It's just not summer yet

 I practiced last night, over an hour and through page 14 in the Wye book. Mr. Wye seems very intent on his students' learning different meters and rhythms right off. It's not like your typical band book where everything's 4/4 until at least halfway through. 

I went to bed and told myself I could sleep all I want since it's the weekend. I woke up at about 5. I wanted to go downtown so I had coffee and nuts and vitamins and headed out. 

First I stopped at Nijiya to pick up some "Black Black" gum. I've been buying this online where it comes in a little bottle of sugar coated pieces. But I'd read online that the stuff that comes in sticks is the "real" stuff so I tried that and I do like it more. So I got a couple little packs of that. 

Then I went over to Dai Thanh and got some coffee and veggies, then for some reason decided I was going to ride along San Carlos and go up Race Street to the used book store but I realized that takes me 'way out of my way so I came back around going past the Poor House Bistro which is a huge tent now, to the Alameda and to the book store. I found Chris Hedges' third book, "Losing Moses On The Freeway" and a book of "Easy Classics For Flute" so I got that too. 

Then I went to Whole Foods and picked out some broccoli and meatballs to eat, and went upstairs. I was going to ask the bartender about their near beer but he was a step ahead of me with one all ready to pour into a glass. (I think these guys have "stats" of how many drinks they've sold, that they want to keep up.) So that was nice. I remarked that "It sure is busy" (because it was very, very much not) and he said "More like dead" and "I blame the wind". In true End Times fashion, it was really windy. 

I ate and then went back in for some shopping, loading up for the week. When I left it was starting to get cold and the wind made things such that it was no surprise that even today, a Saturday, there were no petition-gatherers or beggars or the usual types who hang around by the bike racks. Nor were there many customers to bother. In fact, it was dead all around downtown and might as well have been Monday night except for the cops maybe, and they seemed to be everywhere and I heard lots of sirens. 

The ride home was a long slow slog due to the wind and I kept sneezing, probably due to all the pollen that must be in the hazy, yellowish air.

More money to the IRS

 I got a bunch of resistors ready to list on Ebay last night, but by the time I was done with all of that, it was past 4AM and I decided to call it a night. I tried to get interested in watching something on YouTube but could not find anything - YouTube actually has a very limited library of things. 

I ended up yawning all the time and went to bed. I woke up at about 2 in the afternoon and packed a dozen things including one thing the guy had me wait on so it kept showing up at "overdue" on Ebay but now it's finally out. I also sent a check for the $1600-odd the IRS sent a bill for, and I was sure to sign the check. 

I didn't run into any zombies which was cool. I went to the computer place dumpster enclosure and did more cleaning up. Put a bunch of wood scraps and junk in one of the dumpsters that's regularly emptied and put some of the cardboard that's in the overfilled on in there too. I didn't find any neat computer parts but I got several large flat boxes that might be good for shipping books in. 

The medical place had their dumpster locked but the one next door had more stuff, so I got a couple tooks to put in the tool box here, and two pairs of new brake shoes for a bike like mine, and a few things to sell on Ebay, and I went through the stuff I got the other day and am tossing out a fair amount, but hey new brake shoes are probably $30 these days, plus I got an innertube tube that won't fit my bike put will fit someone's. 

It was warm - and windy as hell - while the sun was up but it's still been cooling down at night.

To sign or not to sign.

 After getting in last night, I neatened the place up a bit and set up a box of stuff from my latest haul from the dumpster of the place next door to the medical place. The medical place had theirs locked up, but next door had a bunch of stuff. I kept a good amount for myself like some Hoppe's No. 9 and another type of gun oil, bike tubes, a set of bike brake pads, etc., and some will go on Ebay, but a the largest part went in a box for Ken, everything from one of those handheld super bright lights that work from a car cigarette lighter to wax seals for toilets, stuff like that. 

I had the bathroom cleaned and the office vacuumed and was going nuts trying, one more time, to find these teeny op-amp ICs we'd listed years and years ago. When Ken came over I told him about them and he looked through the whole shop and he actually found them - they were in tubes, in with all the others that are in tubes. I was looking for parts on a reel. It was a huge relief! 

