Zombie O'clock

243rd day sober.  I went to bed last night before midnight, because I was so sleepy I was actually starting to fall asleep in my chair. 

I was awakened at a quarter to 6 by noises and yelling and curses, and looked at the video camera monitor. A zombie, with a zombie car that was a "luxury" car at one time by the size of it, was by the dumpster enclosure that has a dumpster in it. I should mention that one dumpster is very popular with all kinds of characters and even I use it to toss things in when it's the night it's emptied (Thursday night) and I'd put trash in there and got a couple of really nice boxes out of there yesterday. 

The zombie car had a zombie at the wheel and a zombie wrestling with something, not sure but probably something heavy, that they wanted to throw away. Eventually, with much noise, they got it done and cinched down the trunk lid with a ratchet strap. Even that took a lot of time and lots of cussing. 

Eventually there was a squealing sound as the zombie car limped away. Most zombie cars can barely move under their own power. I went back to bed and heard the zombie car, some distance away now, have its horn on constantly. I heard what sounded like the horn running down, then start up again, then the car move possibly closer as the horn/battery ran down again, and perhaps park in the alley between the two halves of the complex here. That alley's popular with zombies and there are often epic fights in there. That's what I think caused the horn honking continuously; there being two zombies in the car means an inevitable zombie fight (this is where the movies get it wrong, in that zombies don't leave each alone out of some kind of professional courtesy and only attack humans, no, they attack any living thing that's nearby including and especially other zombies. 

Eventually everything settled down and I went back to sleep until 11. I'm headache-y and the cold has been bothering me. I thought about this and realized that last winter at this time I was still a drinker and if I wanted to warm up I just drank.

Like a damn zombie convention

 242nd day sober. I'd gone to bed at 1AM last night and intended to sleep until 9, but I woke up at 7:30 and could not get to sleep. I got out of bed and had some green tea and saltines meaning to go back to bed for a few hours, then realized I was awake so I stayed up. 

I packed a few more things, and gave myself a haircut. It came out well because I washed my hair with hot water only, no soap, then after it dried did the cut and was very thorough. Then of course washed it again and shaved, cleaned up a bit and rode for downtown. 

I stopped at the little free libraries but didn't find anything good, and went to the post office. St. James Park looked like a damn zombie convention and despite the cold weather there were a lot of zombies around in general. Maybe there are some extra "bum feeds" going on due to the holiday weekend coming up. 

After dropping off packages at the post office I went to the bank and did my deposit. They're training a new gal and said, "Alex is here every Thursday" and I said I come in on Thursdays because I noticed when I come in on Friday, they're (the bank workers) always really busy so I come in Thursdays to make it easier for them. 

After the bank I rode over to Dai Thanh but because I decided to turn on Market street I ended up going by Christmas In The Park and having to go through all that. It seemed fairly busy but ... there are no street musicians or performers now. There used to be a guy doing balloon figures, a real old hippy from Berkeley who decided decades ago he was just going to do balloon figures and that's all he'd ever done since. He wasn't there, Rabbit Trumpet Guy has been gone for a while. Leroy has been missing-in-action for months on end now. I kind of thought Wendall, the flute player from New Orleans, might be around but he wasn't. So the city fathers should be happy, with most of downtown dead and only a little life around Christmas In The Park and the only "culture" a stand selling cheapo hats and that guy who makes those awful carved wooden signs. 

I went to Dai Thanh for some things and after picking up bubble mailers at the Amazon hub, went to Nijiya for more things and then got back here. 

It's funny that it's this close to new year's day and I haven't heard any fireworks. In the past, people would pop off fireworks, illegally of course, as the day got closer. It's been dead quiet. In fact if one thing's surprised me about 2021 it's how quiet it's been compared to 2020. In 2020 we had the protests to let off steam. That's also the year I got into participating in the free libraries, and almost always coming up with stuff to donate on each trip downtown. 

Maybe it took a summer of kicking up a fuss for people to adjust to the new, mask-wearing, non-traveling, social-distancing life. Maybe now people are just used to it.

Out and back before the rain (mostly)

 241st day sober. I practiced a good long time, mostly just working on the higher notes and I'm making good progress there. 

I got to bed a bit after 7AM and slept until about 11:30 and finally decided I really needed to look at the radar map and sure enough there was a big ol' soaker coming my way. So I packed a couple more things and got on the bike with my bags of packages and got going. There was a lunch truck just down from Tom's so I stopped by and got a "5 speed" burrito. I remembered having one years ago and it being good, and it seems to have 5 fillings - eggs, ham, sausage, hash browns, and "cheese". 

I stopped at Tom's because he has a nice table out front and Tom came out to say Hi. He offered coffee and I accepted, but told him there's a lunch truck just down the sidewalk and if he wants anything he'd better be quick so he went and got a "5 speed" burrito also. We ate and I drank the black coffee (I've finally taught myself to drink it black) and had a good old time until I started feeling drops and said I'd better get going. 

So I got sprinkled on going to the post office and back, and did some shopping at H Mart, and got back here although on the way I stopped at an old favorite lunch truck that stops by the tire place and got a couple of egg rolls which I ate back here. 

Eventually the "soaker" came overhead and it rained heavily for hours, so I was really smart to get those packages mailed and get back in here when it was only sprinkling lightly outside. 

So much for Tuesday

 240th day sober. I got Ebay things listed but it took a while because I had to find some things, sort and clean them, etc. 

I got some practice in, and I have to say that things are coming along. In the past, from time to time, I had come upon the technique of compressing my midsection but it was, in the past, a sort of diffuse sort of compression of the midsection in general. "Wedge breathing" is more focused. To be precise, Maynard Ferguson studied actual yoga and yogic breathing, and realized it's what's called the sacral chakra that's important. 

Bobby Shew learned this technique from Maynard, and came up with the name "Wedge breathing" which actually put me off for a long time because, due to the name, I thought it was some sort of gimmick like "wedging" your lips into the mouthpiece or something. There are a lot of gimmicks out there ... 

I'm glad I finally did my homework and learned the truth about this technique because I really think it's THE way, and the way Louis Armstrong and Herbert L. Clarke and all of those guys played, they just didn't have the words to describe it properly. Western culture doesn't have the idea of chakras anyway so it took Maynard's studying yoga to bring a precise definition into Western trumpet playing. 

I'm glad I'm making progress too, because trumpet playing is my one bulwark against homelessness and despair in the coming years. 

I notice that my playing is becoming more "expressive". The result of "more air" I suppose? But also, a musician's ability is limited to their internal concept of the music - if you can't hear it in your head you can't play it - and maybe my internal concept of music is growing. Because I am always working on music in my head. 

The nice thing about this last is, it seems when I'm out busking it's "not so much what I say but how I say it"; people often can't tell what song I'm playing but they like how I'm playing it. This is because peoples' own internal concepts of music vary greatly, but expressiveness is more general. 

I know it's expressiveness that makes so many people nuts over Miles Davis but I still just don't get the guy. I'll keep listening because I feel there's something I need to learn but I'd rather listen to The Velvet Underground. 

Anyway, I ended up between the listing and practicing, staying up until past 9AM and finally went to bed and slept very soundly and woke up at 6! So much for going to the post office.  

My schedule is that screwed up. Too much YouTube, I guess. Plus it's cold and I don't feel like doing much, and I need to give myself a haircut, and it's a weird week anyway. 

