Day 115, glasses, FOPAL, burger

Wednesday, 3/27/2019

Started with a run, 37 minutes, felt fine. I’m sure I did something for the next two hours, but don’t remember what. At noon I set out to take care of a thing that had been bugging me for three months. For all that time, two pairs of Marian’s glasses have been lying in their cases on a bedroom dresser. I’d see them, think, “trash them”, then “no, donate them”, then “but where?” and then “deal with it later”. Over and over for 100-odd days now.

Well, yesterday I finally got around to an internet search for where to donate used eyeglasses. Everybody knows the Lions Club has that as their special charity, but it turns out they don’t have any local drop-off points. Further searching reveals all LensCrafters stores accept glasses for their OneSight program. And I know where there’s a LensCrafters. So I drove to Menlo Park and dropped off the glasses. Done.

From there I went to FOPAL and did 3+ hours of sorting. That’s damn hard work. I counted; I moved about 35 bankers-boxes of books from sorting to the sales room. I didn’t count the books I handled, but it was a lot. Per the Health app I walked 4.7 miles, 12,000 steps yesterday. A bit less than half of that would have been my run, but a lot was going around and around the sorting and sales rooms with boxes and cart-loads of books.

They really handle an amazing quantity of books. One cheerful donor yesterday brought in 25 boxes, which pretty much wiped out the gains we sorters had made in the hour previous. The donations vary immensely. Some people drop off boxes with mostly recent hard-covers. Or a box will have somebody’s accumulation of years of computer reference books (Windows XP Secrets, How to use MS-DOS, etc.). Yesterday there were a couple of boxes of very old paperbacks, many with cover prices of 50 cents and 75 cents. That keeps the sorting process interesting; you never know what the next box will have.

At 4:30 I left, stopping to buy a few grocery items. I decided to go and eat out for a change. Specifically, I decided, a burger and a beer. I went to Kirk’s Steakburgers in the Town and Country shopping center, but when I walked in, their drinks fridge had no beer. “Yeah, we ran out,” the counter person said. Well, a beer was an integral part of my plan so, feeling distinctly curmudgeonly, I turned around and left. Now what? Ah! I drove back to California Avenue and (with difficulty) found a parking place, and went to The Counter, where in fact I sat at the counter and had a beer and a burger.

When I got home I was quite tired; watched a little TV and went to bed at 9:30, and slept until 6, so that was good.

Day 113, jewelry, FOPAL, basketball

Monday, 3/25/2019

Began the week with a run, 40 minutes of my 4.5mph pace, felt just fine. I had a list of things to get done. One was that Louise was coming with the jewelry she’d taken for appraisal, at 10:30. Two were online, so I did them while waiting. One was to review my museum schedule and sign up for docent tours for the month of April.

The other was to go to Apple’s trade-in page, and arrange to trade in three Macs for apple store credit. The process is simple; you enter the serial number of the device and answer a few questions about its condition. Then their recycling vendor sends you an email to confirm, and later a custom box to return the device. When it is received, you get a gift card in the amount. I’m returning Marian’s old Air, which was made in 2006, I learned after entering the serial number. Got lots of good use out of that one! The other two are my old 2011 MacBook Pro, and Marian’s 2017 iMac which sits on her desk. (It was a recent replacement for a Mac mini that served her a long time; and it was preceded by a Cube — remember the Apple Cube?)

I realized from the email that the return offer is only good for 21 days. I’m not sure I’ll be ready to send off the iMac in 21 days. I use it for all financial stuff, bank statements, reviewing brokerage accounts, credit card bills. Just because the Chrome browser in that system knows all the passwords for those accounts and fills them in. Silly! I have the passwords; there’s no danger of getting locked out. I can do that work equally well from laptop Godot or my big iMac.

Louise texted she’d be an hour late, so I zipped out in the car to take care of two more items. One was to go to the Stanford ticket office and make sure that my WBB season ticket account was alright. Yup, it turns out I had indeed unsubscribed from emails from them (while shutting down all Marian’s email subscriptions). That’s why I never had a chance to buy a good seat for this weekend’s games. Fixed now.

The other job was to return some fluorescent bulbs to the hardware store for recycling. Back home, I had an email from Canopy about the memorial tree planting for Marian, now with a time and other info. So I composed an email to the people who wanted to attend. While I was working on that, Louise showed up. So I answered the door sniffling and had to go blow my nose before talking to her. She’s done a marvelous job documenting Marian’s bling. We talked about how to sell some of it, and she will get back to me with more info.