He brought over the book on flute repair I'd ordered, but didn't have the trumpet valve springs I'd ordered. We talked about things for a while and when he noticed it was a quarter after midnight, he got ready to go. He looked "one more time" in his truck for any mail for me, and found the valve springs after all. So how I have them and can just hope they fit, and that I can install them in the cornet without messing anything up. 

I tried an experiment last night, I tried the idea of mixing wheat gluten and ground beef. They don't mix. I eventually put the whole mess in a pot and cooked it well with some garlic and it was actually pretty good. I still want to try making wheat gluten noodles. 

I was up today at a bit after 2, got cleaned up and shaved and all that, and took my bags of books and headed downtown. First was the bank and amazingly, the IRS hasn't cashed my check yet. I hope I remembered to sign the thing. If not, I suspect they'll send it back to me to sign. In the meantime, I think I'll pay that other will they sent and make sure I sign *that* check. 

Next was the book store, and I ended up getting $16-odd for the books. I didn't see any DVDs I was that keen on buying and their music books have been almost totally wiped out. There's maybe a half-shelf on piano, a few on organ, a handful on trumpet, a few old ones on strings, and everything else just gone. They had tons of band methods, books on the recorder and the bagpipes and things like that, and they're all just gone. So I just took the little credit slip, which is just the amount written on the back of one of their business cards. 

I went over to whole foods and had baked chicken and broccoli and a club soda first, then got a bunch of the stuff I usually get. It was windy, not all that warm, and the black guy sitting on the bike rack with his eternal refrain about raising the minimum wage seems to be a feature there now. The petition guy seems to be gone - he probably got in a fight with the wrong person. If I were playing, I'm pretty sure I could play "around" the black guy, or even just play a bit later because I think he quits around 6 or 7. 

From there I rode over to Wal-Mart because Ken thinks the soda water with lime juice I offer him is fine, but needs some sweetener, and that means "blue" Sweet & Low. There's pink, yellow, and blue and they're all different formulations. So I figured Wal-Mart would have it but they didn't. I got some other things though to the tune of a bit over $20. 

I came back by the Amazon place and picked up my coffee filters and a bunch of bubble mailers, and then went to Nijiya. 

I got things there, too, so I had the bike pretty loaded up on the slow slog against the wind coming back here. The cold wind keeps the zombies in their hidey holes though so it has its advantages. 

More wonderful news on the radio, both Ukraine and the coming war here. A guy is talking about the overall plan of the January 6th insurrection; to get all the Democrat politicians (and I seem to remember a few Republican ones who weren't loyal enough) into the basement and gas them or otherwise kill them. Lovely. This is why I've got a couple of guns now and hope to obtain more off of dead bad guys if it comes to that.

It's the geography

 Last night I got 20 more Ebay things listed and got things out to pack and ship. 

I also practiced before bed, getting in at least an hour. It's all getting easier and feeling a bit more natural. I started with the octave exercises for 15 or 20 minutes then started in on stuff in the book. I also did lots of partial scales using the notes I know and some random fooling around. 

I seem to have something called "geographic tongue" and according to "Doctor Google" and the Mayo Clinic, it's not something that can be treated, really, it just kind of "is". What it means it the tip of my tongue and part of one side are red and smoother, and more sensitive. Fizzy drinks bother it for instance. It's actually a bit better today. I wonder if it's why I could not play above C in the staff the last couple of times I played the trumpet though. Trumpet is a "high pressure" system where you have to have high pressure air in your mouth and controlled by the tongue. Flute is much lower pressure. The sensitiveness of my tongue could have caused a protective reflex action to keep me from playing any but the lowest pressure notes. 

RIP Walter Mondale

 Last night I took this beat-up signal generator apart. It was one of those ones that's built so it takes forever. I also got 20 Ebay things listed. And I also got a bunch of small things packed so, in theory, I'd get up early enough today to take them to the post office downtown and then take my used books to the used book store to trade for store credit. 

