One Dollar Becomes Three

Awake at something like 1 which is early for me. Tries to sleep or "relax" some more but it didn't really work. Got up at 2, did neck exercises, and got my lazy ass out the door at 3. The lunch truck was there, at the front of the complex, and the only cash I had on me was a $1 bill in my shirt pocket, so I figured I'd give the lady the $1 because I'd bought that half-burrito that time before that was $2.50 and she'd let me have it for $2 because it's all I had.

I rode up and parked the bike and she called out to me, "Helloooooo...." and I fished out the dollar, which somehow had become three. So I paid $3 for another $2.50 half egg and mystery meat half-burrito and I think she was happy I'd remembered the 50c. I sat one one of those parking lot space stops, tossing out the pieces of potato (carbs) and part of the flour tortilla (more carbs) so the birds had a snack later too.

That hit the spot, and I got going to the bank. Put my check in, then went over to Whole Foods. To have something to buy I got some more Ca-Mg-Zn pills, a large bottle of Italian fizzy water and a canned double latte thing called "Black Medicine". And got $100 cash back.

I went and sat in front of Diridon Station because there was a nice planter to sit on the edge of, and it was in the shade, and no one was around. For some reason the "Black Magic" made my tummy hurt, so I poured half of it  at the base of a tree.

I rode over to the Amazon place and picked up my little bottle of 0.1 molar silver nitrate solution, my Morakniv "companion" fixed blade knife which looks very handy indeed, although it's a lot smaller than a Ka-Bar. And a spare pair of those Fiskars scissors I like so much. And some padded envelopes to use in packing and shipping.

I was making great time, as it was only a few minutes after 4. I rode over to Bike Express, where there were a few people in line to go in, and a black zombie homeless guy staggering around. He started to stagger into the shop, then staggered back out and as he went past me I grumbled, "Just keep going, Zombie Guy, and go bite someone down the street!". Actually I'd prefaced that with more out loud, "If there's one thing about this town, it's all the fucking zombies!"

That's the great thing about a bike. You've got speed on your side; you can veer around the shirtless crazies and slow walkers and all the types of undead that are out there now.

Bike Express had ONE pair of 16-inch tires, "We don't have 1.75 but we have one-and-three-quarters". They had some tubes and rim bands, and tire levers but Pedro's not Park, and as for Cat Eye lights, they don't sell those any more and the guy went on about how they're junk. They're not junk, but I didn't want to argue.

It all came to $93-odd. Bike stuff adds up! I was glad I'd pulled a full hundred out for my bike shop visit.

I rode back by way of Japantown, parked/locked the bike *and* tires a distance away from Nijiya market and got some things there and $40 back. Then I rode, slowly because of the bags and tires hanging off of the handlebars and because of the strong wind, over to the veggie dumpster on 10th street. I got eggplants, pickle-type cucumbers, and string beans.

I got back, put things away, answered questions on Ebay, and ordered the light set I'd have bought at Bike Express, off of Amazon. Eventually I ate the bento I'd bought at Nijiya, and rode up to H Mart to buy things so I won't have to go out at all over the long weekend. That went well, and I think it was a good idea because the markets will be crazy busy over the weekend, and I'll only have to go to the post office and FedEx and not go into any market.

My shopping left me with $1 and a few pennies, and sniffing around for packing supplies on the way back, the crazy guy who argues with the world in Vietnamese was hanging out by the electrical lighting place as he sometimes does, over at the other side of the parking lot. I wanted to be nice to him but not approach, so I took the dollar out and rolled it up and motioned tucking it into the hole in the top of a traffic cone that was there, made sure he saw me doing it, and then left it there for him to get.

That was actually the second dispensing of a dollar to a bum today, because when I was leaving Japantown, by the Buddhist temple there was a guy messing around in this weird little niche in the building and I thought it might be this guy who's crazy and seems to have some kind of a crush on the new, female, pastor there. He shows his love through death threats and vandalism. Anyone who sees him around the temple is supposed to call the police, and let the temple officials know too. The guy had his back turned to me, messing with whatever he was messing with in a shopping cart in that niche, so I said something like, "Hey wanna dollar?" and got a dollar out and gave it to him, and that let me look him over. Not the guy. He thanked me and said "God bless you" so not a Buddhist either.

Coming back from this H Mart trip, I stopped by another veggie dumpster I know of and got a real haul. Green beans, bell and poblano peppers, so I'll have to do some veggie washing and trimming tonight.

I think the problem with my ear is too much Dettol. Yeah it's swollen but it's a different kind of swollen. When it was swollen from cellulitis, it was dark colored and kept cracking and bleeding very easily. In this case it's just plain swollen where I've been putting the Dettol on. I did some reading and it's quite possible to over-do it with Dettol. So I'll dilute the Dettol I have in a little bottle and use it more sparingly. But at least I don't have to go through the hell of visiting the ER (my only way of seeing a doctor) to try to get those green pills again.

I packed some things that really should have gone to the post office today, then took a food break: a can of sardines and then a cucumber and nasturtium salad I dressed with cider vinegar, sesame seed oil, a little salt and pepper, and what turned out to be too much mayonnaise. But I like mayo anyway and it was delicious. And this was made with a bag of nasturtiums I've had in the fridge about a week. 

I didn't practice because this packing really needed to be done, plus my less than optimum time management, I guess. I think I will have to start following an actual schedule because the increased sales are kicking my ass. So I drew one out on an index card that has me keeping to a M-W-F shipping schedule, packing on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and listing on M-W-F because on shipping days I'm getting out of here with a load pretty early and then have the evening relatively free. The gold standard, from which I've really departed especially lately, had been listing two batches of 25 items each, or if it's large things more like 12. But this way, I'd list 3 evenings a week and it would be 15-20 items. I was trying to do a system of 10 items an evening but that's not gone well at all. The beauty of the system I have on the index card is, I can, on each day of the week, know exactly what to do.