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.
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