1.009 haircut, FOPAL

Wednesday, 12/11/2019

I had a haircut appointment for 9:30, so wanted an early run. Just to keep it short, I ran on the treadmill in the basement. 32 minutes of running there feels like more exertion than actually running on the street. I’m not sure why.

Actually could have had time for breakfast in the dining room, but instead had a Sated RTD on the way to Chris’s place.

From my haircut to FOPAL where I got the Computer section ready for the upcoming sale weekend. That includes counting the books on the shelves and generally arranging things for a pleasing layout.

I walked over to the grocery store for snacks and took a break in the car; then went back in for two hours of sorting.

A few days ago I think I mentioned that my anti-acid-reflux med, Ranitidine, had mysteriously disappeared from drugstores and online. This morning I messaged Dr. Julia about this, and she replied that Ranitidine had been recalled because of possible contamination with a cancer cause — but unlikely and don’t be concerned. Meantime, use Famotidine 20mg. So I need to get some of that.

Before supper I gave my wrap-up essay a final editing pass. I would like to get it read by Susan, who I know is a good editor, but I am a little afraid to do so. It’s pretty raw and open about emotions and it might be uncomfortable to expose myself this way to somebody here. On the other hand, why not? Well, think about it.

After supper (where I sat at an empty table and was quickly joined by Craig and Diane, which was nice) it was time for the Channing House Chorus to perform. I had bowed out of the Chorus back on day 326 (or 0.326 as it would be, by the new numbering scheme). Since then they’ve done a lot of work and did a pretty good performance. Most successful was a number in which two spirituals, Amen and Go Tell It were woven together; they actually swung it. There was drinks and cookies after, so very nice.

Day 331, teeth, book, A/V, SWBB

Tuesday, 10/29/2019

First thing this morning was to walk to the dentist’s office for dental hygiene. Times past, I would allow 30 minutes for this walk, starting at Tasso street. Now it’s four blocks. Good news, my gums have not receded any further, and Dr. Kono couldn’t find anything to complain about, no decay or anything.

The A/V committee meeting is scheduled for this afternoon, and I’ll likely be assigned an event. It has been weeks since Ian walked me through the various features of running all the stuff in the auditorium, the lights, the screen, the projector, the mics. Lots of details, seen once. I’d been telling myself often, I should go down and poke around again. So today I did that. I went into the auditorium and turned stuff on, dropped the screen, played with the lights (of which there are quite a few, house lights, stage spots), turned on a mic and talked through it, hooked up my laptop and played a youtube video.

After lunch I added some more words to the book. When time came around for the A/V meeting I walked down to the third floor lounge. I got assigned just one show, a talk on Monday morning at 10. Only issue is the presenter, on the ERF (event request form) has stated he needs to show PowerPoint off his Windows laptop. I need a few more details, like, does the laptop have an HDMI port or what?

I had seen a message on the house email list, Lenny (woman who moved in just after me) wanted a ride to tonights SWBB game. I offered. So I got a quick dinner at 5:45 and met Lenny in the basement at 6:15. This was the first time I’d gone from CH to Maples, and I made a botch of it, ending up taking the wrong way, and then turning too soon and having to loop around for a second pass at the Maples parking lot.

The game was fine: the Cardinal beat Beijing Normal 100 to 58. Three of the freshmen played and all looked strong and capable. A returning junior, Alyssa Jerome, looked vastly improved, and the usual good players all looked good.

I am glad I can still enjoy SWBB on my own. Several times during the game I pictured Marian there with me, how much she’d have enjoyed it, and my eyes prickled and my throat closed up. But that didn’t dominate the experience, and there were a lot of moments when I was honestly and enthusiastically cheering for good play and high skills by Stanford.

Day 330, Shingrex, FOPAL, book, fugue

Monday, 10/28/2019

I opened the day and week with a run. Every run is different. This was one of those where I felt good, not just normal but positively good, jogging along. A mental tail-wind as opposed to the mental head-wind that one sometimes has to battle. At the point where I stop jogging and start walking, I did a rough time/distance calculation; I jog at about 4.5 miles per hour, the same as feels comfortable on a treadmill.

