting in a guest unit while the contents of her unit were moved.

We finished the last board about 2:40. (That evening I got Craig’s results email; he and I were once again bottom pair of the four. I am just not that good a bridge player to do the tournament game. I wouldn’t mind playing casual bridge, but there are currently no casual games being organized, although I understand there are couples who meet to play regularly in their private units. I can do one of two things: play a lot in some of the many online bridge games and try to get better; or perhaps organize my own casual game. Or forget bridge. TBS.) So now off to

my Shingles shot.

Multiple people have independently recommended that I get a Shingles booster. The previous Herpes Zoster vaccine has proved ineffective, and there’s a new one. I got an email from PAMF telling me that a limited supply of the new vaccine was available and recommending I book for one, which I did last weekend, for 3:15pm today. Then Craig asked me to play bridge; but I was pretty sure I could get to the Los Altos location by 3:15 after bridge, and so it turned out.

The list of possible side-effects for the new vaccine that I had to sign is pretty long and has some really dire symptoms. Most common is arm pain and possibly a slight fever.

From there I went to FOPAL to clean up the Computer section. It was a typical haul, four boxes sent to the bargain room, about 30 books priced and shelved. While I was there I got a call from Chuck. The escrow will pretty surely be closing tomorrow, and he wanted to request a favor. He’s had a good year, and would like to defer the receipt of his commission on my sale to 2020, when possibly conditions won’t be as good and his taxes would be lower.

I guess this is OK, although it does mean that I would receive the amount of his commission as part of my receipts out of escrow, and would sign a no-interest promissory note to him — I think? It’s a tax dodge, but as long as my hands will be clean, I don’t mind doing him this favor. I called my financial people, and everybody was in meetings or out of the office, so I left a voice mail for Howard. Who unfortunately didn’t call me back. So I headed back to CH for

Patti’s Farewell Dinner

Patti had invited me, Craig and Diane, Jerry and Betty, and Gwen, to join her to celebrate the eve of her move-out to a different floor. People have various reactions to moving. Me, I’ve only been here 2 months. I don’t mind the move. I really like my unit with its Eastern view and floods of light all day, and will be very happy to get back to it next January. But I’ve got no big emotional investment in it. Others, like Patti, feel like it’s an exile; she’s concerned about her plants and other items, and feels like she’s being separated from her friends.

So after I’d returned to my room and was browsing Reddit about 8pm, a goose (as I learned next morning) flew into some power lines nearby and blacked out the middle of downtown Palo Alto. People took this pretty easily. No running and shouting. There was, I think, someone trapped in an elevator; at least, I heard the elevator alarm bell being rung. Don’t know how that was resolved.

I went to bed at 8:30, and woke up at 9:30 when the lights came on again. Turned them off, went back to bed.

Day 259, visitors, house concert

Sunday, 8/18/2019

Coffee this Sunday was back at the café in Midtown. Part of cleaning up for the visitors coming, I needed to take some stuff down to the garage, so for fun took the car out to the old coffee place.

Back at home I fiddled around until finally Joanne texted they were ten minutes out, and went down to the lobby to meet them. Joanne and Brad and their daughter Sierra had visited me in January, Day 26, when I gave them some of Marian’s clothes. Now they are passing through on a vacation trip, in a rental Mustang convertible, nice choice guys.

Joanne is a sweetheart, great fun to talk to. We toured Channing House, sat for a few minutes in my unit deciding where to lunch, then went out and had lunch. They proceeded on toward Santa Cruz with the top down.

I had a couple of hours to pass then before I drove to Berkeley for a house concert. This one featured The Quitters, two musicians I’ve heard in several house concerts over the years. Glenn Houston is a wonderful guitarist, and sat almost knee to knee with him.

That was my chair, bottom center in the picture. House concerts are great.

I had actually signed up for a house concert on last Friday night and only remembered that when it was too late to start for it. It was in Oakland and on a Friday night one really should start about 2 or 3pm to have time for a restaurant meal before a 7:30pm concert. So I gave that one a miss.

From this one, a Sunday afternoon, there were only a few slow-downs going up 880 and the trip took less than an hour. Starting home at 9:30pm, however, I unwisely opted to keep right as I came out of Berkeley, over the Bay Bridge and down 101. That was 10mph from the middle of the bridge to the south City limit — on Sunday, at 10pm, is it ever clear? — and then around Whipple Ave CalTrans had decided to close the center lanes of 101 for construction, so it was 10-20mph for several miles more. I got in about 11:15.

