Day 155, FBC and FOPAL and mixer

Monday, 5/6/2019

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

revived Fast Break Club.

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

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

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

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

A bit later in the morning I found myself with

nothing to do,

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

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

FOPAL

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

supper,

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

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

Day 146, hazardous waste, docent,

Saturday, 4/27/2019

If the tentative schedule holds, exactly three weeks from today I will be moving into my unit at CH.

Took a leisurely start as usual on Saturdays, but at 9am arrived at the Palo Alto Utilities’ Household Hazardous Waste site. This is open Saturdays 9-11. I’ve been putting aside all the paint, bug spray, and other chemicals as I went through the garage, and now took three boxes of cans and bottles in the back of the Prius. They check your i.d. as a resident, take the containers out of the back of the car, say thank you, and off you go. Feeling morally and physically cleaner.

At home, I made copies of the five different forms that I’d filled out for Chuck, various disclaimers and disclosures and advisories one must sign to sell property. One, a detailed four-page questionnaire disclosing just about every possible thing that might affect the value of a property, was almost as much work to prepare as income tax. My first attempt had me trying to put explanatory notes in tiny little spaces provided. Then I got another copy and put the notes on a separate sheet. Anyway, done now. I put the originals in an envelope for Chuck to pick up next time he stops by, and my copies in a new Penda-Flex for the sale of the property.

Then, remembering that Chuck said he might bring a prospect to view the house Sunday, I tidied the shit out of things, made all ship-shape. While doing this, Chuck stopped by briefly and took the forms, saying he would probably bring someone to see the house tomorrow.

I changed to my docent uniform and went to the museum to lead a tour. A quiet Saturday, only eight in the group. Drove on home stopping to pick up a couple of food items, including some deli take-out for supper. Set out the foam mattress and waited for the junk guys to come by. Which took a while, but eventually two friendly dudes in a white truck came and took away the foam mattress. Another thing off my mind.

Tonight is “fireworks night” at the Sunken Diamond and I just don’t feel like going, sitting out in the chill — it has gotten chilly — through all nine innings to see fireworks. So, staying home and catching up on the DVR backlog. Amazing Race, Midsomer Murders, yeah.

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 130, Shustek and taxes and legal

Thursday, 4/11/2019

My tax return is ready at the accountant’s in south San Jose. Their office is open at 8, and I need to be at the Shustek center in Milpitas at 10. OK. At 8:15 I leave for the first stop. I pick up my tax form, which includes addressed envelopes and forms for,

Federal tax return
State tax return
Federal estimated tax returns for four quarterly payments
State estimated tax returns for three (I get to skip September) quarters

The amount I need to pay immediately is rather large. Unfortunately my financial advisors, or rather the brokers they rely on, realized a lot of gains this year. Due to this misfortune of making a lot of money, I need to pay a bunch of tax. I put the papers in the car and proceed to Shustek, arriving just before ten.

The usual gang, Toni, Don, Steve, Dave, and Greta work on cataloging a bunch of stuff and chatting. I leave for home at 4.

At home I sit down for serious check signing. Marian established the tradition of writing tax checks against our unmanaged Schwab account. I log in and check; oops, there isn’t enough cash in it to cover all the taxes. Well, this is the account whose mutual-fund assets I intend to liquidate to pay the C.H. entry fee. So I place an order to sell one of the mutual funds. Good practice for selling the others next week.

Then I write four tax checks (return plus first-quarter estimate, federal and state) and triple check that the right check is with the right form in the correct envelope. Then look for stamps, and oh dear, only one stamp left in the desk. Well, I wanted to get this properly posted anyway. I drive to the California Ave. P.O., buy stamps, re-re-check that every check and form is properly addressed, seal the envelopes, stamp them, and post them.

Back at the house, I work my way through nine (9!) pages of realtor disclosure forms, signing and initialing. So that’s ready for Chuck when he next stops by. Next up, the forms needed by my attorney. Yesterday I got a statement from her listing what documents she needs to properly handle the details of Marian’s death, and oh yes, how much it will cost. So I assemble the documents and write that check.