Next stop was the Los Altos office of PAMF, to get my second Shingrex shot (say that three times fast). The prior one, see Day 268, had given me a day of low-grade fever. The nurse this time said, oh yes, this one might do the same.

Moved on to FOPAL for the usual Monday morning cleanup of the computer section. Found only one “high-value” book this time, a textbook that retails from $27-$75. Then I did sorting for another two hours, leaving when the 2pm volunteer crew arrived.

Back home, I took a nap and then flogged myself over to the keyboard and added 1000 words to the novel.

I felt fine up to the time I went to bed at 10:30. But around midnight I wasn’t sleeping and I felt cold, cold enough to shiver. I got up in the dark and found a wool throw, one that we bought at a Scottish woolen mill in, probably, 1978. It’s light but very warm and snuggly(*). I knew just where it was, so I found it in the dark and brought it back to bed and wrapped myself in it, under the usual sheet and blanket. In that brief excursion out of bed, I started literally shaking with cold.

I was quite aware this was not a real sensation of cold, but a chill. I figured I probably had a fever as well, although I didn’t feel any malaise. I expected that shortly it would turn and I would find myself sweating. That didn’t happen. Eventually I drifted off. Somewhere around 2am I woke again and pushed the wool throw aside, then slept until 6:30. At which point I felt just fine.

I blame the whole episode on the shingrex shot; nothing else changed in my routine. Anyway as of the next morning, I feel fine.

(*) Sad story about the twin of this throw. We had bought two, and gave one to my mother. She moved in to a care facility, where she often sat with the throw over her lap. There her laundry was done by the staff, who weren’t the brightest candles in the sconce. Some staff person decided to launder the throw along with everything else, and must have tossed it into a load washed with very hot water. The one-time fluffy, 4×6 foot woolen throw came back from laundry the same color as before, but now about 18×20 inches, with a texture like a hot-pad.

Day 320, non-docent, pictures, eyelid news

Friday, 10/18/2019

I started the day with a run, for the third time getting out the front door and saying, “shit, it’s cold out here, why didn’t I wear a sweatshirt?” Whatever. Showered and shaved and put on my red docent shirt because today’s activity was to be a noon tour, a group of junior college students. I’d been thinking about this tour for days, wondering how to slant my pitch to people all of whom were born, probably, in this century. Well, no need to worry; at 9:30am I got an email from the museum, the group had canceled.

I did some reading. For a guy who says he does all his reading on Kindle, I seem to have a bunch of paper volumes around, but all free. The other day Jean handed me a copy of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, about the Tehumara(?) people of Mexico who supposedly have superhuman running ability. I have two books I snatched from FOPAL while sorting. I’m 2/3 of the way through Just for Fun, Linus Torvald’s biography. And Wednesday I glommed onto a very fresh copy of Randall Munroe’s (creator of XKCD) book, What If? Serious answers to absurd hypothetical questions. Then yesterday, Toni had just received back from Greta, a set of old SF paperbacks by Melisa Michaels she had loaned, and I was intrigued so I borrowed them. All fun books, and I spent a couple of hours reading chapters from each.

Then I sat down for three hours of digital image work. During the Greek trip I had uploaded all my iPhone pictures to Smugmug. Now I downloaded them all to my permanent picture repository on the big Mac. I reviewed them all, and did minor editing: straightening horizons, cropping for better composition, occasionally a little bit of color correction. In the course of this I re-learned, or re-confirmed that the iPhone camera, while remarkably good at its default focal length, absolutely sucks when you zoom in more than a tiny bit. One of my favorite shots, morning sunlight making the Parthenon pillars glow, is just pixelated crap when you make it full screen. I had zoomed in maybe 50% to take it. Well, it was my considered choice not to carry my real camera; so you get what you get. Then I re-uploaded the edited versions to SmugMug.

At supper time I sat at an open table and was joined by four people I have talked to before, all nice, pleasant talk. When I returned to my room I noticed I had a voice mail. I had had a call from a 321- prefix and declined it, assuming it was a robocall. Well, not so. It was my opthalmic surgeon with the report on my eye thing. But she’d left a voice mail with the news that,

It was a basal cell carcinoma;
These are very common, slow-growing, and usually don’t come back if they are fully removed;
The pathologist reported that she had gotten a complete rim of normal tissue, so she believes it was fully removed;
I am to see her again in 3 months, 6 months, and 6 months again, just to make sure.

