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.