Last Sunday was another utterly gorgeous day, the third or fourth in a row. I went to Rainbow and saw my favorite checkout person and C. came over to sit in the kitchen with me while I cooked, after which we went to El Majahual for burritos and on to the Borderlands Café.
Tuesday I went to the office of the career consultants for another resume editing session. Only one other person showed up, which I thought was lucky, though Dwightly said it’s actually best to have a lot of people look at your resume. However, because there were just the two of us plus Dwightly, and because the other person was ten minutes or so late, Dwightly went over my resume almost line by line and gave me some excellent suggestions which will take about two minutes to implement. Yay! I’m very nearly done with this particular resume variation. Turns out Dwightly herself used to be a business analyst.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but 20 feet from my living room windows a construction project has been going on for about seven months, six days a week, starting with many weeks of heavy equipment running basically all day, because for some reason, it was felt that sinking five trillion tons of rebar into the ground would be necessary to keep a one-story wooden house from collapsing. I suspect there’s some more far-reaching plan in this somewhere, like after two months, they’ll burn the house down and build a ten-story apartment building, and when I step to my window to admire the view, someone 20 feet away will be staring back at me, goggle eyed.
I’ve gotten used to the construction noise—in fact, I was kind of peeved the other day when it didn’t start promptly at 7 a.m.—but when the workers cranked up a radio on top of that, I was instantly irate. I dug up a document I received about this project when it was first conceived years ago, called the city, left a message for someone, and voila! Minutes later, dead silence (except for the construction noise, of course). I couldn’t believe it. I called the guy back and left a very profuse message of thanks.
This was about a month ago and the radio was not heard again until today. I left a message for the same guy and again the radio has been silenced. This is definitely the part of our city government that is working best. Working perfectly!
David and Lisa came to town from Seattle, and Friday night they and Tom and I had dinner at Chef Jia’s and spent some time at Café Greco, affording the best laughs I’ve had lately. David is funny. (Reminders to myself: The Village People and the thumb company.)
Yesterday I went to see A. at the hospice facility again, and again found it enjoyable. She is almost nearly blind and deaf, and among the many problems these conditions cause is that when she writes a letter, she doesn’t know if one line is being written on top of another, and if she forgets what she’s writing, she can’t reread it, so I acted as amanuensis for a letter to a friend. At first she dictated word for word, but then she started saying, “Don’t write that yet! I want to say … ” And I’d suggest a phrasing and her face would light up: “Yes! Write that.”
She got a phone call, so I stepped out of her room to give her some privacy, and took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, during which her call ended, which I could tell because she hollered, “Yoo hoo. Yoo hoo! YOO HOO!”, louder every time.
Next I took BART downtown for a memorial service for the partner of a friend of a friend. I didn’t know M. very well and had only been in his company five or six times (one occasion being a lovely, intimate dinner at the art-filled home he shared with his partner), but he’d made a fairly vivid impression on me, and I liked him and felt he liked me. He was only 55 and died after a brief illness, so it seemed very sudden. I feel particularly bad for his partner, who probably anticipated they would have many more years together.
I met a lot of people, some really sweet folks, a number of entertaining characters among them. We saw a slide show covering the span of M.’s life and people shared recollections and we heard his favorite song, “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers.
Last night I got to see David and Lisa yet again, this time at Herbivore. Tom joined us, and Paul and Joshua. Joshua will enter high school in the fall—he is being mentored by Paul—and is a delightful young man, bursting with energy and intelligence. I don’t know the details, but I gather Paul has made quite a commitment of resources, and it appears he has changed the course of Joshua’s life, which is very touching.
Tuesday I went to the office of the career consultants for another resume editing session. Only one other person showed up, which I thought was lucky, though Dwightly said it’s actually best to have a lot of people look at your resume. However, because there were just the two of us plus Dwightly, and because the other person was ten minutes or so late, Dwightly went over my resume almost line by line and gave me some excellent suggestions which will take about two minutes to implement. Yay! I’m very nearly done with this particular resume variation. Turns out Dwightly herself used to be a business analyst.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but 20 feet from my living room windows a construction project has been going on for about seven months, six days a week, starting with many weeks of heavy equipment running basically all day, because for some reason, it was felt that sinking five trillion tons of rebar into the ground would be necessary to keep a one-story wooden house from collapsing. I suspect there’s some more far-reaching plan in this somewhere, like after two months, they’ll burn the house down and build a ten-story apartment building, and when I step to my window to admire the view, someone 20 feet away will be staring back at me, goggle eyed.
I’ve gotten used to the construction noise—in fact, I was kind of peeved the other day when it didn’t start promptly at 7 a.m.—but when the workers cranked up a radio on top of that, I was instantly irate. I dug up a document I received about this project when it was first conceived years ago, called the city, left a message for someone, and voila! Minutes later, dead silence (except for the construction noise, of course). I couldn’t believe it. I called the guy back and left a very profuse message of thanks.
This was about a month ago and the radio was not heard again until today. I left a message for the same guy and again the radio has been silenced. This is definitely the part of our city government that is working best. Working perfectly!
David and Lisa came to town from Seattle, and Friday night they and Tom and I had dinner at Chef Jia’s and spent some time at Café Greco, affording the best laughs I’ve had lately. David is funny. (Reminders to myself: The Village People and the thumb company.)
Yesterday I went to see A. at the hospice facility again, and again found it enjoyable. She is almost nearly blind and deaf, and among the many problems these conditions cause is that when she writes a letter, she doesn’t know if one line is being written on top of another, and if she forgets what she’s writing, she can’t reread it, so I acted as amanuensis for a letter to a friend. At first she dictated word for word, but then she started saying, “Don’t write that yet! I want to say … ” And I’d suggest a phrasing and her face would light up: “Yes! Write that.”
She got a phone call, so I stepped out of her room to give her some privacy, and took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, during which her call ended, which I could tell because she hollered, “Yoo hoo. Yoo hoo! YOO HOO!”, louder every time.
Next I took BART downtown for a memorial service for the partner of a friend of a friend. I didn’t know M. very well and had only been in his company five or six times (one occasion being a lovely, intimate dinner at the art-filled home he shared with his partner), but he’d made a fairly vivid impression on me, and I liked him and felt he liked me. He was only 55 and died after a brief illness, so it seemed very sudden. I feel particularly bad for his partner, who probably anticipated they would have many more years together.
I met a lot of people, some really sweet folks, a number of entertaining characters among them. We saw a slide show covering the span of M.’s life and people shared recollections and we heard his favorite song, “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers.
Last night I got to see David and Lisa yet again, this time at Herbivore. Tom joined us, and Paul and Joshua. Joshua will enter high school in the fall—he is being mentored by Paul—and is a delightful young man, bursting with energy and intelligence. I don’t know the details, but I gather Paul has made quite a commitment of resources, and it appears he has changed the course of Joshua’s life, which is very touching.
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