270th day sober. I practiced last night and it went pretty well. I'm getting more comfortable in that above the staff octave, worked on my higher and probably better sounding What A Wonderful World, played some songs I want to have down really pat like the Israel national anthem and tried Amazing Grace an octave up and I'm not quite ready yet for that but will be in time.
As I write, there's snow in Israel and I don't mean the sorta-faux snow we get here in San Jose, I mean real snow that's beautiful. And I was worried Israel might be uncomfortably hot!
There was just a neat thing on the radio about harmonica player Lee Oskar, actually Lee Oskar Levitin. His "Lee Oskar" harmonicas are actually made by Tombow in Japan, no wonder they're so good. I tried getting into the harmonica and found that pursuing it seriously means tons of learning how to work on harmonicas yourself, always scraping reeds and taking apart and cleaning and so on. And you have to have them in tons of different keys and tunings.
Between that and the fact that to be heard on the street you need a small amp and a mic, the whole setup isn't any less bulky than a trumpet case and it's more hassle. I even had "Red" the flute player (probably RIP) ask me about the harmonica and I gave him a run-down of my findings, that they're "maintenance nightmares" and all the keys you need etc. Red was getting by fine buying a new cheapie flute for $100 or so a year and flute has tons more "credibility" than a harmonica anyway. Sad to say, harmonica = hobo to most people. Red concluded that he'd just stick with the flute.
I got going at the usual time, and stopped at the corner bodega for rubbing alcohol. Next I dropped off a couple of packages at the downtown post office. St. James park was FULL of zombies, staggering around and yelling and fighting and doing the usual zombie things. I just toodled on by pretending to ignore them while of course keeping wary, as you have to be around zombies. They really need to take the old Fort Ord "campus" and set it up as a big camp where zombies can just be zombies, and live how they want, with free drugs and junk food, and let us non-zombies not have to put up with 'em.
Next was the bank, and I've now passed a threshold, where I have over $10,000 in the bank. By about $50, but it really is 10 grand in the bank.
I still assume about half of it is the property of the IRS ... they're really backed up and that's why I haven't heard from them yet but I'm pretty certain I didn't do my latest taxes right and owe them more although I could not figure out how I'd come up with the lower amount I paid. So I've really been expecting a bill from them. And this next time I'm going to be extra careful and give myself more time and they ought to get a few thou although in all fairness a lot of it isn't tax, it's other things like paying into Social Security and Medicare and so on.
After the bank I went around to Dai Thanh, honestly hoping to get one of those long chewy "Chinese donuts" but they were out. I got a few other things, then stopped at the Amazon place for bubble mailers, and then rode over to Nijiya where I got ... other things but mainly a "3 kinds of fish" (my name not theirs) bento plus a little sashimi to make it 4 kinds of fish. Those noodles, the ones where the noodles are fresh and there's a sort of "kit" with sauce and so on, generally two servings per package, were all wiped out there too. Oh, well.
So I had a cold bento and sashimi and one near-beer left, but that's the kind of meal to eat slowly and savor, so when I passed Foster's Freeze and noticed it was not busy - as in, no customers at all - I stopped in and got a burger and fries.
I got back here and put things away and ate the burger and some of the fries with the last near-beer and got out these laboratory glass manifold things I had to ship. I'd been really worried about those, but they were smaller than I remembered and a box that originally held three bottles of wine worked perfectly with the molded cardboard supports that held the wine bottles working fine for the manifolds with only a little extra padding.
I took that up to FedEx and picked up some boxes and stuff, and since I really didn't want to miss out on any packing material I checked Sanmina also, and took the stuff I'd gathered back here, then went back out and to the storage place where I checked out one of the other storage units we have. I needed to get a power supply that had sold, and picked out some other things to list. That all went well, and I took the things back here.
Thursday is trash day around here so I went through the welding place's trash to get out a lot of little padded envelopes they toss out, and put stuff I wanted to get rid of into the dumpster on the other side. It's my "neaten up" night around here.
I like to keep things nice and clean because life is actually easier that way. This is what I don't get about the homeless around here. If they kept their areas clean people would appreciate it and consider them an asset. It's pretty obvious if you think a bit about how people would see you if you were the kind of trash-scattering slob there are so many of, as opposed to someone who keeps the park etc. clean.
I saw an interesting lecture on YouTube recently. A professor was pointing out that (a) schizophrenia isn't an "on" or "off" condition but a spectrum, and (b) that his research found, surprisingly, that the brains of schizophrenics operate normally except for huge deficits in the parts of the brain that make a person "social". This fits well with my observations that even somewhat normal-seeming homeless people seem a bit "off" like there's something missing, and my own impression is they lack an idea of the "social contract".
The "social contract" is such things as, if someone gives you something, you're thankful and you really *feel* thankful. You try to do little favors for others because you know how they'd feel. Things like that. But as counter-examples, examples of how the homeless tend to do things, you give a panhandler a dollar and they follow you asking for more, even when they'd actually be ahead if they didn't pursue you and went on to the next possible donor. Or one of the bums around here, when I got some new gloves, assumed I'd give her my old ones like I owed them to her.
I'm trying to think through how some people become homeless and that's it, they're never climbing out. And how some others may dip into homelessness and are back "on the grid" in no time. I think it comes down to the presence or absence of this social sense. If I offer to wash someone's car for a few bucks, I'm going to do a good job, not leave soap to dry on it, etc. I'm able to put myself into their mind and think how they'd feel if their car now had soap streaks, maybe one part not clean, etc. I want them to be happy, not unhappy. But one of these homeless people wandering around will probably half-ass the job and then *demand* the money, and upon getting it, try to hustle for a bit more. To them, another person is a sort of money-vending machine. You might get more if you bang on it a bit ...
When I lived in Gilroy I was starting to think I might try out doing odd jobs for the strip of businesses in the downtown area, start out with things no one else wants to do like clean bathrooms and mop floors, and gradually build up steady customers and steady tasks, $5 and $10 at a time. You have to build up a reputation for being a good worker and honest and that takes a good social sense.
Maybe that's what's wrong with these homeless people who seems physically fit enough, and mentally "there" enough, to build up a clientele washing windows or detailing cars or things like that. The central core social sense, that makes one want to not only earn money but be wanted or needed, isn't there. They could be just schizophrenic enough that it's missing.
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