Day 258, Docent, house concert

Saturday, 8/17/2019

In the morning I spritzed some more stain remover on the carpet. It will pass. My guests probably won’t be in the room very long anyway.

Speaking of the guests, I texted Joanne about 10 to check in. They’ll arrive sometime around noon. I told them not to stress about making it here in time to eat in the dining room; we can have lunch anywhere outside.

Then I left for the museum to lead a tour. Afterward I chilled in the room for a couple of hours before going out to Suzanne and Chuck’s place, where they hosted a recital by one of Chuck’s piano students. Hanna is just out of high school and will be going to UC Berkeley to study computer science this fall. She performed pieces by Chopin, Liszt, and the first movement of a Brahms concerto for piano and orchestra. Chuck played the orchestral part on a second piano (they have three grand pianos in their music room) and Hanna played the solo parts. It was rather awesome to hear these very complex pieces played with power and accuracy by a slip of a girl, but she did it.

I noshed on cheese and crackers afterward while talking with Suzanne and with Hanna’s parents. That was almost enough food so it didn’t matter that I wasn’t back in time for supper here. I had a PBJ in my room.

While watching some old Naked and Afraids with one eye, I spent a little time on Lisp. Strange language. Old, as I’ve said, and it kind of has the same relation to computer science that Latin had to the Catholic Church. And the 1989 standard for Common Lisp was presumably thought through and argued out by big brains. So, how did they manage to leave blatant inconsistencies in the design?

Case in point, the whole damn language revolves around lists; the list is a basic data type and there’s a bunch of operators for manipulating lists. Dandy. But there is a set of related standard functions, floor, truncate, ceiling etc., all of which can return two values. For example, (floor 25 4) evaluates to two numbers, 6 and 1, respectively the quotient and remainder of dividing 25 by 4. This is very useful. The comparable function in Python is called divmod, and divmod(25, 4) returns a tuple, (6, 1), a tuple being a standard data type in Python.

Does the Lisp function (floor 25 4) return a list of two items, (25 4)? It bloody well does not! At this point all I know is the documentation says it returns the “multiple values” of 25 and 4. You can’t access the second of the values (the remainder) in any normal way. The only way to get at it — and of course finding this out involved an internet search leading to an answer on Stack Overflow; it was of course not to be found in the index of any damn tutorial — is to use the multiple-value-bind function. This special function has the magic to trap the multiple values returned by floor and related functions and assign them to names you supply. So this old well-thought-out language, used in much AI and other cutting-edge research, ignores its own basic data types and has a magic special extension to handle the special magic values returned by several fundamental arithmetic functions. Great.

Day 239, FOPAL, lunch, realty

Monday, 7/29/2019

Started with a run. Got mentally immersed in the podcast I was listening to and forgot to turn across the creek, so the route ended up a little shorter than usual. After showering I headed out to FOPAL, arriving around 9:30. I cleared the Computer section pile, pricing and shelving another 30 books or so. Somebody had donated several books about Perl, so I assembled a whole little section of books on Perl.

At 11am I switched over to sorting, all by myself. I cleared the table. Donors brought another 5 or 6 boxes, out of the normal hours for that, but whatever; and I took them in and sorted them. So when the regular sorting crew arrived, they found a nice tidy sorting room with a clear table.

At 12:15 I headed off to meet Scott for lunch. From there headed home. Sitting around, I got a text from Chuck. He has been scheduling various operations, and has hopes of showing the house for the first time a week from Friday, August 9th. That’s excellent news. He has a floor person he has used before, who quotes $2300 to put new vinyl in the kitchen and utility room, and another $2000 to refinish the “rest of the flooring”. I commented that seemed low, was it just a coat of varathane? No, this guy is good, Chuck has used him before, he’ll sand and varnish.

I ok’d both jobs, and said I appreciated the depth of his contact list. He replied that he got contractors to work for him because he pays them promptly, and by the way could I give the painter a check for his work on Wednesday? Back of the envelope calculation, I’m committed to about $20K of work, including the tree work, the painting, the flooring, the staging, and some misc. handiwork not yet scheduled. So I wrote to Cindy at the financial managers asking that she have the brokers get me another glob of liquid funds I can transfer from the managed Schwab account to the unmanaged one, which I can write checks against.

Looking at tomorrow’s schedule, I had planned to do laundry in the morning, but there are a couple of other things I want to do then also. Checked the house laundry room schedule and met Diane there. She’s running laundry until about 8. Fine. I’ll do laundry starting at 8. I want to sit up for SYTYCD anyway.

