Not that way!

 309th day sober. I'd gone to bed at noon yesterday, woke up around 6PM, went back to bed and slept until midnight. 

It's kind of a nice "clear" feeling that if I do anything with trumpet, I'll start from scratch with a new horn that's the best one for me possible. It'd probably be about 2 grand like the flute was. This all sounds very expensive but while 2 grand buys an "intermediate" flute made out of actual sterling silver, or a "pro" trumpet, it only buys a beginner Yamaha sax. And guitars and violins can be a lot worse.

Every time I think about the trumpet I think about the stress, the strain, my tone going to shit because of some little defect in the skin of my lip, the awful shit building up inside the thing, and the spit valves, the constant emptying of spit valves. Let's just say I'm not rushing out to take that up again right now. 

Thanks to YouTube it's possible to learn a ton about anything quickly, and thanks to James Galway I learned to look at my aperture in the mirror carefully, and the octave exercise. As for the first, I have a sort of "teardrop" in the middle of my upper lip, but if I go just a bit to one side I get a very nice aperture on the left side. 

Sir Galway even shows, in one video, exactly where his lip goes as he said, he'd not cleaned his flute the night before so there was the mark right there, to show the audience. And he showed how he kind of rolls the lip and the lip plate together, too. So last night I came up with what at least is my beginning aperture. A bit to the left, and I stick the place on my lip where it was cut when I was a kid onto the beginning of the hole and roll in and it seems to work great. 

What I love about Galway is he's got personality. He'll talk about how to learn to make a "real racket" (play loud) on the flute, and how doing things a certain way, "clanking" on the keys is "not considered good sounding". He also mentioned somewhere, something about doing the octave exercise an hour a day and his dad getting on his case if he slacked off. 

Last night I worked on the octave exercise and while I could not do it at all the night before, I could do it last night. I might have put in close to an hour, while watching various things on YouTube. It was great - not being able to do something and then suddenly I can do it.

As for Ukraine, boy was I all wrong. I've long said, "Please, Comrade Putin, bring back the USSR" well, that's apparently what the ham-handed clod's been trying to do. And it's not in the way I thought it might be brought about. My version of how to do it is to bring back the things about the USSR that are good for the common people and he's really not done that. And he's come into Ukraine not as a friend and comrade but as an enemy, bombing civilians and getting himself very much hated. 

I just read a thing where the plan was to get Zelensky right away. If they could kill him right off or capture him and have him declare defeat, right away, they felt they could win and maybe they could. But they could not get him and now Zelensky or not, there will be no surrender on the part of the Ukrainian people. 

It's a case of, "Do this thing" then they do the thing but in their own idiotic way and then it's "Not THAT way!". 

I tried to get some sleep from 9AM to maybe 2PM but while I lay in bed I was not able to get to sleep so eventually I just got up around 2 or 2:30.  I packed a couple more things so I had 4 things to take to FedEx, which I did. Even though it was sunny out there were too many zombies out there for my taste. One came at me going the wrong way with his bike and trailer full of zombie crap and blathered something nonsensical at me; I gave it the 1000-yard stare and was ready to go with my "explainer" (long bolt I've turned into a billy club). Another was staggering around dragging a shopping cart full of crap while managing 4(!) dogs on various improvised leashes. And there was a third, I forget what it was doing. Since it's Sunday and the "squares" are not expected to be out and around, I guess the zombies really come out. 

I was out in back to do one of two things: Go back without the bike trailer to H Mart and do some shopping, or go to Nijiya. The number of undead out there staggering around swayed me toward going to Nijiya so after dropping off the trailer I went there. No zombies there, er, actually one, a tall Black one that fortunately just went staggering on down the road without bothering anyone around Nijiya. 

I got $30 worth of stuff which has me right on budget, and for a treat instead of getting a bento which will have rice etc in it, I got some raw shrimp and cooked those up with garlic and butter when I got back here. It was cold and windy out there but that didn't keep a female zombie on 10th from walking around in shorts. Even now, at 11 at night, I wanted to go out to throw out a box and checked first, and there was a zombie looking through the trash cans for the HVAC place and the beauty supply, cans that never have anything of real value at any time and especially when they've just been emptied for the weekend. I waited for it to be gone then went and tossed the box.