But that didn't happen. The other things took too much time and I needed sleep also. I practiced maybe 20 minutes and called it a night. Fingering the C in the staff is getting easier - it's a tricky one as you hardly press down anything. So I did lots of scales and going from it to the other notes I know so far, as well as practicing the stuff in the book, up to page 13.

I woke up at a quarter to 5 and turned on the radio. They mentioned, as a small aside in the process of talking about VP Kamala Harris getting covid and where she's been and going to be, and where the President's been, that he went to a funeral for Walter Mondale. 

Apparently he just died. And has been nearly "disappeared". I looked up the wiki on the guy and he was a real good guy, fighting for the right side right up into the 2000s. Like Ralph Nader, who is still alive and kicking, our new right-wing nation would rather not admit he exists. 

And a muskrat named "Elon" of all things, has decided to buy "Twitter", a right-wing hatefest masquerading as a messaging service, so he can make it even more right-wing. There are people who idolize Elon because he's paid a lot of other people to invent things for him and claimed their inventions as his, thinking he's an actual inventor like Edison was. But instead he's just another rapacious oligarch and like in Germany in the late 20s, in the same way Krupp and Thyssen promoted Hitler, the Muskrat will promote whatever right-wing fascist they think they can control. 

Let's see, the economy crashed in 1929, although there were rumbles of trouble before then. The Dust Bowl, for instance, and tons of farmers being foreclosed on. But the real crash was in '29 and started in Germany, the country tipping into fascism. So maybe things will get really interesting in 2029. 

Speaking of evil, I'm still talking with my aunt, the one who probably plays around in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck. She can't possibly live *that* much longer, and it's interesting in a sickening way to talk to a real example of "the banality of evil". This is someone who'd cut their own hand off before they'd give a starving person a sandwich. 

I took the things I had packed and went up to the post office and dropped 'em off. Then I went to 99 Ranch and got some things, using the $15 in cash (really ratty bills so I wanted to spend them) and a bit of change from the change bag I had. 

They didn't have large yellow onions though so on my ride back I stopped at H Mart where I got a large yellow onion and some celery and some gum. I decided to check my membership card and I had 1750 points, enough to get a $10 gift certificate (which is every 1000 points) so I used that but it only came to $6.50 and they don't give change on those. "I'll just get some more gum, give me a minute" and grabbed another little jar of gum, and that did it, along with some more change. 

It was a very unremarkable trip this time. I got some big sheets of foam from the circuit board place and just rode back here with those in a big plastic bag, and noted that Renee, one of the troublemakers who used to live in the parking lot here, seems to have her "war rig" permanently parked with some other bums' rigs on a side street off of Zanker. 

As I came in here I noted two bums riding around on bikes but didn't get a close look at them. I rode past then cut in through one of the other ways in, then through a little passage, thinking I'll head 'em off if they're casing this place or any of my neighbors'. But they didn't come over to this side. I remembered that Renee likes to scout around on a bike for things to steal or people to bum cigarettes off of and get into conflicts with, and I know they'd seen me, so maybe that's why they didn't come over here. That was all the bum trouble today. 

Cadillac Desert

 I practiced last night while watching "Cadillac Desert" which is an old-ish PBS program some people have put on YouTube. As always these days, it's not "video" as I understand it, being 1-3 frames per second and sound not always in sync, but I see YouTube these days as a way to see something to decide whether to get it on DVD. 

I practiced a good hour and a half, starting with octaves on the headjoint and that went really well. And I'm up to page 13 in the Wye book. The first notes, B-A-G, are easy to finger. The next one, C, is trickier because the thing held down by the left thumb has to be let up and while it doesn't make a difference as far as I can tell, the thing under the right pinky has to be held down. The result is the hand position has to be thought about a lot more as going from B to C the flute wants to rotate which not only makes me feel like I might drop it, but plays hell with the sound. 

As for sound, I'm sounding better, and I just did tons of little partial scales from G to C and back down, over and over, to work on that hand position. I'm also happy to say the octave of the C pops out nice and clear and even piercing. 

