Played with my food

I wanted to continue on being as lazy as possible last night, so all I accomplished was "playing with my food" by which I mean, cut up the lb. of bacon into 8 pieces for 8 breakfasts, and trimmed the beef ribs into 4, 3.75-oz packages and took the bones and excess fat and tossed that up on the roof for the birds. Gotta look out for my bird-friends!

I'd paid about $10 for the packages of beef ribs, and they're about the lowest quality H Mart sells. I've discovered that those have the best flavor though, and at $7 a lb with the bones etc. ideally they work out like these did, at $10/lb or $2.50 a serving.

I woke up at maybe 2, pissed, and went back to bed until 5. As lazy as possible here. It's not raining yet but it's really pretty and grey outside, with different layers of grey clouds.

Yesterday Crazy Chrissy was much in evidence. First prowling around in her shitty primer-grey car, impatient for the ice cream guys to get done so she could fill up her bottle/buckets of water. Then she set up camp right in front of the door here, and I was afraid she might monkey with the plugged spigot in front here (long story, Ken had put a lock on it and a bum had ripped the entire spigot off, and I'd plugged it) and I let her get a glimpse of me with a stick in my hand, then she eventually, after driving around randomly, set up in front of the ice cream place with her trunk open, a red thing next to her car, just really random.

Other bums were around too and I was not sure if she was in her car or other with the other bums, but the other bums eventually left, and I decided to check on her. I took my big flashlight and sneaked up to her car, saw that she was upright, and apparently mesmerized by her phone, and I sneaked away.

Crazy Chrissy had once tried to run me over with her truck. I was running a load of stuff between the two shops as we were moving from the old shop to the new, and I think she was probably servicing a customer, there in her truck. I think my passing by had startled her "john" and he wasn't able to finish. No finish, no $20 bill or whatever her price is, so she was pissed. The copz were called, they had a talk with her, a talk with me, I was told to call 'em if I saw her again, yadda yadda.

I'd gone by her truck the next day and had a talk. I wasn't one of the "guys who was harassing her, throwing rocks at her truck" and didn't even know any of 'em to tell 'em to lay off, I'm "one of the good ones" etc., and so we've got a truce between us. If she'd noticed me sneaking up on her last night I'd have offered her some food or coffee or something and said I'd just been concerned about her. She's a spun-out crazy bitch, but a life's a life.

I ordered a 2nd pair of Crocs from Amazon because these shoes are really nice. Perfect, no, but a very good combination of light, protective, and airy. I had to pay $10 more for this 2nd pair, and the only ones I can get are in ugly "RealTree camo" but as I was telling Ken, advising him to try out some Crocs, once you reach a certain age you don't have to care about fashion. And I got the last pair Amazon had in stock of even these ugly ones. They're a Chinese import of course, and with the idiot-in-chief threatening some sort of war, whatever he can drum up, with China, best is to have ordered them a week ago, and next best is now.

The other reason is to put them in a "go bag". That would be a backpack with shoes, clothes, essentials, to grab and go in a hurry. Fire, zombie attack, what-have-you.

I made a big bowl of guacamole because, dummy, when you buy 3 avocados at the same time, they ripen at the same time too. The power went out then back on, then out, so I sat by the door watching the pretty sky and clouds and decided that to eat guacamole properly, I need beer.

I rode out to Old Bayshore and there was a cop car and PG&E trucks and the cop yelled "STOP!" at me and I stopped, and he said there's a wire down there and I asked if it was OK to go over the other way and he said it was.

I rode over to "my" thistle plants first and cut off a lot of very prickly flower buds. Should be somewhat artichoke-like, is the theory. Then over to to the convenience store, and locked up the bike because there was a ... person ... digging through the trash or their backpack or something. I picked out a 6-pack of Sierra Nevada and back out front, the "person" turned out to be a gal, who I gave $3 to, and she said she has a really bad toothache, and I think I talked her into hitting up the ER, either O'Conner which is on the #23 bus route, or Valley which is on the #22. I hope I encouraged her to take care of it, because toothaches can be dangerous.

I looked for boxes etc. by the electrical lighting place and Sanmina, and sure enough, there were some really excellent boxes, and some other boxes with good packing material in them. Shit, so much for having a beer right away....

I rode back, put 3 beers in the fridge, got out the bike trailer, and headed back out.  I pulled in close to the Sanmina building and got to work, taking the 4 large boxes out of the compactor and filling them with the packing foam etc in the flat boxes, being very methodical but it was far from a quick grab-and-go. And soon enough, a Karen type came out to say I can't do that, so I quickly stacked the boxes on the bike trailer and bungee'd them down, then got to work putting some of the packing stuff I couldn't take back into the flat boxes and stacked them neatly on the pallet they'd been on, as a nice Sikh security guy came by and said I can't take stuff w/o permission, and I said I knew a guy in there but I'd have to get his business card.

So I neatly stacked the boxes up, hopped on the bike, and got out of there straight out to Brokaw Road where the security guard would have no "authoritah". I rode back here to the shop, and when I got back in the power was back on.

I ate the guacamole and of course some of Uncle Yu's excellent spicy fish balls, and then got in a practice while watching a movie about a lady the kids called "Aunt Mary" who of all things, coached a little league team. From the same era, and same subject, as The Bad News Bears which is a pretty good movie but while Bears had tons more polish, I'd say this one was as good.

As engrossing as the movie was, the practice went well. I've been skipping far too many practices. I had tone that was just amazing, but endurance takes a hit. It seems that properly playing trumpet takes the coordination of lots of muscles that people are not accustomed to using, and they've got to be used in conjunction with each other, just right.

I feel that I've crossed a milestone in my playing, kind of like in archery when you finally discover how to "get in line" where you get your form to where the arrow and your arm right back to your elbow are in a straight line. This is  not easily accomplished, and unfortunately it can be hard on the tendons if you have unfavorable arm dimensions, as I do. I took up archery for a bit, and my getting "in line" resulted in my actually injuring myself. Basically, archery's not for me.

But I feel like I've made this sort of break through in trumpet playing, and I really need to keep my practices up, which is why I put practice first tonight. I've explained to Ken that if he loses his day job, he'll probably want to work here fulltime, but money might be tighter so I could do the packing and shipping because in exchange for living in here, and for living money I'd go out and play my trumpet. "It's a backup for us" I've asserted.

The thing is, I could go out and get a job for Amazon or something but I doubt it would come with a free place to stay like this one does. Trumpet playing gives me flexibility in that if I weren't a player, my choices would be go work for Amazon or be a homeless panhandler. Or if I were trading packing/shipping for rent here, being a semi-homeless panhandler. Much better to be a semi-homeless trumpeter.

My practice was just good old Irons exercises and a few odd things. I'd been thinking a lot about that song by The Kinks about the stars on Hollywood boulevard, and it turns out to be easy to play. Very nice tune. That's the kind that could cheer some people up. 

More playing with food: Dinner was 15 small artichokes I'd harvested on 7th street. They tasted like .... artichokes that grew on 7th street.