Day 248, real estate, FOPAL, lecture

Wednesday, 8/7/2019

Started the day with a drive to the gym for exercises. Then I headed over to Tasso street. There I gave Paul a check for part-payment of the flooring, and folded up the big tarp from which Richard had removed all the mulch. He’d come up just a bit short on mulch. I figure to buy a couple of bags of the stuff and he can finish the last little corner next week.

Then I went to Chuck’s office because I wanted to discuss the disclosure forms that his office guy, Andrew (also his son), had sent yesterday. Chuck and I had a long and productive discussion on the marketing of the house, and about pricing. I am very much letting him handle this, as he has the depth of experience with real estate in this market. His approach is to set the initial asking price a bit low, and count on the charm of the place to inspire enough competitive bidding to raise it. So we will be asking $2.49M, and feeling pretty confident that it will be bid to something over that.

On the way to his office I got a call from Chris the hairdresser. I’d blown it, my appointment was for today. I knew it was today; it was in the calendar for today. Well, now it is for next Wednesday. Insert head-bang gif here.

From there I went to FOPAL and tidied up the Computer section ready for this weekend’s sale days. Then I started sorting, and when I quit at 4pm, I was very pleased and surprised that we sorters had actually sorted “everything”. Well, every box of donations that were in the Sorting room today, and the dozen boxes and bags that came through the door between 2 and 4pm. Of course, Frank reminded me that there are a couple hundred boxes of donations in the other building. But clearing out the Sorting room is an achievement anyway.

Back home, I got a call from Helene; she has a couple more questions for the piece on me for the newsletter. We agreed to meet for supper at 6. The questions didn’t amount to much but I got to talk about myself, always a pleasure. We talked about her, as well. Compared notes on grieving. She lost her husband at age 58, so she’s been a long time widowed, but still gets occasional bouts of grief.

At 7pm there was a talk by Palo Alto’s relatively new Chief of Police, describing the changes he’s initiating in the department. He seemed a very genial, but highly competent person. They just started the body-cam program. Each patrol car has a total of five cameras mounted on it, three outside and two inside. Then when the officer steps out of the car, his body camera is automatically triggered. No more forgetting to turn it on in the heat of the moment.

Chief Jonson initiated a citizen advisory board, and their first priority message to him was the need for traffic enforcement. At that point, mid-2018, the PAPD didn’t have a traffic “unit”; they just relied on patrolling officers to enforce traffic laws. But he has set up a three-officer unit that is dedicated to traffic enforcement (two motorcycles, one car) and doing “strategic” enforcement. Which seems to mean, focusing on specific streets? Anyway Alma and Embarcadero were mentioned specifically.

Day 247, more mulch, meeting, papers

Tuesday, 8/6/2019

Started with a run, since I didn’t get one yesterday. Spent some time doing classifications at Zooniverse. Tried out yet another game, and didn’t like it. Then an email arrived from Richard the gardener: our big green garden-waste bin was full. I replied he should use the paper leaf bags that are in the garage. Then I decided to zip over there and see what was going on.

Indeed, some gardener unknown had filled our large garden-waste rolling bin to the top with garden waste. That bin was empty yesterday morning. I had left it out Sunday night, so that nobody would park on the tarp I laid down to receive the mulch. When I rolled it away just before the mulch truck arrived yesterday morning, it was empty. So somebody had filled it during the day or, perhaps, in the night. Da Noive!

I checked on Paul; he has the color down on the two floors he sanded yesterday and they look great. He expects to spray varnish today. He raved at length about the wide oak planks and how you can’t get wood like that any more.

I put gas in the car for the first time in five weeks. 740 miles, 94.1 miles per gallon. The Prius plug-in is the perfect car for the retiree. Then I got it washed.

Back at C.H. I grabbed some lunch, took a nap, and it was time for the Upgrade Status meeting, or, as a lady named Florence commented in the elevator going down, the Upheaval Update. Dates haven’t changed for the 7th floor moving in or for my 6th floor moving out. Most of the meeting was to explain the new lighting being installed. This is something they did not include when remodeling the 10th, 9th and 8th floors. Beginning with the 7th, they are re-doing all the overhead lighting. A 1BR unit like mine gets two flush-mount ceiling fixtures in the entryway, two in the bathroom hallway, and six each in living room and bedroom, those groups of six being on dimmers. In addition, all the outlets and outlet plates are replaced.

