Zombiful afternoon

 I woke up around 3 or 3:30, packed one thing, and took off to take it to FedEx. I also had some stickers I'd made last night to "enhance" one of the political signs that had sprouted up. Sunday's a good day to do that, less people around. 

I was able to do both things, send off package and deploy stickers. I rode outside my usual route to find any signs by the particular politician and found a few more than I'd have otherwise, so that's good. 

But there were zombies just everywhere. The warm weather brings 'em out. My zombie avoidance skills had to be really on point. 

I got back here and decided my trip downtown would be dual duty. I had a ton of over the counter drugs and bandages and stuff I wanted to donate, so I put those in two large bags, and got the cornet and tip box and so on, and headed out. 

I wanted to donate the stuff to the "Peace And Justice Center" and I was happy to see a NO WAR WITH IRAN sign up front. You know the local Zionists hate 'em haha. They had their back yard fenced off so I just threw the bags over the fence. 

Then I rode over to Whole Foods and got settled in. I started busking at 8, and it went fairly well. No Feet and other beggars were not there, and while there were hinky types wandering around, I had my eye on 'em and they knew it, and by 9 they'd drifted away. 

I got a $1 tip right away, then tips were slow but trickled in. A young guy came up with a slice of pizza from Pizza My Heart and tried to give it to me, "Have you eaten today?" I said I was fine. He said he was giving out pizza to homeless people and I said he should look on Santa Clara street downtown because he'll find takers for his pizza.  

I wanted to make at least $20 since I'd spent about $14 at H Mart, and by 9 I had $19 and a Target gift card I was told had $5 on it. I wanted to hand it off to one of the hinky types but they'd all left. I decided I'd try to busk until 9, and made it to about 9:30. 

Whole Foods closes at 10 and I think there's a sort of attitude among the later shoppers that anyone out playing music that late deserves a tip. And Petition Guy showed up, not to set up his table or anything but to shop. So I packed up and accompanied Petition Guy while he shopped. He just picked out some yogurt and juice, something like that, and got in a discussion that might have been an argument with a Black lady who was shopping in that area too, that he knew by name. 

It came out that Petition Guy had been happy when Trump was first elected, but has since changed his mind, hard, like so many have. But she's under the impression that he's a Trump supporter. "She's got a bad attitude about everything", he said. I said, "Some people are like that", and said he should not worry about it. Truth is, he has a bad attitude also, which is why those two seek each other out to fight with. 

I got a chance to count up my money and I'd made $28, plus the $5 Target gift card which I'd given to Petition Guy. The ride home was peaceful, as it should be, as it was past 9PM which is the same as past midnight anywhere else. 

I was up all night, besides making and eating dinner, there was "playing with my food" by which I mean dividing up and freezing portions of beef and pork I'd bought. And then I packed an order of 15 things for one guy. He's bought a lot more than that, but doing batches of 15 or so things seems easiest and even then it's not easy because I've got three customers all making these big orders like this, then all the normal, 1-2 items orders, all of them all mixed up in order of when they were ordered. So it's a lot of keeping track of things. 

 

 

A quiet night

 Last night I got 30 things photo-ready, and decided to make it an "early" night and actually went to bed by 6AM. I stopped fiddling with things around 3-4AM and got some practice in. I need to practice every day and make progress, because being able to play music, and on a "difficult" instrument at that, is the major thing to differentiate me from the horde of NPCs staggering around. 

(These days I don't consider trumpet to be difficult. It doesn't use up strings, doesn't go out of tune, laughs at rain, doesn't need an amp, is as easy to carry around as a violin or ukulele and is much more durable, and there's a lot of neat trumpet repertoire.) 

Well before the illegal night club normally sets up, around 1AM, a cop car posted up at the entrance on Rogers Avenue with its lights on and the cop presence kept up until 4AM, so, long enough to make sure nothing happened and only a couple of potential customers came by on my side, circled around, and left. I'm certain they have something like a Ring camera set up that they can access online, so they can see if da copz are there and stay away. 