Day 226, book, lunch, money, concert

Tuesday, 7/16/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 224, coffee, book, movie

Sunday, 7/14/2019

I had a date for coffee with Harriet this morning. We met at Mme. Collette at 8, and had a lengthy chat over coffee and pastries. I had imagined she might want to see Channing House, so I tidied my apartment before going out. During this I thought of a name for the decorating style I’ve achieved here: MCMM, Mid-Century Modern Monastic. Really, the open, spare feeling, with plain walls and carpet, is reminiscent (alright, very slightly reminiscent) of a monastic cell. A very comfortable cell. The plain walls aren’t an affectation; it’s just that I’ve not hung any of the prints I brought from Tasso street. When I move back from purgatory in January, I will hang them.

Anyway, Harriet expressed no interest in seeing the place. So we parted about 9am. I worked a bit on the book, regenerating the PDF of the text to correct one of the two problems that Kindle Direct found in my uploads. The other problem had to do with the cover image, and I decided to remake two of the three parts of that. But I quickly ran into small issues with Affinity, and decided to post a request for help on its user forum. Did that and set the project aside until Monday.

I didn’t fancy the lunch menu at C.H. — nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t like the formality of sitting down in the dining room as at dinner. Some days you just want a peanut butter sandwich, you know? So I walked up Homer street to Whole Foods and had a smoothie.

After lunch I paid a few bills and organized a couple of files. Later I decided to see a movie, and went out to a 5pm showing of Toy Story 4. It’s cute. I found it dragged a bit, and just too many events. Could have used cutting IMO. Anyway, I just made it back to C.H. in time for supper at 6:59.

Day 213, FOPAL

Wednesday, 7/3/2019

Started a run about 7:30 but my body just didn’t want to do it. Not short of breath, just general lack of energy and stiffness. I’m always on the lookout for symptoms that would indicate my replacement aortic valve is breaking down, so this was a concern. I cut the excursion short, walked mostly for 1.5 miles. My late sister’s husband Wes used say he “felt few”, meaning sickly, sub-par. So I felt “few” for a couple of hours, but felt back to normal by noon.

Drove to Woodside for my haircut with Chris. Bought some fruit there, including a punnet of Blenheim apricots. And walked away from it when I left. Damn.

Went on down to FOPAL to work the computer section and do some sorting. Although I felt normally strong, after 3.5 hours of schlepping books around my back was hurting, and I left a little early.

When I got back to C.H. the little electronic gizmo on the dash that lets me into the garage didn’t work. Maybe it was cooked by being in the sun for a few hours? Whatever, I parked on the street and went to turn it in at the front desk. An hour later, the desk person called to say that a new dongle was ready for me. So I moved the car into the garage.

Waiting for me in the mail area was my shipment of Saturo. I decided a couple of days ago that I was tired of not being able to get breakfast as early as I want, on the days I want to get going. So I ordered a couple of packs of Saturo, the ready-to-drink meal replacement that tasted best to me when I was reviewing such products last year. I had meant not to do this until one of two companies that have promised ready-to-drink Keto meal replacements made good on the promise, sometime in the fall. But I want the simple logistic now, of having an easy, instant, 350 calories of balanced nutrition in the fridge whenever I want it.

I started out eating alone at supper, but sat at a table for four, not one of the little two-person booths on the edge. So Al came and sat with me, so I put away my phone (reading on the kindle while eating) and made conversation. Which was good.

Tomorrow, the 4th, is going to be a holiday for me, too. Quiet and relaxing is the plan.

Day 202, docent, washing machine, dinner

Saturday, 6/22/2019

On the way down to breakfast about 8am I ran into Craig, who pointed out that my painting was now properly hung opposite the lounge door. Later I wrote to Dean Linsky and sent this picture. He wrote back later, appreciative of the note and that the painting wouldn’t be sold.

Today I am scheduled to lead the noon tour at the museum. I put on my red shirt and head out at 10:30. I stop at the post office, but it isn’t open for receiving packages on Saturday, so I can’t mail the DVR.

Scott showed up to take my tour. We started with over 20 people. At least 5 wandered away, but the rest seemed to enjoy it. Just after I finished up, Deborah called to say someone wanted to see the washing machine and dryer, could I show it at 3pm? Oh, yeah, sure. I drove back to C.H., changed clothes, picked up the house key, and drove to Tasso street. A very charming couple showed up; they are moving into a rental that, they think, doesn’t have a washer/dryer. They approve of mine, and went away to talk to their landlady. Later in the evening, Deborah texts that they won’t be taking the machines after all.