So that’s that, for now. The removal site, by the way, has not caused me any discomfort, just a round scab that is getting smaller, I think, already. Certainly healing nicely.

Day 316, eyelid, FOPAL

Monday, 10/14/2019

Started with a run, and was once more surprised by the chill. Next time I must try to remember to put on a sweatshirt. At 9:30 I headed out for my appointment with an opthalmic surgeon to have the “lesion” (as my appointment referral calls it) on my eyelid biopsied. The surgeon was a charming woman who looked at the 3mm white bump on my eyelid and explained all the different things it might be: a cyst, an unpigmented mole, or a basal cell carcinoma. If it is the latter, I don’t need to worry about metastases, basal cell tumors don’t metastasize, which is a bit of a relief.

She recommended removing it today. She would try to remove a 1mm margin of tissue around it, so if it proves to be malignant, the pathologist may report that it has been completely removed. If it is malignant and not fully surrounded by normal flesh, there will be further work to excise the remainder.

The procedure was about as minor as surgery can be. I laid back in a chair; she anesthetized my eyelid (“little pinch now”), and there was a little pressure as she fiddled around for a couple of minutes, and that was it. I’m left with a little divot in my eyelid.

eye_divot — This was not an easy photo to take! Can you figure out how I got this “selfie”?

She cautioned me that the anesthetic would wear off in an hour and I might have some pain. I didn’t. She said it might bleed, but it didn’t. I have a tube of erythromycin to dab on twice daily. That’s it for care; “eyelids heal really quickly”.

This was my first “procedure” as a bachelor. The familiar details, like waiting in the waiting room, being given a sheaf of paper with post-procedure instructions, and so on, brought back all the many, many exams and procedures that Marian went through last year. It wasn’t comfortable to remember those.

I came back to CH for lunch, then went to FOPAL. To my surprise, there were no boxes of books stacked by the computer section, as there normally are on the Monday after a sale weekend. So instead of culling and pricing, I just sorted for three hours. During that time we took delivery of a donation from a recently-deceased Stanford professor: forty boxes of books. I may go do some more sorting later in the week.

Day 313, phone fix, skin check

Friday, 10/11/2019

Went for a run, the first in about 3 weeks. First impression out the door: whoa, fall is here! The temperature was around 60º but felt quite chilly in my shorts and t-shirt. Back to the room for a warm shower.

Headed out in the car in time to catch the iPhone fixer when he opened at 10. There are several hole-in-the-wall iPhone places nearby, Smart Repair is close by, on University Ave, but I have been going to Fast Repair, on El Camino near California Ave. I was there earlier this year to get the battery replaced. This time I noticed his shop now has signs, “Apple Authorized Repairs.” I’d heard that Apple had loosened its former policies about third-party repairers. Anyway, a new front glass for my iPhone 7 costs $160.

Leaving the phone, I went to Town and Country and parked conveniently close to PAMF, where at 11am I was due for a dermatology skin check. I passed the time at Peet’s, then walked to the derm. dept. While waiting to be called I got the email from Fast Repair that the phone was ready.

My skin is mostly fine, one little thing to freeze on the tip of my ear, but there’s a little node on my left upper eyelid–to me it looks like a whitehead, maybe an infected lash?–but the doctor wanted it biopsied, and that has to be done by an opthalmic surgeon. So he referred me for that, and later in the day I got a call and made an appointment for that on Monday.

Back home, after parking the car, I heard another resident trying to start her car from what sounded obviously like a near-dead battery. Been there, done that, just yesterday. I talked her through what she’d have to do. Maybe I should carry jumper cables? I could have done a jump start, instead of referring her to AAA. Nah, when is that going to happen again?

In the afternoon was the monthly TGIF party on the 11th floor, this time sponsored by the 7th floor. They had a wine tasting and lots of snacks. I chatted with a couple of people, ate a lot of snacks, and didn’t feel like supper. So afterward I watched a whole lot of backed-up TV, determined to stay up past 11 so as to get my sleep schedule back to normal.

