Slept through sun-day.

 183rd day sober. After taking those things apart last night/early-early morning, and getting a batch ready to list on Ebay, it was late/early enough that I decided not to do the actual listing, and just relax a bit, practice, and go to bed. However Chuy next door started washing his van, and he was having a hell of a time, singing a bit some Mexican song and going over every detail - he's like that. Since I'm not supposed to actually be in here on an early Sunday morning, I decided not to blow my cover with violin noises and eventually went to bed. 

I woke up at a bit after 4, since I'd have to be out the door at 5 with some packages packed if I was going to do a FedEx run I decided to blow that off, and went back to sleep until about 7:30. 

There's a guy with first one, and now two, black and yellow pickup trucks parked next to the trash enclosure. First I thought he was trying to get one of them running, but now I think it's an example of a car-fixing zombie. Car-fixing zombies never actually fix cars, they just fuck around with them interminably, as an excuse to have a junk car or three and a lot of trash scattered around. I took a peek outside just now and the zombie's spray-painting part of one of the trucks that was black, yellow. Hello, it's cold and a bit damp, not at all painting weather. I don't care if he hears my practicing and hope it annoys him. 

There was a thing on the radio about non-compete clauses. That's one of the things I talked with Ken about last night - how I'm effectively under a non-compete clause with him due to how Ebay is. I reminded him how I and a mutual friend of ours almost got kicked off of Ebay for life because this friend and I communicated and occasionally bought things from each other. He's in Santa Clara and I was in Sunnyvale. Ken mentioned a guy in Tennessee who he's dealt with with no problems, and I pointed out that the guy's 1000's of miles away. Likewise, once back in Hawaii I'll be about 2500 miles away and could, if nothing else, go back to doing Ebay stuff, finding things to buy and sell, and that's what got me around to talking about the seashells. 

With a big enough "nut" of money to live on and rent a place while getting it going, I could honestly do that. But it really works best with small, high-value things. Like seashells. 

Being able to busk and selling shells would be just about perfect. 

First note

 182nd day sober.  Besides Ebay stuff I got some practice in before bed, and that went pretty well. I ventured onto the next page in the String Builder book and tried out the first fingered note, an E on the D string. I was not sure which note they meant, since if I'm doing things my own way I just put my fingers where my ears tell me the notes I need are, but if I'm to learn to do it right I have to do it *their* way and this is the advantage of working out of the String Builder book: There's at least one guy on YouTube who has play-throughs of all the exercises. So I just pulled up exercise #25 and there it was and I played along. I was able to play dead-on in tune with the guy which was a neat feeling. 

My sleep schedule's still screwed up, though. After all this I woke up at 5:30 in the afternoon. I left for downtown at 7:20 or so. And interesting thing happened. On 10th street, as I cross the railroad tracks, tracks I've crossed a ton of times, my front wheel got grabbed by the little groove alongside one of the tracks and I ended up doing this huge wobble all over the place, it was wild. I could have "eaten it" really badly as I was going fairly fast. I'll just have to be more careful about those things.

I dropped off rice at my three regular little free libraries, but found no books worth taking. I rode through San Pedro Square thinking, It's a Saturday night, it's just a bit before 8, and this is the perfect time to see if there are any musicians around. The answer was no. There was only one beggar, and that one not even very good at his craft but more like mentally ill, sitting with a bunch of various boxes he'd collected and not really interacted with anyone. 

I got to Whole Foods and they'd cleared the pumpkins away so if I wanted to play trumpet there again I'd have the same wide open venue I did before, but again, I expected there'd be a beggar there with it being such a nice warm night and so on. But there was no one. 

I walked up to CVS first and got some things, and it had odd people in there as usual but they were friendly odd people, then I walked back to the bike and loaded the stuff into the bags and went into Whole Foods for some shopping. Of course Ken called me while I did that, and he said he was coming over to the shop and I told him about a couple of things and said I'll be back to the shop in about an hour.

So I got some buffet stuff too; as they had tabbouleh, kalamata olives, hummous, etc., so I had a sort of Middle-Eastern snack at one of the tables

I ate my snack, and noticed a middle-aged lady walking by with one hand on her back like it was sore. I didn't think much of it. For some reason there were several people wearing Sharks gear although there was no game at the stadium and there were not a few people who were really drunk. 

When I was done eating and had arranged and packed things on the bike and was heading out, I noticed there was a fire truck and an ambulance out front, and being loaded into the ambulance was ... the lady with the sore back. So that was weird. 

I rode home at a pretty good clip, and when I was on Old Bayshore my phone rang and it was Ken. I told him I was 2 minutes out, 

Ken had some weird video camera stuff and  some boxes, and I told him about the problems of packing this one large thing that sold and we made some plans on how to deal with it, and other "administrative" things like that. 

Then we got talking about various weird things that get you in trouble on Ebay for instance, I almost got kicked off and a friend of mine also, myself being in Sunnyvale and him being in Santa Clara, and Ebay didn't like that we did a little buying and selling between us so we almost got kicked off for "shilling" and I told Ken how as long as I'm working for him I'm under a "non-compete" because of this. But once I'm back in Hawaii I'll be 2500 miles away and if nothing else I could start up my Ebay business again and this time around, just avoid get into debt for any reason. 

"That means getting stuff the way I do", Ken said, by which he meant free or cheap. I said these days I know how to look for things companies are throwing out, plus all the various seashells which are of course free. I pulled up listings of shells being sold by people in Hawaii on Ebay and even I was amazed. Sure enough, as I noticed a while back, kahelelani shells are going $1 or more each. Even "raw" ones, just picked up off the beach with no holes put in them for stringing or even the sand picked out, are going for 40c-50c each. 

I showed him all these different shells, that the sellers are often not getting the names right of, and was amazed myself at the prices - a lot of non-rare shells are going $10 each or more. I told him how I knew these things and where each mollusk lived and how and what it ate and so on, because I grew up with them. I told him how, when I went back in 03, I'd thought for years that the puka shells had been really depleted after the craze for them in the 1970s, but I went back to the North Shore - had the whole beach to myself from end to end - and there were tons of shells just like the 1970s gathering had never happened. 

I told him my impression is that the shells are certainly there, but it takes someone who knows how to gather them and how much work that is, and how to be organized, good at the things I'm good at and that those skills are relatively rare. Also I guess a person had better like collecting shells because otherwise it really would seem like hard work. 

I told him the reason why I'd gone into music is, you play the music and people tip and nothing physical changes hands. Hell I was making $60-$80 for playing a couple of hours. I also admitted that I seem to have "topped out" on trumpet and will give violin a try for a year because I think in a year, on violin, I can be where I was after several years on trumpet. And if violin doesn't work out, at least I'll know I tried. 

Ken says he wants to get someone with electronic technician experience to replace me, and we agreed you have to have someone who really knows what the things do and how to repair them if needed. I said he'll have plenty of warning of my going, as I don't plan to leave before 2024 unless something drastic happens and even then, it would probably take me 6 months to get all set up to move. Also, I want to make sure I have enough saved up to live on for a year without having to do anything. Pay for a place to live a whole year up front etc. 

Why all these plans, though and why all this thinking? I feel like now that I'm not drinking at all, I have a brand new brain. I can remember things better, and I guess in a lot of ways my tastes have changed. Like, why was I so interested in the trumpet in the first place? It's OK I guess, and if you're out busking it's certainly good for making sure people know you're there, but I'm just no longer interested in anything I have to puff into. 

If I had to describe what music I grew up on, I'd have to say lots of classical due to Dad, lots of popular whatever was on the radio stuff, and lots of good old 1970s guitar. And I notice a fair amount of overlap between some classical violin and some of the neat guitar stuff that's been done, so maybe if I can get good enough, I can scratch that itch of being able to play some of the guitar solos I love. Apparently they're not that hard to play for a competent violinist. So whether I make any money with it or not, so far I'm really happy I decided to see if I can learn to play the violin. 

Halloween's gone.

 181st day sober. Last night I went to bed a bit before midnight, I was so tired. I woke up a bunch of times to pee but slept until 9AM, then got up a bit before 10. I had coffee and so on, then still felt tired so I went to bed again from about noon until about 4:30. 

I'm listening to the radio and you can't make this stuff up. They play a really cheerful, bouncy, song that goes "Halloween's Gone", by a guy named Profit, who's originally from Orange County, the place that might not have invented real estate speculation but certainly perfected it. It's about a shooting in the Castro district of San Francisco, that happened on Halloween and killed several people. 

Shootings bring down property values, opening an area to speculation. Plus, if you're trying to gentrify an area, the last thing you want are large Halloween celebrations. So if you're a mass murderer who carries out such shootings, of course real estate speculators from Orange County are going to write bouncy, cheerful, songs celebrating you. And your song will get pushed on National Public Corporate Radio. Apparently the song is on some album they put out called "Songs Of California". You just can't make this shit up. 