It's good to see I'm getting stronger at this. I've simply got to get good on the flute. If I'm running into a "glass ceiling" in trumpet then I've got to get good at something else. At least  I can *make* flutes. I've got a book coming that should show me how to work on flutes. I've got to have some skill that makes me useful in the world. 

That skill can't be something modern like computer programming, as I grew up seeing how it put my dad in the poorhouse. Any "New, fast-moving" field is just one that's going to fast-move you right out of a job as humans are "advanced" right out of the loop. To me it's only a viable skill if it was viable 500 years ago. Farmer? Sure. Shoemaker? Fine. Tattoist? Prostitute? Pickpocket? Street musician? All well and good. "It is a beggar's pride that he is not a thief" is an old Japanese saying and I prefer to not pick locks or pockets, but "Lockpicking Lawyer" on YouTube does all right. 

The thing is that street musicians are becoming vanishingly rare. Mine is the last blog on Earth that even discusses busking once in a world. Likewise, in my city of over a million, I am the last street musician when I get out there. It was a viable occupation 500 years ago and it is now. 

I've just got to get up to speed on the flute! At least when my lip wasn't wearing out for the night I think my trumpet playing was getting some "guts" and people were reacting to that and that's why tips got so much better. I'm hoping it won't take me so long to get some "guts" into my playing on the flute and I'm already getting the idea my ability to keep playing for hours might be better on it. 

I packed 6 things and took off at 7 for FedEx. It was quite a load. The drop-offs went fine and I picked up a "Dutch Apple" pie that someone had left on one of the planters. I'm guessing a couple were shopping, guy grabs the pie, then on the way to their car the gal looks at it and goes, "Eww, it's past date" and they leave it there. 

I didn't need to look for any packing material so I just rode over to Tom's to drop off the pie with him. He ate half of it right away - "This is my dinner ... and my breakfast!". We hung out and talked for a bit. He told me about "The Whacker", a guy who would go around to different construction sites in his car, masturbating furiously. Hence the name. The construction workers would shoot at him with their nail guns. Great fun all around I'm sure. 

He also told me about how a local character, "Cowboy", is now so spun out on meth that he's taken to actually dressing like Crocodile Dundee and I dunno, walking up and down Rogers Avenue that way or something. We talked about a lot of different things and had some good laughs. 

And he even told me about this one Mexican flower seller he used to drive by all the time, who used to "make eyes" really obviously at people, plus he had this stereotypical thin "Mexican" type mustache, plus in addition he'd stick the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth... the "sexy" flower seller. 

I told him about the interesting people-watching around King and Story, a notorious crime-ridden area, and we really had some laughs. He *is* a good guy to know and if things go to shit for me somehow I'd probably be able to pay some rent and sleep somewhere in that shop of his. I just want to get him actually out busking and we talked about that also. I told him I was about to get new springs for my cornet and I can get one of those plunger type mutes for that wah-wah sound and a new mouthpiece for it, come to think of it (I had a 3B but normally play a 3C) and we'd be quite a pair, with him, tall, playing a trumpet and me, short, playing the shorter instrument, a cornet. 

when we were talked out I took off and checked my usual places, and found two packages of glazed mini-donut things in a couple of different flavors, a small green bell pepper, and a jicama. Those, I guess with the pie, are the day's freebees. If I weren't on a low-carb diet I've have split the pie with Tom, and I also passed on a large Ziploc bag of small pretzels that if they were on my diet, could have heated to de-germ and de-stale them and eaten those. The jicama turned out to be too big/old.

Evaporation Economics

 I was up all night again, and had 20 things ready to list on Ebay I swear, but didn't list them. At least I finished reading the James Galway book, which seems to have been written right after he had a horrible accident in which he was standing on a street in Switzerland and some idiot on a motorcycle plowed right into him and some people he was with.

I practiced a bit over an hour, basically until I wasn't tired physically but was becoming so mentally. When I did That Sport, at first, I could only concentrate for 20 minutes or so at first, and gradually lengthened the time I could. Over a few years I got to where I was training 5 hours a day, split into two sessions. It was easy since it was my only job. But in retirement, playing music can be my only job ... 

