It was Friday, I had my pay check all ready to deposit, had given myself a haircut (but not practiced!) before bed. was all spiffied up and ready to go once I woke up.
And so, I went. I had a bunch of things to drop off at the post office, and did that, and then the bank. There's a new guy, Abdul something and he wanted my ID which I got out, muttering about how it's expired and I'd better take care of that, so here's my passport card and got that out. And I was just doing a deposit. Oh, he said, we don't need any of that, and I put the cards away. And the bank's numbers and mine agreed to the penny so everything's fine. I'm at just a bit over 13 grand these days.
I'd been going back and forth with myself over whether to go get packing tape at Han Kook Market, and after a side trip to get a few bubble mailers from the Amazon place, I went over to Whole Foods which I had to go to anyway. I decided I'll go for it. So I got on the slow-ass #22 bus and went over to Han Kook's and got 12 rolls of tape, leaving some poor customer who comes after me with one. (There's actually another brand there that's probably fine, so I'm not leaving anyone in the lurch.)
I got on the somewhat faster #522 bus back to the Diridon Station stop and walked back over to Whole Foods and got my usual nuts and a bottle of cold coffee. Interestingly, they're lowering prices there without having to have a Prime membership, on a lot of things.
I hung out with the "Save The Children" people while I drank half of the coffee. They'd been there when I'd first gotten there, then when I got back from my tape run they'd been gone, and I'd noticed how nice a night it would be for playing music. But coming out with the coffee, there was the booth again. I guess when they take a break they pack everything up. Maybe they've had people mess with their booth and stuff.
The coffee was to compensate for not having had that much sleep the night before, because now I was going to enact a plan I'd been mulling over for months, to go over to Trials Pub and have a sausage roll and a Guinness.
I'd been seeing these things on YouTube about Greggs' sausage rolls in the UK for a while and Trials is supposed to be the most "genuine" English pub around. And one Guinness would not be a problem.
So that's what I did; I rode over there, locked the bike at the rack in front, and went in and had a seat and ordered my Guinness and the sausage rolls, apparently it was two rolls according to the appetizer menu.
So I ended up talking with a bunch of guys, and it came out that one of the bartenders, Dave, plays Gypsy jazz, on guitar. Everyone plays guitar. The sausage rolls came out and the way they do them, they're sliced up so they're .... sausage roll "bites"? It might be an appetizer for a table of 3 or 4, but even with an appetite it was a lot of food. And they were OK I guess. The sausage was bland, kind of a weisswurst flavor I guess, and the dipping sauce basically had no flavor.
This is America, and these plate of food probably constitutes an appetizer for most of the crowd there, though, as it takes a fair amount of food to maintain their large body sizes. And as for the sauce, to Americans, any flavor is "too spicy" so through the miracle of Science they've come up with a sauce that even looks like it would taste like something, but doesn't.
But it's all OK because the conversation came around to music. One of the vary large guys, working behind the bar also, also plays guitar (because everyone plays guitar) and presides over a group that plays in Menlo Park. And Dave's Gypsy jazz group is just "breaking in" a new player, a gal who's a violinist. I told them about the Gypsy jazz I saw being played at The Pressroom a couple of months ago and it wasn't Dave's group or anyone. So here's a rare-ish music genre with at least two groups playing it that hadn't heard of each other.
Since we're talking music, Let's have another Guinness, I said, and I told Dave he ought to check out the movies of Emir Kasturica and wrote it down for him and to check out the movie "Black Cat White Cat" especially. And we talked about Cafe Stritch and other places, and it was all a pretty good time, if noisy, and expensive.
I spent about $40 between the two beers and food and tips, which is probably something like the average tech bro spending $200. That 2nd Guinness finished, I said "Now it's my turn to say I have to go," and went.
It was pretty cold on the ride home, and I got back here around 10. I was very tired, full of food, and I went to bed pretty soon, right around 10. Even though there's no more smoking in bars, those places put a stink on you that's a bit much. I wonder what the guys who work there do? Do they get right in the shower and scrub themselves down when they get home? Do they have work (bar) clothes and non-work clothes? Do they just smell like a bar?
Anyway so now I've done it and I don't have to again.