 

Sifting and sorting

 180th day sober. Yesterday and last night, not only did I sift through all those pills and pretty largely sort out the decongestants Ken wanted from the other stuff like other pills, "medicinal" packets of malted milk balls, band-aids and so on, but I also did a lot of other sifting and sorting. 

Not least of which was assembling 124 connectors with other bits that go with the connectors so I had assemblies that were all the same. And taking some parts - close to 200 of them - and putting them into better storage boxes than the falling-apart box they came in. And in the end of all this, I listed a bunch of this stuff on Ebay. 

So I knew I was not going to get much sleep, and it was a nice surprise that I actually woke up in time to leave for downtown with plenty of time to stop at the little free libraries and drop off a bag of apple, a bag of oranges, 3 small bags of rice, and pick up some neat books. I got "Political Economy" by A. Leontiev, a basic text for anyone who wants to call themselves a Marxist, and a William Burroughs I'd never heard of called Wild Boys. If it's as good as Junky I'll be pretty happy. 

The thing with Junky by Burroughs is, he could have been writing about bus drivers and it would be as interesting. It's the writing itself that's excellent. If I could write like that ... Well, if I could write like that, still no one would read what I write but I'd be fairly happy. In fact I'd not mind writing some stuff and getting an ISBN number for it and publishing it just so I could say I've written a book. It used to be one could make money, even a living, this way but that's all gone now. Everyone writes for free these days. Still, as hobbies go it's not terribly expensive. 

Things went fine at the bank, I did some shopping at Dai Thanh and Nijiya, and even gathered a little bag of juniper berries for Ken. The ones I gave him a while back were a hit. He just soaked them in vodka. I think these will be better as they're more ripe. I suppose I could take some myself, soak them in some sort of alcohol and evaporate the alcohol, then use to flavor fizzy water as a drink or to put in tonic water for a gin-and-tonic flavored drink. That's all a lot of work, though. I'd rather just pick some berries for Ken and have the fun of wondering when I'll get yelled at for picking the berries. The house the bushes are in front of always seems to have someone hanging out talking on their phone or with each other. Maybe they figure having the berries picked is a benefit, as at times the berries get so heavy it makes parts of the bushes sag down and then the bushes look weird. 

A Potemkin Pot

 179th day sober. I got my practice in last night, and am surely improving. Still on open strings, but still pretty fun to do while watching some documentary on YouTube. I've been finishing up my practices with the kind of "long bow" exercises my teacher was so big on when I was taking those few lessons, long ago. 

I was up around 3:30 and had coffee etc. packed a few things which turned out to be surprisingly big in that they took surprisingly big boxes to pack well, and did my post office and FedEx run. It was actually kind of warm, and I wonder if I'll have to get the hat and gloves out at all this winter. 

I picked up a ton of office break room type packets of pills from the medical place and some AED pads to put on Ebay etc., and a few manuals to list also. 

I'd had the trumpet soaking in a Dawn solution for days, and scrubbed the parts and put it, in parts, upstairs to dry. Then I cleaned the bathroom; the toilet's not flushing at all so it's a Potemkin pot. It looks all fine and well but it doesn't work. It's OK in a way, I can whiz in this container I keep for reasons like that then empty that into the sink and rinse it, and well, I have systems for everything. But I hope whatever's wrong with the plumbing resolves itself somehow. That's sort of the game around here. The toilet's always acting up and it's up to me to let someone else complain about the system so I'm not the complainer. 

Ken came by as I was scrubbing the sink, and loaded me up with a ton of stuff to list. Then I fixed him tea and we talked while I went through the pills, sorting out the decongestant ones "we eat like candy" for Ken and his family. I mean, there are adhesive bandages and cough drops and all kinds of goodies in there, even a little bag of Cheez-Its which Ken got as he needed something starchy/sugary for his blood sugar. When he was done with those, I fixed him up with some haw flakes. 

He didn't think the haw flakes tasted like much, and I explained that I liked them because of the day I was really hungry, had had nothing to eat and was with my mother downtown and all we could afford was this little package of haw flakes that was like 29c, and how those things really saved my day. I went on to say it's my impression that a lot of things in the Asian stores are like that, they don't taste that great but people are nostalgic for them; foods that got them through hard times. I mentioned eating sweet potato leaves as a kid and what a great discovery they were. Everyone thought they were poisonous so no one considered them food, and that's how I was able to get them. If we tried growing anything in a garden it would all be stolen. But something people thought was poisonous, was accessible to me. That's how you get by in hard times, you eat things that most people won't touch, so you develop these quirky tastes in food. 

I sorted out all the decongestant pills for Ken and put them in two gallon zipper bags, so it was a lot of pills. And I got my check of course.

Keeping away

 178th day sober. Up around 4. I practiced my hour or a bit over an hour last night, before bed. When I got up I had the packages I had to send all packed, so it was easy to load 'em up when it was time and go. I kept away from Junction Avenue in case that zombie who yelled at me was there.

Nice and dry now.

177th day sober.  Up at 3.  

Last night I did my about-an-hour of practice. I feel if I consistently practice at least an hour a day, after a year I might really have something to show for it. I actually feel that after a year's diligent practice at an hour or more per day, I might have the same capability to produce music that people find at least somewhat likable, that I had after years of playing trumpet. And unlike trumpet, I should not "top out" at the G that sits on top of the staff. 

I managed to get most things that were due to go out, packed and headed out at my usual time, and it was nice and dry (going to be so for at least the next week) and it was uneventful except, going up Junction Avenue, there was a female zombie with a shopping cart. As I passed, giving a wide berth by riding in the center of the road, the zombie called out to me saying things like "It's a nice afternoon" and "God bless you" and as I ignored it, said more things which I could not make out but from their tone did not sound nice at all. 

That's the thing with zombies. They are convinced you owe them something where "something" probably means every bit of money you have on you, anything else with any value, your bike, your clothes, your shoes, and Oh yeah these are zombies we're talking about so of course your delicious brains. 

I'll change my route leaving here for the next few days and as always, keep my eyes open for *other* zombies because the damned things are scattered all over. 

I stopped by the dumpster that's by Tom's building because on Monday night they always put out packing material but there wasn't much this time and no 55-gallon bags. But there was some, and I had a large plastic bag with me so I gathered that up. Tom was home, but I think his homeless friend has moved in there because his van was there too. They're probably getting good and drunk every night and more power to 'em, I'm staying away.

Pouring

 176th day sober. I woke up around 3, and it was raining so I went back to sleep and woke up at 8. It's pouring. Before bed I got at least an hour's practice in, and I'm improving. This is what I plan to do, the same as I was doing on trumpet. Get in at least an hour's practice a day. After a year, decided how to proceed from there.

So much for that plan

 175th day sober. Last night I listed some Ebay things which is good, and more importantly, I did some practice. 

I hadn't practiced for days, and when I got the violin out it was still in tune. This Bunnell violin from Kennedy Violins may not be the ne plus ultra of violins, but for a beginner like me, it's great. I even like the cheesy shoulder rest that comes with it, even if I do have to unscrew the legs of it to fit it into the little compartment in the case when I put it away. I've used a real Kun shoulder rest in the past, and this stays on the violin better and is even lighter. 

Even though I'd skipped a few days, I found I'd improved. The exercises were easier, the playing position felt more natural, and so on. I'm still on the open-string stuff and will stay there until I'm ready to move on as there's tons of different note-counting and some very basic bow-technique stuff in there too. I practiced a bit over a half-hour. 

Of course it was something like 9AM when I went to sleep, maybe closer to 10. The plan had been to get up in time to pack a couple of things I could take to FedEx before the rain started but when I woke up at 3, I could not bring myself to get out of bed, I felt so tired. So I went back to sleep until almost 8. I'll figure out the shipping later. 

between storms

 174th day sober. I was up around 3:30, packed a few small things, and did my post office and fedex run. I got back and checked my email - Ken had sent me an email, as always, after the fact, telling me that inspectors were coming around but I guess the impression was good enough the first time around that they never bothered me. 

It had been raining when I went to bed, but was dry today and besides dropping off the small packages I did a pretty thorough shopping trip at H Mart as I might be rained in over the weekend.

Between storms.

173rd day sober. Last night I packed up a huge package that had to go out, with the idea I can have Ken take it to FedEx for me if I got it packed in time. I'd just finished that when Ken came by, so I had to maintain a conversation with him while I improvised a waterproof cover for it out of two large Hefty bags, then Ken helped me find a laser power supply I'd put in some hours looking for, and I packed that - it had to go to Japan - meanwhile of course keeping Ken conversationally entertained. 