I started in listing the things and then after 8 or so, realized I needed to get cleaned up and go out busking if I'm going to. 

I got to Whole Foods at 7:45 and started right in. No Feet was there too, yelling at people to give him $5 or $10 and yes, he directed his yelling at me also, at least at one point. He has no memory of me from when we hung out and talked at the bus stop, I'm just another ambulatory dispenser of money, if he just yells persistently enough. 

So I just did my thing, and he did his thing for a bit, then the Wolverton-esque Stella showed up and wheeled him off, leaving a Target bag full of empty cans which I moved over by the trash can. 

Tips were slow but it was kind of cold and windy (official busking season isn't until June, and lasts until the last day of September, so four months which have not started yet). 

Plus pretty soon a couple of police cars were flashing their lights right across the street, then eventually a fire truck, and then an ambulance. 

I tried to last until 9:00, but by 8:45 I was not competing with the ambulance very well, it had gotten fully dark, and the zombies had started to show up. There was one, a tall Black guy, lurking, pacing up and down on the sidewalk behind me. And another, a crazy looking old White guy with an Amazon box under one arm, wandering around to the front of me to no purpose. 

I made $23, went in and got a couple things I'd have bought anyway, and so it's a nice feeling going out and practicing for an hour, buying things, and heading for home with $10 more in my wallet than when I'd started. 

I took a little ride around downtown to see what buskers or performers might be about, it being Saturday night. And there were none.  

 

Made it to Friday again

 I woke up just in time to get ready and go downtown to the bank, I made it a quick out-and-back mission. My idea of my balance and the bank's idea of my balance agreed to the penny so that's good. 

The guy at the bank and I got talking, as we often do, and he's no longer commuting down here from Sacramento, but lives something like a 12-minute drive away. We'd gotten talking about vehicle costs, and of course he drives a truck (his girlfriend or wife  I forget which will have her own car, and like 99.9% of traffic here it's one person in each vehicle) and I guess it's unthinkable for him to take the train or get a bike or something. Probably his girlfriend or wife, I forget which, would leave him and his PP would fall off, in no particular order. Gotta have that truck!  

I didn't take any money out by my usual method of cash-back at Whole Foods, since the name of the game is going to be to keep as much in there as I can, and get by day to day on busking income with maybe a little out of each pay check. 

I got back here with enough time to pack a few things and I'd filled in my ballot last night, and rode up to the post office to drop the things off. Then I rode up to Dai Thanh market for some things, picked up some packing stuff on the way back, and got back here. 

It was pretty crazy out there between the numerous zombies and the bloodthirsty drivers. In fact I learned a lesson a few days back. Normally when I'm at an intersection where there's a left turn lane on each side and the green light applies to the left turn lanes and the straight ahead lanes, I'll wait and made sure I have a car or preferably something big like a truck, going straight. That way, the attacking car or cars in the left turn lane have to go through them to get to me. But even that's not careful enough, as I learned the other day. 

I made the mistake of riding out ahead of the vehicle that was "running interference" for me, and the fact is, the blood-lust of the attacker is often such that they won't even look out for their own well-being; their urge to kill me is so strong that they don't care if they get T-boned, as long as they can cause my death. 

In this case, the attacker stopped, right in the perfect position to get T-boned by the vehicle running interference for me, but sadly, that vehicle stopped also. I'd have loved to see a car-ghoul get taken off the road, preferably on a stretcher with the sheet pulled up over its head. But no... In any case, I have to keep in mind not to go out ahead of the vehicle I'm using to block access to me by an attacker.  

 

 

Fucking Scotland wut?

 Since it rained so hard overnight and the forecast today was 60% rain, I decided I'll take my $800 check to the bank tomorrow (Friday). 

Ken told me he's "still working on" his debt consolidation. He's still not paid the $1004.95 to the landlord. What a hill to die on. But, he said my check should cash OK, and that he's planning to vacation to Scotland and I guess around England in July or August. 

