Day 345, paperwork, novel, supper

Tuesday, 11/12/2019

Went for a run. Then took care of some admin. First, scheduled a payment to the BofA credit card. It will go through tomorrow, so from Thursday on it will have a zero balance and I will close it out.

About two weeks ago–I don’t see any mention of it here–I went to the MyMedicare site and did plan comparisons on my health plans. I found that the Anthem/Blue Cross prescription drug plan appeared to be a significantly better deal than the Humana one I’d been using since 2007, so I opted for that. Soon after I got a letter from Medicare saying my application should be processed in ten days, and if I hadn’t heard, to contact the provider. It has been more than ten days, so I did.

Annoyances: I tried to use the Chat facility on the Anthem site. It kept showing me that some person had connected, enter a message, then that they had disconnected, then went back to showing me “a representative will be with you shortly.” Tried two browsers. So called the number shown. Very short menu: 1 to buy a new plan, 2 for an existing plan, 3 for a provider. OK, 2. Thank you, as a member, please call the customer service number on the back of your membership card, goodbye. But… but… OK, try again, this time select 1. Lady takes my name, address, date of birth; says, well you have called the medicare purchase line, but I see you in our system (oh good) let me transfer you to the medicare service line. Which works but of course, that lady also has to take my name, address, date of birth because heaven forfend the info should transfer along with me.

Anyway, yes, my application is in the system, a membership card was mailed to me on 11/5, and a welcome packet should arrive separately but soon. So all good.

After lunch I added 1300 words to the novel.

At 4:30 it was time to attend the 4th floor meeting. Each floor has regular meetings to cover whatever domestic items come up. There’s an elected floor rep who chairs the meeting. (I first attended a 6th floor meeting back on day 156, after I’d signed the contract but before I moved in.) Fourth floor meeting was to be followed by 4th floor eating dinner together, they’d reserved a large table. But Craig, the 6th floor rep had also reserved a table for a 6th-floor-in-exile get-together dinner, so I ate with them.

Day 341, Docent, printing

Friday, 11/8/2019

Went for a run. Do not remember (now, 24 hours later) what I did between then and 11am when I left for the Museum to do the 12pm tour. There was a Go Language conference on the upper floors, and those people had filled the parking lot, but in fact museum attendance proper on the ground floor was very light. My tour group was just six people. But they stuck with me the whole way.

Back at the “land-locked cruise ship” I took a short nap and then (anything to avoid actually writing) made some notes on the next phase of the novel, then spent an hour printing big pictures on my new printer. It does very nice, 11×14 prints. It would do 11×17 if I only had any paper that size.

That was about it; for supper I took one of my cans of beer to drink, big whoop.

Day 337, A/V, welding, novel, photos

Monday, 11/4/2019

Went for a run in the morning. Did not remember to wear a sweatshirt, but the temperature was just high enough — and with the time change, there was enough sun shining on my back — that I didn’t miss it.

Next up was my first assignment running the audio/visual for a performance, in this case a talk by George Marotta. This was nominally a “Book Talk” and a review of Dereliction of Duty by General (Ret.) H.R. McMaster. But George, who was in Viet Nam in 1957 working for the US Aid program, just in time for the Tet Offensive, talked a lot about his own experiences. For example, while working in the State Department under Robert McNamara, George was responsible for administering the program run by the Rand Corporation, including working with a Rand employee named Daniel Ellsberg. He reminisced about how McNamara was insistent that Rand was to keep very good records, which they did, and those documents ultimately were published by Ellsberg as The Pentagon Papers.

Anyway, I got the screen and projector and mics all set up and the presentation went off quite smoothly.

A few days ago, I noticed an object on the balcony outside the common lounge on this 4th floor: a wrought-iron plant stand. It has 6 pot shelves arranged in a climbing spiral around a central pole, the whole being 4’8″ high and a bit under 2′ wide. It’s dirty, rusty, and has two broken welds that make it unstable. I asked around and eventually found the lady who said she owned it, who said I was welcome to it if I wanted to fix it up.

Yesterday I used Yelp to find a local welding shop. Today I brought the car around front, lowered the rear seat, and brought out the stand, which fit in the Prius just fine. And off to Mountain View to a modest little hole in the wall where the guy said, sure, I can fix that, tomorrow morning ok? Which fits my schedule perfectly.

Back to CH where I spent an hour making progress with the novel. Added 700 words, mostly well-chosen.