One of the documents she needs is a copy of a recent property-tax bill. I’ve been fretting about that all day, where would that be? Finally realize it will, or should, be part of the wad of supporting documents in the 2018 tax return folder. Out to the garage where the box of tax forms went yesterday. Yup, there it is!

Then I try to fit the documents into the attorney’s post-paid return envelope and they don’t fit. So I supply my own return envelope and two stamps.

I call Darlene to confirm I’m joining them for lunch tomorrow. Somehow one or the other of us gets the call into FaceTime mode (except I can only see my face) and then neither of us can figure out how to end the call. I think I’m tired. A little TV and bed.

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 117, estate no-sale, lunch

Friday, 3/29/2019

Exercise today was to walk (not jog) to the nearest ATM for my bank, the Stanford Federal Credit Union. That’s 1.8 miles each way, per Google maps, and the iPhone agrees, showing 9,338 steps for the day.

Chuck the realtor arrived at 11, along with Sheri Galvin, a vivacious older woman who runs estate sales. She looked the house over, admired it extravagantly (“I’d buy it myself if I didn’t have my family living with me”) but ended up saying, “I don’t see $10,000 here! I need to see that before I can afford to run a sale, I have to pay my assistants and make a little myself out of my 35%.”

She did offer to help me run the sale myself, if I wanted to. For a fee she would come for a day and price everything, loan me card tables for displaying stuff, and so on. I’m thinking seriously about that.

Meantime, as I explained to her and to Chuck, I am in limbo, waiting on Channing House to come back to me with specifics. Here’s what I know will have to happen.

Kim Krebs calls me in to show me a contract.
She and I agree on what upgrades will be done to the unit, for example re-do the kitchenette, replace the drapes, and — Chuck reminded me — I take a close look at the bathroom and maybe ask for improvements there.
That gets added to the contract; really, want it on paper.
We agree on a time-line for the unit upgrades. That work is done by C.H. in-house maintenance staff, and I have no idea how fast they work or what kind of back-log they have.
I liquidate the mutual funds in the one Schwab account to fund the needed entry fee. Here I’m not certain of the exact procedure, do I do it over the web, or should I have my financial advisor do it?
Money gets wire-transferred from my Schwab account to C.H.; same questions as the preceding step.
I have legal occupancy of the unit, yay! Except, can I start moving in, or do I have to wait for the upgrade work, and how long will that take?
At least, with legal occupancy, I can bring Tyra the decorator in to plan, and I can start moving items from the house to the unit, if only to stack boxes in closets.
Tyra has a design and she and I go buy furniture to be delivered.
When (almost) everything I want to keep is out of the house, schedule Sheri to assist, and set a date for a sale.

All that could start happening as soon as C.H. finalizes my application. I don’t know why that didn’t happen this week, after I got medical approval. I picture my application sitting on somebody’s desk while they check my credit rating. (Hmmm…. I put a freeze on my credit ratings a year ago. Well, if they need to know, they can ask me. Now, where did I put the info on how to un-freeze a rating… I think I know…)

With all this in mind I went to lunch with Scott and Steve. Lots of talk about our mutual pasts at IBM.

Back home I ran the DVR through the WBB games that involved PAC-12 teams. Sixth-seed UCLA gave 2-seed UConn a scare, but finally lost. Oregon State gave 1-seed Louisville a respectable game and lost. ASU lost to 1-seed Mississippi State. Oregon, a two-seed, started slow against upstart 6-seed South Dakota State, but pulled ahead in the second half to win.

Day 110, many appointments

Last night’s play, at local playhouse The Pear , was the world premier of

Sojourn

by Evan Kokkila-Shumacher. It was… interesting. The staging was clever and attractive. The acting was competent. But it was a lot longer than it needed to be. I almost left at intermission, but stayed for the second half to see if they could resolve the many issues; in the end I don’t think they did.

