Last night I drank a little less than the night before, and of course had a silly busy dream and only slept about 6 hours of real sleep. It's worth it though.
The very best sleep is with no alcohol and meditation techniques to go to sleep, if needed.
I had real trouble getting motivated to get going and finally did so at 5. First I dropped off trash in Japantown, then went to Nijiya and got odds and ends like seaweed and curry powder, and a package of chicken kara-age and a can of beer.
I ate over at the benches, and felt a little better, I thought. I didn't finish all the beer, and ate about half of the chicken kara-age. It was dry, of course. So I packaged the rest up for later and went by the blessing boxes to put some books in. The one on 6th is gone now, and the one on 5th didn't have anything new until I put my books in. I later found the one on 7th was empty, so maybe blessing boxes are a seasonal thing.
I went over to Whole Foods and locked the bike, and noticed a huge line to go in. I walked down to CVS for my handle of cheap vodka and got in a conversation with a young guy who was wearing a full-frame backpack. He didn't look like he'd been on the road long, really. I think he'd have liked very much for me to offer to buy him stuff, but I didn't feel like it and instead asked where he was traveling from (Santa Cruz) and where he was heading (Portland I think).
An interesting occurrence was when one of the workers asked an older Black guy if he "needed a cart to carry that" and got the guy to sheepishly pull a fairly expensive bottle of liquor out of his pants. "I need to feed my children", he said. "You feed your children on alcohol?" the worker asked, heard the guy's explanation "Well, actually, I sell the alcohol..." and told the guy to just leave.
I was going to tell the worker about the guy in Sunnyvale who's in a wheelchair and used to beg in front of a little liquor store there and got given tons of bottles of booze, which he'd sell right back to the store since he doesn't drink. But the worker had other things to hurry off to.
I ended up being Mr. Backpack in line, then ended up walking with him for just a bit on the sidewalk. I was open to talking some more, and he got right square in front of me and said that he actually was escaping a really horrible situation, family trouble and violence, his brother had been shot etc. I said about all you can do is go far away, to some little town and just start a whole new life.
I then ducked into a "FOOD & BEER 2- 6" place to look at their menu, and Mr. Backpack didn't follow - probably already knows you can't go in a place like that looking like him. This place has a dish, pelmeni, which is a Russian thing that "Life Of Boris" talks about on YouTube. Since I'd just eaten chicken, I could not eat any of them. If I'd not just eaten meat, the vegetarian one would be acceptable while none of the others are, at all. But if I can manage to go by there when I've not just eaten meat, I think I might give the veggie pelmeni a try.
I came out of the place and Mr. Backpack was still out there, but talking to someone else. I went back to the bike and tried to think of anything I wanted from Whole Foods and could not come up with anything, so I unlocked the bike and told the Gypsies begging out in front that they might do better in front of CVS because "You can be closer to where the people walk by" which is true, and "Working-class people are more generous" which is also true.
I rode over to the Amazon hub and picked up 16 bubble mailers so that was great, and picked up some nice fresh green beans from the dumpster on 10th. By now it was dark and I am really not used to riding around in the dark which I used to find fairly enjoyable.
I got back here and put things away, and took a lot of fusty vegetables over to the blackberry patch. I throw out a lot of vegetables because I'm pretty careful with cutting off bad parts, and the veggies were headed for the landfill anyway. There was some guy shuffling along with a skinny-tire bike, completely dark. It was like he was a hole shaped like a guy with a bike, with a slight scuffling sound. I'd spotted him under the bridge and veered wide just in time, and now he was there at the beginning of Rogers Avenue. He seemed to have a place to go, though. Rogers Avenue is pretty much one long homeless camp again.
I got back here and that's it for tonight. I made an interesting dish, where I cut the chicken kara-age into sort of cubes, toasted some garlic and walnuts in some sesame oil, then added the chicken and some water so it would not only be sure to be heated thoroughly but so the flavors could mix around, and simmered then fried that, and it was pretty good.
I've now spent $150 out of the $350 I got from Ken last week, and $40 of that is in cash in my wallet so I've really only spent $110. I really need to do my taxes though, because out of the almost $3500 I had in the bank, the IRS gets first dibs.
I did a practice, a bit over an hour (rusty because of not practicing Thursday-Friday-Saturday) and it went fairly well. Then fixed up another large cole slaw and had it with cheese for dinner.
Now I just have to pack lots of packages and it's gonna be a hot one tomorrow.
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