Day 70, old pics and a game

Friday, 2/8/2019

When I went out to pick up the paper at 6:30 the sky was clear, and the TV news said the rain wouldn’t come until the afternoon. I assumed I could do a run, but it started to rain just as I was ready to leave at 8:30, so instead I drove to the Y and ran on the treadmill.

Then I set out to tackle those boxes of slides that I mentioned on Day 67. The slides are exquisitely organized and cataloged into “groups” where a group is usually one trip, but sometimes a category. There is an index file that lists each group by number and topic and shows which box it is stored in, as well as a catalog that lists each slide by its group and serial number and its subject.

Over the past decade I’ve spent many hours scanning slides from various groups. I would inspect a group, and scan the slides that were either emotionally significant, or pictorially fine. For some groups that was most of them; other groups just a scattering. Those scans are now on my main computer as well as in the cloud. But now I need to get serious about finishing this job: looking through each unscanned group and deciding which, if any, slides in it deserve to be retained.

I made a copy of the index, and emboldened the entry for each group that hadn’t been scanned, and printed it out. There are 20 or so, for example group 102, “New England Fall 1972”. Sitting in a chair that faced a window, I popped each slide into a hand-held viewer and made fast editorial decisions. No; no; no; don’t care; why’d we keep that; no; hm that’s nice; no;… I set aside a few to scan. On to the next group.

I’d gone through quite a few when Marian’s sister Jean arrived at 1pm. I’d asked her over to go through the memorabilia I had that was purely Lacrampe family stuff. Jean’s attitude toward old stuff is very pragmatic (the Lacrampe women are all unsentimental). Anything she wants to keep, she scans into her computer, “then I toss it.” For this exercise we went through several piles of stuff, mostly pictures. She recognized most of them. “I’ve got that. I have that. Huh, I’m not sure I have that, I’ll take it and scan it.” I set aside a few pictures of Marian that I didn’t have already. Jean built up a pile of 25 or 30 things to add to her collection. The great bulk went into the “recycle” pile.

The mound of pictures for the recycle bin.

The only part of this that had much emotional impact on me was going through a fat envelope of memorabilia from Marian’s trip around Europe. She toured Denmark, Italy and England for a month in 1960. In the folder were all the letters she’d exchanged with her mother and brother, and about 40 postcards which she’d bought along the way and used for notes on each day’s activities. Of course, I felt guilty consigning all this to the recycle bin. It crossed my mind that I could read all these letters, transcribe them into a text file, and have a complete journal of that trip. But then I thought about how the envelope had sat in a drawer in the closet for forty-plus years and, as far as I can recall, she never got it out to look at it. And, as far as transcribing it — there was nobody in the world better qualified to transcribe that material into a computer file than she! And she didn’t. And who now who would want to read it?

There’s a SWBB game at 6pm. Just time for a nap before that. Results tomorrow.

Day 66, various mishaps

Monday, 2/4/2019

It rained a lot through the night. But at 8am there was sunshine outside, and looking at the weather radar online, there were only a few green pixels and they seemed to be vanishing. So I went for a run. Just halfway through I noticed a charcoal-colored cloud looming over me, and rain started to fall. I kept jogging along getting wet but after a few blocks I decided to get a Lyft the rest of the way. I sheltered at Philz Coffee and started calling a Lyft. The selected car was several minutes away and not approaching fast, when I noticed the rain was tapering off. So I canceled the Lyft and resumed my run, arriving home wet but fine.

I had scheduled a mobile auto-detailing service to polish the Prius today, but yesterday evening they called to reschedule, citing the weather. So now my morning was open, and I decided to go and give blood. I’d had an email over the weekend saying my type was in short supply, and I was just coming eligible (I gave blood on day 6, so just over 8 weeks). I drove to Menlo Park and went through the very familiar check-in process, but there was a hitch. The last step is to take a drop of blood from a finger and check the red-cell count with a little machine. The machine said 11.9, and the lower limit for donation is 13.9.

This has happened before, several years ago. My doctor wasn’t concerned. I took iron supplements for a few months until at my next checkup, my labs showed normal hematocrit. She advised me to discontinue the iron then, as too much can be a problem.

