Friday 04/17/2026

Usual walk with Joanne in the morning, up to Town & Country for coffee and to shop Trader Joe’s. Then she went to her doctor while I walked home, stopping at my bank to deposit a check.

Listening to the Security Now podcast about the Anthropic Mythos announcements I gathered some info on that and brought it to the AI Interest Group meeting at 11am. Better meeting than the last couple and not just because I had something to say. What I brought in–some technical info and better detailed explanation of what Anthropic had done, than had been in the press– sparked some good conversation around the table.

Did some reading, some guitar practice, then it was time to set up for another rehearsal of our mini-Music Man show. Two other cast members were absent so I played stood in for both those parts.

After an early supper we met at the garage and drove the mile to the First Congregational Church, a place we’ve been so often for one event or another I call it “First Cong” and leave it at that. Anyway this was for a concert of early (13th-15th Century) music by the Voices of Music organization. This was a miscellaneous collection of dance music and love songs, plus one original composition, all performed on instruments like Viola da Gamba, lute, and harpsichord. One player performed on a total of four harps of various sizes and periods. All very skillful, but the star was a soprano, Molly Netter. Really amazing voice, so pure and accurate.

On the way home we were joking about how we’d seen three concerts this week, Samara Joy on Monday, David Byrne on Thursday, and this on Friday, and they had all been good, highly skillful and enjoyable, but so completely different from each other. You wouldn’t think the notes of the musical octave could be put together in so many different ways.

Thursday 04/16/2026

Spent most of the day in my room, reading or writing or practicing music. Reading the long (long!) New Yorker story about Sam Altman. So he’s a sleaze, fine, glad to have that established. Writing on my book talk for next month.

Practicing: I am trying to get my fingers to play the simple guitar accompaniment to Leonard Cohen, “You Got Me Singing“. It’s a simple pattern, “do do do BA de do do” over and over, but I want to get it nailed into my synapses so I can keep doing it while singing.

Finally at 5:30 Joanne and I headed out, to park the car at Town & Country village, where we had a quick simple supper. Then we walked 15 minutes onto the Stanford campus, to Frost Amphitheater, for the David Byrne concert.

The show was spectacular for the visuals and choreography, and I enjoyed the second half when he did the old songs, “Psycho Killer” and “Once in a Lifetime” and such. The sound was too loud and the lyrics were not understandable.

While fiddling with the phone I accidentally took a portrait of us two.

Wednesday 04/15/2026

Morning project was to take a hike. Joanne had organized it, and other walkers were me, Joanne #2 and her partner Erika. Martha was to come but begged off at the last minute. So in Joanne #2’s car off to Arastradero preserve. It was a very nice day, cool with clouds and everything green.

We saw deer and wild turkeys. The male turkeys were showing off.

After lunch Joanne and I drove to the Stanford campus and scouted the approach and parking situation for the Frost Amphitheater. I’ve never been in this outdoor concert arena, and Joanne doesn’t remember doing so either, even though she practically lived on campus for a couple of decades.

Tomorrow night we are going to a David Byrne concert, and it will be a big deal, lots of people. Eventually we decided we would eat at some restaurant in the Town & Country center and leave the car there, and walk across campus to Frost.

Another resident, Romie, has suggested that we do something for an upcoming thing in July, me on guitar and her with her cello. Today Joanne was playing music from her phone through the car stereo and Leonard Cohen’s “You Got Me Singing” came on, which has a super simple guitar accompaniment with a violin part. Perfect! I spent an hour getting sheet music for it to show Romie.

Tuesday 04/14/2026

Out the door at 7:45 to walk to the doctor’s office for the blood draw that would have been done last week if I hadn’t forgotten I was supposed to be fasting. That done, I walked back. Somehow I see I racked up almost 4 miles for the day.

Proofed two more files for Scribble&Sketch, paid a bill, and cleaned the apartment for the housekeeper.

At eleven I attended a talk by a rep from Waymo. She touted Waymo’s safety record and how convenient they are, all of which is true. During Q&A she, being from the PR department, did not have any real answers for why Waymo always charges from 10 to 50 percent more than Lyft, or why they still can’t come into our parking lot and up to our front door, like Lyft and Uber drivers do. But it was a nice presentation.

After lunch I went to the line dance class. I am pathetic at this, but it is a nice gentle workout anyway. I enjoy watching Joanne and a couple of the other students who actually can dance well. While I try to reproduce their steps, but always a step behind.

Did some guitar practice. That was about it for the day.

Monday 04/13/2026

Resident Association meeting at 9. During the meeting I was thinking what a great demonstration it is of the Channing House culture. The library volunteers were featured, and they were introduced and asked to stand in groups, because there are different subgroups who do different things. But all told there must be 15 people involved in keeping our library up to date with the latest books (“We buy a lot of mysteries because that’s what people ask for”) and organized. All resident-organized and run, no staff involvement, as with a number of other activities like the gift shop.

After that a brief pause and then another meeting, of the Transition committee, devoted to helping integrate the people who will soon be buying into Arris, our new second building three blocks away. Discussed a number of issues, of which the most interesting technical issue is, transportation. Should CH hire a driver just to shuttle back and forth? Or can we acquire a self-driving car to do it? That’s my preferred solution. I think the cost of owning or leasing our own Waymo or Zoox vehicle is competitive with the cost of a staff person, and it works longer hours.

Anyway, picked up a lunch sack and headed out to FOPAL. There I spent three hours, one hour doing the post-sale cleanup, and two hours processing 6 boxes of donations.