With all the stuff I'd done and all of that going on too, once Ken and I had had our customary bull session, I was wiped out. I actually watched some YouTube documentaries, one about Liszt and two about Izhak Perlman, the old one and then a very recent one. 

There are a lot of people trying to sow fear, "Jews are taking over the world" and all that, and I say, Let 'em! Perlman's family got the hell out of Poland while the getting was good in the mid-1930s, to what would become Israel. They swept floors and took in washing and such things. Then Perlman and his mother moved to NYC where she swept floors and took in washing and such things, but they backed their kid up 100.00% and he was able to become a great violinist. They encouraged, pushed, arranged funding for Juilliard, etc. They wanted their kid to do better than them in life.

The thing is, white, non-Jewish parents don't do this. They don't give a shit how their kids turn out.

I was not sure I'd wake up in time to get down to the bank or whether it would be raining, but I woke up at 3:30 and it was clear, and while it's kind of warm and "tropical" feeling, it stayed dry and my errands were uneventful. After the bank I went to Whole Foods to stock up on some things and now they have a bum outside whose "performance" is sitting around with a sign.

I think if I went out to play music there again, I'd play up the sidewalk a bit in a spot that's actually closer in, but less obstructed with pumpkins and bums, and because of being closer in I'd play a lot quieter - it's actually much better suited to violin playing than trumpet playing. With trumpet I felt like I had to "fill up" the parking lot with sound.

I think I've had a fixation on how loud I can be, and in fact, in terms of mainland culture that's considered a good thing. In bios of Louis Armstrong it will always be mentioned how Louis naturally played so loudly that he had to play some distance away from the rest of the band when making the early recordings. But being loud is not good back home. 

I went around to Dai Thanh and got some food at Da Kao which I ate over at the college, picked up some bubble mailers at the Amazon place and got a couple of books to read on the way back, and got back here. I also stopped by these juniper bushes on 2nd to check on their berries. Some ripe ones are on there, and I gathered a few, carefully, because one of the guys who lives at that house was right on his front steps on the phone and there was a car waiting for him or something too. So I just rode up, gathered a handful of ripe berries on the other side of the bushes from him, and got out of there. 

The berries, when they ripen, open up like little flowers and there are seeds in there that fall out. I'm gathering them for Ken, who wants to make a non-alcoholic gin flavoring.

Rained on

 172nd day sober. Yesterday was a busy one. I not only made those two trips with the bike trailer to "harvest" those jars of vermicelli, but I had to swap out the spaghetti I had stored, and organized the jars of vermicelli into boxes that stack nicely. Plus I used a large piece of cardboard as a sort of mat under my folding futon to protect it from the carpet, and I'd found a nice large appliance box and needed to get that back here, trim it down a bit, cut up the old piece of cardboard and since I'd gotten it as well as this new one at the HVAC place, drop off the pieces at the HVAC place. 

Then there was tons of Ebay packing to do, and things to hunt for and eventually find. There's only one thing I can't find (customer is not happy). To get them all done, I "staged" the packages last night into this morning, then when I got up and had had coffee etc., I finished them up plus found and packed a few more. I ended up leaving at 6 on the dot with 21 packages on the bike trailer; the Post Office ones in one large plastic bag and the FedEx ones in another large plastic bag. 

My system worked well as I did get rained on, coming back from the post office to go to FedEx. I picked up a big box to ship a very large heavy thing (about 60 lbs) in and thought about picking up some food. Ideally, this would be the one night a week I'd stop at Krispy Chicken but I'd actually gone there last night and the one before. I remembered good old Grill-'em and stopped there. Last time I'd been by it had been full of "dude-bros" and not that pleasant but maybe tonight it would be OK. 

It turned out to be so un-busy I thought it might be closed when I rode up. I was the only customer in there. The wings have gone up to $12 now, of course. I got back here and ate them and as usual they were pretty good. 

Rain possibly coming in.

 171st day sober. I did some practice before bed, more open-string stuff. There are all kinds of different kinds of exercises in the String Builder book that just use the open strings and as tedious as they can be, I want to stay on those until I've got decent control of the bow before going on. 

I was up at 3 and after coffee etc., I packed some things and did my post office and FedEx route, and stopped and got fried chicken - which I'd done last night too but I was hungry - and picked up a few packing things and at the "irregular" food place an onion and a bag of those itty-bitty potatoes that are all kind of funny colors like purple. 

I stopped at the "Indian" dumpster just out of curiosity and there were tons of plastic jars of "100% durum vermicelli" which were very thin noodles maybe an inch long, 500 grams per jar. I loaded up the trailer and came back here with about 60 or 70 jars, unloaded those and sat down and ate my chicken, then went out for another load. There was a security guy snooping around who hung out by where I was going to ride, so I found little things to do until he bugged off somewhere, then when I was going to go into the complex where the Indian dumpster is, there was a zombie with a shopping cart, and worse, the zombie was going into the complex also. 

So I rode around the other side and came in by FedEx, looking and listening for the zombie, and there was no sign of it. I loaded up the trailer again, and in the end came out of this with 141 jars of durum vermicelli, which at 400g a jar, is 124 pounds of the stuff. 

Each jar is sealed with a neat foil seal, so I think I'm going to swap these in, and swap out my stash of squid-ink spaghetti. This stuff is much more appetizing, takes far less cooking time, and can be used a ton of ways, even to make Indian sweets. The spaghetti's only in cellophane bags and ... squid ink ... I mean... 

One advantage of the squid ink stuff though is, it's black. I can clip it into small pieces and toss it out for the birds and keep it a pretty good secret. I *was* putting out things for the birds on the little overhang here until I realized it's really easy to see from the parking lot what's up there. Even sunflower seeds aren't stealthy enough. I've thought of buying a bird seed called "niger" which is black but never got around to it. But this stuff is free. 

As for the vermicelli, I think it's a much better emergency store. Each 400g jar is a good daily ration or to hand out to people, and it takes very little cooking. You can put it in a wok with a little water to cook it, then as the water boils off, add a little oil and stir-fry it, add veggies, etc. 

Since it's similar amounts of pasta, it's a pretty easy swap to change out one for the other. And I only got a few drops of rain on me, when gathering up the 2nd trailer-load. Heavy rain is expected, which will turn things into a mushy mess. 

One less war criminal.

 170th day sober. Last night I decided I'd get an hour of violin practice in, and I did, maybe 45 minutes' worth anyway, before doing anything else. I then planned to pack things until 7AM or something then maybe do a morning trip to the post office. Then I decided that was crazy and instead I'd get to bed sooner and pack after getting up. 

Colin Powell has died. They talked about his career highlights on the radio; things like taking part in the attempted cover-up of the My Lai massacre and lying to get us into war in Iraq. 

The practice I did was open-string stuff in the String Builder book, where it's just basic counting out notes and changing from string to string stuff - plenty interesting when it's a challenge.

It had rained.

 169th day sober. Besides listing Ebay stuff, I went to bed and started reading "All The Little Live Things" by Wallace Stegner. It's only story #8749594340949857489 about how hippies and deadbeats make everything worse. There's a reason they're hated; hate takes some energy and time to maintain and the fact that hippies and druggies and deadbeats are hated means their behavior is a continual replenishment of that hate. It's good to hate the smallpox virus; it's good to hate a hippy. 

I am reading more books because I miss my old book-reading days, and because when, not if but when, the internet becomes untenable it'll be good to be at least mostly weaned off of it. 

I woke up around 4 maybe and slept some more because I felt like it, and then woke up and finished the book. It was now 9:30PM and it had been raining. I put some more metal junk out for the bums and it was interesting all night in that, at all hours, there was bum activity. 1AM, 3AM, 5AM, didn't matter. There was some bum prowling around and what may have been a bum-ess dealing/buying drugs or turning tricks. 

On the radio just now a guy who worked for Microsoft since DOS 5.0 and founded Zillow said, "The web's been around what, 9, 10 years?". It's been around for over 25... 

 

Staying in.

 168th day sober. I took forever to take this radar controller thing apart last night; it required cutting the frame into pieces with a hacksaw to get the goodies, such as they are, out. Before I knew it, it was dawn and I was done as far as doing much else. I started in reading "Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons", a Vonnegut paperpack I'd bought some time in the past and hadn't had much hopes for, but it turned out to be beyond excellent. This guy figured out things, in the 1960s and 70s, that I've only begun to figure out how. His send-up of the Moon program was an amazing breath of fresh air. 

I was in bed until 9PM tonight reading all of this. I used to do this; take a day off and just read a book.