There's the old saying that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, is this something like a Boomer can keep coming up with money, mysteriously, longer than any normal (GenX like myself or younger) can conceive of?  

I'd made my noises about coming around to Ken's way of thinking and might as well work until my "full retirement age" of 67, yadda yadda. The *real* plan is to stay and save up money, and be prepared to leave when things get too bad, but hopefully holding out until my planning time of mid-September 2027 when I'll be turning 65. 

Now, I could go back to Hawaii and maybe between savings and earnings be OK and still not collect Social Security until I'm 67, but the main thing is eventually the planes *will* stop flying and I want to be home before then. 

If we're heading into a 1970s or worse Depression, I forecast a lot of people will leave Hawaii. 99% of them think the mainland is some kind of cheap paradise where you can buy a house at 1960s prices and the jobs all pay $50 an hour. Tons of them want to go to Las Vegas, Nevada, or Texas, or Florida. Again, Americans love and crave the stupid, and gravitate to where it's thickest. 

This will make rents and property prices even lower than they already are in Hawaii. After all, who wants to live where you're eating local foods and getting around by bicycle? The way I plan to live, even pre-Depression. 

 

Worth the paper it's printed on

 I was up around the usual time, and had time to pack two boxes, of 17 things each, and get those and all the other boxes onto the bike trailer and got them to FedEx and the post office. 

I got some groceries at 99 Ranch a little package of chicken at H Mart which I ate sitting on the little ledge in front of the building, in time-honored fashion. 

I'd called Ken from FedEx (it's relatively quiet in there and up near the front window, I'm not near anyone) and he answered, so he's alive. I asked if he's coming by tonight and he said Yes and I said "See you then!" and that was it. Of course his word is worth the paper it's printed on and he says plenty of things he doesn't follow through on so we'll see. 

Oh, and still no reply back from Pat, "Mr. Logic", on the Big Island. I think he's still trying to comprehend the idea that our disagreeing on support or being against "israel" could actually not be a logical fallacy but a simple difference of opinion. 

Oh, and while out and about, I found a phone. It was lying on Junction Avenue just north of Brokaw. I had to park the bike, run across the road and grab it on the run like those kids who grab errant balls at tennis matches, then run back to my bike. 

I got back here and put things away and tried to figure out the phone. The thing is, these phones tend to have irreplaceable photos on them and such things. I figured out the owner was employed by Terminix, OK is there a Terminix near there? Yep, just in from the corner. So I rode back with it and since no one was there, hung it, in a bag, from the door handle. It had been run over once, but if I'd left it, it would have been turned into dust by the traffic.  And it was getting messages, too, about the owner's Feit Electric door camera and such things. So he'll get his phone back, in condition to at least get the photos and data off of it. 

Update: Ken came by and I got my check for this week and last week, and I made some noise about "coming around to your way of thinking and keeping working here until I'm 67 so you can sign another lease" haha. And it started raining overnight and it's good and wet out there so I'm glad I put the cell phone in a plastic bag so it will be dry when the Terminix staff come to work in the morning and find it. 

 

 

$11 and a bag of chips

 I took off for downtown the usual time, with a load of small things for the post office, and the cornet and tip box. I dropped off the things, then went to Whole Foods and busked from 5:00 to 6:00 which is too early on a weekday but I had a meeting from 7:00 to around 9 I wanted to go to. 

It was windy, and still kind of warm so while I'd brought my fleece I didn't need it. Tips were slow, as expected, but that's OK. I could play much better than yesterday, so I was pretty happy. The thing is, this early on a weekday isn't good because people are rushing around, and haven't had time to get a beer or two into themselves. Later, they're more relaxed. But I was busking for the principle of the thing. 

At one point a guy who'd parked his fixed-gear hipster bicycle came back for it, and had a big bag of Doritos with him. I said it's a lot more fun buying "bicycle fuel" which those chips are, than buying gasoline. He said the chips were for me and handed me the bag. Cool! 