Well, so I can’t donate blood today, or for the near future. I picked up some iron tabs on the way home. I’ll take one a day until mid-year, when I’ll get a routine physical. Probably my labs will be up then and I can try the donation again.

Back home, I launched into a different programming project and made good progress until late in the afternoon I decided to upgrade one of the libraries I depend on. Bad move. The installation process changed something and the library stopped working at all; and in trying to fix it, I did something else that messed up my whole development setup. Trying to fix that, I keep running into messages about “Your MacOS system is too old and is no longer supported.” I had been avoiding installing the latest OS on this laptop for at least two years (long story), although I had upgraded the other machines around the house. Now the lack of upgrades bites me. Well, I don’t want to go through an OS installation on this machine now, when the replacement laptop arrives Friday. I’ll want to spend time installing things on it, including the very latest OS level. I’ll rebuild my development environment there and proceed on that machine. Or maybe just move to the big iMac which is very up-to-date.

I went out to a restaurant for supper. I’ve got plenty of food at home; I just felt like going out (so there).

Day 63, tour and errands

Friday, 2/1/2019

Started the day with my third run of the week. I did a run rather than just a long walk because I didn’t exercise Thursday. Well, apart from four hours of pushing heavy machinery around, and stooping and standing, at Yosemite. Did yesterday’s blog post, then off to the museum to lead the 12pm tour group. Only five people initially, although three more joined on as we went along.

Drove to the credit union and deposited Marian’s life insurance check. Then to the cleaners, and the grocery store. At home, I found I’d received the Vite Ramen that I’d backed on Kickstarter months ago. Should I do a review for my youtube channel? Sure, why not? and I got out the camera and tripod and shot the material, and spent an hour with iMovie to edit it, and there we are.

I’ve been watching a lot of Adam Savage, both online and on his new Mythbusters series, and I’m afraid his hyperkinetic style is rubbing off on me.

Tomorrow is a big day, two ways. Mainly in the morning I get a tour of Webster House, the competition to Channing house. In the afternoon, a Stanford-Cal basketball game at Maples. Whee.

Day 61, book sorting etc

Wednesday, 1/30/2019

Went for a run and it felt good. It’s amazing how different these runs feel, when there is no obvious difference in any other factor. Same amount of sleep, same time of day, same air temperature, feeling just as healthy — but today I felt comfortable and confident and just cruised along. Monday it was a slog, effortful, not painful but felt right at the limit of my oxygen intake.

Back home I spent an hour going over my program to make sure all the copious comments — I wrote it in “literate” programming style so it reads like an article with code interspersed — were readable and accurate. Then I posted it to the learnPython subreddit and awaited the awed and admiring comments. Yeah. At the end of the day I had exactly one, and no up-votes. Pbtbtbtbtb…

Went to FOPAL with two more boxes of books, including a complete run of the “Miss Read” books. Well, maybe not a complete run, looking at that wiki page, but more than 25 of them. Two and a half hours with four people sorting and we could just about keep up with the stream of donors coming through the door. Made barely a dent in the 5-box high wall of boxes with books donated from previous days.

Day 59, a button and a money rethink

Monday, 1/28/2019

Started with a run, which was ok. Then ran a string of errands: to DiMartini’s for some fruit; stop at Trader Joe’s; stop at JoAnne’s Crafts; Piazza for a few other groceries. Wait, crafts?

My favorite jacket has a broken button. I’ve been keeping the jacket alive for years; in 2017 the lining started to fall apart and I paid to have it relined, as the shell is fine. I’ve replaced buttons on it before, the buttons on the cuffs tend to snag on things. Just as I decided to do something about this broken one, I realized that our collection of spare buttons went off in the sewing box that, along with the sewing machine, I gave away yesterday. There was probably a match for this button in it, but now it’s gone. Well, it’s not an odd button, I’ll get another. And I did, going into the craft store near Trader Joe’s, 5 minutes looking through the button racks, there was a card with buttons close enough to the originals. I spent longer waiting in line to check out than I did finding the button.