The setup is that two astronauts have been launched on a no-return mission, to pass Jupiter, then Saturn, then apparently to just keep going on toward the Oort Cloud. They have aboard fertilized human eggs and incubators and are supposed to keep decanting babies to be raised up as replacement crew members. This whole mission plan seems, in hindsight, screwy, impractical, and pointless, but it is revealed gradually through the first act so the screwiness doesn’t really hit you until you’ve left the theater. On the ship, things have gone profoundly wrong. Back home at NASA, the management wants to cut funding. But all the stage time is taken up by endless, repetitive arguments. The two astronauts argue in circles about the mission plan. Back home the mission director and a nasty manager argue in circles about funding and the value of the mission. It was all quite tedious and I thought, even as it was going on, that the main points of debate could have been conveyed in a third the amount of dialogue. But then you’d have a one-act play, I guess.

Friday, 3/22/2019

Today is full of scheduled to-dos. After a shower, shave, and dressing in my Museum Docent clothes, I sat down to assemble some

financial documentation

that I was supposed to have included in my initial C.H. application! I was politely reminded of the need for this stuff in an email from Kim, just after the email telling me I could have the nice 1BR unit. It took a while to assemble the needed documentation (basically, proving I had as much assets as I claimed).

One item wanted was a copy of “the first few pages” of our 2017 tax return. I thought I knew exactly where to lay hands on that. There is a small banker’s box with a folder for each of the last five year’s tax returns, organized meticulously (of course) by Marian each April. I opened it, there was the folder for 2017, but it only included the supporting documents — not the actual spiral-bound return document from the accountant. The folders for 2016, 15, and 14 had their returns, but not last year’s. Thinking about it… the taxes would have been finished just about when Marian got her pancreatic cancer diagnosis. We got really busy around then, with lots of doctor appointments and procedures. (I commented more than once that, when you get cancer, you have a new job: you are “doing cancer” for the duration. It just occupies your life.) So not too surprising that, either we didn’t keep the spiral bound printout, or more likely, we didn’t ask for one because the return was e-filed.

At 9am I sent an email to Cindy at the financial advisors’, and at 9:40 she had emailed me a PDF of the 2017 return. I’m getting great support from that outfit. Printed out the first 8 pages, added it to the other copied statements showing the value of various accounts. I had promised this for Monday but I think now I will drop it off on my way to the Museum for an

11:30 tour.

Which was a bit of a mess. On the volunteer scheduling site it was given as “11:30” but in fact the group arrived at 10:30. I got there at 11:00 but Mike, the second docent, didn’t show for another 15 minutes. I had the group of 40+ herded into the 1401 lab and vamped about that machine until Mike arrived. Then we split the group up and started our normal tours — he very generously offering to do his in reverse, from the present backward, so we wouldn’t conflict.

Then, five minutes in, a CHM staff person interrupted me to remind the group that their lunch would be ready upstairs at 12:00. Only now it was 11:20 and I was barely started on what is usually a one-hour tour. I edited myself severely and managed to get them off to their lunch about 12:05 but it was not a relaxing experience. For me; they seemed to enjoy themselves well enough. But seriously: this is the second time in a month that the museum staff has screwed up the scheduling of a custom tour.

I stopped on the way home to buy coffee. I use three scoops for my morning cup, and had only enough left in the canister for tomorrow. But I’m getting to be such a

short-timer;

everything I do has a resonance of, will I do this again? Will I finish this pound of Peet’s Gaia Organic in the old house, or will it last until I’ve moved to C.H.? I bought a pound of bacon because I like to fry up a couple strips and an egg for supper. Will I actually finish that pound, or will I have to throw some away because I’ve moved to C.H. where meals are laid on? It’s an uneasy, but exciting way to live.