At this point it was 3:30. In the morning I’d used Google Maps to make a list of all the local furniture stores. I’m determined to find a pleasing, open bookcase to display some objects and my few books. I can exactly picture what, in college, I would have built out of glass blocks and planks. Now I decide to drive to the southernmost of my list, Cost Plus. I remember visiting Cost Plus with Marian several times, although I don’t recall what specifically we ever bought there.

55782_XXX_v1 This time, they have one that is almost exactly what I want. The only problem with it is the shelves are only about 10 inches high, and my taller books won’t fit. They could be on top, held by a heavy pair of bookends I have, but I am going to keep looking.

I headed back to C.H. where I’d been invited to join Patti and Craig for dinner. We sat for over an hour chatting, that was nice.

Day 201, lunch, Time Capsule, DVR, mail forwarding

Friday, 6/21/2019

Went for a run first thing, without breakfast. I don’t want to go into the dining room in my t-shirt and running shorts and shoes, and there’s nothing in the to-go case that I can eat while running (whatever that might be, I really can’t imagine). So, went without. Health app said, 2.5 miles.

Had a baked good and coffee at Prolific Oven then stopped at the Walgreen’s on University to find a sleep mask. Jackpot! Found a good sleep mask, one with an adjustable elastic band and convex eye-covers, so there will be no pressure on the eyes. The sun through the drapes at 6am is just amazingly bright. Have I written that I spoke to Angela about the missing drapes, and it was a misunderstanding between us? She thought I was willing to wait for them when they replace the drapes as part of the upgrade this fall. I had thought they would be installed now.

Well, I can’t disagree that it makes sense to wait until the drapes are replaced; but that leaves the problem of sleeping past sunrise, which will be getting earlier and earlier in the next couple of months. The problem will solve itself in September when I am moved to the 4th floor West side. Meantime: a sleep mask.

Next I solved a technical problem: getting my Apple Time Capsule to work in the C.H. internet ecosystem. It turned out, thanks to the magic of Apple technology, to require little more than plugging it in and turning it on. I put it next to the Comcast modem and connected with a cable. It immediately found the internet and began to broadcast the same Wi-Fi signal, “Cortesi Home”, that it has been serving for several years. I don’t want it to do that; that network is redundant and unneeded here. However, it turns out you can use the Airport Utility to make it “hide” its network. So the name won’t show up in the long list of competing wi-fi networks in the building.

Meanwhile my laptop and desktop both found it and immediately began backing up to it. So, problem solved. After they’d both done complete backups, I shut the Time Capsule down. I’ll start it up every week or so for another backup, or if I need to recover anything.

Now it was time for lunch with Scott and Craig. Craig drove us to Town and Country in his newish red Prius. It makes my 7-year-old Prius look dowdy. I had been thinking — and still do think — there is no practical point in buying another car. The 2012 plug-in will serve me just fine for as long as I’m likely to drive. But… on the other hand… the new ones have some safety features mine doesn’t… and smell nicer… Maybe next year, after the house is sold and my finances are solid…

Scott and Craig reminisced at length about the old days at IBM. I had worked longer in the same organizations as Scott so knew roughly what he’d done during those years, but I had no real feel for Craig’s career. It was interesting to learn.

For a couple of days FedEx has been texting me about the progress of “your package” — what package? I couldn’t think what I would have ordered that hadn’t already come. Today I guess it might be the package from AT&T/DirecTV for returning the DirecTV DVR. When at 4:50 I got a text saying my package had been delivered, I drove over to Tasso street and sure enough, it was the DVR return box. I am still sure I bought that DVR but heck, I’m not going to fight AT&T over it. If they want to recycle it for me, great. I packed it up per instructions, but it was now to late to deliver it to the Post Office.

I gassed up the car (first time in a month, almost 800 miles on a tank at 91.4 mpg, let’s hear it for the seven year old plug-in hybrid!) and stopped at the hardware store to find some kind of snake oil to improve the finish of my teak coffee table. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture but it has the patina of 40+ years of benign neglect.

Back home I checked the mail, and there was a letter from my insurance company, addressed to me at 2340 Tasso, and officially redirected by the Post Office computers to the new address. So my address-change has truly been processed.

I guess I live here now.