Home, put away groceries, sewed on new button. Fortunately I did not give away all the sewing equipment. There was a separate drawer where the pincushion, scissors, a few spools of thread lived. I actually had the thought yesterday to gather those up and dump them in the sewing kit, but decided no, hang onto basic tools I might use. And the next day I used them.

Money money money

While driving along earlier I’d been mentally reviewing what I wanted to talk about with our financial advisors — excuse me, my financial advisors — when we meet in March as scheduled. The most pressing issue I thought of was to address the change in income. In round numbers, Marian and I had a combined income of about $6000/month. Her social security and IBM pension were both higher than mine. Now that she’s gone, my monthly income is about $2000. But my expenses are only slightly reduced. (Food a bit less, one less person wanting shoes and clothing and books, etc., but those don’t add up to $500 per month. Utilities, insurance, maintenance all continue virtually unchanged.)

I’d got that far in my thinking when I realized that for at least two decades we had been living on that combined income and it had been just right: money out was usually equal to money in. If we took a trip or made some other big purchase we’d move money in from one of the investment accounts. But we never moved money back to an investment account. Net cash flow pretty close to zero.

Now, I realize, my net cash flow is roughly negative $3500/month. I’m not worried by this; I have ample reserves to make up the difference for many years to come. The question for the advisors will be, what accounts to take it from, and at what intervals. However, this realization that we’d been spending just what we made at $6000/month cast a whole new light on the analysis I made on Day 43.

Staying, Going

Back on Day 43 I did a rough calculation of how much it cost me to live right here, and I came to a number of $25,000 per year. But that can’t be right! Because for the past two decades Marian and I have been living right here and spending $72,000 a year, the amount of our combined pensions. We are not known for riotous living, either. No big parties. And the major vacations, and the two cars we bought over that span, were paid for out of investment accounts, not by saving up. So when I figured my cost of living I was low by a factor of almost three. I had to have been! Where did I go wrong?

Well, never mind that; what about the sticker shock I got, when I thought about the monthly costs of ILFs? They looked so expensive in comparison; the least expensive charging double what I thought I could live on.

They don’t look so expensive now, do they? As a couple we were living modestly on $6000/month. As a bachelor, history says I would need only a bit less, say $5000/month.

What does a 1BR unit at Channing House cost? $4650/month.

Hmmmm. Not such a rip-off after all.

Pulling chains

Sent some emails to people to remind them I’m waiting. To my niece to see if she wanted the china set. (She quickly replied with an apology, and no, they can’t use it.) To a friend who had a friend who might be able to appraise Marian’s jewelry. To a friend who has a friend at Webster house.

And a second email to the gallery in Monterey that I contacted on Day 53. You send an email using their web form, and you get a cheerful automated reply, “We’ll get right back to you.” But they don’t. I’m really forming a bad opinion of the art gallery business.

Computer stuff

Spent some time working on the computer. I need to transfer my game to Windows and package it there. I run Windows in a virtual machine in my “big” Mac system. But it’s been months since I fired up the virtual machines, and of course now Windows wants to update itself with months of maintenance. After the usual amount of fiddle-faddle and rebooting I got the job done, a working game on Windows.

Day 56, busy busy

Friday 1/25/2019

Started the day with a short run, only 25 minutes. Then after shower shave dress in my docent outfit (proper slacks and my official red Museum shirt) I sat down to clean up some deferred desk work.

One job was to get the form 1099R for Marian’s 2018 pension into PDF form. All the other 1099’s (of which there are 8 total) arrive as PDFs, or are downloadable from the provider, Schwab or whoever. But this one arrived in the mail as paper, and I need it as a PDF with the others to submit to our tax accountant. Well, not a big deal. That’s why we have an “all in one” printer that copies and scans. But I’ve never actually scanned off this printer. Just on instinct I opened the Mac Preview app, which is Apple’s swiss army knife for documents, looked under the File menu, and there it was: “import from scan” with a submenu listing the attached printer. Two minutes later, badda-boom badda-bing, PDF.

Next job was to call VIA Benefits, the IBM health agency. I want to know that Marian’s account is properly closed. I called them first on Day 13 when they couldn’t talk to me because they needed proof I was Marian’s executor. I’d sent a packet of proof then. So I called again today. The pleasant phone rep “Candy” told me she couldn’t talk to me because blah blah, I said, but I sent blah blah, she says, oh I see on the file a note here, the legal department said the document was “missing page three” so it wasn’t complete.

