Pouring

I slept in until 4 again because it's been pouring since last night. Which is good because it had been a very dry winter and then with this virus and the cutting down in human activity it's like a switch has been flipped and it's cooler especially at night, and we've been having rain.

Ms. Crackhead doesn't let a downpour stop her though, and is out there futzing around with her junk cars at all hours.

I did some exercises, had my coffee and chocolate etc., and answered questions etc on Ebay, then settled in and got a good practice done - a bit over an hour. Mostly Irons exercises and messed around with a few songs. When this whole thing is over I want to have some skills to show for it.

"Selco", writing about his survival during the civil war in Yugoslavia, mentioned a guy who played guitar. He was your typical skinny, long-haired, no-muscles guy who's good at the guitar because it was what he was really into. So he finds himself held with a lot of other prisoners by some warlord, and their lives were really worth nothing. If the warlord snapped his fingers, this or that guy was taken out and shot. The guitar guy survived and even did OK because in the war, there were no working radios or at least batteries to run radios, no music on the radio, and people were starved for music. So he was Not To Be Harmed and rode out the war just fine.

I seriously am looking at my trumpet skills in this light. Not only is it good for my lungs to practice, but if this thing goes as forecast, there will be a lot of funerals and a lot of those of veterans. Lots of need for someone to play Taps. I'd not ask for pay for this. But this is why I practice it a bit each practice, and also Aaron Copland's Fanfare For The Common Man.

I've even told Ken that my trumpet playing is a good ace in the hole, because it's another way of bringing money in. A guy in New York playing the national anthem even made NBC news tonight. 

Electronics being as terribly low-paid as it is, I've looked at learning a more viable trade, and sign painting takes so much in the way of space and materials, it's really not happened. Since I've cut my own hair and will be for the foreseeable future, I thought I could learn to be a barber but that's as expensive as college was back in the 80s and since my income is back where it was in the early 80s that's a no-go. Playing trumpet is actually the most viable thing I've got. Since I was going up to notes far above high C tonight, I think it's got some promise after all. I can play a pretty good Israel national anthem these days too.

I'd gotten a series of three really nice books on learning Hebrew, the Ivrit Likro series, which are for kids maybe 5th or 6th grade but are pretty nice for anyone and are used in the adult level class held at the local Reform synagogue. Then I'd done a "clearing out" of books which I certainly regret now, and sold them to Recycle Books on the Alameda. I guess I'll have to get 'em again ....

I have a lot of Amazon orders floating around out there. I've got a book, some cotton tipped swabs, trumpet valve oil, a hair clipper, and a kilogram of "vegeta", a seasoning popular in Europe, coming in the next week or so. 2-3 things can be picked up tomorrow but I think it'll be too rainy to go out anywhere.

The thing is, if I'm to convert and retire in Israel, I need to get a really good handle on Hebrew. Learning the language is a huge thing in whether olim (Jewish immigrants) are happy there or not. It's possible to get by in English only but apparently it's not fun.

The idea is that my Social Security would pay for a place to live at least, and busking would take care of day to day expenses. It helps that living in Tel Aviv would cost half what it does here.