Oct 15th strike day

 167th day sober. Last night I rounded up a lot of trash and since the machine shop's trash was full and the welding place's trash can half empty, I stuck it in the latter. In the wee hours the truck came around and emptied the machine shop's dumpster but apparently the crew who empty the welding place's trash is taken in the strike seriously because they never showed up. So at dawn I took most of the stuff I'd put in, back out again and put it in the trash enclosure, since the welding guys will have to get by for the next week on the half-can of room they have. 

I'm not sure how many people are striking. It seems quiet but that might be attributable to it just being a Friday. 

I'd been up into dawn listing some Ebay things, then finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five. It seems a simple book but Vonnegut put a lot into it. His guts, you might say. I used to read such books in an afternoon, but instead it took me about a week to get through it this time. This is because computers are making everyone stupider, including myself. 

Once it was late enough and what workers had shown up had left for the night, I checked out the machine shop's dumpster, which had been emptied but already had trash put in. I took the trash I had stashed in "my" trash enclosure and put it in there, along with neatening things up in there and cutting up the boxes I was disposing of instead of just dumping them in. I figure if I do my bit for neatness, it won't matter if people can see me on whatever cameras they might have set up. 

I've got to do something about myself.

 166th day sober. Last night I worked for a while on taking a 1950s radar control box thing Ken had brought by apart, and that's very time-consuming. In the end, while I got stuff ready for listing I didn't list anything (but somehow had the time to watch a rather interesting documentary about Hermann Goering that, chillingly, showed many similarities between the Hitler years and the Trump years...) 

I woke up at 4. At 4:10 I was on the bike, riding for downtown. I dropped off packages at the downtown post office and went over to the bank and did my deposit. 

Once done there I rode back to Nijiya and did a big shopping trip, as I intend to do nothing tomorrow, it being a national strike day. No commercial activity of any type, as I see it. I don't know how many will honor this but I sure intend to. 

There was a guy in there with a friend, wondering over the Japanese snacks in there so I told him a few things, like the "bitter" chocolate really isn't, and so on. Outside, as I was unlocking the bike, the guy called out to me and ... wanted advice on whether the jacket he was wearing fit him well? I said it was great and where'd he get it so I can get one.... he said, "From  Jeff 'Baysos'" in other words, from Amazon. Then we got talking about a bunch of things, mainly trying to come up with the name of this TV show where it's a bunch of people who work in tech, and there's the Indian guy and the gal and so on, and they all talk through their noses. 

We were not successful in this, but ended up talking about how each generation or two, they come up with shows that are a re-hash of earlier shows just with the fashions etc that are more current. And I said that the thing with San Jose is, you meet all these neat people but you never see them again. Eventually I said something about "these things have to go in the fridge" and took off. Nice guy but I'll never see him again.

I got back here and put things away and looked at the clock - it was 6. Or, the equivalent of 9PM, pre-virus. The "wartime 3-hour shift" is still very much a thing.

Ken comes through in a pinch.

165th day sober. I woke up around 4, had my coffee etc.. Last night I didn't practice because I thought maybe I ought to stay with the shakuhachi after all, but I got it out and it was ... lame. And besides, sometime, a cockroach I guess had nibbled on the buffalo horn part of the mouthpiece. Not where it messes up the sound because it didn't nibble the edge, but still annoying. 

It might be a nice simple instrument but I just can't get too excited about it. 

The night before last, I felt too cold and tired to practice. So much for building up a practice habit. 

I took a bunch of things to the post office and FedEx, and picked up shipping stuff on the way back, as per usual. Tom had his homeless buddy there at his place so they were probably boozing it up. If you want to make friends with a boozer, just keep the free booze coming and you've got a friend for life, or until the booze stops flowing. I know, they could be working on something but Tom's never one to work on something when he's got someone around to talk with and drink. 

I know these things because I've been there. In fact, when I was drinking and staying over at Ken's house weekly, the booze certainly did flow. I tried not be a complete freeloader, bringing by a large bottle of wine each week, but there was always beer besides wine, and all sorts of hard liquor too. Generally Ken's son Paul would be there and he likes to drink, so the 6-pack of beer I'd picked up on our grocery stop between here and Ken's house would be gone in no time, and then we'd start in on other things. My drinking influenced someone with a slight propensity to drink, Ken, into drinking more, and someone with a strong propensity to drink, Paul, into drinking more. 

When I was a non-drinker, the drinking at the house, at least on Ken's part, was very light. 

So, I probably won't be checking in weekly to hang out with Tom any more. He'll either be passed out or otherwise in horrible shape. 

When I got back I scrambled a couple of eggs to eat and after that I packed a big-ish but plenty heavy vacuum pump. I had one box that would fit it, and after putting that all together and printing out the label I set it aside and vacuumed the office. 

Ken came by at the usual time, dropped off some stuff to list and some boxes, wrote out my check, and as usual we shot the bull for a while. Ken's coming around to the idea of college being a waste of time because a couple of loudmouths on TV have said this, Mike Rowe being one of them. Rowe's only trained as an opera singer (they make good money) and is now doing his show because it makes even better money. I'm guessing his opera training was done in a college, although in all fairness, music instruction is a sort of separate system than "college". The "name" music schools trade schools, in the best sense of the term. You learn a trade. 

But we agreed, college is a scam. And most everything's a scam now. It's a whole economy built up on scams. And I told him about the huge difference between the job culture back in Hawaii and here. Here, you're expected to be a job-hopper and have loyalty to no one, and no one has any loyalty to you. Back in Hawaii, you can do alright working for the supermarket or something and just staying there for your 20 or 30 or 40 years. 

I asked Ken if he could take the now-packed vacuum pump to FedEx for me and he said he would so we loaded that up in the back of his truck and that's one less thing to worry about. I want to get everything I have to get done this week, done tomorrow then do absolutely nothing on Friday. 

Getting cold and dark out there.

 164th day sober. I was up around 4, maybe closer to 4:30, but had a bunch of stuff all packed and ready to go so it was easy to just have my coffee etc. and at 6, load up and go. 

So I made the run to the post office and on the way back picked up a bag of pork and kim chee potstickers behind H Mart, but didn't find any veggies at the food place near Tom's. I guess it varies. Tom had his homeless buddy over - I could tell by the white van parked in front along with Tom's truck - so I didn't stop in, as I figure when his friend is over they're working on something. 

I did hatch up a theory though: Tom's pal became homeless because of drinking, and of course Tom drinks, heavily at times it seems. So, since Tom has enough money coming in to keep the booze flowing copiously, maybe they get together and get blotto drunk. That would explain how awful Tom looked the other day. That would explain his friend, this homeless guy who lives in his van, hanging around so much. And that guy being an alcoholic would explain his becoming homeless in the first place, perhaps. 

Plus another theory just now: Tom knows I've stopped drinking and seem to have stayed off. He used to continually drink beers when I was over, which didn't bother me in the least but he may have thought I was judging him. (Actually I thought rather well of him for drinking them, because it's relatively easy to taper off of light beers.) The last few times I've been over, I've not seen him drink a beer at all. So the theory is, he's taking nips of vodka when he goes to use the loo or goes to get a book or something. I've done the same when Ken would be over and I'd start feeling shaky. Take a swallow or two of vodka which it's easy to keep a mug full of in the fridge or in a desk drawer etc. 

In any case it was cold out there, and dark to the extent that I should have put the lights on the bike before leaving, and had to put them on halfway to the post office. When I got back I cooked up about half the potstickers with some Chinese bacon and they were pretty good.

Indigenous Peoples' Day

 163rd day sober. Today used to be called Columbus Day and it's about time they did something about that. I was all cranked about this a decade ago. Celebrating "Columbus Day" is about as nice as celebrating Hitler's birthday as "Jewish Culture Day". Finally enough people have gotten disgusted enough with celebrating the old ghoul. 

But it also means the post office is closed, with the results that I spent what part of the day I was awake, in bed reading Slaughterhouse Five, and I've got customers all antsy about when I'm going to mail their orders. What genius that book is! I've read it before; of course I've read it before, but damn, how long ago was that now? It's absolutely great, even though in the little paperback edition I have the printing is pretty bad, so there might be a some remnants where an "m" is supposed to be. 

There's so much I didn't remember from having read it however long ago. Like Weary, the character who's about to beat the shit out of Billy Pilgrim when they're "rescued" by some Germans. A truly horrifying character because they're so common. 

In other good news, Governor Awesome, er, Newsom, has signed a bill outlawing gas-powered leaf blowers. That's another pet peeve of mine. For decades I've forecast that we're going to have a whole generation or two of elderly Hispanic guys who are deaf, going around saying, "What? What?" or whatever's the equivalent in Spanish, and it's going to be up to us to provide them with hearing aids. 

After doing whatever shit I had to get done last night, before bed I practiced a little. The String Builder book has lots of neat exercises where it's just open strings, but counting out whole and half and quarter notes and switching from string to string. I probably practiced a half hour which is enough at this stage.