I went another couple pages in the Wye book, through "Sad Song" and to the page where "Rain Is Falling" at the top of the page. That one's got some tricky stuff as Mr. Wye is going into eighth notes. And at the bottom page the note C is introduced, tippy flute time! As when playing C, you have to start holding the flute properly. But I did this in the past, years ago, and will do it again. Besides, with C, I can play this cool thing from a song if I "borrow" a low note below G at the bottom that I'm not sure I'm fingering right. 

I'm getting glimpses of how easy it can be; how the flute *rings*. This is why I think this intermediate flute is more like a 3C mouthpiece on the trumpet and a student flute is like a 7C. If I were going to just play trumpet (and hadn't run into such low limits in my playing) I suppose in addition to my fancy-schmancy Bergeron model "pro" trumpet which does ring more, I'd play a pair of "shews" - the Bobby Shew Jazz which is like a 3C with just a bit more edge, and a Bobby Shew Lead, which is a "lead" or high-note mouthpiece. 

But I'm really eager to see where this flute thing goes. Because if I can master this bugger, there are tons and tons of advantages. I can literally carry 3 flutes as easily as 1 trumpet. I can stick a flute case (or two at least) in my messenger bag along with my folding tip box. Flutes do get drippy, but it's really just condensation where with a trumpet there's real spit going in there, along with grease and oil and all sorts of grot. 

The trumpet does make a fine tone, but I can play great one day and then the next I'm back to - and sounding like - intermediate school level. It's maddening. I just read that the normal range of the flute covers 3 octaves and I'll be there in no time. The shakuhachi is good for 2-1/2 anyway and I'll be there in no time too as the two help each other. On the trumpet in actual playing out on the street, I've been good for about one octave and that's it. While I've done them in practice, I've never played a high C or even a G above the staff out on the street.  And too often, at the top of my practical range, I've treated the listening public to sounds more like a small animal in pain than actual music. 

So if I can get a handle on it the flute might just win out. 

I was reading the umpteenth discussion on Reddit wherein younger people discover the truth of Marx's analysis of capitalism and they were grousing about our "trickle down" economy which is more like "trickle up" where the wealth trickles up from the poor to the rich, and someone called it "evaporation economics" and I think it's a great name for it. Lots of people I've known, friends and the girlfriend I had a while back, would spend any money they came onto with the feeling that if they didn't spend it, it would evaporate somehow. 

I think one friend, an airplane mechanic who was a BMW motorcycle nut, said it best. If you get a chunk of money, spend it on something big because otherwise it'll be "frittered away" on small things like bills. Buy something big (like a motorcycle) and then you'll find some way to pay the small things like bills, and you'll have this big thing to show for it. If you're poor, this actually makes sense. It means you'll lose all your money more slowly as opposed to right away. 

A form of this might work when you're rich. You get a windfall and you put it into art, buy some Van Goghs or Picassos. Only those will increase in value. That's only possible with motorcycles if you're picky about which ones you buy. Plus then you've got to store the smelly things and ride them once in a while to keep them in condition. 

But for most of the poor, it's spend it quick before "the invisible hand of the market" snatches it away. Hence the frenzied shopping my GF would engage in after a getting a pay check. She'd cash the check at "the pink store" and buy stuff there, mainly beer. Then it was off to the larger town 20 miles away to buy clothes or something. She should have been saving like crazy because her rent was small, her food was largely free (she worked at a hospital and took home lots of good food from there) and her only other big expense was her car. 

I was *kind* of like that in my 20s. It's almost like I was afraid to save. I had my rent, and since I didn't have a driver's license for a car I rode motorcycles. Looking back I still could have saved tons. I actually went bicycle-only for a bit and it was great. Far cheaper than motorcycles too - I could have done quite well sticking with bicycles and just taking a cab or the bus to work on rainy days. I wasn't cooking at home so I was spending a fortune on prepared food. Even with paying student loans I should have been able to save a ton. But somehow saving was "for the future when I'm making a lot more". Plus that fear of saving, like it might ... evaporate. 