Pretty soon No Feet showed up and started begging. This didn't cut off my tips, so I stuck it out the whole hour. Then I packed up, and went inside and bought a little tub of sour cream and some fizzy water, and sat down and had my chips and dip. 

When I was done I walked back out to the bike for something or other, passing by No Feet. He muttered the same begging patter he was giving to everyone else, not even recognizing me.  He hadn't remembered our hanging out at the bus stop and talking about all sorts of things at all. OK then. 

On my walk to the meeting, I still had half of the Doritos to find a home for. There was a Black guy sitting at the bus bench, and I set them there on the bench and when he looked up quizzically, I said, "Oh yeah, this bench comes with chips!". He was glad to get them and started chowing down enthusiastically. 

(I like modern chips, because they've devised a way to make them taste salty etc., but instead of using a ton of salt, they use a thin layer of salt/flavor on the outside, so they're tasty but you don't feel crappy after eating them because it's half or less the salt as in chips made the old way.)  

The meeting was OK I guess. A few people making plans to leave the country, and medical care seems even harder to get these days. 

When it was done I walked back over to Whole Foods and bought some cilantro for my soup tonight, and thought about busking since I had almost an hour left before they close, but it was very cold and windy and there were all kinds of bums hanging around. No Feet was gone, but these were other bums. 

I was glad I brought my fleece to wear because it was rather cold. Today's freebee: 8 cans of no-sugar "Polar Seltzer" grapefruit flavor. 

 The TL;DR for this day is, Went out, Did things, Came back with $3 more in my pocket and 8 cans of seltzer. 

After dinner and some relaxation time I found and packed things until 4AM and that's enough - I'm tired. I have a lot of packages to get out, and may run one set up to the post office and FedEx, then come back and pack two large boxes of 17 things each, and run those up to FedEx. 

What I don't get is that the better I'm doing, the less I'm effectively being paid. I honestly don't know if I'll see another pay check. I'm being ghosted, as the saying goes. 

Hence my being back out there playing music, and being careful with my finances. I'm not getting any nibbles on Craigs List for my instruments, so I've got a plan. I'll see if Starving Musician wants to buy my student "concert" flute and the two glass flutes. There's a fair chance they will and although I won't get much for them it will be something. The shakuhachis and associated stuff will be donated to a store in Japantown. And the clarinet stuff, books, plus at least one trumpet book I don't really want to keep, will go to San Jose Jazz. 

I also, before coming in and cooking dinner, took a big tub of stuff I was going to donate to the Buddhist temple boy scouts, and since I'd noticed I'd have to get the stuff there at noon next Saturday, decided to just stick it out by the side of the road and see if it's all gone when I head out tomorrow. It's all the same to me, and if I'm up that early on Saturday, I'm getting out busking. 

In a Depression economy everyone's trying to sell off their stuff, so it's hard to sell stuff in a sea of stuff for sale. Busking still holds up because buskers are just about extinct here. So people are pretty tickled to see someone playing actual music on an actual instrument, and one that's not a guitar. 

Ken's supposed to show up tomorrow night and then maybe I'll get some hint as to what's going on. I'm thinking I'll tell Ken I'm really coming around to his line of thinking; that I ought to work up to my "full retirement age" which is 67. And thus am going to stick around. And thus he can sign another lease. And like hell am I sticking around here until age 67. Nope, in September of next year, my older sister back in Hawaii is going to get sick, and want me to come see her. And I will go. And I will not come back. 

Meanwhile, the most time I can spend on the horn the better. That's the one thing that differentiates me from every other poor, down-and-out bum in the upcoming bigly-est Depression.  That's another thing that irritates me about the situation here. I've been putting work before busking, but I'm getting paid for the busking and not paid for the work. 

Welcome to my wheelhouse

 Yesterday Pat, my "friend" on the Big Island, told me in an email that I've committed a lot of logical fallacies in, I dunno, I guess being anti-Israel where he's pro-Israel. 