Rubbish, I did not say to Candy. I just had her verify the address to send, hung up, and prepared a new packet of copies of Marian’s will, death certificate, etc etc, making sure that every page was copied. Had it all addressed and sealed when I realized, her will names “my spouse” as executor. So I opened the package and added a copy of our marriage certificate just to prove that I was the “spouse” in question.

Then it was time to go to the museum to lead a tour, stopping at a post office on the way to mail that packet. It was a light day at the museum and my tour group numbered only four. I asked, they were not in a hurry, so I deliberately took it slow, made a couple of extra stops. Ran over the allotted hour by 20 minutes, but they stuck with me.

Did this post, and now I’m going to run up to Belmont and get a quote on a dash-cam. Later… Yes, I have booked installation of a nice dash cam for February 5th. I mean to get the car waxed soon, too.

I’m going to close out this blog post. Tonight at 6, I and another Stanford WBB fan are going to drive to San Jose, to Mitty HS, to see a highly-touted Stanford recruit play. I’ll tell about that tomorrow.

Day 54, haircut and FOPAL

Wednesday, 1/23/2019

Went for a run in the chilly morning. At 11, departed to get a haircut from Chris, just like on Day 18. There was this difference: as I pulled into the Ladera Shopping Center parking lot, I automatically scanned for open slots near to the top — just as I had twenty or more times over the last two years or so, parking to minimize the distance for Marian to walk. And suddenly realized, wait a minute: I can walk just fine. I don’t need to park close to the entrance. I can sashay across the length of the parking lot with no difficulty. And pulled into the first available spot.

Claiming my new life. I never felt any resentment at Marian’s limited mobility, or the limitations it forced on us both. If I thought about it at all, I admired her matter-of-fact, dignified acceptance. This is how I am now, was her attitude, and this is how we deal with it. Parking close to your destination, avoiding stairs, skipping activities that needed many steps — these was just ways the partnership operated.

But I’m living a new life now, and it has pluses and minuses. One of the advantages is that I no longer need to compromise with limited mobility. (Well, for now. How long will I be freely mobile?) Today I consciously realized that advantage.

I loaded two cartons of books and went to FOPAL where I sorted for 2 and a half hours. Afterward I drove down to say hello to Jean. I took a bag of books. When she was at the house last, she took all of Marian’s Tory Hayden books (Hayden wrote books about saving troubled children). Well, that was a genre that Marian had loved. Cleaning out the next shelf I found another dozen books of a similar kind by other authors. Now I brought that bag of books to her and we chatted a bit.

Day 52, Grief blips

Monday, 1/21/2019

By and large my emotions have been pretty upbeat and calm for a while now. What earlier on I called grief spasms have not been a problem, and I haven’t been troubled by that anxious “day late and a dollar short” feeling for some time. Which is all to the good. But there are little blips of grief that pop up from two sources. One is doing something that we did together, now for the first time alone.

Today I went out for groceries and went to DiMartini’s fruit & veg place in Los Altos, for the first time as a bachelor. For the last several years we always made that the first stop on our habitual Sunday grocery round. Marian loved that they provide samples of all the fruit. She enjoyed tasting all the different varieties of pear, for example, to decide which to buy. I wanted to go to DiMartini’s because I’ve been stocking grapes and oranges to eat with my meal replacement drinks for variety, and I’ve been unhappy with the quality I got at our usual grocery store. But walking around DiMartini’s, sampling fruit, without Marian, was… rough.

The other thing, that pops up quickly and annoyingly often, is my instant, unthinking reaction when I see something that she would have enjoyed. One of the plants alongside the path to the door is going nuts, popping up a mass of new sprouts and already showing buds. (I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even remember its name.) Every time my eye falls on this over-achiever the thought, “Oh, she’ll love that” starts to run through my mind and bangs into a wall of reality. I’m afraid spring is going to bring more of these.