After she’d gone, I headed out, first to Office Depot because I wanted to see what kind of office furniture they had. For the new place, I want some kind of cabinet to set the printer on, with space for printer stationery and hopefully a file drawer. And I looked at desks, because initially I’d been thinking I’d keep Marian’s desk, but now I’m inclined to want something a little lighter, more open. Office Depot stuff didn’t attract me. Ikea’s desks are better.

From there I stopped at FOPAL to check on the Computer section. There were several boxes waiting, so I culled them and priced the keepers. Two hours logged in the book. I learned something today about the bargain room, where I send the unsaleable Computer books. But time presses, I’ll record it later.

Had a few hours to relax and eat some supper; then it’s out to the Stanford second-round game against BYU. I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Day 103, many little tasks

Friday, 3/15/2019

Didn’t mention yesterday, that while I had planned to do the laundry today, I decided to start it last night, for no particular reason. Continued with the second load before sitting down to breakfast. Then out for a run, which went OK. On return, folded the two dry laundry loads and started the third one.

Sat down to do some desk work. Paid a credit card bill. Then edited and started the upload of the video I shot on Wednesday (and didn’t even mention in that blog post, I was so taken up with describing the FOPAL process). Anyway, the video is up and within an hour I had a comment, “another great video”, from one of my 150 or so subscribers. Yay me.

Got into the tax accountant’s workbook and I think I have entered all the data and uploaded all the 1099’s and other documents. I’ll hold off on the final click of “send to accountant” until after Tuesday’s meeting with the financial people.

Yesterday I got the official letter of acceptance from C.H. So I sent an email to Kim the marketing person asking when we should meet, and shortly got an invite to come in next Wednesday, after talking to my financial advisors.

Went out to ship that box containing the brown pitcher to Laurel, mail a letter, and pick up a couple of food items. Just love ticking off items on my to-do list!

Continued a productive day by scanning another batch of slides. Something happened here, and I’m not sure what. There was a train of thought where I was initially patting myself on the back for a good picture, and then realized that no, I could not have taken that, it had to have been taken by Marian. And some of the other slides were of trips we had taken in 1989, and 1992, and so on. And suddenly I was sniffling and for half an hour was not-quite-crying, in the strongest grief spasm I’ve had for a week or more.

I have a ticket for a play at Palo Alto Players for 8pm. It’s now almost time to depart, so I’ll report on that tomorrow.

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.

Day 92, C.H. application in

3/4/2019

Started with a run, usual length, felt good. Drove to the Los Altos clinic and picked up the paperwork Dr. Marx had prepared. Put it in an envelope with the other 8 pages of the C.H. application packet, and then decided I wanted to make a copy of the whole thing before turning it in.

Drove home via the grocery store, picking up a few items. My grocery shopping is very easy these days. Well, except for one thing. I’m getting about half my calories from a meal replacement that you mix partly with heavy cream. Most stores only carry heavy cream in 8oz units, but my Safeway has been carrying it in quart sizes. Only today they didn’t have it.

Copied the whole application packet, put it back in the envelope, and drove on over to C.H. to turn it in. I was going to ask Ms. Krebs a couple of trivial questions, but she was just sitting down with other clients, so I left the packet with the receptionist. So that deed is done. I hope to hear something back from them soon, but it could well be weeks.

Headed home for a session scanning old slides. While the scanner whined away I worked with the new laptop, Godot, downloading the apps that I use on the old laptop. Pretty soon I’ll be able to switch entirely to the new one.

Day 91 getting stuff done

Friday 3/1/2019

Started the day with a run, which went well. Usual distance, felt good. Then began doin’ stuff. Started the laundry. Paid a couple of bills. Sorted the tax folder and made up a spreadsheet (based on last year’s spreadsheet) of charitable contributions.

Cleared out another shelf of things. One thing in particular is a large brown-glazed earthenware pitcher in what I believe is called “piecrust” style, a supposed family heirloom. I can just make out words on the bottom, “THE BUCKEYE POTTERY MACOMB ILL”. I will look this up and see if it has any value. Then see if either a nephew or a niece wants it. What it certainly was, was dirty, from sitting for years on a shelf beyond the reach of the cleaning lady who’s rather short. So I washed it. Also on that shelf, two brass-colored (pot metal) candlesticks of no value, threw them out. And two large pine-scented candles in tins which were last lit for Christmas… 2000? I think?