Why the late decision? They had wanted to do overhead lighting from the start because they observe lots of floor lamps in use, and floor lamps are in general a tripping hazard. However, there is only 2-½ inch clearance between the bottom of the cement beams that support the floor above, and the plaster of the ceiling of the room below. Only recently have they found fixtures that will work. And prices have come down and they were able to get a good deal on a whole floor installation. And the use of all-LED lights will mean significant reduction in building electricity use.

Late in the day I got emails from Chuck’s office with some earthquake disclosure forms to sign. However, I recognize them as things I had signed previously I’m sure; and anyway one of them still had the Buyer name filled in as Daphne Higgs (the Lawyer Lady). So that isn’t right. I replied that I should come by Chuck’s office tomorrow and sign in physical person.

Day 246, mulch, FOPAL, drawers

Monday, 8/5/2019

Yesterday Lyngso said 9-11am. Today as I was getting out of the shower at 7:05, the phone rang. It was the Lyngso driver telling me he was “just pulling out of the yard, I’ll be at your place in 15 minutes or so.”

Boy oh boy did I feel smart that I’d gone over and spread the tarp last night! In fact I got there just before the truck, but I’d have been really sprinting to get the tarp out and spread for him. After the friendly driver left, I drove back to C.H. and had breakfast. Then I went down to FOPAL, arriving about 9am. I worked on the Computer section for an hour, and then did sorting until 1pm.

Chuck had texted asking whether the mulch would be finished today or tomorrow, and I wanted to check in anyway, so I stopped at Tasso St. Richard was working in the back yard. He explained that he couldn’t spread mulch until he had done his normal weekly cleanup. He didn’t want to spread mulch over dead leaves, etc. So he would definitely still be working on it tomorrow.

The flooring guy, who turned out to be named Paul, was also hard at work. He had already finished sanding the living room and dining room. We talked about the job and he reassured me he was qualified to remove and replace the hot water heater.

Back home I tried a new game; it was boring. Well, it was only $5.99. Ate supper at Rosina’s table.

OK, let me get some things down about

meal replacements.

Before moving to C.H. I was feeding myself about two meals in three from meal replacements, primarily Keto Chow. That showed that the low-carb diet suits me; I felt strong and healthy and lost weight gradually. (I’ll check my weight tomorrow, but for the past week it has been oscillating around 171.)

Nominally I shouldn’t need meal replacements at Channing House; after all, three meals a day are laid on in the dining room. However, as I’ve complained before, there are many days where I want breakfast earlier. I want to go on my run, or go to the Y, during the breakfast service hours, eating something earlier and perhaps a bit more later. Also there are many occasions when it isn’t convenient to be here for lunch: working at FOPAL or the museum. Those times, I’ve been grabbing snack food, protein bars and such, from grocery stores. (Thursdays, the artifact crew always go to a casual restaurant like Eric’s Deli Cafe; those are reasonably healthy meals.)

A few weeks ago I laid in some Saturo from Amazon. These 300-calorie packages are quite convenient, and do nicely as an early breakfast, and I like the flavor better than the Soylent ready-to-drink (RTD). But Saturo (and Soylent) are not low-carb meals. I really wish that there was a “Keto” RTD, but there isn’t. One, Sated, has been promising “real soon now” for over a year. Keto Chow’s owner, Chris Bair, did an experimental run of an RTD, but couldn’t continue because he can’t find a co-packer that can meet his requirements.

I had assumed I needed a RTD product because it’s too much trouble to mix powdered products in my little kitchenette, and my 2-liter pitcher doesn’t fit my little refrigerator. But wait! I was watching a video by Chris Bair, in which he was showing how to mix individual Keto Chow shakes in blender bottles, and does it quickly and neatly. Well, I have a couple of blender bottles and a bag of Keto Chow left over, why not try it? And it is actually quite easy. It takes less than five minutes to mix up two shakes, and they fit in the fridge. I did that, and consumed one for lunch yesterday, and one for lunch today. It was great. So I’ve ordered a couple more blender bottles and I will mix them up four at a time.