It's a whole different feeling counting off notes on a bow instead of blowing into something.  I got a feeling of accomplishment from just playing those very simple pieces. Also, the violin had stayed in tune from the other night, which is a good sign. And while I'm not at the stage where I'm "fingering" notes yet, I fooled around a bit, doing a double stop with two strings on the same note which sounds cool, and tried doing "finger vibrato" because I kind of have a "soft" plan of learning, by December, some simple Xmas carols well enough to have them sound OK, to try busking with the violin and leave the "musical plumbing" at home. 

I've just got to bitch about the trumpet a bit. Right now, for no other reason than the change in the weather, my lips are chapped. I use plenty of balm on them and they still are. So there's a good chance my notes would sound like shit esp. the high ones even if I were practicing like crazy. Plus in this cooler weather I'd have to blow out the spit valves even more often than I usually do and I've already talked about how disgusting that is. 

Sure the trumpet's louder so you can "reach out" more, to give more people a chance to think, (a) there's a busker up ahead and (b) they sound pretty decent so (c) it turns out I have a couple dollars in my pocket so I'll tip them. But as I've pointed out to others, just as many people "hear with their eyes" so it's good to not look like a scruffy bum when out playing street music, and a violin player is very distinctive, visually, with the distinct posture and the bow moving around. That calls people in too.

And of course I can always "go electric" to be louder. But the main thing is no drips and no splatters of spit, and most importantly in the tropical atmosphere back home, no stink! In a tropical atmosphere, brass instruments stink badly. 

I just need to get over this hump where I don't sound good at all yet, but once I can play some simple things and sound decent, I'll be back to where I'll know I can get by even if I lose my situation here. 

I have to be able to go out and at least make enough to support a storage unit and buying things like a "bivy bag" to sleep in, or to be able to rent a small office perhaps paying a year's rent up front, and having that as a place to sleep and store my stuff. 

I have to be careful, though, because while I have to wait for the virus to die down - if it does - before I can get my papers in order to be able to travel, I probably will not be allowed to travel without, on paper, having it on record that I live in a McMansion and am a good solid member of society, one that might just feel like taking a vacation in Hawaii. If I sense things getting dicey with Ken, health failing or something like that, I'll start making plans to get my ass on home before my planned time of late 2024. 

I packed a lot of things today, glad to stay in other than a trash run, as the "end times" wind was howling away and it was really not warm out there at all.

Something like a day off.

162nd day sober. Or as I consider it, free of the "mainland disease". I took something like an actual day off today. 

The party next door was done by midnight, the kids off to bed, and the parking lot left scattered with little packets of candy, green seedless grapes, and a large lump of shaved ice in the cast of a large bucket, which the crows nibbled at and drank from at dawn. I ought to come up with some way of providing them fresh water in the morning. 

The crows probably took care of most of the things like grapes. And some of the guys came by today and cleaned the rest of it up. I woke up at 4, and stayed in bed and read the last of "White Noise" and a weird book called "Lucky Strike" by a Kim Stanley Robinson. It involves how the bombardier on the Hiroshima bombing run might have decided to fuck up on purpose, dropping the bomb in the mountains instead of in the city. 

The interview section after the story, and after the analysis/discussion of the story, is the best. Apparently the guy's written a ton of books, it's just that I've never heard of him. They're sort of... not what I'd call "airport books" because those can be any potboiler, but they're the sort of book you read and not much of it really stays with you. The guy's a boomer and so am I, but the Wikipedia entry on "Generation Jones" tells all. The guy had a draft number. I think that's a quickie marker between a boomer like him and a boomer like myself. The earlier cohort really did get everything on a silver platter. My older sis, for instance, who'd have had a draft number if she were a guy. And us younger boomers for whom "woodstock" is some thing "the hippies" did, and who consult Wikipedia on things. If you're of the older cohort you get to write a lot of potboiler books and coast along pretty easily. 

Those of us in the younger cohort know the field of writing is dead. Everyone writes for free now. If I could, I'd go back to Jack London technology and write for 10c a word but I can't. No one's paying that huge amount now. To be sure of survival, I have to step back much further, to drawing portraits, a well-developed art 1000s of years ago, or play music on the street, preferably with an instrument at least 100s of years old in its present form. 

As I write, on r/collapse on Reddit, they're discussing the airlines cutting down on flights due to having less pilots. A ton retired and of course some have died. I just hope the planes are still flying in 2024 or will Matson start having passenger service? Or can I take a cruise and jump ship at good old Honolulu Harbor?

Party!

 161st day sober. Last night I sifted and sorted through a plastic tub of stuff and threw about half away and kept about half to sell on Ebay. It enabled me to make one tiny part of the shop a little neater, too. 

In the wee hours of the morning I got the violin out of its box, found my tuner and tuned it up, figured out the shoulder rest and rosined up the new bow, and did some practice. I did the first exercises in String Builder for maybe half an hour, but with lots of rests inbetween. 

I got up a bit past 3 today, and had a bag of books I'd selected out of my boxes of books to turn in for trade credit at the Recycle Book Store. So I had a reason to get out of the house. I got going a little after 4 and rode right over there. While the guy went through my books I looked in the music section and spotted at least a couple I'd like to buy, one of them being the first Suzuki book. I'll buy them later.

Then I meandered toward downtown again and ended up by El Jalapeno Rojo, a little Mexican food place on San Carlos that I've gone by a ton of times on the bus and not a few times on my bike. Usually there are homeless people loitering around there so I've avoided it, but it looked OK this time so I got a hot dog with all the toppings and it was pretty good. 

Then I rode over to Dai Thanh and got a few things and a "Chinese donut" but this time the round kind not the long thin kind, and ate that over by Philz Coffee. 

Then on the way back I stopped at the little bodega that's my best connection for rubbing alcohol and got a couple of bottles. It's pretty easy. I fork over $12 and the lady gives me two large bottles and I don't think the cash register is even involved. 

I got back here and had to thread my bike in between the cars. Last night I noticed the guys with the cleaning company next door had set up a porta-john in the trash enclosure. That was silly, I thought. Watch all the homeless people use it, and what's wrong with the loo in their shop? As I was taking off today, I saw they were setting up to have a party, so that's what it was for. One of the guys was waving off a car that was going to park in front of the shop here, and I told the guy it was fine if people park in front of my place, as I don't expect anyone to come by. He was very appreciative. 

So when I got back I had to get in past a couple of cars that had a wider gap between them than most, as the parking lot was pretty full - and it's a big parking lot here - and the party was in full swing with a band, a bouncy castle the kids were making good use of, food being served up, and so on. It's plenty loud, but this is an industrial area and they can be as loud as they like.

First cold day

 160th day sober. I woke up at almost 4 so, I guess I needed the sleep. I packed a few things except for one large box going to Europe I want to take my time on, but it doesn't have to go out until early next week. 

I got going for the post office and it was indeed the first cold day of the year. I wore sweat pants and my jacket and was in no danger of breaking out a sweat.

Have it all together

 159th day sober. Last night, after "washing" the vacuum and putting a bunch of stuff away, Ken came by at his usual time, I got my check, and Ken also brought by a big box marked Kennedy Violins. He's also brought by a lot of stuff to list, so after our sitting around and talking session and it was well after midnight, I decided I'd list some easy stuff by taking this one test instrument apart that was probably made in the 1940s or a bit earlier, and sell the parts. That was fun, but the parts need a lot of cleaning and then need to dry out afterward so I was not going to have time for that. 

So instead I dug into a box supposedly containing a bunch of circuit boards, all the same, but which turned out to have a lot of different parts in it, so I counted out and listed that stuff. Before I knew it, it was past 6AM and I read a bit of "White Noise" and went to sleep. 

I woke up at about 2:30 and got up, cleaned up, had my breakfast coffee and chocolate, and was out of here a bit past 2. I went right to the bank and deposited my check and the numbers work out all right, I've got almost 7 grand in the bank. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got a few things then walked up to CVS and got my flu shot. That turned out to be free and I got a $5 gift certificate too. Whole Foods has a new "busker" now; a Black guy who has a setup all about "saving the children" or some shit, which I have no doubt is every bit as much a charity as my trumpet playing was. It was really cold and windy though and the thing with wind is, it makes people feel like their money might blow away if they take it out, so it's bad for tips. The cold keeps people's hands in their pockets just to stay warm. 

I rode over to Lee's to get some food, and there was an old Asian lady in front of me in line who was being really annoying. She hemmed and hawed and took her time choosing things, then changed her mind and No, wanted something else, etc. Finally she went and sat over at one of the tables, and it was my turn. I picked out a chicken on rice plate and asked if it was 2 for 1 time yet (generally that's after 6) and the gal waiting on me had to ask and it was, so I picked out another plate that I'm pretty sure was the one the lady originally wanted, and after paying went over and gave her the extra plate and the receipt so no one could hassle her about not paying, and rode over to the college to eat mine. 