Back in time for a nap, then early supper at 5:30. I and Joanne joined Jerry and Betty, and right after supper we got in their car and off to Stanford, to attend a concert at the Bing. This was to hear Samara Joy, a noted jazz singer. On the way back I was saying it was one of those “high respect, not so much enjoyment” things. She used to sing standards but now she has a regular group of 7 musicians and they perform as a unit, with her voice as the lead instrument among them. Lots of scatting, lots of vocal decoration and improvisation, not much in the way of recognizable lyrics or melody. So, appreciation of a tight, well-rehearsed and very skillful set of musicians, but nothing to hum along with.

Sunday 04/12/2026

I know, rain is not a big deal many places. But California is in a precipitation shortage so far this year. All the ski resorts in the Sierras closed at the end of March because the snow was gone. So this weekend a nice series of showers blew in on Friday and are still showering even now.

Joanne and I had planned to go to a music festival, Ploverfest, in San Francisco. But yesterday I discovered that Ploverfest had been rescheduled because of weather, to two weeks on (at a time when we are signed up for a different outing). So we had nothing to do today, and rainy weather to do it in.

I pondered while watering my plants this morning and then scoured the intertubes for “what’s on Bay Area” and found that at the Hiller Aviation Museum, just a few miles up 101, they had a special with a bunch of model railroad clubs exhibing in the museum lobby. Sounds like fun, so after lunch we hopped in in Fred and drove up there. Joanne had never been to that museum, and I had only been there once, maybe 8 years ago.

We looked at the other exhibits, it’s a huge barn of a room that is just stuffed with real planes, parts of planes, pictures of planes, and other aviation stuff. Also stuffed with a lot of little kids, apparently a lot of families thought it would be good to take the kids to the aviation museum on a rainy Sunday. Which actually gave a nice atmosphere.

After a couple of hours we followed up another “one of these days” ideas, and went over to REI and shopped for camping chairs. Looking for really light-weight but stable chairs to take to outdoor concerts. And we found some so we bought two and stowed them in the back of Fred.

Then down to Menlo Park to the coffee shop next to Kepler’s books, to sit and sip and chat about our neighbors. With as many neighbors as we have, there’s never a shortage of conversational topics. Pretty nice Sunday.

Saturday 04/11/2026

In the morning I stopped by the gym and did one round of the machines. Then walked on to Cafe Zoe to reward myself. Saw a few light drops of rain on the return. 2.6 miles for the day.

Put in an hour on the upcoming book talk. Then at 1pm met with Joanne and Betty, the Production Eds for our magazine, about some of the things I had done when proofreading last week that had been a little confusing. We are now on the same page I think, so later I re-did three documents in the desired way.

Then met with Mary and several cast members of MM to explore the costume locker in the basement. This is a 4×4 cage maybe 6′ high that is stuffed solid with props and costumes from a decade or more of skits and shows. We picked out things to wear for MM, then carefully re-packed the cage.

Practiced a little guitar. Read a bunch of stuff on the internet. That was about it.

Oh, we had planned, just for fun, to go to Ploverfest, a music festival in SF celebrating the first year of Sunset Dunes, the park created on what had been the Great Highway. Good thing I checked their website because they had rescheduled for two weeks ahead, 4/26. Probably because of a bad weather forecast for this weekend, huh? So now we have nothing to do tomorrow. And it is going to rain most of the day.

Friday 04/10/2026

Joined Joanne for our Friday morning muffin ramble, with the change that it was raining! Haven’t walked in the rain in while.

Practiced some music. I’ve had a suggestion from another resident that we sing together; also I have agreed to be the entertainment at the October birthday dinner. So on those accounts, I guess I will keep practicing guitar. (The birthday dinner is a monthly event, one section of the dining room is set apart for people whose birthday is in that month. And customarily some residents, usually Kay and/or Jerry, but sometimes others, provide a brief musical entertainment ending with singing that song. So, like three songs total.)

Then I spent a couple hours working on my book talk. It’s coming along. Then it was time for the weekly rehearsal of “Channing House Meets the Music Man” or another way to put it, the Cliff Notes version. Anyway, it took almost as much time to set up the auditorium before and shut down after, as it did to do the run-through. Oh well.

After supper I was settling in my chair when I remembered there was a sing-along and rushed downstairs, knowing Joanne would have saved a seat for me, and she had and I was only 10 minutes late, bleagh. Oh well.

Thursday 04/09/2026

First thing today was a 9am appointment with my doctor, Dr. Chu. This was a quick touch-base review, and I was supposed to be NPO so they could get a fasting blood draw but of course I forgot that. So I will have to go back next Tuesday morning for that.

Anyway, back at home I completed editing the second video I started yesterday, Prof. Durham talking about his book on the Galapagos, Exuberant Life. Pretty good talk.

Then I did some proofing for Scribble & Sketch. I am officially a proofreader for the mag. I found one typo in the seven short pieces I inspected.

Finally I got serious about the book talk I am supposed to give on 5/4. This is part of the First Monday Book Talk series. Looking back, it turns out I already gave a talk about my book on a First Monday — July 6, 2020. Cast your mind back to July 2020. That was like a month into the pandemic lockdown. At Channing House all meetings and events had been canceled. We were all just learning to use Zoom, which was s much simpler app then than it is now. I talked about my book for the Nones, and explained what a None was, and why I had thought they needed a book.

Hah, turns out they didn’t, or at least, nobody bought the book. But I will do something different this time. I think.

Wednesday 04/08/2026

Joanne is back but not in time to organize her usual Wednesday hike, so we went on one just the two of us, around the Baylands for 2.5 miles.

In the afternoon I worked on editing videos. I got one complete, the other has another hour of work left. The finished one is a talk by sports journalist Phil Taylor about various sports stars he has met. Pretty good talk.

6th floor meeting, then 6th floor dinner. Then I came up to my room to mix breakfast shakes and do the blog, then it will be back down to the auditorium to hear a lecture on the aging brain. Heck, I have one of those.