So I said since I don't know which ones I'm committing, I depend on him to tell me which ones and how. Go! 

I haven't heard back. 

I took a college course in logic and while it was just a 100-level course, I probably know more about logic than 99% of the population now, whereas I doubt ol' Pat could tell the Pons Asinorum from his own ass. 

Then there's Tom. I last hung out with him a few days ago and as he's taken to doing, he harangued me about wearing a bike helmet. He said he'll lecture me on it every time I come by. I said that's OK, I'll just stop coming by. Because it's obvious that his standpoint is, "I make more money than you and thus I know better than you and thus I will tell you what to do, because it makes me feel better about myself". 

It's a variant of what high-on-his-own-supply Mark, who owns the Gilroy place, is on. Living there meant being a part of the Mark-Is-Cool Club. I really screwed the pooch, as they say, when I mentioned being in MENSA. It turns out Mark had tried a few times to get in and could not. He's not a dummy by any means, he just couldn't qualify. 

Hell, the only reason I got into MENSA was, someone else ponied up the $10, a huge amount for me, to take the test, and I thought it was help me get a job somehow, which it did not. The test was fun, although I was terribly hungry at the time I took it, as I was terribly hungry a lot of the time then. I was 18 and the solution to my life's woes turned out to not be MENSA but the US Army. 

So getting back to Mark, he seems to invite people to stay at his place who are hard up so he can have people around to feel superior to, then he likes to get the different people to be in conflict, kind of like a kid who puts different kinds of bugs in a jar to watch them fight. 

I guess Tom's like this too, because he befriends the most amazing assortment of bums, then gets all butt-hurt when they con him. So my interactions with Tom will now be just observing from afar. 

The only real good I'd gotten from knowing Tom was borrowing his water-shutoff tool, but if I need to shut off the water again I did work out a way to do it with two adjustable wrenches we have around here so that's not a problem. 

Getting closer to home, Ken is acting strange. I don't know why a mere $1000 he owes to the landlord is the "hill he chooses to die on" but as far as I know, he still owes it. I got that one call from him saying he'd been up late testing, and would call again to let me know if he's coming by, but then nothing and that was last week. 

His last check didn't bounce, amazingly, and I have the $360 check from the clarinet I can deposit tomorrow. 

With Ken it's got to be (a) money trouble, (b) something at his day job that really requires a lot of his time and energy, or (c) something with his health. I don't want to call and bother him, but will wait until his usual time to show up, because if he's under a lot of stress he doesn't need me bugging him.

I figure I can afford a "package" of a flight and two weeks in a hotel and that will cost about half of the $5k I have on hand. In those two weeks I can start looking for a room to rent.   Or at least find a storage unit to be a home base. 

While I was able to sell the clarinet back to the music store, due to their policy regarding student instruments bought new, I'm not getting any calls or emails about the other instruments. I'm starting to realize I'd be better off getting back into busking and just donating the instruments, than trying to sell them in this Depression economy. 

I got myself cleaned up a bit, oiled the valves on the cornet, and got my things together including some stuff to donate to the Japantown little free library, and headed out of here around 6. I stopped at Nijiya for a bottle of tea and a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a bundle of cilantro, which came to something like $9. 

As I rode along The Alameda towards Whole Foods I saw, standing at a bus stop there, no other than the non-ironically named Rabbi Magat. Yes, his last name is actually Magat. He called out "Hi!" and I sort of raised my hand in acknowledgement, but that was it.  

I started busking at Whole Foods at 7 and held on until 8. It was hard. Taking time off to drink beer every night was not a smart idea. I sounded awful. Plus it was cold and windy. Tips were slow at first but picked up, and I might have done quite well if I had been able to hang on another hour, but by the time it was 8 I was too cold and tired to even count up my money. I packed up and went to the Amazon place where I got two bubble mailers, then rode home, fighting the End Times wind. 

I counted up once I got back and it was not bad, $42.