Mango?

 I woke up around 1 and tried to sort of half-sleep in bed, then I thought I heard a knock on the door and jumped out of bed, calling out "Hello?" but I peeked out the mail slot and didn't see anything. 

I finally got up, had vitamins and nuts and things, and got to work finding things that have to get shipped, or at least packed and ought to get shipped, today. I already had 6 or 8 packages I'd packed yesterday, and with all the things I packed today, it amounted to 24 packages. 

There was a good documentary by DW on YouTube so I ended up watching that, about Fukushima and the fact that the aptly-named aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan got a fair dose of radiation. I say aptly named because the officers took iodine pills right away and stayed below, while depriving the sailors of iodine pills but making them sign papers saying they'd had them, and also not moving the ship away from the radiation plume. 

Then Shaun Renzo Head had a live thing going on and I actually got to talk to him a bit. I mentioned my cheapie shakuhachi and he showed us one he paid $40 for, because it had a split near the top, which he bound up. It plays great. I also mentioned the Yuu and that I'd heard some amazing playing on a Yuu. 

So I left here at a bit after 6. I opened the door and there's a big Uline box in front of the door (tape) and a smaller box (free "tape gun") so I wrestled those in, got the bike loaded up, and took off. The drop-offs went fine at the post office with the chute working fine, and I got thinking that it's Friday night and I really want to do something different. I went over to Vons chicken and it's expensive! I looked at a couple of Chinese places in that shopping center, then went to the one opposite and decided to get something at the Vietnamese place that's take-out only. I got the ever-popular shrimp and pork on noodles, and waited 10 minutes or so while they made it. 

I had a place picked out to eat it; a place in a corner of the parking lot that's got a light right over it so well-lit, and away from people. And even  a dumpster right there for my trash. So I walked the bike over there with my dinner amongst the packages on the trailer, and the Thai (I think) guy who was taking trash out there or something came and up said something about "Mango?" I thought maybe he thought I was delivering something, and I said that no, I don't have any mangoes, and am just stopping to take a break. He got curious about the packages and I pointed out how they're all addressed and I have to take them to FedEx, and he started to tell some story about this one time his friend... then he started bugging me about mangoes again and I muttered, "That's it, I'm outta here, I'll eat somewhere else, it's not safe here!" and rode off. 

I ended up setting up shop on these curved stairs at the center of that complex that only lead to houses/condos behind it so no traffic that late (it was something like 7, pretty late in these wartime days) and ate, and it was really good. No one bugged me, and it was great other than a wind gust that scattered my napkins and chopstick sleeve around. But I picked those up when I was done. 

Then I went to FedEx and dropped off 6 packages with them and got my new Koga book spiral-bound which cost me about $9 this time, sheesh. Still, Friday night is the time to do this because FedEx was super un-busy. 

Next I went to the storage, thinking I'll take out two 500-series plugins to replace the two that just sold, and some other stuff. For some reason the light inside the storage unit didn't turn on so I wonder if the bulb is bad. I found that not only does the flashlight I carry on the bike need new batteries, but the bike headlight too. Ken had put some more stuff in so I grabbed my 2 plugins, a box of Plantronics headsets, and a few other things. 

By now it was after 8, which now, is equivalent to being out after midnight in the Before Times. I got some packing stuff from the electric lighting place, which seems to have a dog in there overnight who barked a bit. I went back my usual route, past Univision but didn't see Arnold so I didn't get to wave and call out "Hey Arnold!". 

I pulled in the complex with Grill'Em and there was another large-ish dog, running around loose. So I called out like people do with dogs, in that falsetto-ish voice, "Puppy! We've got a puppy!" and the dog wasn't aggressive but was just with "his" people, who were working on a truck there. One of the guys called out, "You got any catalytic converters in that wagon?" and I said "Nope!" as I rode by. I didn't even find anything in the veggie dumpster. 

I got back here and put things away and decided that since it's so damned late, something like 8:30 which is like being out and around at 1AM in the Before Times, I'll get rid of some stuff. 

I opened up the huge Uline box and took the 4 boxes of tape out of it, cut the flaps off the box to make it a big tub, put some paper stuff from around here in it, then put these 5 really long probe boxes I'd tossed into the trash yard, into it also. These boxes were something like 4 feet long and held some kind of probe or something that does something like go in a guy's leg and all the way up to his heart or something. So I took all of this and dumped it by the bridge where 10th street starts and now the hobos can burn the cardboard or whatever they want to do with it. 

I got back in, exchanged a few friendly words with my Mexican buddies next door, and That Was My Day(tm). 

I measured out 20 feet of this 24-inch wide copper foil we have, which takes a bit of doing. I made 20 little stickers to put at each foot mark, then rolled it out while rolling up the measured end, until I got to 20 feet (with a little more to the customer's benefit) then cut a mailing tube down to fit with padding eat each end, rolled my 20 feet up to fit inside, then taped the ends with really strong tape over the caps. It weighed 10 lbs, and the customer had paid us $200 for it. 

I packed this not only because if I didn't tonight it'd go "overdue" like a library book and lower our score on Ebay, but I also thought Monday will be rained out and so I wanted to pack a lot of FedEx things and take them there tomorrow. Instead, it seems Sunday will be a rain day and Monday will be fine. Plus, all the things I have to ship now are small so they'll go to the post office which isn't open on weekends. So any "going out and doing stuff" will have to be tomorrow.

A while back I had a plan to do voice exercises every day and I was doing them at least for a while and they were making my voice stronger but what's been doing that even more is practicing the shakuhachi. It gets right down to the fundamentals of breathing.