Then cleared off the spice racks. Back on Day 2 or 3 I realized, I’m never going to cook again. In fact I do cook but in a very casual way: fry up a couple strips of bacon and two eggs in the grease. Chop up some fruit for a compote. Height of sophistication: the other night I sliced up an apple and cooked it in a dish in the microwave, and sprinkled cinnamon on it.

But nothing that needs spices beyond salt, pepper, butter and, ok, the cinnamon was nice. But we had many many other spices. Here’s all the jars after I finished emptying them.

Note that one in the middle with a date on it? We would acquire spices for some particular recipe, and put the jar on the shelf until it was needed again. Every once in a while I’d get suspicious about the age of some spice and I’d mark the date it was refreshed. Here’s a couple I noticed. You can see how in 2016 I said, this allspice doesn’t smell of anything! (And no wonder, since it was then almost old enough to vote!) So we got some fresh and I updated the label. Anyway, that felt kind of good, to get all those aging spices out of there. I also dumped the canisters of flour and cornmeal and put them in the dishwasher. Only one full canister left, granulated sugar. I don’t eat it myself but I need it to keep filling the hummingbird feeders.

With the laundry all dried and folded I took a short nap, then went to work scanning old slides. I believe I said, somewhere back in the several days of nattering about slides, that I was only keeping the ones that were emotionally significant, or were excellent photographs on their own. Here’s one of the latter. g802p001 looking at faberge eggs in Gumps window christmas 1979

The story here is that around Christmas 1979 Marian remembered how when she was a child the family sometimes went into the City to look at the store window displays. So we did that, walked the streets of downtown SF in winter darkness, and saw a display of Fabergé eggs in the window of Gump’s. I looked down and saw this girl and grabbed this shot. I don’t claim any skill here, but that is one of those fortuitous compositions that just works, every angle is just right, the line of shadow, the angle of her gaze, the line of the hair ribbon — it just all fits. And it has been sitting unnoticed in the slide box in the closet since… 1980?

I got a bit sidetracked at that point, spending the better part of an hour trying to get my printer to produce something like the color tones of the digital image, on some quality paper I have. (Shit, I wonder when I bought that box of quality photo paper? This millenium, I’m sure.)

Now, coming up on 5pm, I have the option of staying home to stream the SWBB game at WSU, or going to a Stanford baseball game. Well, I can keep in touch with the progress of the basketball on my phone, at the baseball game. But what’s the weather going to do? Answer tomorrow.

Day 84, slides and a game

Friday, 2/22/2019

Started the day with a run but had some foot pain so cut the distance short. Finished reviewing all the slide groups. I have selected perhaps 150 total out of… I am not going to try to estimate accurately, but several thousands. Today I looked at some I am sure have not been seen since they were filed in the box, shortly after they were taken in the 80s or 90s. One group, from the Oughts, is a series that Marian took of me, before and after the operation to replace my aortic valve. I don’t think I had ever seen them.

In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours actually scanning and processing slides. Over several years and hundreds of scans I have polished that work flow down to a smooth pattern. I won’t go into it now. But it appears I can finalize 10 slides an hour, so the whole pile that’s beside my desk now should take about 15-20 hours total. Two weeks max. And then, I expect, I will dump about a bushel basket of slides representing 46 years of photography (the earliest slide in the collection is from 1973) into the garbage.

While I was eating an early supper, Dennis called and suggested we see a movie Saturday evening, so we made that date. Then I was off to a SWBB game against the Arizona Wildcats.

The game was a whole lot closer than any Stanford fan would like. They trailed by four with two minutes to play. With 29 seconds left, Alanna hit a three to give Stanford a 2-point lead. On defense, Stanford committed a foul, but the Arizona player missed both free throws and Stanford controlled the rebound. All Stanford had to do was hang onto the ball and let Arizona foul them, but with 10 seconds to go, they turned it over. Now the Wildcats had the ball. With one second to go, their best player put up a three-point shot. It hit the inside of the rim, rolled around three-quarters of the inner circumference of the basket — and popped out. Buzzer; game over; Stanford wins.

