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.
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