The tree overhanging the backyard was taken down today. Half of it never leafed out this last spring and the leaves that did appear looked slightly purple and not healthy. Michael next door thankfully did his duty.
Category Archives: 114 Warren
8/2/2019 – house, work, tennis, HAL event, drinks
Friday
Saw a do-it-yourself video about a drop down work bench. Remembered there is a 60 x 36 table top in the barn. This will do just fine. Need to get piano hinges and other hardware. Also started adding a new light over door to factory that will come on with a motion detector.
Talked with Seth. Went over to meet with Luca ??, the young guy Seth has doing odd jobs. Chatted with him about plans he has to take a year off from college. Gave him the task of finding some healthcare logistics firms to handle our biometric devices.
Tennis with Ted mid afternoon. Played well.
In the evening I went to the library for a concert, Music in the Stacks, given by Aston Magna.
The Schubert song cycle Die Schoenberg Mullerin was a forty five minute extravaganza of twenty poems about nature and lost love. Sung by a tenor Frank Kelly who had memorized the whole thing. Here is section of one poem as an example:
Everything was played on period instruments or reproductions of period instruments as in the forte piano.
Janissary bells. A fourth foot pedal actuates these bells.
The natural horn was amazing but also disconcerting with its muffled sound when the hand in the bell was used to change pitch.
8/1/2019 – prostate biopsy
Thursday
Went up to CMH and met up with Dr. Subudhi, the urologist. Karen went with me. The biopsy was moderately uncomfortable, but as expected it only took perhaps ten minutes of so. Went home and spent the rest of the day snoozing, reading, doing very little. Watched more videos about prostate cancer topics. Results of my biopsy should be available in a week. Then we’ll see what decisions need to be made.
I’m really annoyed with Seth because he told everyone at UTMH about the biopsy. I’ve received notes from Wexelman, David, Ole…. But maybe I should not be so annoyed since I also told David rather casually the other day in an email about scheduling some meeting.
Saw a video about making a drop down work bench for the barn. I can use the dining table we retrieved from the alley.
Made a tofu dish for dinner. Onions, green peppers, red pepper, bok choy, chopped tomatoes (canned), tofu, tikka masala sauce. Combined with leftovers. Bulgur, meatloaf, cauliflower and cheese.
7/30/2019 – HAL, clean up, tennis lesson
Tuesday
Did some of the standing exercises with the exercise bands….monster walks….These Indian clubs showed up in the mail:
Ducked out of the UTMH team meeting today. Cannot stand the blather…. Caught up on HAL stuff. Set up meetings with board members…looked at ellenliburt.com website in advance of tomorrow’s meeting with Ellen. Spent time getting ready to transfer the new UTMH website to the domain. Also watched more videos about prostate cancer and treatments, especially robotic prostatectomies. Updated my exercise protocol pages.
Sudden, quite violent thunder storm with hail descended at about 1pm. Power went out. Took Karen to library on the way to Saugerties. Tree limbs and trees down over in Catskill.
Tennis lesson at 3pm. Worked on hitting backhand crosscourt. Spent a lot of time on crosscourt rallies, both forehand and backhand. Ended with serve. Saif seemed pleased that my toss is finally high enough to slow down the swing of the arm and racket. Ted Dewsnap showed up for Saif’s next lesson as I was leaving.
Put a big pile of recycling out. Got rid of many computer boxes that have been upstairs in the barn for ten years. Started working on new motion detector light over door to office. Will come in handy when the shorter days return in a couple of months. 
Karen made a real meatloaf with a mixture of veal, pork and beef. Excellent.
More Boston Legal
7/28/2019 – tennis, dinner with Sue and Mark Haven
Sunday
Woke up at 5 am. Got up and read more of Stalingrad, coffee, breakfast.
Cindy Weisbart appeared for breakfast along with Karen. Got NYTimes on paper.
Left to practice serve at 9. Probably hit 250 serves. Big focus on tossing the ball very high so that I have to delay my swing and hit up on the ball. Making progress with both flat and slice.
Did gallery duty.
Cindy left for the train at about 1pm. We jumped in car at 2:30 after Pauline Decarmo showed up for gallery sitting. Stopped at Pondside Nursery to consider plants for the backyard just behind the new sun room which ironically receives almost no sun at the level of the plants. Helped by older woman who had taught at Hudson High for a career then went on to teach remedial English at CGCC for another 20 years. She knows Joan Damiani.
Left for Sue and Mark Haven’s house in Lexington, NY in the Catskill Mtns. Since we weren’t due there until 5 pm we drove beyond through Wyndham, Prattsville, Grand Gorge, then to Stamford before tracking back to Lexington and dinner. Excellent time with the Havens. Looked at the vegetable garden in raised beds. Not much there due to hedgehog rampages. Maybe my thinking about a raised bed should focus on flowers? After all we can get excellent veggies at the farmers market here in Hudson every Saturday.
