28th day sober. I went to bed at about 5AM, drifting off to sleep rehearsing the finger positions I know now and their notes on the staff.
I wonder why I'm squeaking so much? The last time I played clarinet and well enough to play "Harry Truman" by Chicago, and "How Dry I Am" for the dubious benefit of a staggering drunk on the other side of Castro Street who was being held up by two friends, I was hardly squeaking until I got tired out. But then, I was playing a student Vito clarinet, which are noted for being made for minimum squeaks. I think smaller finger holes were one feature. Relative squeak-less-ness seems to have been achieved by sacrificing tone, from what I've read about Vitos.
I'm also stronger due to all that trumpet playing, yet because I'm essentially new to clarinet, I know my embouchure is all over the place.
I woke up at 2, had coffee, vitamins, and nuts. I'd gotten some Doutor pour-overs at Nijiya and man, those things are good!
I packed 4 things that need to go by FedEx, and which made a decent-sized load. I left here at 5:30 and got to FedEx about 5:50 so it was perfect timing.
I got a gyro at Baba's Falafel and ate at the egg shaped robot place, and as usual it was excellent. I wanted to have a full stomach because when I was done with that, I stopped at Tom's place and told him I'd been thinking about it and decided I don't want to watch his place for him and that the Yamaha hard case should stay with the Yamaha trumpet. I told him about a couple of music stores that will probably sell him a hard case, and that as for the building, if he makes it look really neat, have all trash cans etc behind the fence, get rid of the weeds and sweep up, etc. make it look super-neat, no one ought to bother it for the 10 days he'll be gone.
He didn't seem to take this personally, maybe because he knew he was going to try to stiff me for the money. We ended up talking about a bunch of things and I mentioned our Ebay sales being down due to my not working as well due to the domoic acid poisoning then deciding to get off of alcohol then the 2nd covid shot. That got me into talking about getting off of alcohol and how I'd been very motivated by reading up on the actual damage it does to the body. I talked about ascites and the BBC documentaries showing even quite young people who have it, normal arms and legs but big belly with the belly button actually pushed outward. About then, Tom stood up and I saw in profile that his belly was not only big but his belly button pushed outwards.
Since the guy's probably going to just drink himself to death, I don't mind getting him into busking but I don't want to be too involved.
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