At least "too much YouTube" has enabled me to find two good resources. One is "HebrewPod101" and one is "Piece Of Hebrew" run by a nice young French-Jewish couple who speak good English and as far as I can tell, Hebrew, and who just moved to Israel. I need to keep on this shit because I can't move anywhere outside the US if I can't hack the language. 

And what of Hawaii, where I know where everything is, and speak the local patois natively? I just don't think I'm going to be happy back there, where I'd be stepping right back into a social system where I'm at or near the bottom. My two sisters who live there can get by OK because in both cases they've married into enough money and connections to be fairly safe, and still I found the day-to-day carefulness my older sister practiced rather ominous. 

Essayist Morris Berman advocates leaving the US. but with his money, of course Mexico City is delightful. And there's no way he doesn't have an "insurance plan" paid for and in place to whisk him out of there when the pogroms start. 

I really thought that if I got involved with the local Buddhist church which is the same as in Hawaii, I'd have a circle of people who "have my back" but I think that belief was delusional. Sure, if things get tough for those of Japanese descent here in the US, they'll be able to get out of here in a heartbeat. That won't help me a bit, though. And back in Hawaii I'm just another hated "haole". 

When I really get thinking about it, I never could feel any kinship with what Hawaii originally was - a group of remote islands inhabited by stone-age cannibals - or what it's become, which is a sort of white man's anti-intellectual playground where work and hard thinking can be left behind. 

Cold Monday

 239th day sober. I slept much of the day, waking up at around 3, but didn't feel like going out at all. My sleep schedule is really mixed up right now. 

I practiced again last night, maybe 45 minutes, and it went pretty well. I need to up the duration though. If I'm going to go out busking for 2 hours at a time I need to be used to practicing longer. 

Boxing Day

 238th day sober. I did some practice last night and it went OK. Actually, my overall level is rising, so that my "blah" level is where my "doing really good" level used to be.

Today's what the Brits call "Boxing Day". I always imagined people putting on boxing gloves and having a friendly spar around the tree but I guess it pertains to the opening of boxes. 

It was rainy all day and I slept through most of it. I eventually got 10 Ebay things listed. 

Nittel Nacht

 237th day sober. The actual name for Christmas among intelligent people is Nittel Nacht, it turns out. And here it is. 

It's done nothing but rain, so I feel really smart getting those packages mailed yesterday. Other than that, I've just watched stuff on YouTube and slept. 

If it weren't raining, I'd have gone out to see if I could find some good Chinese food. Instead I made a nice salmon salad with some cold cooked salmon I'd bought at Nijiya on Thursday. Tomorrow's supposed to be rainy too, but Monday should be clear enough to mail some packages and buy groceries.

Xmas Eve

 236th day sober. My sleep schedule is really weird right now, but I checked and the post office was open until noon, so I packed 6 things and took them up there, leaving here at a quarter to 11. The idea is to use the non-rainy time when I can. 

I stopped at "Ono Hawaiian Barbecue" on the way back and got a kal bi place lunch. These "Hawaiian" places crack me up - there was absolutely nothing on the plate lunch, not the white rice, the macaroni salad, the beef or cabbage or broccoli, that was known to pre-contact Hawaiians. And these places always play annoying raggae music in them too - like there's not a huge body of Hawaiian "slack key" music to draw upon, which I'd find annoying also but at least it'd have some authenticity. I think I saw these places described somewhere as actually being "Taiwanese" and that makes sense and would explain broccoli and cabbage always being present. In any case, the meal was very good and I ate it, put the scraps out for the birds, and went to bed. 

I woke up a bit past midnight. I'd told myself that one big feature of this weekend would be getting all the sleep I like.

Christmas Eve-Eve

 ... as we sometimes called it when I was a kid. 235th day sober. Ken came by last night and I got my check, and we talked a bit as usual. I felt very tired so once Ken was gone I sorted out some stuff to list but didn't list it, and just went to bed. 

I woke up at about 11AM and it was raining. I looked at the radar map and there was heavy rain parked right on top of where I am, but I thought if I got some more sleep for a few hours, it might be clearer. So I had some crackers with butter and green tea and went back to bed and slept until a quarter to 4. Then the sky was clear.

I washed up and shaved and got ready to go to the bank, and noticed my bike's front tire was flat, no, merely very low. Probably a "pinhole leak" and if I pumped it up it would probably hold - and it did. I rode downtown as things went from sunny to cloudy. There were a few more zombies staggering around and markedly more of the gibbering and yelling type. I was watchful and got around them OK. 

The bank deposit went fine - I'd left the card with my account number on it at the bank, and the guy had saved it for me, and in any case I had another little card I'd made. After the bank I went to Whole Foods and it was a madhouse - very busy. The petition guy was out front but he was sort of subdued, not bothering people. I went in and got what I was after and got the hell out. I stopped by the Amazon place - also busy - for bubble mailers. I try to neaten things up a bit when I gather these, so I'm a help to them. 

Next on the agenda was Nijiya for yet more things. Then I headed back here. At least things were OK back here. When I'd gone to bed after waking up at 11AM, I'd heard the funniest thing: A gal yelling about something then whistling and calling to a dog. I looked and there was a gal dragging something, a can or something, not anything alive but some kind of a can or box, on a string like it's a pet. She went over to another bum who was digging through the HVAC place's dumpster, then they both wandered out the front way - can or box or whatever it was in tow - and to the left where the (other) crackheads have their nests in the bushes. 

But when I got back here, at 6:30PM, everything was normal. I'm not usually awake at 11AM and maybe those crazy crackheads come through every day at that time.

A holiday up-die

 234th day sober. I woke up at about 3, and was out the door with stuff for the post office at about half past 5. I actually stayed dry, which I was not counting on. 15 packages outta here. 

I stopped at 99 Ranch and H Mart on the way back, and the just got back here. It's warmed up but it's still pretty cool out there. 

On the radio the guy's promised us a "holiday up-die" then he corrected himself to "update" but an up-die is always in order. We're at about a million dead due to covid, and to meet the standard set by the 1918 flu we need to double that to two million. We're doing well so far, though, with more deaths in 2021 than in 2020.

Clear before the rain

 233rd day sober. I stayed up all night, packed all packages that had to be shipped, and took off at about 8:30 in the morning for the post office. I knew there's rain coming but it was beautiful and sunny out. I stopped at a lunch truck not far from Tom's place and got a sort of egg and chicken patty sandwich in a burger bun of course, and ate that at the table in front of Tom's. I carry a little bottle of Tabasco in the bike bag and it came in handy, and a crow got the top bun and bits of the bottom one.

 It was not busy at the post office but of course the chute jammed, so I had to tell them and a lady came around and opened the door to the "chute room" and pointed me to a couple big rolling fabric carts where the packages actually go. I had my packages in two large plastic bags, one for boxes and one for enveloped, and I just dumped them in. "You do a good job!" the lady said, which I'm not sure was about my system of having bags all ready to go or how I pack my packages pretty well (I've seen some flimsy Scotch tape attempts at packaging go through there in the hands of "civilians") but the compliment felt good. It would take a lot for me to lose my admiration for the postal service. 

On the way back visited two more lunch trucks, getting some chicken wings the lady fried up for me and a tamale. It was still sunny and beautiful out. I ate those things in here, watched some Adam Curtis stuff on YouTube, and went to bed. 

