Up at 2 today. Last night was pretty wild. I'd gotten my evening going early enough that I was just ready to get in an hour of practice before Ken came by, and the next thing I knew, I heard Ken's truck outside.
He had a load of light bulbs and projector lamps, and to help find room for them, I told him of my plan to move a big laboratory refrigerator/freezer into the office and have it under my little college student type fridge/freezer, and take the rolling cart I had under my fridge before this and get rid of it - it was mine to get rid of as I'd found it and taken it home.
So along with unloading boxes and boxes of lamps, we did this. Ken decided to take the rolling cart thing to his home because it's really nice as such things go.
The lab freezer is neat, but kind of noisy when running. Programming it is a bit complicated, and I had to look around a bit to find a manual for it online. It being a lab freezer, you don't just dial in a temperature; you have to set the high and low points. Because of the noise, I finally decided that since I'm not keeping anything in it right now, to just unplug it for now.
But when Ken and I were sitting and talking, I pointed to the big "VWR" logo on the front of the thing and said, "Now I really live in a lab!"
Ken had also brought by two Amazon packages for me: a new light set and a new bag/pannier set. Those came sooner than expected. So I can take the Sky Flakes box off of the back of my bike that I was carrying my chain or bungees in. And I'll be sure to put the nut/bolt back in there to keep anyone from just sliding the bag/panniers off. Now I wonder how many bums tried and didn't get it in the past. In fact I'm tempted to put a machine screw in the push-down part as well just to frustrate bums just that much more.
One thing though: In the old one, the chain etc. had started to eat holes in the bottoms of the panniers. So I'd bought a couple of heavy duty place mats at Daiso and had planned to sew them into the bottoms but never got around to it. But I finally came up with a neat solution: Just take one or two of those cloth re-usable grocery bags and fold 'em up and stick 'em down there. They protect the pannier bottoms and in a pinch it means I've got an extra bag or two for carrying things home. It's brilliant!
Likewise, I was thinking I ought to buy a "barber's cape" for my home haircuts and was looking at them on Amazon, then realized I could just take a clip and clip the neck on my T-shirt so no hair slips down there, cut away, then take off the T-shirt, give it a good shaking out in the wind and then it goes into the laundry.
Early dinner(?) yesterday was egg salad made with scrounged onion, and late dinner was beef with scrounged fresh spinach. I really think I've been saving a lot of money by "gathering" my vegetables. Another thing is that I've run out of cream for coffee and had it black with ice yesterday when I got up, as I'm having it now. If I give up cream, that's easily $10 a week I'm saving and I don't really think I need the calories. That money's better allocated to the vegetables I *do* buy, like broccoli.
I put the new bags on my bike and used a cap screw and nut and washer and blue Loc-Tite to secure it, and dashed over to San Jose Beauty Supply to pick up some 70% isopropyl alcohol as I'm finally running out of that "mix" I'd made a couple of gallons of when the shutdown began, of 52% alcohol white liquor and HEET methanol, to about a 70% concentration with water. Frankly it doesn't clean as well and cost me about $40 a gallon. San Jose Beauty Supply had come down in price a bit, and I asked about 99% and they had two gallons left so I got a gallon of each, using my debit card. So I'm set for 70% stuff for about 2 months and for the 99% stuff for years.
On the way back the lunch truck was here so I got one of those half burrito things and ate the scrambled eggs and sausage part and some of the flour tortilla, and tossed the potato pieces and most of the tortilla for the birds.
Then I headed downtown. I dropped off trash in J-town, and picked up a book from the 6th street blessing box, "The Hobbit". Then I dashed over to my bank, and knocked on the door. I told them "I can't get the software to work" to get an appointment, but I just needed a sheet of checks, which they print off for me for free when I ask every other year or so. They took my bank card with the number and ID and came back with those and a sheet of 3 checks in an envelope. I hid the checks under the cloth bag that's under my bike chain in my bike bag.
Next I went over to Whole Foods and locked the bike, and walked over to ACE Hardware and got some Nylock nuts that fit the cap screw I used to secure the bike bags. I was amazed, the gal knew exactly what I meant when I said I was looking for Nylock nuts. And they were only 16c each. I got a gallon of Simple Green too, and walked back to ACE and put those in the bike bags then walked back up to the drug store and got some witch hazel using the $4 coupon from last time - I think I got their last bottle.
Next I headed for the Amazon hub then remembered that most of the reason for going downtown was to put my paycheck into the ATM so I doubled back and did that, then went to the Amazon hub and picked up my copy of Why America Failed by Morris Berman.
I had time to get to Nijiya before they closed so I dashed over there and got a bunch of things and $40 cash so I'd have "walking around money".
I picked up green beans on the way back from the dumpster on 10th, so while I did buy some broccoli from Nijiya and ginger too, my veggie spending is way down. I also didn't buy cream, since at least in this hot weather, iced black coffee is working fine for me.
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