Crash, crash, crash

 I didn't do Voldyne practice last night but put in extra time on the shakuhachi. More work on the little 4-note figures and starting to dig into the notation and understand it. I also can now play Hinomaru correctly. Yay! I also found a shakuhachi hero, a fellow named Goro Yamaguchi, passed away now but he taught a lot of students and did a lot to popularize the shakuhachi, also one of the best players ever. I used to rave over guitar solos in music by Steely Dan and the Eagles and Pink Floyd and so on, but Goro Yamaguchi blows 'em all away. 

I woke up around 1 when there were three long peals of thunder, then heavy rain, then hail rattling. NPR's promise of thunder and hail fulfilled. I finished off the dozen or so packages I had staged, packed one a guy's antsy about, and thus had a good large load. 

It had stopped raining, but then it started again. I saw the mail truck come in and park in a corner of the parking lot, grabbed the USPS stuff and hurried out there. These guys will take packages or letters etc as long as it's not a huge amount. Nice older Indian or maybe Pakistani guy, and of course he took them and seemed quite happy at my profuse thanks. Now I only had 3 large boxes to take to FedEx. 

But then I had the shits 2X. What the damn hell. I took a good slug of Pepto and waited for things to settle down and took off around 5:30. I got the boxes to FedEx OK and found some boxes on the way back and 3 white onions from the veggie dumpster that only needed their outer layers removed to be fine. 

Once back, I scrambled some eggs with sauteed onions, as something easy and relatively non-exciting for my stomach. 

I did things like put Ebay stuff away and start a load of laundry, and pretty soon Ken came by. He brought a few boxes and I reminded him of our need to order more packing tape, and he wrote out my pay check with an extra $100 on, which almost pays for the shakuhachi books I've been buying lately. 

Then we sat down and I made him tea and we talked about the usual science-y stuff but it wasn't the long gabfest of the last time, ending at 12:30 but we were done at a quarter to 12. 

I finished the laundry and hung it up and made some very "soothing" pork and vegetables. It really was; it was what I imagine I'd get if I went into a good Chinese restaurant and wanted something soothing.  

Then shakuhachi practice and bed.