My day off sorta

 99th day sober. I slept in until 3, and last night not only got Ebay things listed but did some practice too. 

I'm really glad I've decided to only read and not post any more to Morris Berman's blog. Here's a post by one of the regulars, a Joe M. - 

" Sure as shit, as I’m walking home a punk ( about 25 or so) on a bicycle passes me. He angrily says, “Take the goddamn mask off!” He pedaled on a bit and condescendingly shook his head. So I replied, nice and loud, “MIND YOUR OWN FUCKIN’ BUSINESS.” He pedaled a little further and I then yelled, “GO FUCK YOURSELF!” He slowed up his bike and I thought he was going to get off it. So I started walking towards him to put up the dukes. But he kept on riding. He looked as if he was close to 7 feet tall, slender build. But I didn’t care. Just for good measure I was hoping he would return so I could confront him, and if need be, fight him. And so I stayed for over two hours where the incident occurred, this time with heavy tar rocks to throw at him as hard as I could before I put up my fists. Lucky for him he never returned.
For some reason, I always seem to attract mean, nasty people in public. I don’t know if it’s the nerdy-looking glasses, the mild mannered-looking face, or the flowered shirts. But I’m fuckin’ sick of it!
I mean this in all sincerity: If I were a character in a movie, I’m to the point here in the United States I would be Michael Douglas in Falling Down."

How's that for a New Monastic Individual? Any normal person would have just let it all go, at most thought about how the punk will probably catch covid and take it home to his grandmother or something along that line, and go on with their walk. Here's a grown adult, picking up "tar rocks" and waiting around for two hours to fight some "punk" who he assumes has nothing better to do - while said punk probably rode on home, had beer and pizza with his buddies, you know, normal things. Not hanging around with rocks in hand waiting for a fight for two hours. And as far as that goes, masks aren't required outdoors. Then the guy compares himself to the Michael Douglas character in Falling Down, who is very much the bad guy. Falling Down is a huge morality play as are all popular movies, in which the bad guy is the bad guy for being the most inflexible, the other characters less bad because they're inflexible but not as much as the bad guy, and then the good guy, the detective, is the good guy because he's flexible and willing to listen to other people's viewpoints regardless of race, class, etc. Anyone who thinks of the Michael Douglas character as a hero really hasn't thought about the movie at all.  

But my mentioning that shooting is in the Olympics because the modern Olympics was founded by Baron de Coubertin, a competitive shooter, is forbidden. And all mention of me seems to be so, also, because when a regular doesn't post for a while the others tend to ask about them, and I'm not seeing that so even inquiries are being screened out. 

Eventually I rode up to H Mart for some shopping, and even got a new saucepan because the nonstick coating on mine is starting to wear out and after a while longer I'll decide it's had it and can just get out the new one. I also looked at their electric kettles because mine's acting weird and so far I've decided it's not the connection in the base so the next thing to try is to take it apart and mess around inside and see if that fixes it - if not it's time for a new one. 

On the way back I stopped to hang out with Tom, and brag a bit about my $155 weekend playing trumpet. As usual we talked about all kinds of things including the udon I'd just had. I tried the udon at the place that's inside H Mart, because Tom said he didn't like it. I really did, I told him, but it's definitely a Korean take on udon and if you're expecting it to taste like Japanese udon you're not going to like it. 

One thing I told him was how I'd come here to the Bay Area. I'd flown in to the San Francisco airport and hadn't even booked a hotel room in advance, but just followed some people onto one of the hotel buses and ended up staying at the Ramada and it was only about $50 for the night. After a night's sleep got up and walked down the street where I thought I saw a rental car place, and since there was a breakfast place there too I had breakfast first then rented a car, and drove around to the other side of the bay where an internet friend lived who was going to rent me a room but the room was tiny and his place was a horror so I told him I had other plans. I then drove down to Sunnyvale and stayed at the "Silicon Way Inn" I think it was for about a week while I found an apartment. That place was only about $40 a night and after the first night I told them it was a great room, and the guy said, "It should be - before the dot-com crash it was $160 a night!". Once I had an apartment rented it was time to buy a car, which I did over at the Saturn place, then drove the rental back up to South San Francisco where I'd rented it and one of the guys took me to the CalTrain station there and I took the train back down to Sunnyvale. In other words I just winged it and it all worked out all right. 

We talked a lot about the 08 crash and I said if I'd been a super saver and super frugal, I'd have weathered it OK. But of course I didn't. A guy Tom has doing some work for him lost it all in that crash also, and the crash also drove his family apart. We talked about the desirability of being able to save money and thus be able to say no to jobs we hate, and to be able to maneuver around in life. 

But these days it also means, I think, you've also got to be able to wing it. And that might mean risking being homeless, or living in your office, or something like that.