When I was done eating - the cold made me want to eat fast - I rode over to Dai Thanh and got a few things and a "Chinese donut" which is just a long strip of dough they deep fry. I ate that over at the college too. Then I went to the Amazon hub and picked up some bubble mailers and the two things I'd ordered; the first book of the Maia Bang Violin Method and a little tube of "peg soap" which seems to be the thing to use if pegs are acting up. It was pretty cold riding home, and I was glad to get back here, at about 7:30.

Box gets to the house at least.

 158th day sober. I listed a bunch of Ebay things last night and then felt really awake, with the result that I didn't go to bed until past 9AM. I read a bit more of "White Noise" and it continues to be interesting. 

I ordered some "peg soap" on Amazon last night. A real bugaboo for me with violins has been pegs slipping and there's nothing more demoralizing than opening a violin case and finding the pegs have all decided to loosen themselves and the strings are all slack - like wtf? I plan to get a hole reamer too. 

The box containing the "Bunnell" violin I ordered should be arriving at Ken's house today, and I'll get it whenever Ken drops it off here. The kit is supposed to come with a bow and rosin and all that, but I plan to be set up to mess around with violins to the extent of being able to replace a sound post, replace pegs and so on. 

I got a weird email today, a survey from Amazon about why I've not used their pickup points for a year. My response was pretty incredulous. Hopefully the left hand learns what the right hand is doing over there. My responses were basically, "Come on, guys, I use Amazon pick up points all the time and love 'em!". 

I'd packed 8 or 9 packages, some large-ish ones, and took off at the usual time, just a bit after 6. It's really cooled down and looked almost like it might sprinkle (it didn't). The drop-offs went OK, and behind H Mart I picked up a lot of bananas, some limes, a couple small lotus roots, and a bag of Persian cucumbers. I boxed those up with boxes from behind Baja Fresh, the bananas in their own box and the rest of the stuff in a box. 

I picked up some fried chicken, paying with quarters from the pill bottle full of quarters I keep on the bike and which holds $10.50. I'd spend exactly half of my last pay check, $175, and this is how I keep spending down. 

I stopped by Tom's to drop off the bananas and although the lights were all out, Lo and behold he was there. He looked like hell. Dirty, esp. his feet, long hair not even tied up, dirty all over really. I told him I'd been by yesterday and all the lights were on but "I guess you were passed out" and he made no comment to that. He appreciated the bananas, and I told him about my tips for trumpet playing going way down and my decision to take some time off until December. I told him how I'd made just a hair under 2 grand in 2 months and 2 weeks, and he said that's more than he made selling figurines. "And I don't have to take the train up to the City, pay $20 or more for transit, and all the time", I said. "And you don't have.... don't have... " "I don't have any overhead!" I said. He had to *buy* those figurines, after all. Plus lug them up there and from what he was saying, that was not easy. 

Still, he'd not been practicing and he even gave me back the mouthpiece I'd given him. I told him about the fruit and veggies I'd been finding and how he ought to check behind H Mart and also check that Dept of Education place every time he goes by, because they toss out all kinds of "school grade" furniture and he can sell it without having to do much to it. "You think people will buy that?" he asked and I said Sure, because people homeschool and besides they get nostalgic. 

He was all set to turn on the outdoor light and to sit and shoot the bull for a while, but I said I had to get back home and eat the chicken I'd bought and then his friend who lives in a van and has been doing a lot of work for him on his building, came by. So I said, "Here comes your friend" and said Hi to the guy as I headed out, and got back here and had my fried chicken and followed it up with a nice bowl of cucumber slices. 

I decided it would be a good idea to vacuum the office but ... how long has it been since I changed the vacuum cleaner bag? Way too long, apparently, as I opened it up out in the parking lot and it was awful. So I got that all cleaned up, actually *washing* the top part that has the motor and the container part that's the bottom, and the big rubber band that holds the bag on. The office isn't that bad, and I'll let everything dry overnight then put it all back together. 

A full 8 hours.

157th day sober. I listed Ebay things and mostly, dug a lot of things that had sold out of the warehouse, as usual some things being hard to find. I got to sleep by 7AM and, I feel, am slowly moving my schedule back to a more reasonable one. I did more "violin motion" exercises last night while watching YouTube videos. 

I got up a bit past 3 but had gotten a full 8 hours of sleep so that's good. On the radio they were talking about sleep, and the guy they were interviewing said, if Nature could have us get by on, say, 3 hours, it would be that way. So we really need 8 hours. Or course this is NPR, which I listen to all day, not the AM stations where I don't know what they're talking about these days. Probably about how Biden's a lizard-oid and the best time to shoot the entire family next door because they might be Democrats. In between a million commercials. 

I packed 16 things and had a few packed already so it was 19 things I took to the post office and FedEx. I went to the little Filipino market and got some peanuts and a can of "Tome'" sardines in olive oil and tomato juice to try. I talked with the guy a bit, telling how, due to the season changing or something, my trumpet income is way down so I'm taking the next couple of months off. But in that time, going to have another try at violin, a thing he thought was really great. "I love the sound of violin at this time of year" and he said he gets carolers going around with guitars all the time around Christmas. 

On my way back I stopped by Tom's just to say hi and let him know I'm still alive, but although it looked like he was there (all the lights on and his truck was there, computer on etc.) I got no response when I rang the doorbell and knocked. So he was probably passed out in one of his alcoholic stupors. 

I found something neat though - I saw, on Rogers avenue, some Dumpsters that looked worth checking out, you never know if someone's tossing out all kinds of neat packing stuff. Well, I didn't find that, but I found fruits and veggies. I got a cantaloupe and a bunch of plums and an avocado, all of these unripe, and a package of small shiitake mushrooms and a package of blue cheese. So I got back here and after putting things away, made  a curry featuring the shiitake mushrooms and later will probably fix up a salad (I got a head of lettuce too and not that lousy iceberg stuff) with blue cheese dressing.

While I was out riding today I thought about the book "The Death Of Ivan Ilyich" and of the good person in the book who cares for Ivan without any thought of a reward, the butler Gerasim. Garasim's a country boy and among country people, you don't ask How or Why or What will I get in return, you just pitch in if someone's sick or injured. Meanwhile Ivan's family are conniving all around him and he looks back on his own life of conniving. 

The difference is, in Gerasim's world, everyone's poor as shit and everything gets shared alike according to need. There's really not anything to connive over. I think this is the true meaning of the book, that humans don't deal with wealth well.

We didn't evolve with wealth, as it's understood now. In the hunter-gatherer days there was no such thing as a trust fund that could support you without your having to work, or your descendants, or their descendants, and so on. You went out, you hunted, you gathered. If you came upon a windfall you shared it. If you found a new way to do things you showed others how to do it - it's not like you can keep secrets in a hunter-gatherer band. It was true Communism, from each according to their abilities, to each according to their need. Being a dirt-poor Russian peasant was not much different, so of course Gerasim has these "noble" qualities. 

The idea that wealth itself, wealth being a thing at all, being inimical to humanity is one I've had floating around in my head for a while. Back in the days when "Nature" shows like National Geographic were watched by everyone on TV because it was 7 in the evening Sunday night and that show was a big treat, we all saw that scene where the "researcher" gives out a lot of bananas to a troupe of chimpanzees. There are those scenes where chimps are grabbing all the bananas they can hold, dropping many of them, snatching them from each other etc, with much screeching and teeth-baring. That's just primate nature, is the message. 

But since it's been seen that that is not at all primate nature, and that chimps and bonobos are actually very good at sharing. A massive windfall of out-of-season fruit during the dry, hungry, part of the year is going to spur some "edge" behavior as in the edge of the envelope of possible behaviors. Capitalism has to try to convince us that greed and individualism are proper and desirable.

Going through the motions

 156th day sober. Last night, while watching a 1-hour BBC documentary to time myself, I did "exercises" where I pantomimed playing a violin. The reason for doing this is to get my muscles used to the motion. I interspersed 30-50 "bows" with various exercises to move my arms/shoulders around and loosen up. The reason for this is to avoid the thing beginners have where they start out and 15 minutes' playing makes them sore the next day. I want to be a little bit more prepared than that. 

There are a lot of confusing "methods" of bowing. There's the Belgian bow hand, the Russian, etc. There's the Russian method of using the whole arm, other methods that keep the shoulder still and use the forearm and wrist, etc. I have run into the problem of differences in arm lengths and even the ratio of the length of upper arm to lower arm, in other activities like archery. So, this is another reason why I intend to stay away from teachers and while being open to all the "input" I can get ahold of, for my own style of bowing, of arm-use, etc. I will start with paying attention to what's happening where the bow meets the strings and work back from there. 

