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.
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