I was so de-motivated yesterday I considered just staying in. But no, my plan had been, in my packing a load of things on Sunday night, to keep those packages here and my trip "out" would be to Lowe's where I'd buy the smoke detectors and fire extinguisher, which I'd then install. If I didn't do things according to plan, those packages would sit until Wednesday and that would just not do. Plan your work and work your plan...
Still, it took me forever to get the things installed, between fixing food and eating, trying to take just enough alcohol to not be too shaky on the ladder but not too much, and so on. But I got everything installed, and got some Ebay things listed also. And so while being very demotivated, I did a thing I hadn't had to motivation to do - and should have - when first moving in.
I drew a few more heads and doodles, too. It's actually really easy to fit a few in; with trumpet practice I have to block out an hour or two of time, get my mouth all clean including chewing sugarless gum, then find something on YouTube that's about an hour or an hour and a half long like a movie to watch (often with closed captions on) while I practice, etc. It can't be at 4AM because that results in a shitty practice and who needs to practice not being able to go above high C. You want to practice doing well. And it can't be when people are holding a party next door because who wants to mess up their music? And so on.
From the movie "Trumpets Republic" I learned that it's entirely to become your area's champion trumpet player by practicing while watching trashy TV, and watching a show to "pace" my practice (not only make it more enjoyable but also to make sure I put in the hour; hour-and-a-half). The main thing that got me into is regular practice.
Unfortunately I was raised with this weird mid-20th-century idea that kids should be "natural" and anything that smacked of grind, or drudgery, was unnatural and bad. And if a kid was "smart" then they were really let off the hook with regard to any sort of discipline so it was only very, very occasionally that I determined myself to draw or paint something every day. It usually lasted less than a week. I drew or painted depending on whether I *felt* like it, which is how people thought artists did their work, and in reality is only how the many hacks around Hawaii at the time who called themselves artists, didn't do their work.
After doing all the stuff I did last night, I actually dressed up and walked out to the front of the complex where the lunch truck should be, around 7AM. And it wasn't. Maybe it's just not profitable any more. So I went back in and got back into my "inside" clothes and had a can of sardines that were on sale at Nijiya and not bad, and a little Parmesan cheese and drank a bit and went to bed.
So I was up around 4 today, had my coffee etc., and somehow managed to just barely get out of here at 6. The deliveries went OK, except that when going under the bridge where 101 crosses Brokaw, some idiot in an SUV got all pissed at me and leaned on his horn. I hurled a fine trail of blasphemy at him. The problem with going East there is that the bike lane and the lane going onto the freeway cross each other.
Deliveries all done, I went over to "Ono Hawaiian Barbecue" and got the shrimp appetizer. I'd realized I still had the ratty $10 bill I'd put in my pocket for the lunch truck, in my pocket. So that's where $9 (with tip) of that went, and I even got a 1960 penny in my change. I went to the opposite shopping center, the one with the gym in it, and found a place to sit and eat at one of the planters because it was too dark to go to the egg-shaped robot place.
On the way back here I found three perfectly good onions in this one dumpster that occasionally gets good stuff (like the Vita-Mix I'd pulled out of there not long ago that went for $100 on eBay) and over at the Sanmina circuit board place I found 10, 18X24 sheets of what I'd swear is that elusive treasure called "illustration board". It sure looks/feels like it, and even had a smooth (hot-press) and rough (cold-press) side. Since Sanmina deals with some high-dollar stuff, maybe they're buying actual illustration board to used between circuit boards. Right now I'm drawing on the larger size of index cards, and have been considering ordering some card stock but this stuff is a real find, and free.
I got back here and put things away, and made up a load to junk to take to a dumpster, and my organic trash to bestow on the blackberry patch. The dumpster I wanted to use, the one right out front, was locked (maybe they didn't appreciate my putting a huge scientific equipment "body part" in there...) so I used a couple others, dividing the stuff up. Then fertilized the blackberries and back here.
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