How many heads

 Up at 4 and want to get out of here at 5. I'm still rattled about that SUV-driving asshole honking at me when I went under the bridge, and have looked at a map to see if there's a better route and there really isn't. One solution may be to ride up on the sidewalk there.

I got a bunch of packing done last night including one big thing that I was going nuts looking for, how could something that big get lost? I put away tons of things I'd listed because sometimes that helps me find things, and at the very end of that, it did. The thing, a big piece of metal hose, was simply placed up high on top of other stuff on the top of a shelf. D'oh! I packed that right away. 

I then made a really excellent bowl of miso soup with salmon. After frying the salmon, I had an idea and scrambled an egg and fried that in the oil left by the salmon. It was good! Even then, before bed I was hungry again and toasted some walnuts with garlic and had that and a couple slices of cheese. 

I didn't draw any, which isn't good for establishing a habit. I'm not about to break into that illustration board I found last night; the larger size of index cards are fine for now. But I thought last night: If I drew 3 heads a day, isn't that over 1000 a year? Or three drawings or sketches of just about anything. The idea would be to become so "prolific" as such an artist is described, that it's no big deal to just give art away. 

In other words, now that I can make $0 playing trumpet, why not make $0 doing art? 

In other thoughts, living on the island of Oahu is 1/2 the cost of living here. Israel/Tel Aviv is 1/3 but a huge language barrier and the need to convert which means I'd have to profess to believe in a lot of stuff I don't necessarily believe in. 

In fact, after some reading on Buddhism yesterday, it seems to me the contract between the Jews and "God" would be seen as worshiping one of the devas and so not the actual truth. It's exactly what deva-worship would look like. I don't think that's going to really work for me. Judaism looked attractive to me because of the high regard for learning and the influence of so many Jewish people in my life, like Carl Sagan and Feynman and so on, but really, these are people who largely broke away from Judaism and were pretty largely not observant. This same high regard for learning is found in many cultures and is certainly present in Asian ones. 

So getting back to living back in Hawaii being 1/2 the cost of living here, it means the $800-odd I'd get if I got Social Security ASAP there, would be like getting $1600 here and I could certainly get by on $1600 here. Besides wherever I go, I want to have enough saved up that I can do absolutely nothing for a year if I feel like it. 

So today after coffee etc., I got out of here about 5:40, did the run to the post office which was uneventful as I happened to cross under the bridge when there were no cars, did my drop-offs (of course the chute at the post office jammed so I had to put the 2nd half of my packages in a tub and take it to the middle counter) and rode for FedEx. 

But what do I see but a lunch truck called "Fire And Rice" and that got me interested. I parked and got a Spam and egg musubi which was $6 with a $1 tip, and since I had to use the bathroom I tucked it away in the top bag on the bike and went over to FedEx and dropped off the big box. 

I got some nice cabbage leaves behind H Mart, then rode over to the place that puts together emergency kits and such things for business because they often throw out neat stuff. This time I got a little bottle of rubbing alcohol to carry on the bike, and 3 boxes of Alka-Seltzer. 

By now I really had to "go" so I went straight back to the shop and took care of that. Then I tried the musubi, which was pretty good. They left the egg runny but even that was OK.  I followed it up with a couple slices of cheese, to tide me over until my usual past-midnight dinner time. 

Then I took a washed my hair and shaved and bathed, and having an hour until Ken came by, hunted down the Ebay things that had sold, to make my packing easier tomorrow. 

Ken came by on the dot, gave me a lot of packing materials and some stuff to sell, showed off a neat thing he'd bought to keep - some ancient medical device - and I showed him my smoke detector and fire extinguisher installation. "It's the same size of extinguisher I saw in Ono Hawaiian Barbecue", I said. I also gave him the receipt for the $97-odd so he can write it off on his taxes, and he said "I'll pass it on to you" and wrote me a check for $400 instead of $300 for this week. 

Then we talked about all kinds of technical stuff, and he left at .... midnight.