300th day sober. I'd gotten 20 small things ready to list on Ebay but found myself starting to nod off at my desk so I put them away and did about 45 minutes' practice and then went to bed.
I woke up at maybe 2:30 with a pretty bad headache going. I need to get to the bottom of this and it probably comes down to too much sugar/carbs, too much sodium, too much coffee, too much weight (need to lose a fair amount, I figure). I'd love to get an A1C test but when I was ready to buy a tester at CVS I checked to make sure it wasn't out of date and it was at least a year expired.
I'm probably drinking far more coffee than I should, and one thing I should do is pay the outrageous store price for a set of measuring spoons and pick one of them to use, leveled off so it's always the same, per cup.
After coffee and aspirin I felt a bit better and got on the bike, only stopping to drop off some trash, and went right over to Whole Foods. I locked the bike up there and got a canned latte and put $20 on my clipper card and walked over to Diridon Station. Sure enough, I'd just missed the train and the next one would come in 45 minutes.
I read The Metro then put it back, walked around and looked at all the little displays in the station, then went back out to Track 4 to wait. A very hurried, noisy, gal came up all worried about missing the train and I told her she's got all the time in the world and that it will come here to Track 4 etc. She went off to the guy(s) she was with, making noise, and then I don't know where she went.
I actually walked along the track thinking maybe she was down at the next end (I wanted to make sure she understood how to pay her fare) and didn't find her but ended up talking with a couple of guys who'd been to a sort of comic book art show downtown. One of the guys had bought a painting of The Incredible Hulk on the toilet. It was pretty well done, actually. The other guy had been a wrestler in college and was a teacher/coach now. We talked about a number of things but most notable was the elite/notorious athletes we'd met and places we'd been, as athletes. It was a jolly good time and made the time pass by fast - we kept talking on the train and were almost sorry to part when I got off at Mountain View.
I walked over to West Valley Music and looked in the method books for the first Trevor Wye book but didn't find it (it would turn out they were out). I asked if they had a Yamaha YFL-362H and the guy said they're out of them but we'll check .... they expected to have them in, in May. Maybe. They also had the 462H, though, so I asked what that one was. It was only a few hundred more than I'd expected to pay for a 362H so I got that one.
What I paid a few hundred more for was a flute with a sterling silver body *and* head, not just the head. What I really paid for was "the bird in the hand" because the way things are going, who knows what May is going to be like. Who knows how much bigger this thing in Ukraine is going to be.
Plus, if I'm going to go out busking with the thing and want to try paying for it over this next busking season, it's going to be more than a few hundred dollars' difference to be ready to go when the weather warms up.
The lady who owns the store was there, and she's a flute person. I could almost imagine her thinking to herself, "Ahhh finally another one comes over to our side!" Maybe that's why what I paid was about $400 less than the price on their web page, which in the past I'd been told was The Price with no dickering.
After buying my expensive little toy I tucked it under my arm and took a walk around Castro Street. First to use the bathroom and eat, both of which easily accomplished at the ramen place where they make their own noodles. I got the house special and while I waited I looked around at what's changed. No more TVs with Japanese shows on. No more little containers of kim chee to spice up one's ramen with. And prices seem to have come down a bit. It was also not very busy which is kind of surprising this being a Saturday night.
After eating I walked down the street a bit and then around and back up. There were no street musicians. Castro Street is closed to cars except for cross traffic where there are blinking red stoplights. So it's a lot nicer to walk around. There were a few empty store fronts I didn't remember being empty before. I think the tea shop with the most amazing carving of Buddha in all different lives, from poor and starving to rich and fat etc., is gone. The book store has moved away from the corner and a plant store is in there now with the book store next door, in a smaller space. Red Rock Coffee was closed which was surprising because it wasn't even 7PM yet.
There was a guy with a saxophone playing along to backing tracks, except the tracks even had vocals and he was playing maybe 5 notes. He didn't sound bad at all, but it was not exactly inspiring. His amplified sound didn't make it as far as Easy Foods though, so why wasn't there a street musician there? It's a good, reliable place to busk. And again, it was Saturday night.
The wait for the train on the way back was only about 15 minutes coming back. All in all, train fares cost me $10 which is a bit more than the bus but well worth it. I was able to take a good look at the sections of the flute - they're polished like mirrors inside. There are little rubber holes in the keys that are open, so I can take them out as I feel like, as one flute lady on YouTube explained that even pro players will sometimes keep one or two in.
In very little time I was getting off the train at Diridon and walked over to my bike at Whole Foods to make sure nothing was amiss. The petition guy was there and as always, we talked a little and I told him about my new flute. Then I went in to buy near-beer and a few groceries, and got a can of seltzer water for him.
I went back out and gave him the seltzer water which he really appreciated and we talked some more. I told him about Tulsi Gabbard (which like all right-wingers, he supports - worse yet, he doesn't consider himself a right-winger but he is fact is) giving a speech at the CPAC convention along with Trump and a lot of Trump's cronies. He asked if I "associate" myself with Tulsi and I No, I certainly do not but then I'm not a right-winger. We talked about other things too and got along OK, and I'm getting good practice in talking with right-wingers like him while making them think *maybe* I'm a right-winger like them and thus OK. I suspect a lot of people got by day-to-day in Nazi Germany this way.
In fact, I think talking ambiguously this way might be what got Tom showing what might be his true colors. He was talking about moving to the South somewhere, one of the Carolinas or something and I was joshing with him, about how he could join the local Klan and it might help him business-wise and all that, and he made no objections to this. I went on to say he could show them pictures of his blonde Icelandic wife and "Pure Aryan" son and they'd think that was great, and he agreed.
I think what had opened things up with Tom was a month or two ago, when I said of course the Nazis were "green" in that they wanted less human population on the Earth and they were very big on health foods and nature and all that. (Their *way* of being green was flawed, in that if humans are restricted to being this extremely "pure" strain of "Aryans" you end up with humanity being very weak, genetically and even intellectually for all we know. It's a very bad idea.)
I'm beginning to believe that if you take any white person, however "granola" they might seem, and scratch below the surface, you'll find a Nazi. Maybe they feel that if everyone not exactly like them were gotten rid of, their lives would be easier. AND they've at least traditionally been in a position to do exactly that. And now that their lives, along with everyone else's, are getting more difficult, they're attempting to resume where they left off in the 1930s. Going full Nazi again won't make their lives easier, but they *think* it will.
So, anyway, I've got my flute.
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