Day 242, contractors, Yosemite, realty

Thursday, 8/1/2019

First thing after breakfast I sent an email to Mark, the sales guy for Davey Tree service. I’d heard nothing from them since accepting their estimate for trimming several days ago. I get a response in half an hour, “We’re coming today.” Gee, thanks for the warning. Later I confirmed with Chuck that they hadn’t contacted him either. The problem was, there is a flooring contractor scheduled to start on the kitchen floor today, and the painters aren’t quite done either.

So I drove over to the house on my way to a day of museum work across the bay. The Davey team were already at work, a huge truck in the driveway supporting a cherry picker, and a guy up among the oak branches. Mark was just driving away, and we conferred, and then talked to the second tree guy who was on the ground. He didn’t see any problem and would keep an eye out for contractors. When I said “flooring contractor” he said, “what kind, laminate or what?” I said, “laminate” and he said, “Oh no problem, my cousin does laminate floors, and I know he won’t have much stuff to bring in.”

So I went off to Yosemite. Today I and Steve spent the day beginning the implementation of Aurora’s grand plan to check every box. We fetched down a cart load of boxes. I was running the computer and Steve was handling stuff. I would do a search on the box number, and tell Steve how many objects were returned by the search. He would count to make sure there were that many objects in the box. Only once was the count wrong. It was one too high. We had to go through the objects and check their numbers against the search results. Yup, there was one object not listed as being in that box. So we searched on its number, and found it was recorded as being in a different box on a different shelf. So we went and found that box and shoved the item (an unpopulated PCB) into that box. Problem solved.

Then I’d check whether each object had a photograph in the database. A few did not, and Steve would mark them with a “photo needed” tag and that box would go on the “to be photographed” shelf. Otherwise it was all good and went on the “return to storage” shelf.

We ripped through a dozen boxes in the day, at the end of which Steve commented, “Well, I said this was going to be a ten-year project. Now I think it might only be eight.”

I came home by way of Tasso street. The tree guys were gone and the trees looked fine. The oak branches are well clear of the house now. The big Pittisporums are not touching the house roof either, and there’s quite a bit more light in the back yard.

Inside I found that nothing had been done with the floor, apparently that guy didn’t come. The painters were pretty nearly done. I was distressed to find that they had sealed the butcher-block counter tops in the kitchen with something hard, that looks almost like varnish. That’s not right at all.

I texted Chuck with these observations. Later in the evening he called me up. He’d talked to the flooring guy who had said, well, some materials didn’t come in, so he can’t come until Monday. That pretty well messes up the time-line for opening the house on Friday week. So Chuck says now we’ll slip it a week to 8/16, and I have to agree. He’ll discuss the kitchen counters with Eric the painter.

Day 241, FOPAL, tour, realty, play

Wednesday, 7/31/2019

Started with a run; it felt fine.

Paid a couple of bills. Yesterday I got an email from Amy wanting the signed contract for the staging, so I did that routine: print out the contract PDF, sign it, scan the signed page, and email the scan back to her. About 11am I left for FOPAL where I found four boxes waiting at the computer section, but they only yielded a dozen books to shelve. Lots of immense paperback tomes, Everything about Windows 95, The Complete Red Hat Linux Version 3, and so forth. Fifteen-hundred page doorstops, now of no interest to anyone. However, the haul did include several high-value books, little specialist books that people are paying $35-70 for.

Then I spent a couple hours sorting, before leaving at 1:30. I had received a text from Chuck telling me how much the painter’s estimate was. I had intended to bring my checkbook along so when I got that text, I could write a check and take it to Tasso street. However I had not brought the checkbook, so now I had to go back to C.H. and get it; write the check; and go deliver it.

Now I had an hour before I was scheduled to give a tour to a private group. I had meant to spend it sitting quietly, possibly napping, in the car. However at this point I started exchanging texts with Chuck and that led to realizing that still hanging is the issue of getting fresh mulch spread on the landscaping. What day will it be ok to block the driveway with a pile of mulch, what day will Richard the gardener be available to spread said mulch, I need to order the mulch to be delivered, aaaaagggghhhh!