Then I spent an hour going through my collection of pictures and picking out candidates that have enough pixels, and enough photographic quality, that they are worth trying to print at 11×14 or 11×17, with my new printer. Way back in April (Day 149, for one) I started the project of printing my best images for framing. I’ve got a half-dozen of those framed here in the closet now. Just after the estate sale, I found a box of 11×14 frames in the garage — something that Deborah had brought in to sell, I suppose, and left — and appropriated them. Now I have a printer that can do 11×14 or 11×17, and I have some 11×14 photo paper. My eventual aim is to have a photo wall, outside my 6th floor apartment. Each occupant “owns” the hallway wall outside their apartment. People put up all sorts of art. I’ve got it in mind to put up printed photos, a rotating collection of 4 or 6 at a time.

Tomorrow is a busy, busy day. And so to bed.

Day 334, not much

Friday, 11/1/2019

Went for a run, remembering to wear a jacket, which I was glad for. Well, people in serious parts of the world would laugh, but a morning temp under 60º is chilly, here.

At 10am there was a meeting where 6th floor people shared experiences of their move-out with 5th floor people who are about to begin the preparation for move-out. I had nothing much to say, since my move was so smooth: not a lot of possessions, moving to a unit with nearly the same floor plan.

What happened the rest of the day? I remember avoiding writing for most of the afternoon. I am in a bad relationship to my novel just now. I spent a little time getting back to speed on Lisp and reading further in that textbook.

At suppertime when I went downstairs, I found the odor of the “catch of the day” to be powerful and offensive. And nothing else on the menu looked attractive. So I left, got in my car, and drove to Mike’s cafe for a light supper, followed by ice cream from across the street in Midtown.

Day 330, Shingrex, FOPAL, book, fugue

Monday, 10/28/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 327, SWBB event

Friday, 10/25/2019

Began the day with a run. Futzed around the rest of the morning doing I don’t remember what. Feeling guilty about not working on my book, for one thing.

Let me catch up on one thing. Two days ago, when I was printing 34 pages of the SWBB season tickets, I thought about how that would be affecting the ink cartridges in the printer. The Epson Expression 630 has been a stalwart companion for a couple of years now. It works just fine as a copier, a scanner, a document printer, and, thanks to having five colors, a decent photo printer. Two drawbacks. One, it uses fairly expensive ink cartridges, and it is hard keeping them in stock because they always run out on different schedules, magenta this week, cyan next month, etc. Two, it won’t print paper larger than 8.5×11. I think in future I would like to be able to print photos larger.

Both problems are answered by the Epson Expression ET7750. It uses large ink bottles and “comes with 2 years of ink”. And it prints on paper up to 11 inches wide. I have had that on my list of things to buy because I feel wealthy. A few weeks back I bought the better sound bar from that list. On Thursday I pulled the trigger on the printer, and it should arrive Saturday. Then I’ll have to get rid of the 630, which has plenty of life left in it, now that I’ve cleaned the excess ink out of it (Day 283). Probably somebody around here will want it. The only thing left on the “because I can afford it” list is a new TV and I really have a hard time justifying that for any reason other than that.

At 1:15 I started for Maples Pavilion and the Stanford Women’s Basketball season kickoff event. The day had turned warm (the car said the exterior temp was 91º, in October? really?) and there was no parking to be found anywhere near Maples. Walking to the garage I had the passing thought, maybe take Lyft? and now regretted not having followed through on it. Eventually parked near The Bing, a nice quarter-mile walk to Maples.

The event was first, to watch a practice, and after, to have refreshments in the lobby and hear Tara answer questions. The practice was a first chance to see the new freshmen, who look very good, ready to go. And to refresh my memory of the older players. Kiana Williams looked especially sharp. This team has the potential to reach the finals, I think.

Another perennial question is, is Tara Vanderveer still game-ready? She is 66, and there are always rumors she’ll retire soon. She did not look at all like retiring, or even show her age much. I think she’s good for several more years.

Day 325, FOPAL, theft, theater

Wednesday, 10/23/2019

Went for a run, sans sweatshirt as the weather has warmed up again. After that I wrote another long detailed note to the CHBB for MacOS users. Yesterday’s email had made the point about “your old 32-bit apps won’t run under the next release,” but that just raised the question, “which of my apps are 32-bit ones?”

Turns out it is quite simple to find out, but not obvious. So I wrote up how to do that: how to get your mac to list the 32-bit apps, so you could go down the list and decide which ones you actually use, so you can start trying to get upgraded 64-bit versions of them.

