Ken Hangover

 Ken didn't come by at 10:30 like he normally does, and I was on the phone with his wife, Suzy, having a nice chat after asking her if she knew if he was coming by and she'd said, "Like he ever tells me!" then I heard Ken's truck so I told her he's coming by after all and ended the call. 

He brought a lot of packing boxes by, and a few things to list. I unwrapped the plugins and the mainframe I'd brought from the storage place while he unloaded the boxes, then we sat around and had the usual BS session about science-y things. And I made him a couple mugs of tea. It's a lot like the Japanese thing where salarymen have to go out drinking with their boss after work. Ken doesn't have very many people he can talk about science-y stuff with so in a sense I am providing him with a service and consider it part of my job. Even if my performance is crappy he'll keep me around as long as I can talk science. 

The thing is, Ken can be exhausting. "He has no off switch," was an observation I had about him early on, not early on in knowing him but when I started going to his house and spending serious time around him.  When I used to spend a couple nights a week at his house, I used to explain to Suzy, his wife, why I wasn't up until noon the next day, that I had a "Ken hangover".

Some of the boxes, for some kind of catheters that must be meant to go in the femur and up into the heart so very long, I had no use for and put in the trash enclosure. And all the other junk I had in there was gone! Maybe the Tuesday clean-up crew that goes around with leaf blowers cleaned it up? Nice. 

After Ken left, around 12:30, I decided it was too late to do work so I has some saki ika and peanuts, while watching this 1980s show called "Ultraman" which, if I'd have seen it when I was a kid, I'd have been nuts over. It was like a combination of The Thunderbirds, Kikaida, and some YA-grade science fiction. 

Then I got in a good session on the Voldyne and a good shakuhachi practice. And then bed. 

I woke up at 1. I got online and made an appointment for my bank for 2:30 and tried to get awake enough and get going, and did so at 2:10. As I was riding, upwind, I remembered I'd shifted my bike down a gear which seems to result in a few minutes' longer time to get downtown. But I got to the bank at 2:35 which was fine. 

I stopped by the Amazon hub for bubble mailers, then it was over to Japantown. I wanted to buy this large brush marker I'd seen in The Arsenal. But they were closed for lunch. So I went into Kogura's and looked around. They have some interesting books on sumi-e and shodo, and I'm on the borderline about getting into those. I think first I'd study shodo, because of the tie-in to learning some Japanese. But sumi-e could be fun. My oldest sister has a sumi-e set when I was little and it seemed terribly grown-up and interesting. 

I lingered over the MAC knives as I always do; they have the very same knife my mother had when I was a kid. But I take so much pride in using my $2.69 cheapo that I sharpen well that unless I got really serious about making sushi and needed a good yanagi they hold no real allure for me. 

I went back over to The Arsenal just as some really talkative lady went in too, so while she blathered away at the salesperson I looked over the markers. The one I wanted is a "Pitt Large Brush" but I noticed it writes in grey not black. Hm! I wanted a black one. (I looked it up and have a black one coming via Amazon now). 

I went over to Nijiya and got my sake, a beer, an unagi don bento, some crab leg surimi, and so on. They tried to overcharge me on the sake again, but I got that straightened out. I think it's that the price on it changes a lot - it goes on sale, off sale, etc. 

For some reason the ride home was also upwind, as the wind had changed. But the wind was cool and while the riding was slow it it felt nice. 

I got back here and there was a Mexican guy kind of hiding in the niche between our roll-up door and the brick of the building, involved in a phone call. "Hola," I said to him and he said Hi back and got back to his call as I rolled the bike in and closed up for the day.

I ate and drank the beer ... and then got on Amazon and ordered the "Pitt" pen in black, for the same price as it'd have cost at The Arsenal, and Koga's 2nd book on the shakuhachi because there are places in the first where it says to refer to page 85 and that's obviously in the 2nd book because the 1st doesn't have that many pages.