Thanks, Melissa

Up at 1 due to a call from Melissa, in the 707 area code. "Who's this?" she asked. "Who's this?" I asked in return. "This is Melissa.... wrong number?" she said, rolling the R in "wrong" and obviously some nice old grandmother calling up family, and getting the digits mixed up, as is easy to do with my telephone number. We said bye and hung up.

I'd eaten a fair amount of malva last night and I can say, no stomach upset or anything like that; it's very soothing. And from my reading it's an expectorant, which means it helps you bring up phlegm. And I am bringing up some of the residual junk in my lungs.

Street Musician Daniel has found this blog. If I'm going to post a blog, I have to assume that anyone who wants to can read it. Even guitar skeezers. If I ever found myself in New Orleans I'd want to stay far, far away from the guy with the ideal of never meeting him at all. But I don't think I'm going to find myself in New Orleans.

I had my coffee etc. and headed out with some packages to mail and the Crocs that are a size too big. First was the post office, had a great conversation with a guy working in there, telling him how in all the time I've used the PO a ton, I've had maybe 3 packages get lost, since the mid-90s and how competent and capable PO personnel are. There was a security guy out front, who was still out front when I came out and I asked if he was doing security for the PO, and he said Nope, for Med-Men which is a pot dispensary. I raved about the neat red zip-up bags they sell their stuff in, "Yeah, and leave all over the street" the guy said.

Next was Amazon where I just cut the tape-handle I'd made off of the box and put it in the chute, and picked up a few padded envelopes for packing. Easy-peasy.
 
I then rode up to Bike Express but there was no dumpster with tires and tubes to go through, and there was a bit of a line to go in and I didn't want to bother with it. 

I was kind of hungry but Uproar Brewery, which had a sign out about food and beer, had too-high prices for my taste. Pho 69, or Culinary Corner as they're calling themselves now, was open but no one around and no menu on display.

I rode over to my bank and put my pay check in. That went without a hitch.

Then I went over to Whole Foods and picked up a few things, some avocados which I've not had for awhile, cream for coffee, some weird dry roasted nuts called "baru nuts" which are actually pretty good, couple cans of sardines, and some lunch stuff: a package of deviled eggs, a package of falafel with a little bowl of tahini, and a Foster's.

Done there, I figured I'd go eat in the park, then thought maybe I'll just ride all the way home, then decided I'd stop and eat where I did the other day, in Japantown. It's a set of cement benches in front of the Issei Memorial Building, each bench named after one of the internment camps. It's shady and no one's around except for a few people walking by. I tore a strip of paper off of my Whole Foods bag and wrapped that around the beer, and settled down and ate. It was quite a filling lunch and I drank most but not all of the Foster's and saved the can. I picked up a couple of random bits of trash and put them in the Whole Foods bag and put that in the trash can, and picked up some smooth river rocks that belonged at the base of a 3-sided bronze memorial thing that's there, so I left the area nicer than I found it.

I rode back along 10th street and roughly across from the pot place in the green building, there's a dumpster that seems to always have something vegetable-related in it. Last time I checked it had been tons of Persian cucumbers just past their prime. This time it was okra, boxes and boxes of the stuff. I picked out a bit over a pound of it, so it's okra and beef tonight. Maybe okra and hot dogs.

Before coming in here, hooked around by the side entrance of the cement plant. There are blackberry vines there, and I'd read last night that the little leaf buds are tasty. I think it's too late in the season though, and I tasted buds, flower buds, and flowers and all are a bit astringent and yukky. There was some malva nearby and I peeled one of the little cheese-shaped fruits and tried that and it was OK, and then I tried a few malva flowers and those are nice. So yet again it's malva that comes through. I'm really considering getting an air fryer to "fry" the leaves and sprinkle them with a little salt and Parmesan cheese.

Once it was getting near dusk, I got the bike and trailer out and it was 3 trips to take the boxes and Styrofoam and junk out of the trash enclosure and put it over at this place just the other side of the bridge where people dump stuff. There was a sort of couch thing that would not make a bad bed, and there was a portly Hispanic guy hanging out on it, and he didn't seem to appreciate my bringing loads of stuff to dump near him, but there's not much he could do about it. Now the trash enclosure is all clear and no one can accuse me of "dumping" which a sign on the front specifically prohibits. I'm a good neighbor.

Speaking of the opposite of which, Crazy Chrissie is gone. Who knows what kind of fights and conflicts she got into, probably while I was gone, but she's packed up and left. For now anyway. 

Back when the economy crashed in 08 and I lost everything, and by '12 had been living on a "survivalist" place in Gilroy for a few years, I remember standing in the garden which the owner of the place seemed to have set up for the maximum amount of labor and hassle just to keep alive, and thinking, "Here it is 2012, and not only are there no flying cars, but where are the zombies? I was promised zombies!" That's when I decided to make plans to leave that Peyton Place of "doomer" drama and ineptitude.

But it seems the zombies are only a bit delayed. Because there are a fair amount of screaming crazies out there now, and in fact they're quite a bit like the shuffling, muttering, zombies in movies. Easily enough avoided, although I give them a wide berth. I didn't count, but there were at least a handful I avoided today.