Up around 2:30. Before getting up I lay in bed thinking: If I'm to get a banjo-uke, the time to buy one would be as soon as possible, not after the 12th of November when I'll have put in a month of voice exercises. Because not only are the exercises working, but it may already be too late to get exactly what I want because not only is the virus going to make for a bad winter but everyone will want one for Xmas and that plus messed up supply chains means it may already be too late.
According to what I can find out from Guitar Center online, they're flat-out of banjo ukes in this area. Since Guitar Center's computers often have no idea what's actually going on at Guitar Center, I will go out into the orange air and check in person.
But while having a little bit of coffee and Alka-Seltzer then some nuts and vitamins, I vacillated back and forth ... did I really want to go out all the way to Guitar Center today? Maybe I should just do some Ebay stuff. But no, this is Saturday, the day I'm supposed to do things different than a normal workday, and relax, and have fun, whatever fun is these days.
So I finally got out of here around 5, and went over to Nijiya and got instant coffee, lime juice, a nice eel on rice bento, and an Asahi beer. First I went over to the little blessing box and took out a drawer pull I had with a screw and some washers, and replaced the missing drawer pull on the door. I'd been meaning to do that.
Then I went over to the Issei building and had a nice little beer and eel-on-rice picnic. That was nice.
After eating, I rode my over to CVS and bought two bottles of vodka. Then I went my old route to Guitar Center: Race to Park to Shasta to Stevens Creek. Boy, is Steven Creek depressing, with all the janky used car lots, tattoo parlors, etc. And pretty soon was at Guitar Center.
First thing I took 4 little folded up brochures from Ukulele Jams in Japantown and pinned one up on each section of their pinup board. Then I looked at the ukes. No banjo-ukes, or any unusual designs really; just lots of fairly plain ukes, some with jacks for an amplifier and most not. I picked out a nice little Cordoba 15CM that's fair nice and plain except for a cheerful little abalone ring around the sound hole. And one of the guys there helped me find a concert ukulele gig bag, in a silly leafy pattern but eh, at least I'd be able to carry the thing.
Except after paying, he got the gig bag out and we tried to fit the uke in. It wouldn't fit at all. "Wait a minute," the guy said and led me to the back of the store, where there were some gig bags. There were some fancy $60 ones, and then one plain one that was $24.95. "It's the same price so you can just take it" he said. (It was actually $5 more.) So I put the uke in it and it fits fine, put it on my back and was outta there.
(Now that I think about it, I bet that one that didn't fit was simply a soprano sized one that got put in a concert sized one's box. The other box may well have held one that would have fit fine. But the way things went, I got to avoid the silly leafy pattern.)
The ride back was interesting. The traffic around Santana Row/Satan's Row was nuts. Tons and tons of people going there. There was an interesting zombie at the intersection there where I had to wait a while; a Black female (not the same one either, this gal was taller) gesturing at traffic with a finger pointing down. So I "helped" by also gesturing at traffic with a finger pointing down, and when she noticed me I said, "They'll get it if we all do it" so she switched over to waving and then wandered off.
Once I got away from Satan's Row the traffic got easier, and I rode back to Whole Foods where I picked up a few things like some Parmesan rinds, a little salami (kind of like salami but a really classy kind) and cheese thing on sale, and a big sloppy can of PBR. I also helped the meat counter guy a bit as he was putting things away and they had some "flanken" beef ribs there, maybe 5 of them. I said I'll just take what there is there, and thus saved him the effort of putting them away for the night.
The ride home was kind of nice, of course except for the zombies. One staggered by as I was packing things onto the bike to leave Whole Foods. It made typical "Blargh" type zombie noises and wandered off into the street. That zombie turned out to be harmless, but with the really "gone" ones you don't know what they'll do.
As I got close to back here, under the bridge, I noticed my fancy-schmancy Urban Outfitters cloth bag had had one handle actually break. I stopped right there at the traffic island where cars come off of the freeway onto Old Bayshore and fumbled around, taking the broken bag, hanging by one handle off of the handlebar and fishing out a Target plastic bag to put the things in. I hear a zombie or zombies yelling as there's a zombie camp nearby where they live in a collection of junk cars. Shit, I thought, they see me stopped here and might mob me. There was a gap in traffic so I was able to dash past them out in the lanes, but it seemed the yelling and screaming was them fighting with each other, not aimed at me. Whew!
So I got back here and buttoned the place up and am in, and safe. I'll have to do a mailing run on Monday of course, but I think I can avoid doing one on Tuesday even if it means a big load on Wednesday.
I had seen a few trick-or-treaters out and that was nice. Also the "blue" moon was actually a very pretty warm silver color. And funnily enough, there was a "pop up" food truck selling food right on Commercial street which is usually just things like a trucking company, a car repair, electrical supply, yadda yadda and lots of zombies. I bet the zombies just "loved" the generator noise from the lunch truck.
As for the new uke, voice comes first. So I'm still sticking with my plan of voice exercises for a month then perhaps adding in learning simple backing on the uke.
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