I woke up at 10 at night. It was pouring outside.

Beginning of a rainy week too.

 232nd day sober. I listed 10 Ebay things last night and practiced a bit over an hour. That is going OK, I want to really work on that 2nd octave up to "high C" and work on a good clear tone through my whole range.  Right now the idea is to build a solid technique so when it's warm again and good for busking, or if I need to busk to make a living, I'm not stuck playing the same old things and limited to E in the staff.

The forecast is for rain for the next week. So I'll have to work around that. 

There's a zombie minivan, on 4 low tires and the top stacked with the kind of crap zombies collect, including a tire that's not tied down. The inside is full of zombie crap of course. A little zombie car, literally held together with wire, came by and a zombie came out, checked on the zombie van, then drove off. I'm hoping the security guys who patrol through keep these crumbums out of here. (It turns out the bunch of scumsuckers who used to live in the parking lot here have only moved as far as a side street on the other side of Bayshore, so there's always this possibility that they may come back to infest this area.) 

Presently a zombie came staggering along, got into the zombie van, and drove off, low tires and all. That van will probably never travel faster than a jogging speed again, if my observations of zombie vehicles are correct. Zombie jalopies are just moved from place to place, slowly as they're generally not very roadworthy, as the zombies constantly fight and form new groups or isolate away from each other. 

I packed things to go to FedEx (larger things that are harder to keep dry if necessary) and took those up to FedEx, and treated myself to a burger at 5 Guys on the way back. Might as well enjoy the one dry evening this week - I ate at one of the outdoor tables. I've got a sort of habit going of treating myself to a burger or fried chicken on whatever night Ken is coming by later, but chances are on that day this week, I'll be slinking out into the train and then slinking back as soon as I can to dry off. 

They do a pretty good burger though. I always get them with mayo and raw onion. Long ago I used to shoot at a rifle range and after the match we'd always grill burgers and I'd have mine with lots of mayo and a nice slice of raw onion. Hence, the rifle range burger. I put some extra mayo and mustard from packets on mine and it was really good. The chicken place does burgers too and it's a good large patty they give you but the bun is enormous so the first few mouthfuls are nothing but bun, plus it's a single patty and kind of dry. They need to go check out how Five Guys is doing theirs. 

 

The beginning of kill-a-tree-for-Jesus week.

 231st day sober. I practiced for something like an hour and a half before bed, had trouble sleeping because of too much coffee probably, and was up around 4. I got out of here at a quarter to 6, dropped off trash, checked the free libraries (nothing) and went over to Whole Foods and got a bunch of stuff. I stopped at the Amazon hub for bubble mailers and got a good number of those, and came right back here. 

Traffic was nuts downtown. It's the beginning of kill-a-tree-for-Jesus week, and the traffic is no doubt due to Christmas In The Park. 

Also, the petition guy was back in front of Whole Foods but he was on the sidewalk so he was on public property, and he wasn't chasing people down or "herding" them with his sign. He had the sign he was using for herding purposes tacked on the front of his table along with his other one so it says "HELP THE HOMELESS HELP THE HOMELESS". Which he also calls out to people, helping the homeless, and if he gets a taker (not very often) he mentions, Oh by the way, are you a registered voter? In any case it's a lot less annoying than how he was doing things before. 

A general theory of zombies

 230th day sober. Last night the headache started coming on again but I practiced all the same, and it went OK. I finally went to bed after reading the first few chapters in the George Orwell book. I slept in until 4, and still had the headache. 

If I practice it enough, there's no reason the 2nd octave of C in the staff to high C should not be as easy as the first one. 

If I had to point to a single problem right now, though, it's that not having learned "wedge breathing" right from the beginning, I keep forgetting to use it. I've been able to get by OK enough using "high" breathing, up in the chest, that it's too easy to fall back into that practice while thinking too much about my embouchure. 

Although it did not actually get down to 30 last night, only down to 34, this cold weather is not conducive to my feeling like going out busking. Whole Foods has cleared out the Christmas trees so my "venue" is wide open again, and last night when I was there, there wasn't even a bum begging there. I just feel too "blah" to get out and do it. Maybe it's just a warm-weather thing. 

There are a lot of zombie movies out these days and of course I call the scumsuckers staggering around on the streets of this town zombies. So I've had plenty of occasion to think about the undead things. The thing with movie zombies is, they want to bite you which is understandable, being zombies after all, and somehow even though they can barely think they can unerringly tell if you're not zombified yet and will leave fellow zombies alone while going after you. 

The first wanting to bite part, is in keeping with the fear of rabies which is probably instinctual. But the second is a bit puzzling as in real life examples of zombies such as the rabid, drug-addicted, homeless, mentally ill, there's no distinction made between fellow sufferers and "normies". They'll attack whoever is closest. In real life those most often attacked by street zombies are other street zombies. Anyone who's lived near a homeless encampment knows those are constant hotbeds of stabbings, beatings, murders, tent burnings, and so on. 

So why do movie zombies so scrupulously avoid harming other zombies in the least while attacking normal people so enthusiastically? Keep in mind the creepier the movie the more tickets sell so the movie-makers have a real interest in making their fictional zombies as scary as possible. There's a lot of science that goes into this. 

I think this second feature plays on another instinctual fear, the fear of "the other". The Other might be another tribe, another religion, another political affiliation, etc. It probably goes back to factions in camps of 50-150 proto-humans, when resources were short. "The law of the sea" (cannibalism) was probably also the law of the veldt when things got really tough, and the scariest thing in the world would be some faction that gets together and decides to make prey of you and yours. And the members of the faction would not harm each other no matter how violent things got, but unerringly go after you. 

Add in sliminess and rotting-ness and you've got the ideal movie zombie. Fearsome on two counts and just plain disgusting on a third.

Cold night

 229th day sober. I didn't feel like getting up, but I did, at just a bit after 3. I got up and cleaned up a bit and going going at the usual time, 4. I dropped off things at the free libraries and got a nice copy of "Facing Unpleasant Facts" by George Orwell, a collection of his essays. 

I think my headaches may be due to eating a fair amount of dark chocolate at part of my breakfast and vitamins routine, so I'm going to quit doing that. I actually thought my booster vaccination had done something to help, but I'd run out of chocolate and not eaten it for a couple of weeks. It's not much of a treat when eaten every day anyway. 

It's supposed to get cold, down to 30F overnight, so all I really felt like doing after my business at the bank (and having dropped off some packages at the post office too) was going to Whole Foods and buying groceries, then stopping by the Amazon place for bubble mailers and the things I had come in, and then Nijiya for more things and got right back here. It was 6:20 when I got back here so it was a pretty quick run.

It's just that it's so smart

 228th day sober. After listing 20 things on Ebay last night, I did some practice which didn't go that great. I think it's because I skipped a day or two, and that weird thing where I went to the post office etc at around 9AM and slept afterward. 

I woke up at around 3, and had hardly slept - too much coffee is my excuse. I keep forgetting to alternate every cup of coffee with a cup of green tea. 