Next event was the 2pm arrival of Chuck

the realtor

We reviewed the termite report and he confirmed the low price of fumigation and the reliability of the company he’d used. So it really isn’t a big deal or problem for the sale. He still hasn’t gotten input from any developers. We went over my likely time-line: that I could be signing for my C.H. unit as soon as next week or the week after, and when that’s done, I can begin moving things out of the house into C.H. Which means that almost surely by May he can have the house to stage and sell. He was taken aback by the speed of events but accepted it. I also asked if his stager, Amy, whom I met back on Day 94, would be open to my paying for design assistance in fitting out the new place. He said she did do that and he would let her know I was interested.

I also googled the niece of Chris the hairdresser, who she had recommended as a designer two days ago. She has a small website touting herself as a designer. However she had not responded to the voicemail that Chris left for her two days ago. I sent an email to her business address. We’ll see who responds quicker.

Then off to C.H. to meet with

Ilsabet

who is a resident of C.H. and a client of Chuck’s. I’d asked to meet her because she has an “Alcove” (large studio) and at the time I thought that was what I’d be offered. Now I’ve been offered a 1BR I don’t care so much, but I kept the appointment just to begin making acquaintances in that community. She’s a very pleasant lady and we chatted about room decorations and antiques for a few minutes. She had an idea of what I might do with the numerous decorative objects that aren’t valuable enough to sell. She suggested I donate them to the C.H. Gift Shop, which is run by residents to generate money for the library and for newspaper subscriptions for the lobby. They give a receipt for tax purposes, she assured me. I think this sounds like a grand idea.

two scratches

Louise the gemologist was to come by at four, but she emailed earlier saying she wasn’t done with my report, so we postponed to Monday.

I had planned to go to a Stanford Baseball game at 6, but light sprinkles of rain continue, so I passed on that. No fun sitting in the open on a wet plastic seat — assuming they even hold the game. That left a whole afternoon open to install the

sound bar

which I did. I removed the receiver and its subwoofer and five speakers from around the room, and connected the DVR directly to the TV. Connected the sound bar and it works OK, definitely better sound than the TV itself, definitely not as good as the old 5-channel system. However, the sound bar has an output to drive a separate sub-woofer, so I brought back the woofer and hooked it to the sound bar. That helps, adds “meat” to the sound even when the woofer is set low.

Fed myself and watched some TV. Quite a day.

Day 109, Shustek, sound bar, play

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Drove to Shustek center in Milpitas (or I guess it’s officially in Fremont) to work on cataloging. One of the paid staff there was having a birthday so at 10:30 everyone, staff and volunteers, had cake and goodies. I’ve been trying to eat low-carb; boy, blew it today with doughnut and a piece of cake. Did photography with Bud; took 40 pictures in all of 29 objects. Out of work to do, so left early at 3:30.

Took advantage of the extra time to stop at a TV place, Video Only, to continue shopping for a sound bar. (I began that search at Best Buy on day 91.5.) Unlike Best Buy, Video Only has all their sound bars hooked up so you can try them easily, and a helpful, informative, and not-pushy sales dude to assist. I zeroed in on a $99 special, a Yamaha that sounded OK and was on sale. Done. The box is unopened for now. My Google Calendar for today, tomorrow, and Saturday is bizarre. Maybe Monday I’ll have the open time to tear into the wiring of the sound system and try it out.

Noticed the three hummingbird feeders are low, so after I fed myself I brought them in and refilled them. This is not a simple job because the sugar water, as it hangs outside for a week, tends to grow a nasty mold. You have to clean all the parts carefully with hot water and soap.

It takes one cup of sugar, diluted to 4 cups of liquid, to fill the three feeders. Looking at the sugar canister, I judge there is about enough left to refill them twice more. Then that will be it. When the sugar runs out, the feeders, whose plastic parts are rather perished and brittled from years in the sun, will go in the trash. By then there will be plenty of natural blossoms and the little buzzers can make it on their own. Actually, after I’m established at C.H. I might just buy a new feeder for my deck. But that will be later.

Chuck sent along the termite inspector’s report. It isn’t horribly bad, although he did find isolated spots with evidence of both subterranean and dry termites, and recommends doing a fumigation. To my surprise, if I’m reading the report correctly, the estimate for tenting the house is only $1800. That seems terribly low for something that involves a crew of several workmen and a bunch of equipment over two days. Still, the report in all is not the death-blow to an occupier sale I thought it would be.