Day 289, grief, flu shot, more

Tuesday, 9/17/2019

Last night I had a bit of grief flashback, which is lingering into the morning. It started when it came to mind how I’ve ghosted Katie. Backstory. Marian’s brother Emile had two sons, Paul and Mark. Mark is currently head of a radiology group at a Seattle hospital. Paul married Katie around 1998, and they opted to start a farm on San Juan Island, in Puget Sound. Marian and I visited them in 1999 while they were still camping out on the land — we helped construct a roof over the latrine in the woods! We visited the farm again and again over the years as they built a very nice house and developed a thriving organic produce farm. Marian loved the place and loved Paul and Katie, who returned the affection. She took great delight in helping them organize things, and in just doing routine household and garden work, and loved to interact with their son, Quinn.

20070824_2874-m — Marian spent many hours tidying the flower garden in front of the house.

g903p02020over20the20stile-l — In 1999 Marian and Paul celebrate finishing the fencing around the property with this stile.

In 2015, Paul died of brain cancer, leaving Katie and Quinn to carry on. Quinn has since graduated high school and begun attending a small college in Southern California.

A year later, Katie was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers. We last visited in 2017, when Katie’s deficits were starting to show. Fortunately she and Paul had built up enough savings that Quinn is assured of money to finish school and, when the farm is eventually sold, Katie’s care will be secured for as long as she needs it.

Just after Marian’s death I got a very nice card from Katie, heartfelt but also showing deficits in spelling and limited word choice that made clear that her alzheimer’s was advancing.

So the thought that intruded on me last night, not for the first time of course, was that “I really should communicate with Katie.” Or at least, check in with her friend Michelle who, last I knew, had shouldered the job of managing Katie’s affairs, hiring attendants to mind her and watching her finances. But when I really thought about doing that — I got a wave of emotion such as I haven’t had for months. And now while I write this. Marian loved that place and those people so much… I can’t ever go back there, I don’t want to think about it or them… but I feel a duty to make some kind of contact…

Well there were other things today. At 9am I went to the auditorium where a flu shot clinic had been set up, and got my flu shot. At 11am the Creative Writing group met. I’d been urged to participate. The exercise this was was to write something based on a list of words, which I did. Each of the eight attendees read out their creation. It was interesting to see how different people spun different paragraphs from the same words.

After that I spent an hour working on my YA novel. Then it was time to meet Scott for lunch, except he emailed to say that today President Trump was speaking just up the road from the Alpine Inn where we were to meet. He couldn’t exit 280 there, and I was stuck in stopped traffic on Alpine road. Via cell phone, after struggling with poor reception, we managed to redirect to another place.

In the afternoon I got an email saying that the new Schwab accounts were now set up, and when I log in to Schwab, I am now the proud owner of six (6) accounts. So I sat down and set up a new spreadsheet for tracking these. I had kept Marian’s spreadsheet updated for a few months (starting on Day 68, I see), but there would be such a massive change in the structure when the house closed, I stopped updating it. Now I’ll begin again, with initial values today and then when Schwab’s monthly statement intervals come around.

In the evening I watched the end of SYTYCD and a couple of other recorded items. The Ken Burns series on country music is piling up and I haven’t started it yet.

Day 278, move, museum, echo

Friday, 9/6/2019

The day I’ve been anticipating almost since moving in 10 weeks ago has arrived. Angela, at the head of a five-person crew from Gentle Transitions, arrived on the dot of 8am. I showed them about the computer desk and we chatted about a few other things. I grabbed the shopping bag in which I had my day’s necessities, and we went off to a guest room on the first floor, where she took my #621 key (little does she know that I have another one stashed in my desk mwahaha), gave me a brown-bag snack pack, and left me to pass the day.

I putzed around reading until 11ish, then went off to the Stanford campus where two exhibits had just opened. One was works by Jim Campbell at the Anderson gallery. Campbell uses LEDs to make moving images. He hides the LEDs inside plastic beads or behind little metal shades, and animates them with (I presume) a microcomputer to make shifting abstract color blurs or moving images. The one I liked best was this very large one.

