Category Archives: Work

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. 

7/24/2019 – PT, work….

Wednesday

Corey Smith, physical therapist and sports trainer who I have worked with at CMH PT on Fish and Game Rd. several times over the past three years, showed up for a private session. I wrote him earlier about what I felt my objectives are:

Here are a few thoughts about what I’d like to accomplish.
 
Get into an every other day morning routine of exercises focused on balance, flexibility and strength. 30-40 minutes would be sustainable. I want to use a floor mat and simple tools like rubber bands and small weights. Develop a set of routines that will hit the major components of the body in a rotating cycle.
 
Do these objectives fit with your private practice? I might guess that I would need three or four sessions to get started. Then occasional tune-ups. Obviously I am open to your direction and expert advice.
 
So we got right to it. We used the exercise bands I had purchased earlier and he brought along a couple of extra toys, Indian club and exercise balls. I took notes and we took pictures so that I can remember what to do. I turned these into a document:
Now I just have to actually carry through on this exercise program.
 

UTMH

Met with Seth to prep for the meeting at 3pm with David and Cameron. Two topics: Troy Web and Ole Breuning (see Friday 7/19/2019). But, first, Seth needed to talk about his conflicted feelings about spending so much time at this point in his life endlessly working on things that may not interest him so much any more….. This is a conversation we seem to repeat regularly now. Then we got to the Troy Web mess. David and Seth confabulate the need to move on in development work with the earlier contractual commitments they made to TW for a share of revenue. At any rate I got Seth to come up with a framing statement to contain the discussion. This will be especially valuable for Cameron who is not up on all the details.

Met for an hour withSeth, David, and Cameron. Finally resolved to pay TW what UTMH owes under the contract and initiate the SaaS development project. Also, importantly from my perspective, they agreed to retain Michael Queralt and the Nicaraguan guys for the work on a future state map. David never brought up Ole. Don’t think he forgot. He and Seth are avoiding the unproductive situation with Ole. Perhaps there is also a deeper relationship between Ole and Cameron than I know about. I kept quiet.

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.

7/12/2019 – 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.

7/8/2019 – 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.

 

7/3/2019 – web project, work, tennis

Wednesday

Mostly worked on furthering the consolidation of old materials into this website. Lots more to go. Contacted Harvey about going to Bantam Thursday and Friday. OK.

Any scratches??

Went with Karen to Home Depot in Catskill to buy some shades for the back room. Ended up spending $800 for two bottom up-top-down room darkening shades from Levelor.

Brief meeting with Seth and a call to SOMML. They are already on vacation.

Checked out the correct grip size for tennis. Reduced my wrap by one layer.

Played tennis with Ted for 90 minutes at 4pm.  92 degrees, intense sun. Sluggish, perhaps yesterday’s 3+ hours of tennis has its residual effects. Still managed to keep ahead of Ted, though I called off the set early.  New wristband is a help. But this wrist problem may become disabling and require a rest period. Really tired at end of session.

Karen made her signature dish of chicken chunks with chopped cabbage coleslaw. Watched several The Closer.

7/2/2019 – work and tennis

Tuesday

UTMH team meeting. Meeting at NYRWA to move project to next phase. Invoice UTMH. 

Tennis lesson with Saif at 4pm. Lots of work on  ground strokes, especially proper follow through with arm. Wrist bothering me more especially trying overheads. Good work on tossing the ball higher on serve. Still have not found the grove.

Waited around until 5:45 for the first of the doubles guys to show up. Once again got stuck with George and Henry because they show so early. Dreadful first set. Last set was competitive. Ted and I against Joe and George. BUT, not so smart to schedule a lesson before two hours of doubles. I was dead.

Joe and Paul announced that Bill Zvoboda had entered hospice. We took a group photo to send to him.

(left to right) Ted Dewsnap, Kevin Kelleher, Bob Gegen , George Traver, Steve Horniak, Joe Capobianco, Mark Orton, Justin Misevcis, Paul Ambrose, Frank Rosa, Henry Congegrane, Chad Silver

Today’s doubles group started out with these four guys:

(Left to right) Bill Zvoboda, Marty Darling, Joe Capobianco, Paul Ambrose – circa 25 years ago