I am only hoping to get good enough to busk, and to "get around" enough to play music I like, not become a concert performer. So I can learn any way I like. Although, years ago in Santa Cruz I saw a self-taught violinist who was doing vibrato by wiggling the string back and forth like you do on guitar - I draw the line at that. 

I guess the best way to describe my way of thinking is, when you take a sport like baseball or basketball, they don't tell players of different sizes and shapes to all do it a fixed way, but give them general principles like follow-through and of course ambitious athletes all observe "the greats" a lot to see if any aspects of their methods might apply to them, and they freely work out what works for them. 

I called Ken's wife, Suzy, to tell her a large box will arrive at the house for me, probably on Wednesday. And we talked a bit. Things are fine, their daughter's all moved in to the house she bought in N. Las Vegas, and all's going pretty well. I told her about my trumpet playing and the money I'd made, and she said "You must be pretty good!" to make that much. I said it's that music on the street is becoming really, really rare. Like I'm just about the only one doing it where there used to be tons of street musicians. 

I also told her that frankly, it's kind of surprising I was making money at all because "trumpet's pretty gross" to which she replied, "I know." Since she's trained as a pianist and singer, I wonder if she was in a high school band and had some of the typical experiences with smart-ass brass players and their spit valves? 

The reason I steered things this way is, the box I'm getting will probably say KENNEDY VIOLINS on it. It won't be any secret what's in there. 

I'd also mentioned how things changed once the students went back to school, and that I'm gonna take some time off until December when I can play Xmas carols. 

What I'm *not* mentioning, is, that I wonder if I might be able to play enough Xmas carols on violin, in two months' practice time, to go out busking in December all right, but with the violin? There's no way I'll sound as crap as I did on trumpet during my early busking sessions. And Xmas carols, by and large, are very easy to play.

Maia Bang not to be confused with Mr Bang

 155th day sober. Although I went to bed at 7AM, so after 8 hours would have gotten up at 3, I got up at almost 4. I had coffee etc., and got out of here at 5:45, found a bunch of manuals and stuff being thrown out nearby and went back for the bike trailer and got those, and then got out of here again at 6. 

First I went to Lee's where I got a little plate of sticky rice with meat on top, and since it was late enough for things to be 2 for 1 and the guy'd motioned over the whole assortment of things on the counter, I picked out a plate of spring rolls and got those too, all for $3.50. 

I went over to the college and ate the spring rolls, saving the sticky rice for later. Then I rode over to the book store and picked up a copy of the Maia Bang Violin Method Part II 2, for $5 because it had a few torn pages. I'd looked at Part I carefully online and decided it's probably worth it to get part I and then get this one. Again, all these books are cheap and just like with math or physics, they all explain the same thing a bit differently and between all of them there will be lots of neat little exercises to play. 

The author's name kind of makes me laugh because in the old Toonerville Trolley cartoons, there's always this one rider on the trolley, a Mr. Bang, who has a bad temper. He's always just a bit late for the trolley and has to run after it etc., and in the one where the trolley takes everyone to the seaside, of course it's Mr. Bang who gets in a fight with an octopus etc. But the author, Maia Bang, was probably really nice and never hit students on the head with her bow or had a terrible temper. She learned directly from the legendary Leopold Auer (who taught Heifetz). 

I got in what these days is quite a conversation with the bookstore owner, and I told him about my theory that the lack of cars for sale isn't because of a lack of microchips but is in reality because people are broke and are not buying cars. I said my little conspiracy theory matches what I'd seen on Reddit, where someone showed a shot of a huge lot full of "unfinished" cars, and yes indeed there were a lot of them. But, I said, what backs up my theory is, when cars are made, the body panels are all painted individually; it's not like the whole car goes through a spray booth. The panels are painted, and then some protective material, like big white stickers, are put on the panels to help protect against scratches. These are peeled off after the cars arrive at dealerships. Hence, I concluded, what's shown is a lot of cars that were at dealerships but there's no room for them because the dealerships aren't moving cars. This can't be said out loud in the media because it'll create a panic, so it's blamed on lack of microchips, which is hard for the layman to verify. 

Then a couple of customers wanted to pay for their books, and talk a bit too. So I went into the stacks to look around a bit, and looked at their Wall Of DVDs(tm) which is great because it's harder and harder to get to watch movies and there are a few I'd like to see, instead of just seeing references to them online. Then a customer wanted to look at them too so I moved over to the science fiction shelf and found a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut for $3.75, used. Used ones are rare since it's a big seller these days. That was a lucky find and I went back up front to pay for it, also, and talked some more. It turns out the owner had played some trumpet too. Like me, he'd topped out at the G on top of the staff. I talked about my busking which had gone really well until, I guessed, the students were back in school then it was like a switch had been flipped. I said I had, in effect, two months to do something else if I like and I'll give violin a try. Then I can always pick up the trumpet again and play amongst the Christmas trees for the month of December. 

After the book store I went to CVS for a few things, then just rode home. I rode around downtown a bit and it was dead, and San Pedro Square, except for some fenced-in outdoor diners, was a ghost town. I saw one beggar set up and I doubt he was making much of anything. 

Back here I ate the sticky rice and ordered the Maia Bang Part I book, so I'll have the first two books in the series.

Thinking long-term

 154th day sober. I fiddled around with a lot of Ebay stuff but didn't actually list any, so I've got to go through the rest of that box and list something like 2X the number of things tonight. That's no problem because it's a bunch of small pump/fluidics stuff. 

I almost wonder if I've got whatever Ken had that made him tired. I've had a very stuffy nose, lots of "junk" up there. Ken's not been stuffy, but in his case he'd be popping decongestant pills, which often have the side effect of ... making one tired. 

With buying the "Bunnell" violin and other spending, I've spent the whole of last week's pay check, but spending my entire check used to happen all the time when I was drinking. 

I think I've been thinking more long-term, and where able to simply go out there - I was particularly enthusiastic when powered by a good strong coffee stout - and crank out Saints and Amazing Grace and the usual things was satisfactory, I'm finding it no longer is. 

My inner dream has been to be able to play the guitar solos I grew up hearing, stuff from bands like The Eagles and Pink Floyd and Steely Dan and Cream and so on. Now, most will agree those guitar solos are tricky enough on *guitar* but my inner concept of where I wanted to end up was to be able to play them on the trumpet. I know hotshot classical players could do this. I have no doubt anyone good enough to be in one of the military bands could do it, if they wanted to. I don't know why more players don't want to. A lot of the material, I think, is the classical music of our day and will be considered so in the distant future if there is a distant future for us. 

But it's becoming plain to me that, at least on trumpet, this is not in my future. I'm making a little progress just from playing more, but it's really, really slow. I'm not gaining any lung capacity (I checked on the Voldyne) and it's really annoying having things so dependent on the condition of my lips. I suppose they got slightly chapped the last time I was out playing and maybe that's why higher notes were shutting off. It's a unique problem with brass instruments, this difficulty with higher notes. 

Now that I've done it for a couple of months, going out and performing on trumpet can be "fun" in terms of money, but it's not really all that fun musically. It's too difficult for me to "get around" and try new pieces, and out in public I seem to be limited to E in the top of the staff as a practical upper limit. 

The prospect of being back home, playing trumpet out there on "the strip" in Waikiki is starting to seem really kind of un-fun. There's even a Pidgin term, "tanturan" which means the sound of a trumpet, to mean being a braggart, boastful, making yourself all high-muckamuck. There may even be a ban on brass instruments on the strip, as some places don't ban busking per se, but will ban, say, brass and drums. I remember Sonny Beethoven had to get into a big lawsuit to play his saxophone, which is loud and *made* out of brass... 

Needless to say uke's safe, and so's the guitar since "slack key" guitar is a big thing back home (if only the "Hawaiian" restaurants here on the mainland knew that and stopped playing that Caribbean shit) and with the predominantly Asian population, there's no way the string family's going to be under a black cloud. I heard a *very* loud violin in Waikiki once, but I think it was amplified and that might be out, but other than that, it would be no problem. 

I got going for downtown at 6. I went to Dai Thanh first and got things, then Da Kao and got some boiled peanuts which I ate over in the little park. I got talking with a skater guy who was there with his friends, and told him about the area behind the library, but it turns out the security there really comes down hard on skaters, while for some reason breakdancing is OK. We agreed that makes no damn sense. I got to tell a couple of funny stories about being a skater kid back in Hawaii too. 

Then I rode over to the book store, where I had some credit. It turns out they have a ton of violin books along with their tons of piano books and tons of guitar books. The credit I had paid for 3 different violin beginner books. One's by the author of String Builder and the other two just looked good to have. I learned this with math books back in college; each one explains things a little differently. 