Day 82, FOPAL, haircut, groceries

Wednesday, 2/21/2019

Pretty routine day. Started with a run. Reviewed a couple of big slide groups. Not many left, now.

Drove to our long-time hairdresser, Chris, to trim my increasingly thin hair. Really not a lot left, but what there is, looks better for being cut. Chris said she had been going over her recipe file and had noticed how many of her recipes she had gotten from Marian. Over the years the two of them swapped recipes often.

Down to FOPAL a bit early so started sorting at 1:30 and didn’t leave until 4:30. Bought some groceries and was surprised when the bill came to $70, probably the most I’ve spent on food since December. Well, some stock items like a big brick of cheddar at $15 which will last two or more weeks.

Relaxing in my chair, the doorbell announces a visit from neighbor Pat, just stopping by to see how I am. We chat for a few minutes about this and that.

The evening’s entertainment is watching an episode of “Brokenwood Mysteries“, not on the DVR but streamed on Amazon Prime. I like that series and am pleased to see from that Wikipedia link that it has been renewed for another season. But with me watching streamed stuff, TV is stacking up on the DVR; I noticed this morning it is 55% full. Must watch or delete something. Oh, the burdens of being a responsible consumer of media. (jk)

Day 80, slides, tour

Monday, 2/18/2019

I started the day with a run, the first in a week, and felt pretty good for it. This is President’s day, a Monday holiday, and the Museum will be open — normally it is closed Mondays. I had signed up for the 2pm tour, and as of the morning, nobody else had, so I supposed I might have to deal with a big crowd as I did on Saturday. However the desk crew said attendance had been light so far; and just after I got there, Steve showed up as well. I started my tour at 1:59 with the 20-odd people who were ready, and Steve stayed back to pick up stragglers.

I must not have been as interesting as usual (though I didn’t do anything different) because half the 20 had dropped off by the end — although the ten remaining seemed really interested. Then I went back to sit in on the last stop of Steve’s tour. He had a group of a dozen who’d showed up after 2pm. I liked how he finished his tour, more formally and clearly than I do. I think I’ll shadow his tour sometime and see what else he does differently.

Back home I reviewed a couple more groups of slides. I should be able to wrap that review task up this weekend, and then it will be on to scanning and keywording the 150-odd slides I’ll have set aside by then. Keywording is adding keywords to the metadata of each image file so that I can do a search and turn up, for example, all the slides that relate to “Marian” or to “bridge” or “vehicle” or “London”. Or Boolean combinations of those, “Marian AND London” etc. This is an absolutely essential step in managing a collection of digital images. Without it, you just have a mass of hundreds (thousands?) of images and the only way to find anything is to scroll through a sea of thumbnails trying to spot what you want. (Which is exactly what I observed Jean doing yesterday when she was looking for a shot she wanted to show me.)

Anyway, scanning slides involves (1) the actual scan, which deposits the image as a file; (2) looking at it in Photoshop, possibly cropping, straightening, or adjusting color; (3) storing it in its appropriate folder (the folder for its group) with a correct filename (like g201p043 Mt Shasta from I5); (4) going over a group in Adobe Bridge or Lightroom and adding the keywords; (5) uploading the group to our online collection. Then it’s accessible and searchable. Here for example is the result of searching the collection for “Ireland Marian”.

And when that’s all done, hopefully before the end of March, there will be a day when all eleven boxes of slides get dumped into the black garbage can.

Day 74, Scanning and Channing House

Tuesday, 2/12/2019

The refurb-Macbook seller is being extremely nice about my ordering the wrong kind of laptop. I don’t have details yet but they are quite willing to exchange what I actually ordered for something that sounds like what I intended to order.

I started out for a run but the temperature was so low, 41º, which, I know, would be quite comfy for people in some parts of the world, but I quickly found it too cold for running, even with a jacket on. No, I don’t have any sweat pants. So I cut it short, a bit under a half mile.

I scanned one picture of my father that had turned up in the pile of pictures I sorted through with Jean on Day 70. That day had yielded a little wad of old pics that I need to digitize and share with Jean, and this was the first. But looking where to store it in my Pictures folder structure, I realized there are some shortcomings in how pictures related to my own history are organized. I need to spend an hour sorting that out before scanning more.