The big issue here is Adobe software. When Adobe went to the ~~highway robbery~~ excuse me, subscription model, a lot of people didn’t bother to subscribe. They just kept using the last version of Photoshop, InDesign, LightRoom that they had actually purchased on CD, which is the “CS5” edition. They work perfectly well. Unfortunately they are all 32-bit apps and will quit working when you next upgrade your OS. So you have the choice of paying Adobe an annual subscription, after which you can download the latest versions (and learn their modified UIs); or you can look for alternative products and learn a whole new app. I didn’t cover all that in the email; just how to find out what your 32-bit apps are.

About 10 I went to FOPAL. Well, first to the grocery store next door, where I bought about $15 worth, including some grapes and the sugar-free drinks I like to stock. I put them in the fancy canvas shopping bag that I had brought back as a souvenir from Mykonos, on the front seat of the car. And left the windows open.

I worked the computer section and then sorted until about 12, when I went back out to the car to have some lunch and chill out for a while. And guess what? My bag of groceries was gone. Some creep had reached in and taken my bag. I hope they were disappointed with what they got. I hope they choke on a grape. I really miss that bag, it was well-made and had a trendy hotel name on it.

After a while I went back in and did sorting during the 2-4pm open hours. Then back to CH to relax for an hour before dinner. I finished eating at 6:15 and left for the theater. I had tickets to TheaterWorks’ Mark Twain’s River of Song at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. It’s basically a concert of early American music, around the theme of a trip down the Mississipi, conducted by Mark Twain remembering his riverboat days.

This was not very good, and I left at intermission. There were several problems. The first was that the performers really weren’t very good, either as singers or musicians; just average living room performers, mostly. They played banjo, guitar and fiddle, but at no point did anybody try to solo on an instrument; the kind of musicianship you get in any bluegrass group was absent. With one exception their voices were average to weak; the exception being Valisia LeKae, who has an excellent alto voice and can really act.

Second problem was the staging. This was a small show, just six people sitting or standing around, no dancing, little movement. If it were presented in a small theater like the Pear or even Lucy Stern in Palo Alto, it might come across better. But the MVCPA stage is enormous, it’s a huge room, and this little group was kind of huddled in the middle. The big stage emphasized how average (and also static) the performances were.

Day 323, long busy day

Monday, 10/21/2019

Started the day with a run, wearing a light jacket which I really didn’t need, but at least, I did remember. Then off to FOPAL where I processed four boxes of computer books, and did a little sorting.

From there I drove to the Alpine Inn to meet Scott and Denny for lunch. Google maps had pointed out to me a route I wouldn’t have thought of, but which worked great. FOPAL is just off Charleston road, which turns into Arastradero, which meanders into the hills and ends up exactly at the Alpine Inn. Parts of that I had bicycled many times, but I just didn’t think of it in terms of a car route.

Well, come to find out Alpine Inn isn’t open on Mondays! So we adjourned to a restaurant in Ladera shopping center where we chatted for about 2 hours? A long time. Well, Denny chatted. I had not seen him since, roughly, 1979. He has had an interesting life (in both the real and sarcastic senses of the word), has many stories, which he tells well.

Back at CH I didn’t even have time for a nap before it was time for chorus practice. I am still not persuaded I have anything to offer there, but Mary the leader and organizer is very persuasive, positive and encouraging, really a model of a group leader. I’ll keep attending for now.

Out of that, I had only a few minutes before it was time to grab my hat and head out for the evening. As I planned out in detail the day before: I walked to the Palo Alto train station and caught the southbound 5:56, which makes only one stop before reaching Diridon station in San Jose. Walked out of the station and caught a Lyft across to South 1st, where I had a delicious burger and shake at Johnny Rocket’s.

This was a sniffly emotional nostalgia trip, really. For several years before it died, we had season tickets to San Jose Repertory Theater. Marian and I would drive down, park at a garage on 4th street, walk past the theater to Johnny Rocket’s for indulgent burgers and shakes, then walk back to the Hammer Theater for the play. So I was recapping old haunts.

The event this time was the dance troup Momix, which specializes in using props, costumes, and lighting effects — along with spectacular dance and gymnastic skills — to create rather jaw-dropping routines. This video has samples of some, including several that I saw this night. It was good stuff.

I had worked out that if the show let out by 9:15 I would be able to Lyft back to the train and catch one back to Palo Alto, but if later than that, I’d just Lyft all the way home. It was, and I did.

Day 320, non-docent, pictures, eyelid news

Friday, 10/18/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 316, eyelid, FOPAL

Monday, 10/14/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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