So I didn't feel up to going downtown and putting my check in the bank and do tons of "provisioning" at a number of stores. So instead I packed about 5 or 6 things and went to the post office and FedEx. On the way back I stopped at H Mart for some things, and one of the things I got was a little dish of salmon sashimi which I ate at one of the outdoor tables by the Starbucks. And I was reminded by basically nobody does this after dark. As soon as I'd settled down to eat, a zombie came staggering by. "Wud'ge ye git fer dinner? Sumpin' gud?" the zombie said. I gave it an icy glare and said nothing, and fortunately the zombie just resumed staggering along in the direction it was headed. I'd instantly regretted not having a weapon handy. And if I'd wanted to eat something right away, I should have gotten one of the little chicken and rice things the noodle place inside H Mart had, and eaten that at one of the tables in there. 

I got back here and put things away and put some trash into various cans and dumpsters around here, and plunged the toilet which I'm having to do quite a bit. Indoor plumbing is a big high-tech for Silicon Valley. I don't put anything solid down the toilet, not toilet paper or anything, a precaution one does in any third-world country, and it still clogs up somehow. 

The main news on the radio today is how everyone's getting coronavirus. Sports events and all sorts of things with crowds all jamming into buildings together keep being held, and no one can figure out why so many people are catching coronavirus. The damned thing is just much smarter than Americans and this is a little particle that many will argue is not even alive. 

I did various things like pack things, get a batch of Ebay things ready to list, answer customer questions and problem-solve, and in the end developed a headache that sent me right to bed at 7AM. No practice, sadly. 

However, I am considering buying the Cichowitz "Flow Studies" book because I found some being played on YouTube and they look like good exercise and sound nice. 

A pain

 227th day sober. Ken came by - surprise! - last night and hey, I got my check. He was there to pick up a huge transformer I didn't realize he'd put in here, I thought he was carrying it around in his truck. I helped, and this 2/3 size plastic pallet I'd picked up a while back turned out to be super useful. So he got that into the back of his truck and then we had our tea and BS session, and he took off. By the time the dust had settled it was 1AM and I put in some time taking some stuff apart and putting the parts out for the bums. 

I packed some things that *have* to go, plus I packed up the violin and put in for a return and refund from Amazon. Why am I doing this? I got a pain in my shoulder from playing the thing and the stupid pain isn't going anyway quickly either. I didn't get a pain from playing violin years ago, like ... in 2007. But I do now. 

Night before last I watched "No More Wunderkind" about Sergei Nakariakov for the umpteenth time. But I'd not watched it for a while. And when I last watched it I was still a drinker so, watching it now there's a lot I picked up on that had kind of slid by before. He and his family had actually left the USSR when he was 14, for Israel due to at least his mother and thus him, being Jewish. His first album was at age 15. He's 44 now. He was originally supposed to be a piano player but his playing was "uninspired" and he was already interested in the trumpet and playing around on one (his father's a tubist) so a car accident gave the perfect excuse to drop the piano and do trumpet seriously - in his case very seriously. But I noticed something new in the documentary. Sergei's hands are really no bigger than mine - which does not bode well at all for piano or violin. So there's another reason, that's not talked about because I guess no guys like being told they have small hands - except the ex-president of course; he loves that. 

So the violin will be outta here. And, I've stayed up all night because the rain's supposed to go from 30% to 100% by .... evening? Late afternoon? 

I left here around 9AM with the packages, rode up Rogers Avenue and stopped at a lunch truck and got two chicken skewers for $5, and stopped at Tom's to eat because he's got a table and chair outside and Tom was out, unloading wood from his truck or something. He offered me coffee which I declined, and we talked while he had a couple mugs of coffee and I ate my chicken. 

He's still messing around with wood which might be paying him $20 a week, while urging me to play trumpet at Christmas In The Park (which I might do) but he doesn't seem inclined to play trumpet himself. I've told him that since he was playing in band in high school he could likely be playing as well or better than me in no time, and to just play a bit while watching TV each night. I think he's just too scatterbrained plus I think he's a heavy drinker he's just hiding it well, like I did. I only see him drinking standard cans of light beer but I'm pretty sure he's drinking to blackout on cheap E&J brandy each night. 

I continued on to the post office, dropped off packages there, then back to FedEx to drop off a box there, then to UPS with one customer package and the violin. I'm glad I have so many of those clear page protectors because I'd printed out the QR code for them to scan at the UPS and got my receipt for the violin, but I guess I left the sheet with the QR code, in a page protector, there.

On the way back I hunted for more lunch trucks and only found one (it was about 10AM now) tucked away in a company parking lot and went in there and got a plate of spaghetti and meatballs for $6. I came back here and ate my spaghetti and went right to bed. 

11AM to 7 gives me 8 hours of sleep and I actually woke up around 8. It was sure a load off of my mind having my deliveries all done. Two of the customers (the UPS and FedEx packages) were antsy to get their things which was another reason to get the packages out early in the day.

Comically slow

 226th day sober. I got Ebay listings in and staged a bunch of packages to pack, of course the internet is comically slow. If people knew how backward most of "Silicon Valley" is, they'd not be to eager to come here. 

I practiced last night, and am working on getting as familiar with the 2nd octave from C in the staff to high C as I've gotten over the years with C below the staff to C in the staff. I also found a bunch of videos by a guy playing "Cichowitz flow studies" which sound neat and are undoubtedly good practice. The author of them has a book out of beginner-level studies too so I might think about getting that book next paycheck. 

I woke up around 3, finished off the packages, etc.  I headed out at a quarter to 6, and was just about leaving the complex when I decided to double back to make sure I'd locked the door. As I was riding back I heard a zombie out on the street yelling, so I wonder, was that zombie hoping to attack me and eat my brains, and enraged that it didn't get the chance? I was glad I'd doubled back and I rode out of here from the other end of the complex. 

I dropped my packages off at the post office and stopped at H Mart on the way back and had picked out some things and went to pay, and realized I'd left my wallet back here. Usually I check like, "Keys, wallet, phone, keys, phone, keys, keys...." but I hadn't and I clearly remembered the wallet sitting on my desk here. So I put all the things away which was a funny feeling, essentially shopping in reverse. 

I checked my two veggie places but there was nothing so I just came back here.

Death By PowerPoint

 225th day sober.  It's been raining steadily and hopefully it means lots of snow up in the mountains because that's how water is stored during the warm part of the year. 

I slept in until about 5 because I told myself this rainy time is a sort of extended weekend, because I can't really go out. It's supposed to let up a bit tomorrow and that should give me a chance to mail some things out. I can always put the packages in a big plastic bag. 

I've just heard on Reddit that the Dump has been distributing a PowerPoint on how to take over the US government and install him as dictator. One of his higher ranking flunkies, perhaps the equivalent of a modern-day Himmler or Hess, has been talking about "shock troops" to take over Federal buildings on election day in 2024. I'm not sure what I can do; there's a Federal building downtown I could volunteer to help defend but between now and then I'd need to get a set of gear like vest, helmet, etc. because they won't have that stuff to just hand out. Plus being over 50 I'm over militia age; the actual, legal kind. Maybe I can find things to do "behind the lines". 

The military is fond of long lectures with PowerPoint slides and there's a joke saying, "death by PowerPoint" but this actually would be.

Rainy day in

224th day sober. I slept in until 8PM! I'd been up all night as, sadly, I'm back to doing, and then I'd read "The Wild Boys" by William Burroughs, eh, not my thing. I had the weirdest dream about riding my bike to the post office downtown with packages and whether I'd get there in time, and these other bike riders on fixed gear bikes packing along with me for a bit, and the ride taking the longest time. It was weird. 