I went for a run this morning, it went well, 45 non-stop minutes of my pathetically slow pace. But it is a jog, not a walk, that I’m doing. Then shower and shave and dress and go for the groceries. While putting away the groceries my eye fell on the bottom shelf of the door of the fridge. This shelf is kind of overhung and shadowed by the larger pockets of the door where we put eggs and milk and salad dressing and such. I had cleaned out those pockets earlier, during the first week as it came home to me that I’d never be cooking a “real” dish again. I kept the capers and the mustard and the mayo, though, because I’ve been making myself tuna salad, but a lot of things like tomato paste and lime juice and so forth went out.

Now I’m looking at the bottom shelf and realizing it is kind of a black hole where little-used bottles went for retirement. I emptied it of six or eight bottles of stuff: maple syrup (been at least 2 years since we made pancakes), molasses (no idea when last used), hoisin sauce (what? must have had a recipe that needed it, but which, and how long ago?), karo syrup… Emptied them all down the sink with hot water and put the containers in the recycle. (There’s a whole closet shelf of canisters with various pastas and such that I need to tackle, but not today.)

Blog post, then out to do a docent tour; the museum is open this MLK holiday and docents were asked to please try to cover. If anything happens I’ll update or add to tomorrow’s entry.

Day 46, taxes and books and a painting

After yesterday’s writing, I packed up two boxes of books to take to FOPAL on Wednesday. This consisted mostly of bird books and birding-related books. I had no idea we had so many books about birds and birding. Marian had accumulated them over the years; I recognized only a couple. I’ve no intention of ever spotting another bird; that was her hobby that I supported but didn’t really enjoy. So losing those books is another shard of the prior life, but not one that caused much emotion. Well, a little — when I riffled the page of her most-used birding guide and saw all the check marks and notes in her handwriting of what species we’d seen and where.

Another half-box was the books by and about Arthur Ransome that I mentioned back on Day 35. I received the two additional, $1 books that I ordered then. Now I arrayed them all on the table and sat down with eBay to see what prices such books were getting. And quickly realized that my collection was still incomplete, there was one more novel and at least two more popular biographies that I didn’t have. So much for selling a complete bookshelf. I put the books in the box for FOPAL.

Except for one. Most of the books are paperback, but one is cloth-bound, and on looking inside I realized it was a first edition, or at least a first American printing, dated 1942. Similar Ransome hardbacks are on eBay for $50 and up, so I took some pictures and put it up on eBay. We’ll see.

Got an email from Craig wondering if I wanted to visit Channing house or not. Very timely, given how I’d just put my ILF decision back on track, so in a quick exchange we agreed to meet Saturday afternoon.

The rest of the afternoon, I added yet another feature to my program, and to my delight, the new feature worked exactly right first try. So that wrapped day 45 nicely.

Wednesday, 1/16/2019

Went for a run, it was OK. Back home did some desk stuff. Paid a credit card bill. Created the folder to hold all the tax info for 2018, using the 2017 folder as a model. Key item here is to download the PDF copies of a total of eight form 1099-Rs, from all the various accounts we have that generate those (two Social Security, two pension, four brokerage). Made a checklist of all the tasks to do going forward with the taxes. That doesn’t really get busy until February.

Booked myself to attend the PAC-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament, in Las Vegas March 7-10. Bought one reserved seat, booked a hotel room, booked the flights. This will be the first time I’ve traveled anywhere as a bachelor, and indeed the first flight since… I think since October 2017 when we returned from NYC. Hopefully the gummint shutdown will be over by March?

In the mail: the official document from the Neptune Society, stating that Marian was “respectfully delivered to the sea” on January 10th. I have to say, the Neptune Society has been a class act the whole way, supportive, responsive, professional. I’m glad we signed with them all those years ago.

One of the items I want to get rid of is this painting: 4337722_orig

We commissioned this; it was actually painted for us; we met with Dean Linsky (click the link to see his website) in Yosemite Valley in 2004 and walked around with him pointing out features we liked. A couple of months later the painting arrived, and it has been on our wall ever since.