Then I worked my way half-way through the biggest slide group of all, “120 Big Loop of 00”. In ’00 we went on a six-week ride in our van across the South to Memphis, up to Chicago, West through the Dakotas to Seattle and home. The slides are excellent documentation of that trip, if one wanted to relive it. Pictorially they aren’t yielding much.

At 1:40 I headed out for a meeting with Kim Krebs, the marketing director at

Channing House

where I learned the nitty-gritty about pricing and availability.

Availability is slim at the moment, owing to the on-going upgrade project that Craig told me about when I toured the place on Day 50. When that finishes in two years (!) Kim will suddenly have 20-odd units to sell — the units now being used to relocate tenants as one floor at a time is cleared for remodeling. Still, units also become available in “the natural cycle” as she put it. People die or make a permanent move to the nursing wing at fairly regular intervals. As a unit becomes available, Kim offers it to the next person on her wait list that is interested in that size of unit.

There are actually eleven sizes of unit: four sizes of studios; four sizes of 1BRs; and three sizes of 2BR/2bath units. The only vacant unit at the moment is an Alcove, which is a jumbo studio. She showed me this unit. Picture a rectangle about 25×30 feet. One wall is mostly glass and opens on a 5-foot-wide deck. The inner wall has a walk-in closet and a bathroom. There’s a minimal kitchen, more of a wet bar, by the door. (“We could install a cook-top,” Kim said.)

I’m sure that a good decorator could work out some kind of room divider arrangement that would give that space the feel of a living room plus semi-private bedroom, but I can’t imagine how to do it. Although this unit is ready now for anyone who wants it, I think I would hold out for a real 1BR. (Although again, the floor plans for a 1BR look a little confining, with about 700 sq.ft. divided almost equally between living and bedroom. Maybe the Alcove could work — if I only knew a good designer…)

I now have the official rate sheet. Both the entry fee and the monthly fee are different for each floor plan, and different for higher versus lower floors. For a single person the entry fee ranges from $200K for the smallest, lowest studio, to $500K for a medium 1BR, to $800K for the biggest 1BR on an upper floor. These are not outrageous numbers, given what they buy: lifetime occupancy with “continuing care” at no added cost (“We are a CCRC with a Type A contract” was how Kim worded it; here’s an explanation of that.)

There’s a monthly fee that also varies with the unit type and floor (the rate sheet is quite elaborate!). The range of monthly fees goes from $3600 at the lowest to $10K at the highest. For a medium 1BR it’s about $5500 in 2019. Kim said these fees typically rise 3%-4% each year.

A very interesting financial point is that about $2000 of each month’s fee can be attributed to “medical expense” and thus deducted from one’s taxes. Also, approximately 25% of an entry fee can be a deductible medical expense. I will discuss this with my advisors when I talk to them; I’m not sure what the net effect would be on my taxes.

We talked about the issue of “bridging” between the entry fee and the sale of one’s home. Webster House offers a 90-day interest-free note (a fact that seemed to be news to Kim). Channing House’s policy is 20% down on move-in, and the rest can be paid later, but they charge an annual rate of 10% on the unpaid balance.

Let’s say it takes 60 days to complete the sale of one’s house. The numbers for the $500K fee for a 1BR would work out like so: 20% or $100K down, $400K borrowed for 60 days at 10%, which if I do the numbers right, means paying about $6600 in interest. One would have to consider carefully (or actually, one’s financial advisor could get out the old calculator and do some real work) whether it would be cheaper to liquidate some stocks and pay the whole fee up front. (Bearing in mind that up to $120K of the entry fee is deductible, which ought to offset some capital gains. Not simple!)

In any case, Kim’s advice on selling is to not wait until a unit is available to start the selling process. She recommends getting your real estate person involved now to talk about what needs to be done to expedite a sale when it’s time. As it happens, I’ll be talking to one potential agent this coming Sunday, so I’ll bring it up.

Anyway I am going to begin their application process. This involves two extra steps: they have a health form they want filled out by a doctor based on a recent exam. So I need to schedule a routine physical. And they want a “non-refundable, non-applicable” $500 fee. What that gets you is sort of adjunct membership: you are on the wait list, you get the house email newsletter, and you can attend any of the concerts and such they schedule. I think it will be worth the money to be on the wait list whether I go with Channing or not — which is still an open question.