The rain came in early in the morning just as I was going to bed and the people down at the end of the complex had set up to have a big party, had people visiting with a large and a small RV, other cars, actually blocked off that end of the complex, had music etc., but in the morning or during the day yesterday they all packed up and left. 

At least it only got down to the mid-40s last night. The night before it got down to 34, or 1.1 degrees C.

Saturday before the rain

 223rd day sober. I practiced last night and it went well. I started on a new page in the Rubank book, and did other things like working out the Christmas song "Silver Bells" which turns out to be super easy to play. What's funny is I have a faint memory trying that song years ago and having a hard time. Like the Israeli National Anthem, it's gone from hard to old hat.

I slept in until just about 3, and packed seven things for FedEx and took off around 5. I dropped the things off first, then went up to the little Filipino market and got some things. That's the extent of "going out and doing something interesting on the weekend" for me. 

I was up for another burger from Five Guys, but when I went over there I noted a "homelessmobile", a kid's toy car pushcart sort of thing loaded with junk, parked outside. It'd be too easy for its owner to grab my bike and take off, while I was inside ordering. So I nixed that idea. 

I did my usual route for packing materials and found that one place, a sort of lab equipment reseller that usually locks their dumpster enclosure, had left the enclosure open.

They'd thrown out tons of these bubble wrap sleeves like a tablet or a small laptop might have come in, and other stuff too like some small flat boxes. It was more than I could carry without large boxes so I went over to the tire place and got 3 large wheel boxes and came back and loaded 'em up. I stopped by my usual stops too and got a few more boxes so I came back here with a pretty good load. It's that much stuff saved from the rain. 

Preparing to be socked in

 222nd day sober. I woke up at about 2:30, and practice had gone well last night. I ended it with working on the regular old C major scale up to high C. I know the C scale from C below the staff to C in it so well that I don't have to even think about it. I feel it would be quite handy to have the next octave be automatic also. 

Part of that was because if Music Village has any trumpets I like it'd be neat to be able to do a 2-octave C scale, but this 2nd octave needs a lot more practice and I didn't go. By the time I'd had some coffee, cleaned up a bit, and packed some more things, I ended up getting out of here at the regular time, at 4. 

The bank deposit went fine, and then I decided to do routine stuff around downtown instead of going to check out Music Village. It was really cold outside, and it'd be dark and there was a ton of traffic and evne tons of zombies around, although cold weather usually slow them down and they find places to hide instead of being out staggering around. Maybe Friday night is a particularly good one for begging or biting people in general, or maybe some really good drugs have hit town. In any case it did not feel like a good night to depart from my usual routine. 

After the bank I went to TAP Plastics to look for a hand soap dispenser bottle with a wide bottom, but they didn't have 'em. I ended up going to CVS where I found some kind of weird coconut soap stuff in just the right kind of bottle and got that, along with some rubbing alcohol. 

Next I went to Whole Foods and got a bunch of chicken wings and a near-beer and ate in the upstairs area. The bartender said he'd not seen me playing for a while, and I said my tips had gone 'way down so I decided to take some time off. After eating I went back in and bought olives and cheese and veggies and things like that, to stock up for a few rainy days. 

I talked a bit with the "Save The Children" hucksters with their booth set up by the bike racks too, and the Trump Stump showed up with her bike. I talked a bit with her, asking if she'd seen the sign someone put in their yard about the "Reecall" and said I'd always wondered about that "ree" thing and ended up looking up all these videos with frogs making noises and they really do mostly say "ree". She said she'd voted for Newsom to be "outta there" and voted for "the other guy". I played along and said I'd voted for "the other guy" too, the Democrat. She said "No, the *other* guy, the black guy on the radio" and was getting pretty miffed. I said, "Him?? The guy's psychotic! You know they have rubber walls on that room at the radio station he's in!" which is pretty damn funny but she didn't think so. 

I stopped by the Amazon place for some coffee filters I'd ordered, and even had time to stop at Nijiya for a few things. 

The weather report says it will start raining tomorrow night and then rain on Monday and Tuesday.

Per-

221st day sober. I woke up around 3. I'd listed Ebay stuff, gotten the place and myself all cleaned up, had really done a bang-up job of making the place nice for when Ken comes by, and .... when he didn't come by I called him. "Oh, I kind of drove right home on autopilot". 

I listed some Ebay stuff that needed some sorting out and checking over, and did some practice. Tiny bit by tiny bit, I am improving. Stuff that used to be hard is feeling pretty routine now. Like playing "Feels So Good" by Chuck Mangione (in case there's a Mega-Lo-Mart I need to play at the opening of) which used to be a challenge and now it's surprisingly easy. At least here at home. A bit problem for me out busking is, at least in the past, my range would get very limited and I could not play above the staff. 

For lack of anything else to write about I'm going to note that it bugs me no end that the US has fired all of its professors. We only have "perfessers" now and this is even on National Public Radio. You do this or that to "perteckt" your, oops I mean yerself, against this or that. Heads of families now "pervide" for their families, although I'm sure officially they'll be "famblies" soon. It's amazingly consistent; is there some sort of style manual now telling everyone to "talk like an ignorant hick" now? 

I took off with 14 Ebay things I'd packed, did my drop-offs, and got a burger from 5 Guys. I'd tried the burger at the chicken place and ... it's not too great. 5 Guys is the opposite - that's a really good burger. 

I'm glad I had it too, because I found tons of boxes today - a stack of good ones outside a sign vinyl place just down from Grill-'Em that I came back for, but on my way back out for 'em with an empty trailer, I checked this one dumpster on the other side of the complex and there was a big box full of clothes and shoes and the box itself was a very good one. Since there was someone in a truck idling there, I just grabbed it and put it on the trailer and took it back around here. I kept a pair of soccer shorts and some reef/surfing shoes, and put the rest out in a bag for the bums. 

Then I went back out and got "my" stack of a dozen good boxes, and took those plus some bubble wrap and stuff back here. Soon some bums in a car came by and tore the bag open, scattered stuff all around, and I guess took a thing or two. Stupid bums! I picked up the mess and put it into the welding place's trash can which had plenty of room. Not bad, though, those shorts would be $10 at least at Ross, and the reef/surfing shoes, being genuine O'Neills, would probably be $60 and $30 on a really good sale. 

Ken came by at the usual time and I got my check and we had the usual BS session. Afterward I had some cheese and cooked some of the broccoli I got for free the other night.

A refreshing proxy war

 220th say sober. I was up literally all night sorting, labeling, and listing 25 things on Ebay. Then I practiced, and it was "Eh" because I had a sort of ... not a scab, but a "place" on my lip that was messing with my tone, plus I was tired so I mainly just played a ton of the exercises in the Rubank book. 

I also spent too much time, as always, looking at stuff online and I found out something really neat. There's a "chain" of two music stores in this area called Music Village. Leroy, the saxophone player, swears by them. But the two stores are really far, it seemed, from here. I was looking at them again last night and realized, one of the stores is just down the street from International Food Bazaar. So I can ride over there, check out Music Village, then go to the Bazaar and have a kebob plate or something, buy a bunch of stuff like dry-cured olives and halvah and so on, and go home happy. 

