Category Archives: 2019

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.

7/14/2019 – tennis, pig roast, DOG, drinks with David Drake

Sunday

Oatmeal for breakfast. Sunday NY Times on paper. Ellen Feldman.

Tennis with Ted at 11am. Played quite well. Won set 6-1.

The wrist somewhat less troubled. Got to focus on remedial work to get it back in shape. Watched lots of YouTube videos about wrist pain yesterday. Clearly I am suffering from DeQuervain’s syndrome. Found diagnostic maneuver that demonstrates this. Eichoff’s Test. Lots of approaches to resolving this problem. Cold, massage, stretching, strengthening….

Drove out to Claverack to Anna (Rachminov) and Allan Chapin’s estate for a Bastille Day Pig Roast. Multiple barns, huge house. Two pigs roasted. Lots of people we didn’t know. Karen spent a lot of time talking with a new person Catherine Dodge Smith. She has a complicated history as an actress then photographer, journalist, activist. I caught up with Carol Rusoff and her 12 yr old grand daughter.

Got back to gallery by 4pm. Guy came in gallery looked around and then came back just before closing to buy a piece of fabric art.

Drinks at Swoon with David Drake.

7/13/2019 – farmers market, tennis, DOG, closing reception

Saturday

Late rising time. Went to Farmers Market with Ellen Feldman. Played tennis with Ted. Wrist still troubling. Need to figure out how to address this. Ellen says ice right after exercise.

DOG closing reception from 5 to 7pm. Lots of people including some regulars. Sold one Lickona piece. Ted and Anne came by. Went next door to BCB Art to see sculpture by a colleague.  

7/12/2019 – work, tooth cleaning, HAL mtg., drinks

Friday

Breakfast at Bob’s followed by shopping. UTMH – write new collateral about billing process, Troy Web telecon. Talk with Matt Almeida. Tooth cleaning. Looks like another tooth in upper left is infected and should be extracted.

Send this note and pictures to Ted and Chad Silver in ref a conversation we had after doubles night on Tuesday.

Subject: Warhol and the Last Supper
Chad and Ted,
Here are some pictures of this work now at The School in Kinderhook. Chad, you are right about the materials.
 
This might be my favorite Last Supper. But I also really like the Tintoretto version. Looks like a bunch of inebriates hanging out.
 

 

HAL Fundraising Committee meeting at Miranda Barry’s house. New member, Charlie Whittingham, experience fundraiser. He dove right in. Theresa Parsons, Gary Sheffer and David Murphy also participated. Charlie will bring some fresh eyes to our issues.

Ellen Feldman arrived for a weekend visit. Ted and Anne came over for our biweekly drink. Lots of talk about Paris since Ellen has just returned from her three month stay there.

7/10/2019 – work, web projects

Wednesday 

Most of day working on UTMH matters. Several hours translating more material into Russian for the RPM app. Short conversation with Michael Queralt about his proposal, not sent in advance strangely, for re-writing the code for the whole RPM system. $90k-$100k.

More work on sorting through old web materials to consolidate here.

7/9/2019 – Karen’s birthday, tennis

Tuesday

The Hostess cupcakes, our traditional birthday cake, seems to be shrinking with each passing year. Maybe the next birthday will require 4.

Skipped morning UTMH meetings. Drove to The School in Kinderhook for a private viewing of the galleries. There was a documentary of 1 hr 20 minutes on Basquiat’s life. We watched 30-40 minutes.

Lunch at Cascades.

Doubles tennis at Total Tennis. Played quite well. But, more important,  for the first time in weeks felt physically energetic and buoyant.

 

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.