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.