Flurry of texts and emails (Richard doesn’t do texts) and settled on a date of Monday. Also got an email from Amy, fine you signed, but can you send the check, also? Then into the museum to wait for the tour group to arrive, which they didn’t, so I spent the time calling Lyngso Garden Supply and scheduling the delivery. But they couldn’t give me a time, “call back on Sunday afternoon and we can tell you what your 2-hour window will be.”

Compounded by: I had signed up to lead a tour of 25 people, but the document waiting at the counter specified 50. No way can one docent lead that big a tour. But when they finally showed up they were a reasonable group of 25 after all. And pretty independent, a core group of 10 or so stuck close to me, the others kind of wandered around us on cometary orbits. Which is fine with me.

After the tour I could email Richard about the uncertain start time on Monday. Back to C.H. where I wrote Amy’s check and mailed it, fortunately the usual mail delivery hadn’t happened on time so it went out tonight.

For supper I spotted an Open table with one other person, who turned out to be Beverly, and we were later joined by Cathy. I like the Open table concept. By sitting at one you are saying, I’m unaccompanied and open to anybody’s company. There are smaller tables where you can sit by yourself and nobody will bother you, or tables where people who know each other arrive in a group.A couple of nights back, I sat at an empty Open one, and nobody joined me, which was dampening. So I saw Beverley (who I didn’t know) sitting alone at an Open table I joined her and that was Ok.

This evening I had a ticket for a TheaterWorks presentation, The Language Archive. I didn’t like it much, and left at the intermission.

Day 240, echo, alterations, brass polish

Tuesday, 7/30/2019

First thing today was to go to PAMF to have a cardiac echo test. This is preparation for a routine exam by my cardiologist in a couple of weeks. I had opted for an 8am appointment. The Encina street office of PAMF is nominally 20 minutes’ walk and my first plan was to do that.

However, yesterday afternoon my box of new clothes arrived from Bonobos. As expected, the blazer is a good fit in the arms and shoulders, but too tight around the waist. Two of the three pairs of pants are also juuuuust a bit too tight for comfort. Those two are from one line, the pair for a different line are exactly right, despite all having the same nominal size. Anyway, I wanted to drop off the jacket and pants for alterations at Jacquie’s Sew and Sew, a tailoring shop I’ve used before with good results. Jacquie’s opens at 9am. There were other options but I chose instead to toss the clothes into the car and drive.

The echocardiogram was a short routine operation. I’ve had them before, and from what I could see on the screen, it looked the same as before. The technician of course wouldn’t offer any opinion. “Your doctor will tell you about it.” Which is only sensible.

So to the Prolific Oven for breakfast, and then to Jacquie’s, where they took my instructions and clothes and said, August 9th.

From there, on to Tasso street. Here may aim was to polish the brass door and window handles. They were more than ten years from their last polish, and the window handles especially were more the color of a briar pipe than brass. There were two painters there, working away. I didn’t monitor them in any detail, strictly not my job. I set myself up on the front porch with my cardboard box of polish and cleaners and my cordless drill with brush and buffing attachments.

The painters had already removed all the brass door handles into a bucket. I started with those and they polished up very nicely and quickly, using only “Mr. Metal,” a product that I’d picked up at the hardware store that promised “shine without rubbing or buffing” and doggone if it didn’t pretty much do that. When there was no heavy layer of dirt or corrosion, it was a wipe-on, let-dry, wipe-off operation and the hardware looked shiny and good.

The window handles had, I”m not sure how, picked up a layer of gummy crud, like a thin layer of brown crayon. To get that off took soaking in cleaner and whizzing with the abrasive brush. Then I used Mr. Metal and followed with Brasso on a polishing pad.

Each window handle is held in place by three short brass screws. In order to reattach them, you have to start the screw while holding the window open. And of course, I twice dropped a screw trying to start it. Dropped into the bark mulch on the ground under the window. One time I found it. One I couldn’t find.

I was already short one screw, as I discovered when removing the backmost handle from the laundry room. The handles are acceptable with only two screws; clearly I’d lost one back at the turn of the millennium. So I drove to the hardware store and went through their quite good screw and bolt shelves. I found what I thought might be a replacement but in fact, it was just too large and a tighter thread. Who knows what thread standards they were using in 1930? So now I (or actually, the future owner) is short two screws, two handles held on by two screws. I’m going to have one more try at the hardware store later on.

