Ken *did* call last night and say the reason he didn't come by the night before was he was up doing some testing until 1AM. He'd call again and let me know if he was coming by last night. He never called.
I did something I'd wanted to get done for a while, scrubbing the bathroom floor and then putting on a couple of coats of Mop'n'Glo. It looks a lot better now and I should just have to go over it with Mop'n'Glo every couple of weeks now.
I also took a couple of things apart, getting some parts to list on Ebay.
I woke up early enough, about 1:30, to go to the music store in Mountain View *IF* I did nothing else, and *IF* Craig would be there until usual time, 6PM. But I called them and he was only there until 4:30 but he'll be there "all day" tomorrow which means something like 5 or maybe even 5:30.
The reason I called was to see if they'll buy back my clarinet for half of what I paid and since it's a student instrument I bought new, they will. That will get me about $350 and since I paid with my card, they might just zap the money right back into my account.
Meanwhile, the name of the game is to not take money out of the account if I can avoid it. I'm glad I stopped drinking beer because I was spending a LOT.
Before I got back into drinking beer, I was getting prepared meals and especially with busking, I was being really free with my money. I thought nothing of spending $6 or $7 on a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a can of iced coffee at Nijiya to start my day, for instance. That $4 pint of beer at Whole Foods seemed OK, because it didn't seem like that much money.
It all adds up fast, though, especially since beer just leads to more beer. I was keeping within my budget of $200 a week, but that took really economizing on food. So now I'm not spending money on beer and loathe the idea of spending a whole $6 or $7 on a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a can of iced coffee at Nijiya.
Since going to the music store wasn't happening today, I packed 4 small things and took off at a bit before 4. I dropped off the things at the post office downtown, then went to the Amazon place where I found ONE bubble mailer. Then went to the bank and checked my account balance and it looks like my last pay check didn't bounce, whew!
I went over to Whole Foods and found one more bubble mailer, went in and spent $12 on my customary bag of macadamia nuts, and took off. There was a Gypsy woman with 2-3 drugged-up kids begging there, lovely. Although, it was sunny and windy and if I were to busk tonight, the gyppos would be gone by then and the wind settled down.
But this week it's all about selling the clarinet, and I'll try to work in some busking too.
I don't know when I'll hear from Ken or when/if I'll get paid. This is why I'm in a hurry to sell or donate the musical instruments I have. I may have to jet out of here pretty quickly and I don't want to leave any loose ends.
I can keep going on busking and selling off some of the scrap metal I've been throwing out, I guess. But I'd have to work a bit less on the Ebay stuff which would send this business into a steeper downward spiral than it's already in.
I just don't understand how everything could go fine as far as my being paid, the utilities paid for, the rent paid, until a few months ago. But then, Ken is a fine example of Americanus suburbiensis, and among that species it's the norm to never save and always over-extend one's finances. Instead of just going along in a sensible way, putting money into savings, building up resilience, the idea is to build things up taller and taller and steeper and steeper until it's too much to sustain and some slight wind blows the whole thing over.
I've been really hoping that Ken will get his debt consolidation thing done and that will buy us about another year, during which he'll build up more debt of course, but things will hold together, held up by ever more debt, but my pay checks will cash and I'll have another year to save up.
While my ideal is to leave mid-September of 2027, I could leave a few months earlier and that would work too.
One thing that's changed since the 90s is, apparently once I buy a ticket there's a "magic number" I can print out and I will plan to bring a clip board with everything I can possibly printed out, printed out, in page protectors. But it seems that these days, they just look at your passport and that tells them everything about whether or not you have a ticket, what seat, yadda yadda. That's pretty nice.