The reason I'm so hepped up about Music Village is, not only does Leroy swear by them but it seems there's always something hinky going on with the other music stores. Union Music up in SF is always manned by some peon who doesn't know a thing about music and has very few trumpets. West Valley Music is at least a Yamaha dealer and right now is in the front running with me as the place to buy a new Yamaha "Shew Horn" when I'm ready. But I want to try somewhere else that's a Yamaha dealer. And Park Avenue Music is kind of used-car-dealer-y. I did get some killer deals on mouthpieces from them though so it's not all bad. 

In other news, it seems the US is itching for a nice, refreshing proxy war with Russia over the Ukraine. It makes sense as the US backed the Ukranian fascists the last time this area flared up, our side being given to putting Nazi flags on their tanks etc. Our kind of folks! 

It would suck not being friends with Russia. We can't go into Space without them, for one thing. And what would YouTube be without NFAKRZ and Life Of Boris?  The US economy loves war, but the US people are tired of it. There's a saying going around about how it took the US four presidential terms and umpty-ump dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. 

Thank you, Bobby Shew

219th day sober. I packed 17 things last night, then took apart this huge instrument that was a real point-to-point nightmare for some poor sucker to have built. Plus it'd been "monkeyed with" tons, but I got lots of good parts off of it, and put the scraps out for the bums. Meanwhile it rained overnight and we got a good soaking. It seemed to vindicate my decision to not make a post office trip but to stay in and pack things. 

At the end of it all I did my practice and while I've not been perfect with the "wedge breathing" I've been trying to keep it at least in mind and interestingly, my high notes were better at the end of the practice than at the beginning - that's a very new thing. Also at the end of my hour's practice I was playing high notes better than ever - around high C and above I was playing real notes not just squeaks. "Today's squeaks are tomorrow's notes" sure, but now they were actual notes. It was great and I went to bed at around 7AM thinking, "Thank you, Bobby Shew". 

I got going the usual time, about a quarter to 6, did my drop-offs and coming back from the post office and just turning into where I go to the FedEx, I realized I still had a package that was Priority Mail and had to go to the post office. I had to pee really bad, too. I took that one up to the post office and it's lucky I remembered seeing many convenient stands of bushes and trees alongside the (huge) post office building because the need to pee was getting extreme. 

I went back around to the FedEx and dropped off those packages, did my usual route finding boxes and things, and stopped by Tom's to tell him I'd thought of a great idea: Instead of paying me to watch his place, why not put it on Air BnB and get paid? He said that was "too complicated" and then we ended up talking a good long while. We also got talking about his idiotic plans to sell firewood for a pittance, I urged him again to practice a little trumpet while watching TV each day, and when the conversation turned to some windows I'd found him that he's used one of so far, I talked him into giving me a "finder's fee" of $20. 

After leaving his place I checked the dumpsters nearby and scored some fresh broccoli, a piece of cheese, bag of Mozzerella cheese, couple packages of blueberries, and a lb. of "beef for fajitas".  It's a nice feeling ending my outing with more money *and* more food than I'd started with.

So dinner was a half-lb of the beef with a pepper, garlic, onion, and seasonings, and a package of blueberries for dessert.

Ding Dong the Dole is Dead

 218th day sober. It's a good day already because a prominent Fascist died. Of course they're fawning all over him on the radio, but this is a guy who said very recently "I'm a Trumper" and called WWII "A Democrat war" meaning, we should not have fought it, should have buddied up to the Nazis etc. 

I practiced last night and considered the peeled place on my lip it's amazing I could play at all but I was able to play the exercises as far as I've worked in the Rubank book fine.

More on high notes

 217th day sober. I practiced again last night and noticed a couple of things. First, for lower notes pretty much any position of the lips on the mouthpiece is fine. But higher notes take more finesse. I've been putting my lips in a position where, trying to get a high note, I'm blowing "against" the lip and it's no-go. Reposition, and suddenly that high note is easy. So I have to pay more attention to mouthpiece placement. Fortunately my teeth are fairly snaggly and it makes it easy to feel where I am. 

I slept in today until almost 4. One thing I did last night was waste a lot of time reading this comic online, something about "vagabonds and waifs" or something. The art was really excellent and it started out with this guy whose parents moved to the US when he was little I guess, and he had some kind of tech or engineering skills, he marries a typical American "material girl" and then she divorces him. Oh, and he's got some kind of asthma or something. So it starts out with him surviving being homeless, and it works fairly OK for him because he dresses well, has a car, a storage unit, and places to shower. And he works out herbs and things to take the place of medicines he can't get. 

But then it gets into weird stuff like gov't experiments making or discovering some kind of weird plant/animal/fungus thing that ends up curing him, the sad lifetime saga of a friend of his who's a werewolf (a nice one) and the ordeals of wolf-people like him, and a bunch of other crap. The author puts in a word about how the Earth is gonna cook and while conditions will be bad for animals it'll be fine for fungus, so there's a sort of hope. But I note that fungus needs, at least, photosynthesizers to live off of.

I feel like it was a big time-waster buy why do I feel this tale, and not "The Road To Wigan Pier" or "Down & Out In Paris And London" or even London's "People Of The Abyss" was a time-waster? I think it's because Orwell and London didn't waste tons of time describing what they're describing. Plus, characters besides the protagonist are "fleshed out" well. 

I also read "Waiting", a book about being a waitress, and again it was interesting but took far too many words to tell the tale. It was a real reading weekend. 

I do think the reasoning I put down yesterday is sound. The thing with doing art is, I'd need all kinds of materials, have a place to store them, and people would want to pay me by "on the record" methods instead of cash, hand-to-hand. I'm gonna be retired! Why would I want to start another career? I just want to make some nice tunes before I die and the Earth cooks. 

Whether I go back to Hawaii as a hated "Haole", stay here, or am able to make it to Israel, the trumpet is best for me. I'm just playing music, who can fault that? 

I was thinking while out riding the other day that the middle-class in Europe always made sure their kids learned not only the usual subjects but something creative like art and music. Like Einstein and his violin. When things turned upside-down in WWII, those who escaped were able to fall back on these skills. It's too bad in the US the arts seem to be confined to the middle-class and upward. You will not learn to play an instrument other than maybe the guitar, if your parents are working-class and only "play" the radio. 

I hung around until 6 because I wanted to hear a bit on NPR about Kenny G. Of course they played that last in the "All Things Considered" hour. There's a documentary about him I want to see, not because I adore him but I do admire him. There are people who hate him saying "He's not playing jazz!" well, I don't think he ever claimed to play jazz. Did Herb Alpert get the same kind of heat for "not playing jazz?" In both cases they say they just played little tunes they thought up that sounded nice. Kenny G's been accused of "just playing musical wallpaper" - well, I believe there's a whole school of music that's exactly that, called "Ambient" music. The thing is he plays pleasant tunes, is apparently a practice monster, and seems like an all-around happy guy. There's a lot to admire in that. 

After hearing that bit, I took off for Japantown. I was going to drop off my final donation to the temple but there was a skeezy looking zombie hanging around and on a bike - a Zombike? As with zombies' bikes in genera it was loaded down with all kinds of crap but it still means said zombie can chase a person better than on foot so I went on by. 

I got some things in Nijiya and had also disposed of some trash, came back around to the temple and dropped my check off, and rode home. The cold weather's keeping the zombies off the street, mostly. 