Combination of conversation about aging, photography, children, current politics and good food. Returned home as sky darkened with brilliant red sunset behind us.
7/26/2019 – yard work, work, tennis, Rhiannon Giddens
Friday
Raked yard. Checked on sun coverage for possible vegetable garden next year. Hung last of the pictures for the annual group show. Cleaned up storage rack in side room. Threw out boxes from barn storage.
Talked with Linda Larson at length. Possible laptop purchase. New poetry book. Also Harvey Meyerson who is back in Silver Spring. His recovery is quite slow. Keeler mob will be at Bantam first week of August.
Karen left at noon for her Woodstock photo group.
Tennis at 3:30 with Ted. Ended just after 5 with set at 8-7. Wrist felt much better.
Went to Albany for concert at The Egg.
7/23/2019 – house, work, tennis
Tuesday
Mike Herman sent in a proposal for a new patio to replace the rotted wood deck. We met and confirmed the design. They got right to work. The existing wooden structure had been built ten years earlier directly on soil without any ventilation. It was completely rotted out. Pancho and Jerry suggested a masonry patio to replace it. Obviously this would never rot. $4000.
Demolition
UTMH team meeting. Conversation with Ball Assoc. about PR. More with David Ackerman.
Doubles. Weather pleasant. Played extremely well. Lots of good exchanges at the net. Felt very active and engaged. Partnered with Joe Delamorte, Ted, and Paul Ambrose.
7/18/2019 – house and NY Rural Water Association
Thursday
As usual for them KASHINC arrived at 8am sharp to begin work on the fence on the front of the house.
Mike Herman’s crew included Pancho who we know from his work on the underpinnings of the front of the house and the sun room project of two years ago and new people Jerry and Mike’s daughter Michaela. Jerry is Mexican but clearly born or lived in the US since early childhood, his English is native.
Pancho repaired the bricks in Bruce’s house next door. They made short work of tearing down the old stuff and erecting three posts in concrete for the new structure.
Missed tennis lesson. Met with Seth and Michael Lutman to discuss NY Rural Water Association project. Went there and ran through the work flow again.
7/17/2019 – work, house
Wednesday
UTMH meeting with Michael Queralt about possible new approach to software and platform. Very interesting. Reveals more about how Troy Web may not be keeping up with technology. Talked with Anita Harris in the afternoon.
Received text message from Mike Herman that they would come over tomorrow to take down the rotting fence in the front.
7/8/2019 – web project, house, UTMH
Monday
Up at 6 in a rush. Karen discovered that the upstairs toilet had overflowed all night long flooding the bathroom and now leaking down, fortunately, onto the side yard sidewalk. What a mess. I had clogged up the toilet the evening before. The toilet has been running for years. Now stuffed up, it overflowed and continued so for hours. Took five minutes or more with a mop to get all the water up. Amazingly none of it had escaped into the rest of the house.
Karen went to her exercise class. Put laundry in machine. Looked at the leak in the roof that had caused the plaster in the cabinet over the washing machine to fall down. Got step ladder and opened hatch to attic. It was immediately obvious that the leak came from failed flashing around the cast iron vent pipe. Have to find name of roofing company.
After breakfast I put off doing much of anything for UTMH and HAL that I was supposed to be working on. Brief conversation with Seth and a few notes was the entirety of that work. Sent note via Slack that I would not attend tomorrow’s team meeting. Only dealt with nonfiction book group matters. Recent newsletter outreach by Tina Lesem and Brenda had produced three new people wanting to participate in the discussion of White Trash.
Just before noon Mike Herman called and appeared almost immediately to look at the front fence. He will start work in a few weeks. His daughter, who looks like a teenager but is in her early 20’s, was with him. Karen came too. We settled on things including repairs to the brick in Bruce and Sam’s house. She came out and agreed to an off-the-cuff $300-$400 bill for the masonry repairs. Mike will delete the priming and painting cost from his estimate.
Went to bank to deposit my UTMH pay check.Had lunch at Chinese restaurant by the park. Spent time in the factory working on the consolidation project for this website. Karen and I talked about her birthday tomorrow. Settled on going to The School in Kinderhook followed by lunch at Cascades.
For some reason I decided to tear up the rear deck to repair the rotten flooring. What a mess I discovered. 
The supporting joists, particularly the one close to the sun room are severely rotted. Karen came a looked, too. I sent a note to Mike Herman asking for him to return to examine the mess and make a proposal. As I noted to him, “This is beyond the scope and scale of this weekend warrior.” I covered the chasm up with a sheet of plywood.
Made coleslaw and heated leftover curried lamb with vegetables for dinner. We ate in the sun room. Need to do this regularly instead of in front of boob tube.
Read more of Grossman’s Stalingrad – up to page 106.