125th day sober. Last night I got some practice in, and concentrated on using the regular old 3C mouthpiece. But I switched back and forth between it and the 7C and really listened to the tone, and there's actually quite a difference. I can play higher, easier, on the 7C but the tone's a lot bigger on the 3C. The 5C I have on order will fill out the line-up nicely.
I woke up at 3. I packed a few more things making 21 total, and by the time I had everything that goes by US Mail packed, it was almost 6 anyway so I left at about the normal time but I didn't stop anywhere for packing materials so it was a quick out and back to the post office and FedEx.
I'd been considering not playing tonight and playing Saturday and Sunday but I really wanted to get out there so I started out for downtown at a quarter to 7.
By the time I had gotten over to Whole Foods and eaten some beef and beans and had a can of coffee and then picked my teeth and chewed gum and was ready to go, it was 7:40.
The Save The Children (or whatever it is) scammers were still out with their little booth, bugging people as they went by. Now, on this night everyone was getting ready for their big Labor Day weekend so people were practically speed-walking in and out of Whole Foods. But the scammers bugging them made them even more hesitant to tarry.
So I played and played, fascinated, because I didn't get a single tip until the scammers finally packed up their little booth and buggered off. Then I actually started getting tips and thank-yous. It actually started going rather well. At one point, a young guy in a UCSD shirt came up and said how he liked my playing, how he lives in the apartments across the street, how he finds my playing restful etc. and I kept waiting for the "BUT......!" and even said, apologetically, that I was playing later than I usually do. But it seemed all he wanted to say was just that. That he liked my playing.
Also apparently I need to set up a Venmo because this is the 3rd person who's asked if I have one. I should look into that, probably, and I guess Venmo would just send me a 1099 before tax time so it needn't complicate tax matters.
Since I'd started at 7:40 I "had" to play until 9:40 which I did. But all of my tips were actually made from 9:00 to 9:30, and they amounted to $56.50. By the end of the night my lips were really tired and I'm afraid I sounded like a kazoo.
It's almost like, by playing on something other than my good old 3C mouthpiece, I thought I was doing OK but I'd lost some endurance.
I bought some smoked salmon for dinner and left Whole Foods as they were closing, so I got a look at what San Jose is like at 10:00 PM on a Friday night and as usual, it was pretty boring. No buskers at The Old Spaghetti Factory, with instead a beggar set up near the "danger dog" stand; the same location Leroy plays if he's there, or where I'd play if I were playing there tonight (and I'd sure been tempted to).
Just basically dead, dead, dead. There was a "superspreader" event being held at the SAP Center because that virus isn't gonna spread itself, but the concert or whatever it was hadn't let out yet, probably scheduled for 8-11PM to give people a good 3 hours to huff each others' germs. It's good value for the money, really, because if even 1 in 1000 has active covid, hundreds more can catch it.
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