The temple crowd are certainly nice people. Rinban Sakamoto's a great guy, and Paul Endo who leads the choir, and all the wonderful people who make the social activities happen, but with covid running for however many years more, I'm not doing any of the activities. And if/when things go full Fascist in the US, is the temple going to help me escape here? No; I'm not Japanese or Okinawan. The temple has big corporate sponsors like Mitutoyo and that's great, but they'll be helping their own. 

High notes are back

 216th day sober. After all the running around shopping here and there yesterday, I got back here and put things away and had some coffee and tried out some "soft salad" senbei I'd bought at Nijiya because I saw another guy grab a bag and I'd long been curious about them. They were plain, with "Hokkaido" salt, and in their own simple way quite good so I ate the whole package. 

Then I got involved reading stuff on the internet, and after a while I realized I felt really weird. My vision was weird and I felt too hot and also felt fatigued. I think it was some kind of salt and starch overload. I got myself moving and had some cheese and olives and diet soda, and after a while felt better. After some raw cucumber I felt even better, and eventually did some practice. 

Even though I had a peeled place on my lip I was able to play high notes again. I'm beginning to think a lot of this is just plain being stubborn. Like, take those old guys who can still do 100 push-ups or something like that. They might not be able to win any strongman contests but they can sure do their 100 push-ups because they've stuck with it with great tenacity. 

Plus, if I'm going to go out and play 2-hour sets when out busking, I need to practice a lot more. That's the only way through and it'd be the same way if I were doing art; I'd have to get used to doing it for hours a day. 

The trouble with art is art materials. It takes a dedicated space and then it takes keeping track of what was spent on paper and brushes and ink and so on, and that makes taxes tons more complicated. I've already been where I was handling several thousand dollars a month to live on, effectively, about $1500. I really love the "next to no overhead" aspect of busking. I'd bragged to Tom how I wasn't even spending bus far as I rode my bike to Whole Foods, and was probably going to go there anyway so it was easy to bring the trumpet and tip box along.

Hazy Lazy(?) Day

 215th day sober.  I woke up with a headache and the air quality's solidly in the red, about 120. Last night I packed more stuff and finally found one large thing I had to ship, and I'd found a huge box and packing material for it on my way back from FedEx so that worked out well. 

It was my Fried Chicken Night as Ken was coming over (need something easy, good, and calorific) so I ate that first of course. I was packing the big thing when Ken came over and he helped(?) me a bit packing it, and agreed to take it to FedEx for me - I'm taking tons of small things to the downtown post office. 

I practiced trumpet last night and ... the high notes are coming back! I'm not sure if it's the newness of the "Wedge Breathing" system or getting over my covid booster or the approx. 2-month layoff, but I was really feeling like the thing had beat me. 

I practiced while watching this thing on YouTube about why the Soviet Union broke up. It turns out the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was an agreement that in exchange for letting the Nazis have free rein in Poland, the Soviets would be allowed to keep the Baltic countries, those being Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. After the war the Soviets tried to keep this hush-hush, and Ribbentrop himself was told he'd be saved from the death penalty if he'd deny the pact's existence, but instead he told about it in full in the trials - and was killed of course. So after Stalin's gone and especially once Gorbachov's in, the Estonians start petitioning for independence based on this. 

I still don't know what the deal is with these headaches. The crappy air doesn't help, but I don't think it's the primary cause. Maybe the covid vaccinations, as that's the only thing that's really changed, besides my stopping drinking. So maybe it's stopping drinking... 

I got up in time to clean up, have coffee and aspirin for my headache, and head out a bit before 4. I dropped off food at the free libraries and picked up a book called "Waiting" by Debra Ginsberg, about being a waitress - sounds interesting. I also had time to drop off about a dozen packages at the library downtown and then it was on to the bank. 

After the bank, I went to Whole Foods and had chicken wings and a near-beer and bought some groceries and paper towels at CVS - expensive there but I'm too lazy to walk over to Target I guess. 

I went by Dai Thanh for coffee and things, went to check out the First Friday event on First but apparently it's not happening. Back before the virus, I was at one of these, and someone was blasting music at one end of the street. They played "When The World Is Running Down" by The Police and while I like that song, hearing it when I could actually feel the bass in my chest was amazing. It drove home to me what a lot of societies use music for; to enter a trance state together. The song seemed especially poignant. Even before the virus I knew with global warming and all that we're doomed. When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around indeed. 

I got some things at Nijiya on the way home including more curry (late last night I made a curry with some salmon that's been in the freezer for 2 months and it came out excellent) and then it was just a matter of riding back here. The weather's cool enough that zombies were actually pretty scarce which was nice, and at Whole Foods I'd talked quite a lot with a guy working the Profit Off Of The Children booth set up there. Apparently the guy with the petitions and huge sign he uses to intimidate people had worn out his welcome and was gone. Good. 

I solved a little mystery today: Twice now, I'd tried getting $10 cash back at Whole Foods and ended up keying in a single dollar. It happened again today which made for some great laughs between me and the cashier. We really yukked it up over that dollar, but I really wanted a $10 because I have a $20 already, so I'd have the $30 for my monthly donation to the Buddhist temple. 

So at Dai Thanh I tried again and realized, the key with the big green "O" on it is not the zero key - duh! So I did it right ... I will pay my December donation but after that I don't think I'm going to keep it up. I'd already decided that anyway, but while riding around today I thought about it some more and realized that there are some very compelling reasons for the temple's present members to be members. Not only because they've been Buddhists for hundreds of years, but a huge reason is this: If there's a pogrom of Japanese/Okinawans in the US, this temple will make sure its members can get out. Besides a religion, social club, center for family activities like Scouts, it's also a life raft. 

I never really thought about this because in the US, "Religion" means Christianity (which is why I decided not to be religious as soon as I was old enough to think about it) and wherever Christians are, they set things up so they don't have to worry - it's everyone else who has to. If you're a Christian in the US you're not worried about having to leave for anywhere. You are here, and you are planning for how soon you can kill off the non-whites and non-Christians. We have one of our two political parties agitating for the US to become an all-white, all-Christian ethno-state, and the other party ignoring it or treating is as a joke. 

Denis Hardy, RIP

 214th day sober.  I tried some trumpet practice last night and it went awful. I tried "Wedge" breathing and without, and it took a huge amount of effort to get the smallest peep out of the horn above C or E in the staff.  To balance things out, I did a couple cards' worth of doodles too. 

I woke up with a headache, and I'm beginning to wonder if trumpet playing is consistent with these headaches I get now. 

For some reason, I remembered that "Dennis", the older Australian guy who gave me paints and brushes and lent me art books and so on, spelled his name with one N. I was able to look him up easily. After getting "burned out" he went back to Australia in disgust, and it appears he continued his career, finally leaving this vale of tears in 2007.  

He'd retired from the Australian Navy so, like myself holding out for Social Security, he had a basic living taken care of. Some of his paintings can be found online although what I've been able to find don't begin to do him justice. He was doing amazing stuff when we knew him in the late 70s, and he was still not yet 40 years old although he seemed awfully mature and grizzled to me at the time. 

To get 20 years in with the Australian Navy, he'd have had to join at age 18 or maybe a bit earlier like 17, and since he was born in 1940 that would have him joining in 1957 or 1958. Let's say he'd joined in 1957, got his 20 years in, that has him retiring from it in 1977 which is probably just about right because when we met him, it seems he'd just started to be a full time artist, and the "inventory" of paintings he had on hand clearly showed his progress. 