I finished up around 1pm and headed home. When I checked the mail that evening, I found the Amazon package with three copies of To Thrive Beyond Belief. One for my bookshelf, one for the house library. What to do with the third?

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 235, FOPAL meeting, Shustek, book

Thursday, 7/25/2019

First thing after breakfast I printed out the work estimate from Davey Tree Service, signed it, scanned it, and mailed it back to the estimator, authorizing that tree maintenance. Hopefully it will get done next week.

I went down to the garage, got the marked-up book from the car, and spent an hour finishing the edit of the printed copy. I started to enter the changes in the files but got distracted by noticing how badly Leanpub’s software was rendering the several poem stanzas I had quoted. So I started to write up a detailed problem report on the Leanpub author forum, and realized it was past time to leave, so left that undone.

I headed out for a FOPAL brunch meeting at the Mitchell Park Library. Janette, the volunteer director, told us a lot about the pickup gang, the few volunteers who go out and pick up donated books from people who can’t bring them to us. I went in with concerns about the flood of books and how we seem to be falling further behind all the time. I got some confirmation from Frank, a volunteer I enjoy talking with who knows the operations better than I. There is a mountain of about 100 boxes of unsorted donations in the Sorting Room, but Frank knows there are another 200 boxes, some dating back to last year, stacked in a courtyard by the bargain room. After the meeting I talked to Janette about this a bit; she pointed out that there are people who sort other times than the 2-4pm slots when we are open for donations. People sort at night and other times. In my opinion we need a lot more sorting, but I didn’t want to add to her burdens by harping on this point.

I did talk to her about giving a presentation about FOPAL at C.H. and she liked the idea. This evening I wrote to Betsy, on the Events committee, suggesting this.

From there I drove across the bay to Shustek. There I assisted Bud and Toni in taking inventory of the donation from a person who was the director of Multimedia at Apple in the 1980s and 90s. She apparently kept everything. Today we were just making a list of media items, dozens of VHS tapes, Betamax tapes, U-Matic tapes, Hi-8 tapes, CDs and audio cassettes. I read the labels, Toni entered the titles and other info in a spreadsheet, while Bud was going through every cassette type that had a read-only tab and breaking it out so the cassettes couldn’t be recorded-over. We got through a few boxes, with more to go.

Back home I finished and posted my trouble report with poetry formatting. Later in the evening I got a reply, saying basically that it isn’t completely implemented yet, and suggesting a work-around that I’ll try tomorrow. I’m a little dissatisfied with LeanPub. They have a basically good idea and good support, but they have been very slow to get their support complete for corner cases and smaller features. Well, I’ve no real choice but to leave the book there, for online sales. Kindle Direct will be another outlet.

Day 234, tree guy, FOPAL, book

Wednesday, 7/24/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 232, realty, FOPAL, book

Monday, 7/22/2019

Went for a run in the morning. Then at 10:30 left to meet Chuck at the Tasso house. We reviewed what had been done and needed to be done. Henry, our neighbor stopped by to meet Chuck. He and Chuck were not happy with the idea of cutting off an entire big limb of the oak, so that idea is out. Chuck wants to have the better-known Davey Tree Service provide an estimate, and he will have his office guy, Andrew, schedule that. Realistically the prep and staging likely won’t be done until the second week of August.

From there I went to FOPAL where I processed about 7 boxes of Computer section input, pricing and shelving a couple of boxes worth, and. sending 4 boxes to bargain. Then I settled in to do sorting until 4pm. All told about 4 hours of steady physical work.

I bought some of the sugar-free drinks I stock in my fridge, and a little fruit (since I forgot to go to the farmer’s market yesterday) and a pound of coffee, and headed home.

After supper, which I ate alone, I checked the mail and found the envelope with two trial copies of To Thrive Beyond Belief. (Marked “not for resale” because I haven’t officially “published” it to Kindle Direct.)

The cover looks great and the text is readable. I told myself I wouldn’t read it, but I read the opening and found a typo on page 9, which means I have to read it all, now. I got through Chapter 2, which is frankly, damn good.