Shortly now I will head out to see a play. Report on that tomorrow, along with lots of other happenings.

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.)

Day 101, new FOPAL job and a find

Wednesday, 3/13/2019

Went for a run, remembering to log the start and end in my ZIO patch log. There’s a paper log book in the box, but that’s for fogies. I had downloaded the ZIO app for the phone and do my logging there.

After the run I stopped at the UPS store and bought a box and some bubble wrap. At home, I boxed up the Buckeye Pottery pitcher (see Day 91) to send to my niece Laurel.

In the night, around 2am, I was having a wakeful spell and thought about all the things yet to be cleaned out and evaluated. One thing that looms like an ominous cloud is a pair of large metal cabinets out in what we called “the shop”, an enclosed room on the side of the garage. In the night I am thinking about having to clean empty those cabinets and throwing away un-sellable stuff — they were the place we put anything that we might want to use again sometime but don’t want in the house now — and it occurred to me that the cabinets themselves would sell in the estate sale. Fine metal locking cabinets. Then I wondered, where are the keys for those locking cabinets? And in order to get back to sleep I had to get up, find a note-pad, and write down the list of things I’d been thinking of: “pitcher, cab. keys, taxes”. Then I could go back to sleep.

So now, after wrapping the pitcher, I went out and opened the cabinet doors and there inside each door, were the keys to that cabinet hanging on a neat little hook made from a paperclip just to keep the keys handy. Right where you’d look for them, although nobody has looked for them since the cabinets went in, probably before 2000.

Then I spent an hour and a half on the tax workbook. That’s pretty close to done. I hope to polish it off on Friday, although I’m not sure I’ll actually hit the “send to CPA” button until after I’ve talked the financial guys next Tuesday.

I needed to be at FOPAL at 1pm for a meeting, and was just dropping off for a short nap at 12:15 when Chuck called. He has scheduled a termite inspection for tomorrow and now belatedly wanted to make sure I’d be here. I won’t; I’ll be at the museum. But we agreed he should have a key and can then give the inspector access. So he dropped by the house at 12:40 for a key. No numbers from a developer yet, although he’s talked to one.

Off then to FOPAL where I got trained on a new task: evaluating and pricing books for a section, in particular, the computer section. In my previous (and on-going) job of sorting, we separate newly-donated books to their section. If a book is somehow related to computers, it goes in a computer section box. Piles of boxes then stack up in front of the computer shelves.

Today, working with an experienced volunteer, I learned what happens next. We go through the boxes and do a cull of books that aren’t worth pricing. Almost all “–for Dummies”, all stuff for Windows 95 and other obsolete software, almost all books published before 2000 (some judgement needed here), get packed into new boxes and piled up for the “H2” people. H2 is the building where “bargain” books are displayed. Everything in H2 is $1, and things that don’t sell there, go to recycling.

About one in four of the books look salable. These we take back to the office where we enter their ISBNs into Book Scout Pro, which aggregates prices from all over the web. If a book is selling at $8 or more, we write a price on the flyleaf and put it in a box of priced books that will eventually be shelved for the sale. If it is selling at less than that, it goes in an H2 box.

So I put in 3 and a half hours on that, in the course of which I made a find: in the middle of a box, in among books on Java and C++, was an original, 1931 edition of the IBM Songbook! I grabbed that puppy and put it with my hat. That isn’t going in the book sale, that’s going with me to the museum tomorrow.

After work I bought a few groceries (FOPAL is next to my usual grocery store) and headed home. Forgetting to stop at UPS and ship that pitcher, which now will just ride in the back of the car until Friday.

When I was initially thinking about my life “when I’m a bachelor” I had assumed that I would eat supper in restaurants fairly often. In fact, I almost haven’t. I think I’ve been out twice for meals (aside from several restaurant meals in Las Vegas of course). So I think I will go out tonight. Report on that tomorrow.