He'd started painting some amazing stuff, taking inspiration from the great seascape painters and good teachers of technique like E. John Robinson. He also did amazing landscapes and I had a wonderful one of Sacred Falls hanging over my "art work table" in my bedroom in Hau'ula. He said smoking pot helped him concentrated, "It's the weed, I tell you, it's the weed!". 

His art may have actually gone downhill being back in Australia and less able to get "the weed". That might explain the paintings I'm able to find online, done when he was back in Australia years after I knew him, being uninspiring. It's too bad he wasn't able to stay in Hawaii - he could have been the successor to Herb Kawainui Kane, except of course for the problems he'd run into for being white. 

Now starts the season of dying.

 213th day sober. It's December 1st, the start of the season of dying. And indeed, on reddit on r/homeless, there are tons of posts about people getting kicked out, not sure how to stay warm in the snow, etc. 

My lips keep peeling so I don't know how I feel about trumpet playing. I packed a ton of stuff last night and didn't practice trumpet, but did draw a card's worth of doodles of various pocket knives ... there used to be this huge display case with all sorts of them in the Ben Franklin store when I was a kid, and I kind of took off from that. I had a little pocket knife that looked like a fish that my older brother gave me as my first one (Mom soon took it away) and I ended up drawing knives shaped like bugs, fruit, etc. Kind of fun. 

I did this while watching a weird documentary on Russian Jews, done by a guy I must assume is a Russian Jew. It had really weird "special" effects and was kind of fun. I like how he referred to Jews as "Ivri" and not "Yehudi" or "Yiddn". He stated that after 1905, Jews had armed up and there were no more pogroms in Russia - Ha! 

The thing is, the world is getting weird. I am reminded of when I'd travel overseas, and suddenly I was a representative of "America" and had to answer questions. Even here in California, in a room full of learners of that craziest of languages, English, I had a lot of explaining to do. And everything's by appearance. Out of the 5 of us, the two who look "ethnic" are my older sis and myself, and my older sis is taken care of in that she went to Punahou and as a consequence married a rich guy who also went to Punahou, so she's set for life. She's a self-confessed "photophobe" too so she never gets an embarrassing tan. The other three don't look "ethnic" although, like "Kirk Douglas" they are, without showing it. 

This is why I took that DNA test a while back. When the Dump got into office, I figured they'll get around to rounding up the Jews in time, and if I verified I have Jewish ancestry I'd not know anything they wouldn't know, I'd just know it sooner and could sooner plan to get out of here. Plus I'd be able to warn the other 4 of us. But it came back with nothing. We're obviously part something that's swarthy on Mom's side and they got out of Lithuania in the late 1800s and it's all I know. It's just not the #1 priority it would be if the test showed, maybe, 50% Ashkanazi DNA. We can relax for a bit. 

But I think I relaxed too much! Because conversion would have been a walk in the park before the virus came along. But conversion is not cheap, and I also had booze taking all my extra money. Not having a car, and conversion requiring going to a circuit of temples around this valley, I'd have been going to X or Y place, staying in a hotel nearby, to make it to places in time. That's a thing I can do now. But now I have to lay low because of the virus. 

My thinking I can become a member of the Japanese-American Buddhist community is delusional. It'll just be the same as it is in Hawaii, I'm the hated "haole" and they'd never give two shits for me. I don't have the right appearance. And besides not being an anti-intellectual fascist asshole, I'm too tan to fit into the white community here on the mainland, as has been made clear. Hell I'm too tan to fit into the white community in Hawaii, so definitely not here. 

This is really important now. You have to "look the part". Maybe this is why, all my life, Jewish people are the only people who treated me more nicely than they had to. The local Jewish temple is a super friendly, nice, bunch of people but I'm really glad I don't get the kind of looks there I'd get if I were black, or tall and blonde with icy blue eyes and a pointy nose. The same way, I already know that no one would look at me twice walking down the street in Tel Aviv or Haifa. 

When I wrote this title I was referring to the many homeless people who will die this winter, but I'm hearing on the radio now that the "omicron" variant of covid is in San Francisco now. When that variant was detected in S. Africa, the US banned travel from that region except for US citizens, because if we're gonna all get omicron, it's gonna be AMERICAN omicron, given to us by an AMERICAN. (An actual first world country would ban all travel, not wanting omicron at all.)

I took packages up to the post office and fedex at the usual time, looked for packing stuff, and at one point, by the place that throws out medical stuff, I had to pee so badly that, combined with the headache I had, I actually felt sick. So I ducked into the unlocked side of their trash enclosure and peed in there. What's funny about that is, just a bit further down the parking lot, were two or three new porta-potties set up for some reason. I could have used one of those. 

The homeless guy wasn't by the electrical lighting place but I left some stuff for him, hanging from the tangerine tree. I didn't know it was a tangerine tree there so that's interesting. 

I decided I'd not had Pho for the longest time so I rode up to Pho Bel Air and had a big bowl of it there, it was something like $18 with the tax and all though. And with the $3 and change I had left, I got a few samosas from the curry place next door because I'd talked a bit with the gal working there as she was stacking up the outdoor chairs and tables and locking them all up. 

On the way back I stopped by Tom's and we talked for a while. Bad idea: He'd apparently had a few beers and was not all that lucid so it's not like we were able to hash out anything important. I think he actually constantly drinks beers but is pretty good at the sneaky nips on harder stuff. I know because that's what I used to do, and I know E&J cheap brandy is his style. 

He mainly talked about being really broke (how a guy can be broke on $80k a year and a practically free place to live and not having to commute I don't know, but I know booze sure had a way of taking any extra money I had around when I drank) and the upshot is, he's suddenly really worried about the bums and wants me to watch his place while he's gone, but he doesn't want to pay me anything for doing so if he can get away with it. I said for $20 a day I can spend an hour a day looking around the place, doing some cleaning up, keeping it looking like it's looked after. But he doesn't want to pay that BUT he pays his pot-smoking homeless friend $20 an hour so ... I'm worth less than a pothead bum? This is why I'm going to duck out entirely. I told Tom if he'll clean up the outside, block all the windows and holes in the front door and so on so the bums can't peek in, leave a radio on, etc. it's really doubtful he'll have any trouble. I had zero break-in attempts when I lived there and there's been zero the last time he went on vacation. I think it's time I stop wasting time on the guy. 

I got back here, had samosas with butter, cucumber slices, and the bit of picked veggies that came with the samosas. I also tried a new way to clean my little space heater. I took it outside and sprayed it inside and out with Windex, brushed around with a bristle brush, then rinsed it out really well with hot water. Then I took it back in and ran it - it ran fine - and it dried out just fine. So far this method has worked really well with grotty fans and heaters. 

Speaking of bums, a bum with a motor scooter with a bike trailer went by when I was up at Tom's and I pointed it out to Tom, saying whoever it is, goes through my complex too. Well, that personage did indeed go back and forth a few times. And I think it may be Renee, one of the scumsuckers who lived in this parking lot a while back. And I think the reason Renee went back and forth was, I had the outside light next to the door on, which usually means Ken's coming by or some metal scrap is going to be thrown out or both. I realized this and turned off the light.