Then I went over to Whole Foods and did some shopping. There's a superspreader event being held at the SAP Center because the virus is not gonna just spread itself, but this had no influence on how busy Whole Foods was. It was not all that busy, and it looked like a busker *could* make some money there but it'd be like it's been, play for 2 hours and make maybe $30. With all the pumpkins stacked there and the bike racks, it'd be hard to even be seen, and people might not know where the music's coming from - a loud car radio maybe? This is a problem Red the flute player had. He'd hide in a niche, almost, and play while standing stock-still. And he played what really sounded like the background music of a coffee shop or hotel lobby, so I think a lot of people didn't realize there was an actual person playing actual, live, music there. 

With my shopping done, I rode back past SAP Center and the superspreader event was just getting really started, with huge crowds on the sidewalks and in line, and many sellers of "danger dogs" ready to give people food poisoning if the covid isn't enough. I then turned left at San Pedro and rode through San Pedro Square, and while the restaurants were somewhat busy, there were no buskers and even the usual line-up of beggars were not there. 

It really looks like busking is going extinct in San Jose. I might keep it sputtering along when/if I go back out there, but I'm leaving in 2024 if not earlier. I have to believe Gabriel is still out there, playing earlier in the day like the lunch hour. Maybe that's what's happened to Leroy; he's playing the lunch shift now.

A plug for sobriety.

 153rd day sober.  Ken came by last night so I got my check, and he said he's feeling better. After dropping off packing boxes and things, we hung out and talked as per usual. 

I didn't practice last night. My upper lip feels "burned" if that makes sense. Not a lot, just a little. I got up today at a bit before 3 and packed some more Ebay things and had coffee and all the usual getting-up things. I'm not going to busk today, with my lip feeling weird, a bit of a headache, my back hurting, and so on. 

I was up at about 2:30, had coffee etc, packed a couple more things, and headed out just a bit after 4. Of course my first stop was the post office downtown, then the bank to deposit my paycheck, then I had a choice: I could go over to Whole Foods and that area, do some shopping in the used book store where I have some credit, and buy some things I need in CVS, maybe stop at Lee's for some food first, or I could go visit Kamimoto Strings before they close at 5:30 and then shop at Nijiya. 

I chose the 2nd option and got over to Kamimoto's in plenty of time. The way they're doing things these days is, you go around back and ring a doorbell type button, and a guy comes out and helps you. I asked if they had the first book of the "String Builder" series, for violin. They did and I bought it. By going here and doing this I checked out if one can browse inside (they can't) I showed them that I'm not someone who wastes their time (I bought the book) and I also got to see something kind of neat: Apparently Kamimoto's, which is in a house, is on a property of 4 buildings the other three being the house "next door" and two structures behind that may have been modest houses or large workshops or something, and are now workshops for working on violins and cellos and so on. It's a pretty neat setup. 

Then I went over to Nijiya and did what I used to do: Bought a lot of groceries and stuff and also got some cash back for "walking around money". Typically on payday I got some sort of a "treat" meal and this was a bento with all kinds of goodies in it for $8, which I ate back here after putting things away. 

So, for now, no trying to out-compete the big pile of pumpkins, no dealing with zombies, etc. It was a very warm day so the zombies, as the speed of chemical reactions approximately doubles for every 10C increase in temperature, could be expected to be very active. 

So, for now, I can take some time off, until it's time for Christmas carols and then it will be Christmas trees, not pumpkins, I'll be competing with but for the month of December I could really clean up. So far, I've made just under 2 grand busking, but more importantly, by not drinking I've been saving a lot of money also. 

The biggest "profit" though has been the clarity of mind. I've been going back and re-watching a lot of YouTube videos especially the Adam Curtis ones. Even when I felt like I wasn't drinking that much, staying less drunk to stay awake to watch them, I was left thinking, "What's this guy driving at? All he's done is put together a bunch of weird footage and oddball music and mouth platitudes over it in his plummy voice". But now that I'm really and truly sober, it's been easy to see that his documentaries are pretty clear and straightforward, presenting a point, arguing for it, and summing it up at the end. 

Books have been this way too. The author Don Delillo is a superstar, but the only one of his novels I'd been able to get a handle on was "Libra", which I'd bought a copy of decades ago, at a time when I actually drank what's considered at a "normal", not alcoholic, level. I know his "White Noise" is considered by many to be his best, but I could never get it. Well, I'm working through it now and it's great. 

Likewise, I've been thinking a lot about my busking. Am I really providing music, or am I just a noisier than average beggar? Sure I get tons of thanks, but that's only because the standards for buskers are so low, and at least I'm not another bore with a scratchy voice and a guitar.  Trumpet is a "band" instrument and you get extra points with the public for playing a "band" instrument. It's a decent money-maker. But is it something I'd play for my own enjoyment? I have to say, Not really. 

First, there's the disgustingness of it. I had one of the guys at Nijiya ask me about my "Saxophone playing" and I first had to explain that I don't play the saxophone, have you see how many buttons are on those things? I play trumpet ... and he asked how many "buttons" are on a trumpet, 5? And I said there are three, really, unless you count the spit valves then I guess that's 5, and then I had to explain what spit valves are needed for... it's all pretty gross. 

And if I thought I was going to get away from that kind of thing by playing the clarinet or actually switch to the saxophone, I was sure wrong. The strange sludge that builds up in a clarinet mouthpiece is truly off-putting, and if it's getting in there you just know it's going all through the pads and stuff. It's no wonder, maybe not so much here but very much in the tropical climate of Hawaii, where I'm returning in a fairly short time, brass instruments and things like clarinets and saxes tend to stink. 

When I've been out busking, in these virus-conscious times, I'm surprised to have been making money at all, with my blowing out the spit valves every five minutes or so. Spit splatters on the pavement, yum!

Then I got around to thinking about how much fun the violin was before I got all mixed up with lessons. I was having a good time, learning to read off of music in spite of myself, and learning a bunch of songs in the book plus could pick out anything I wanted on my own. Then my teacher got me into doing these bowing exercises, bowing exercises, nothing but these long, droning, bowing exercises. I'm sure they're very good to do but I was not getting in songs and stuff so it became a lot less fun and then of course I lost everything in the crash of 08 which was really the crash of 07 for me. 

I still have no idea why my teacher put me on all those damn bowing exercises. I kind of have a theory that I may have been progressing too quickly, so that I might get handed off to another teacher in the school and that would be money out of his pocket. That or there was something really wrong with my bowing but it made me really interested in bowing technique and at most I'd have to say mine was a lot different from my teacher's as he was tall and lanky and I'm not. If the aim was to drill into me how important bowing is, well, it was a success but you've got to sprinkle some fun in there also. 

Which brings me back to why I bought book 1 of String Builder. That's the book Gabriel, my violinist friend, swears by. He was going to give me free lessons, one or two a week, in the Before Times. I'd gotten discouraged when he wanted me to do a 2-octave scale on the A string with my ring finger or some shit, and I'd looked at his hands and looked at mine and saw that his pinky is as long as my middle finger and thought, "I'm out of my league here" and decided I'm not going to play violin. 

But the truth is, he's just a bad teacher, or over-enthusiastic. A good teacher would have taught right out of String Builder, boring as that is. He also turned out to be flaky as hell because I was going to sell him my violin stuff and he never showed up when we arranged to meet, then I'd see him again and he'd have some excuse, etc. The truth of the matter is, there are better teachers on YouTube. 

So I started looking at violins online. Yamaha makes a really neat looking electric violin, and I think if I want an electric violin it would be my choice. It looks nice, has to be made well because Yamaha doesn't make junk, and from the reviews, is loud enough to be good for practicing without amplification. It's a bit over $600, which I can easily afford these days. I've made just a bit under 2 grand busking in just the two months and a week since I started here so I've paid for my trumpet, for the mouthpieces and books I've bought, and have plenty to spare. 

But I decided I want an acoustic violin because of reviewers pointing out things like, how an acoustic violin will resonate when one is in tune, and of course will make poor technique evident. It's kind of the difference between pounding away on an electronic keyboard or playing an actual piano. And if I go ahead and buy one instead of renting, I will have zero worries if I want to get some tools out and mess with the thing. 

So I've ordered a "Bunnell" violin set from Amazon from a seller called "Kennedy Violins" and should have it in about a week. It was a bit under $300, and I'd saved $100 by getting one that's a "blemished" one which means, according to their web site, anything from a funny place in the wood grain, or a scratch, or a defect in the varnish, etc. Nothing that affects playing or sound. 

So I can mess around on this thing through October and November, then if I want to, go out and compete with the Christmas trees at Whole Foods playing Christmas carols and make some money with the trumpet.