I was always pining after this or that, a "better" motorcycle, or for instance at one point I had three sets of "leathers", one of them custom made for me. It was consumerism at its finest. And it was sure not fine for me. Looking back I could have gotten into reselling electronic surplus even back then, or at least set up a workstation at home and taught myself surface-mount circuit board work and rework. 

My buying musical instruments might seem a bit wasteful, except I can make money with them, and they don't consume gas, registration, insurance... 

The similarity between our economy and an evaporation/condensation chamber are striking though. At the bottom, the chamber would be "hot", the hotness being emotions and the feeling of "spend it or lose it". At the top, it being cooler would be the lack of over-emotionality about money, and longer-term thinking. 

I could not get motivated enough to go out anywhere, and the book store's not buying today, so I stayed in. I started in on the 2nd James Galway autobiography circa 2009. Early on, when he was about 10, he says his father bought him a flute that probably is the equivalent of $1500 today (a Selmer London Gold Seal) and then when it turned out to be junk his father ponied up again for a better one "the equivalent of more than $2500 today". That was calculated in '09 so call it $3k at least now. I can't believe a non-Asian parent doing that for their kid but his father did it. 

Hell I had to go to Radio Shack (for some reason they sold a few musical instruments) and pony up my own money to buy a recorder. Once I got it cleared up that it wasn't a tape recorder I wanted (that I could not afford anyway) I had a nice little Aulos brand soprano recorder, that cost me maybe $15. I practiced tons of scales on the thing and eventually my dad said at first I sounded awful but I'd actually started to sound pretty good. But any more encouragement than that, or God forbid the offer of at least renting a student flute, forget about it. That's not the American way. You're on your own. 

(Maybe that's why we're such a guitar-playing country. The standard thing is to get a guitar, preferably electric because then you can be sold lots of extras like an amp, and you learn all on your own. Hardly anyone takes actual classical guitar classes, because those would involve longer-term thinking, and socializing and working with others. No, the American way is to be a loner with a guitar, alone in the garage or attic, trying to assuage your loneliness and anger with simple twang-twang chords.) 

Galway's 2nd autobiography is a bit slicker than his first. He doesn't mention in the 2nd what wild kids he and his friends were, no mention of harassing "Corky", a lady who had a cork leg whom they used to cuss at volubly and then run. When I was a young teen we had a guy in the neighborhood named "Woody" because of course he had a wooden leg. No teasing him though, he was an adult and to be respected - that's the Asian culture I grew up with. I wonder if Galway's kind of hoping no one comes across his earlier autobio. 

I'm kind of glad now I didn't go out, because I did some searching around about how to work on flutes and found people referring to a book that's over $50 on Amazon but $36 from "flute world" which has a shop up in the City so I've ordered it from them - about $48 with shipping and tax. It's supposed to be the bees' knees though. There's a school for learning flute repair too but they're in-your-face Christians so that's out. 

The thing is, I've always been kind of handy and when I did the sport I worked on my own equipment and in the end even did things that made it work better than it did as supplied. I think if I'd known about making flutes as a kid I might have gotten into doing that, instead of making skateboards and hand-boards for bodysurfing and such things. The PVC flute I made in 2011 or so was not only louder than a recorder but more intuitive to play and a lot of fun. 

So buying this flute book puts me about $7 or $8 over my goal of saving half of each weekly pay check (not counting the large check to the IRS) so no more spending this week. I've got $27 cash on hand if I really need it.

A day in, I guess

 Last night I got 20 things ready to list on Ebay. That involved counting, sorting, cleaning, labeling, etc. I also ended up "high grading" a couple-few boxes of lab glassware, bottles, keeping the ones with nice logos and measurement lines and not keeping the generic ones. Those went out by the trash enclosure for the scavengers. 

I realized it was past 5AM so I settled down and before bed did about an hour's practice on the flute, and am up to just before "Sad Song" in the Wye book. I can think of nothing better than to be very stubborn and practice a lot. 