Looking forward I don’t want to try to house it in a small apartment. Linsky’s work is marketed mostly through New Masters Gallery in Carmel. I’d like to consign it there for sale, but I’ve been having a hard time getting any info out of them by email. So today I called up and spoke directly to the gallery owner, Bill Hill. I have to say, Bill’s telephone manners are abrupt. Although his gallery has been in business for years, he’s clearly not a salesman type. I emphasized how I would have to depend on his expertise to know what the painting would go for, and at his request sent a cell-phone shot of it again by email. Maybe this time he’ll look at it.

Anyway, off to FOPAL, taking two boxes of books. And home for a quiet evening.

Day 39, Consultation

Wednesday, 1/9/2019

Had a good run, that is, one where I didn’t need to stop anywhere. Then headed out to

A meeting

as arranged, with Alan Brauner of Senior Seasons, a referral agency for senior living facilities. Alan turned out to genial, frank and seemed to be well-informed on all the local facilities. We went over my particular desires, and he promised to get back to me with details on several places he thought would suit me.

One thing I learned from this talk was the two classes of facility. One is the “buy-in” type, where you pay what he referred to as an “exorbitant” fee, effectively purchasing your unit, as you might a condo. The advantages of this arrangement are two. One, you have purchased some form of a real-estate property, and in theory you (or more likely your heirs) can sell that when you don’t need it. His experience with the buy-in home that his parents retired to, however, was that the contract was so written that the facility kept a good share of the capital gain on the sale. When his parents died, their estate realized only a few percent more than the initial purchase cost.

The other advantage of a buy-in is that you lock in a monthly rental — oh yes, despite buying in, you still pay a monthly fee in the thousands of dollars — which will not increase even if you need a higher level of care. Channing House, where my distant acquaintance Craig lives, is a buy-in facility. I mean to contact Craig and get a tour, and if it seems appropriate, I’ll grill him a bit on what he paid and what he gets for it.

The other style of facility is month-to-month. You make no commitment other than to give 30 days’ notice before moving out. (Well, I imagine there are longer leases available.) You are renting an apartment with full services (“like being on a cruise”, Alan said) for a monthly fee. You don’t own anything, so there’s nothing to come back to your estate; and while some are “continuing care”, that is, providing various levels of assistance, the monthly charge goes up with the level of service needed.

I headed home to

Kill the freezer

What? Well, for several nights I have been annoyed by the noise of my refrigerator, which is separated from the bed by one wall. The circulating fan in the freezer has developed a buzz. The fridge is old, in fact (referring to our Home Inventory spreadsheet) we bought it in 2000. (All of our appliances are of similar vintage. ISMISEP!) I had replaced the fan in the freezer several years back; now it was buzzing again.

When it was keeping me awake around 4am, it suddenly occurred to me: why am I keeping that freezer compartment going anyway? There’s nothing in it but ice. Previously we’d “cook for the freezer” a couple of times a year, filling it with containers of home-made soups and stews. Then we’d take an entrée from the freezer once a week or so. Well, those were all gone, and won’t be replaced. Marian kept a couple of gel-pads in the freezer to use on her back, but I tossed those old pads in my semi-hysterical clean-out on Day 1. The freezer compartment is empty except for a few odds and ends of leftovers that frankly, I don’t want to eat.

So, back home from my meeting, I put the the food items from the freezer in the green recycle and turned the freezer thermostat to off. I strongly suspect my electric bill will go down. I know I’ll sleep better.

Then it was off to FOPAL for a sorting shift. Wow that is a workout: on my feet and continually moving for 2+ hours, shifting heavy boxes of books around. This weekend is the first of the bi-weekly sales of the year. Most section managers have loaded their shelves and declared a “hold” on their subject, meaning that when a box of “History” of “Nature” books fills up, we can’t take it to the sale room as usual. It has to be stacked in the sorting area, the center of which is now dominated by a mountain of boxes, leaving less and less room to walk around. People showed up at the door with more books every few minutes. Three sorters could pretty much keep up with the flow.

On the way home I stopped at Goodwill and handed in a bag with the last remnants of Marian’s stuff and a few items of my own I’d culled from my side of the closet.

By 5pm I’d received an email from Alan, listing seven facilities he thought might interest me, with details on their costs and amenities. Well, as I emphasized to him, I’m in no hurry. I’ll look at those maybe this weekend.