It’s large, at least 10 by 10 by 6 feet, with the LEDs in a cloud of little plastic balls, so it strongly suggests looking up through a depth of water, and the swimming forms pass across it at random times and directions.

Next door at the Cantor a chummy volunteer docent at the door talked me into joining the museum. I am now a member and got a thick book about Rodin as a prize. I had come to see an exhibit of the sketch books of Richard Diebenkorn. It turned out to be a very small exhibit, one painting and an interactive video table on which you could page through about 20 pages of sketchbooks. I’m afraid I just don’t get Diebenkorn. “And this is good… why?” was my mental refrain. Oh well.

I had lunch in the nice Cantor cafeteria, benefiting from my 10% member discount, yay. Then back to my ~~purgatorio~~ guest room to kill another hour and a half until it was time to go to PAMF and have a stress echo. I had last done one of these in 2007, it turned out. One walks on a treadmill at increasing speeds and slopes, while wired to the max for ECGs. Then when you reach your personal “Very Hard” effort level, which I did just into the fourth level, you lie down quickly and the echo tech takes pictures of your heart action. The only uncomfortable parts were, (a), patches of my chest hair had to be shaved to get good wire adhesion and (b), you have to “take a deep breath and hold” several times when you are panting from your run. But the two techs, one on the echo and one managing the treadmill, were both charming, and in general I think I aced the test.

Now a couple more hours of waiting and finally, Angela appeared to take me to my new room. The movers had done a really excellent job. They had gotten everything, every little object, and put it right back where it was, or as near as it could be given a slightly different room layout. All my plants were on the balcony, and they’d noticed the little sender for my indoor/outdoor thermometer. My Comcast modem and DVR and TV were all set up and working. They’d booted up my iMac and done a test print on my printer. I had forgotten to put away my coffee cup, and left it on the coffee table when I walked out in the morning. The cup, now washed clean, was in the same place on the coffee table in the new room. To the greatest extent possible they made the transition to a new room as seamless as it could be. Really nice job, folks.

Day 268, fever, lunch, tech squad, financials

Tuesday 8/27/2019

I had a tossy-turny night, awake for a couple hours from 1am to 3 or so. But then slept right up to 6:10 and really didn’t feel much like getting out of bed. My arm is mildly sore around the vaccine site, nothing serious, but I just didn’t feel 100%. Took my temp: 99.1º, or a full degree above my usual 98.0. So, shingles-shot fever? I decide to take it easy for the day.

In case I had something contagious I got a banana and a bagel from the to-go refrigerator and ate in my room. I canceled my lunch date with Scott. I generally puttered around, although I put in an hour at the main computer starting to organize my notes for the rewrite of my YA novel. Feeling somewhat better around 12, I went to the dining room for soup and bread — they have been setting out really good, dark-brown bread at lunch times, and two slices of that and a bowl of the day’s soup is a good lunch.

At 2:30 there was a meeting of the Tech Squad. The main topic was a presentation from the two principal founders of a startup, park.com. (Website clearly not finished as of now.) They have an app that will supposedly allow re-use of the numbered parking spaces here, for staff and visitors. If I’m going out for the day, I would use the app to say my space is available. I could charge for it, or not. Someone needing to park, staff or visitor, could reserve the use of my spot. Bert pushed them pretty hard on the fact that there are many, many parking-space air-b&b-like apps. But it appears the facilities team is willing to give it a trial.

At 4pm it was the semi-annual Board of Directors Financial Committee update. The auditorium was set up for max capacity, where they open the folding doors into the dining room, and probably 120 or so residents turned up to hear a presentation on the financials for the 2018-19 fiscal year and the status of the current year. Bottom line, CH has plenty of funds, but the operating budget is losing around $1M a year (on a $20M budget) mostly owing to the fact that 20 units have been taken “off-line” to use for temporary locations during the Upgrade. When that finishes in two more years, a return to profitability is expected.

This was followed by a soiree in the courtyard. I sampled a couple of the foods on offer, did not take a glass of wine even though it was free, and went on back to my room where I dined simply on cherries and a PBJ. However by 9pm my temperature was back to normal (for me) of 98.1. So hopefully tomorrow will be ok.

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.