Pallet-able

 For some strange reason last night I didn't feel sleepy and after I'd gotten 10 things all cleaned up and ready to list I realized it was getting close to 6AM.  I prepared for bed, watched inane YouTube videos, and did my shakuhachi practice including playing my best Hinomaru so far. 

I woke up at 11 when I heard the truck outside, and orchestrated the delivery of two pallets of stuff, stacked on one another. The poor guy delivering them seemed to be Middle-Eastern, maybe Eastern European, and I felt sorry for the guy, having to deliver packages from probably early in the morning. 

I went back to bed for a couple of hours, then after some vitamins and nuts and so on, headed out with packages I'd packed last night. The guy at the welding place called out if we needed a pallet jack to handle the package, and I said that No, my buddy would come by later and we'd handle it. He said he didn't think we had room, and I said, "We don't - it's why we have the storage unit". Then we talked about all the shenanigans of the homeless bums around here, and how nice it is that it's calmed down a lot, with the security guards guarding the now-closed ham factory, patrolling around here too. 

The lunch truck was out front, so I stopped in for something and got a half burrito for the usual $2. The poor lady there told me about how homeless people had stolen her car and her purse and her phone and so on, took it all, and I told her I always felt worried when I saw her being nice to homeless people because "They'll kill you for $5" and even repeated it, "They'll kill you for $5". She said something about paying another homeless person to find her car but it was unclear whether he'd done so or just taken off with the money. 

I ate most of the half-burrito sitting on the curb by the Indian grocery and noticed bums were scrounging around on the other side of the fence. Guy bum saying to himself or someone else that it's going to rain tomorrow "It'll be bad", he said. I waited until he was gone then tossed two empty Tom Price beer cans over the fence. 

Deliveries went OK except a tall thin black guy wanted to put his package in with mine at the post office chute, like what happened to social distancing? I was already on edge due to the bum out front, who may or may not consider stealing my bike. So Mr. Tall And Skinny and I had words. In all the 8 years using that post office I've never experienced someone being so pushy. Just like with white bums, it's Me, Me, Me, and I'm Entitled. 

That's the trouble with African-Americans. It's not that they're African, it's that they're American. They're members of an incredibly shitty culture. I probably should have just let the guy put his damn package in with mine. 

I called Ken to tell him the delivery is here, and he said he'd be by in "about an hour". I gathered some packing stuff on my way back and unloaded everything back here, futzed around on Ebay and on Reddit, and a couple of hours later, was cutting the wrappings off of the package when I heard Ken drive up. 

We worked together loading up the first load, and when Ken took off with that I got busy putting the big shipping boxes out with "FREE" signs on them, or the first one anyway. The darned things cost $85 from Uline. There was a lot of plastic lab stuff we were throwing out because it's pretty much worthless, and I harvest the zipper bags from those. 

Eventually Ken came back and in the meantime I'd gotten bored and opened up the 2nd box and found a lot of small and/or heavy stuff in a flimsy box in there so I put a lot of things into 5 different sturdy boxes I rounded up, so when Ken came back for the 2nd load it went a lot faster. I'd saved Ken a lot of time and hassle. 

Ken did not, however, load up a big hydraulic thing, a monster squirrel cage fan, or the some kind of a pump on a little mini-pallet of its own. "I'm gonna put those in the shop, somewhere", he said. 

All three were bastard heavy, and the squirrel cage fan I couldn't even lift. But I got them into the warehouse. So when Ken came back the area was all clear, the things were in the warehouse, and the work was all done. "Some ancient Egyptians came by and helped me," I explained, referring to how Ken is always saying that people think the things the ancient Egyptians built had to use supernatural forces but nope it's just plain old figuring things out. 

So it was Tea & Science time, and we sat around talking about science-y stuff, and we had a good old time talking about this and that. But I was feeling very tired, and started looking at the clock, and Ken said he's worn out too, and amazingly quickly got up and got into his truck and was outta here. It still amazes me how well we work together. 

And I was tired, having slept from maybe 7-11 then a couple more hours.