So far I've read 7 chapters of James Galway's 1978 autobiography. What really impresses me is he was in a family that found some way to afford to buy him a flute. And there were all these flute bands around, marching around so who'd not want to get into that? He was apprenticed to a piano repair shop at age 14, the same age I was out weeding lawns or doing any kind of work I could do. But he kept up the flute because it was his thing. Art was my intended thing at that age, but unlike Mr. Galway, there were no teachers just what could be learned on my own or in books. 

But I've learned, there's always a demand, or at least a like, for music whereas Hawaii was overrun with artists and even here on the mainland there seem to be far more than are needed. And even if I got into sign-painting, which *is* needed, I'd really need a dedicated space to do it in, or maybe if I were really interested in it at all I'd have found a way to do it by now. 

The flute I am playing now is an "intermediate" model, the model a kid might get as a teen after they'd been playing for years, first-chair in whatever music program in their nice, middle-class elite school etc. I got it because I figure with all my trumpet playing I should know how to puff some air by now and once I get around to taking the plugs out, I can do cool half-holing stuff. Beginner flutes are made to be easy to get a note on, and there might be a huge difference between this one and a beginner one. 

Someone in Campbell had a Yamaha beginner one for sale for a couple hundred bucks and I'm almost tempted to go and get it, just to be able to compare the two, and also I'd like to learn how to work on flutes and it would make a great "victim". 

I'm guessing a beginner flute vs. my flute is like playing a trumpet with a 7C mouthpiece as opposed to the 3C I use these days. You can sound OK on a 7C but a 3C's got a lot more "guts" to the sound. That's what I want to do, play the flute with "guts". 

I can't believe how much worse the internet is getting. "Video" is 1-3 frames per second at 240p, sound generally OK but often not in sync, with tons of commercials. It's probably how it was in the mid-1990s. Back then if you wanted to watch video, you just bought the DVD and that's what I'm trying to do now, buy the stuff I really like on DVD. I also buy books, no "ebooks" for me. When the internet is only something people go on once in a while because they need to, I want to be adapted back to life without it.

Out and back.

 Last night I got 10 rather simple things listed on Ebay, packed some things to take to the post office today, and practiced on the flute a bit over an hour. I played that first little "song" in the Wye book a lot, and lots of lone tones, octaves, etc. 

I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, had coffee and aspirin for "breakfast" and took off around 4. The post office drop-offs went fine, and things went fine also at the bank, where I had them print off some checks for me. then went over to Whole Foods. 

The place was rockin' in that there was a black guy sitting on one of the bike racks hustling people for money under the guise of "Raise the minimum wage!" as he kept calling out. And some more guys with an ASPCA booth set up, hustling away. 

I went up to CVS for some paper towels and index cards, both a lot more expensive than they used to be of course. I looked at the A1C tester they had, thinking they might have replaced the out-of-date one by now but they hadn't. A worker was right there and I showed them how the one they had was dated 2021. The guy said it was no problem, he could "damage it out" and that should result in a new one arriving. I told him I'll keep an eye out because if the new one that comes in isn't past date, I'll buy it. According to online reviews, their A1C testers are accurate, and at $60-$80 or so, for two tests, that's probably half the price of getting an A1C test at a clinic, even if I could. 

I also took a walk down memory lane, by which I mean the booze aisle. The old bottom-shelf liquor I used to buy at barely over $10 a handle is now $15. Stoli used to be on sale $23-$25 a handle all the time there, and now it's $35. I'm saving even more money these days by not drinking. 

I went back to Whole Foods and got some shrimp salad and a near-beer and ate upstairs. It's windy and cold, and I'm glad I was not trying to busk in this kind of weather. 

Then I did some serious shopping, spending about $90. With the paper towels and stuff, I probably spent about $125 today. If I were busking it'd be all I'd have to spend out of the bank, too. The $50 from a decent day busking would take care of any other spending I wanted to do. 

I went back out and the guys with the booth were done for the day but the guy sitting in the bike racks was still there. We got talking about the wind, and that led to talking about the Chicago airport. So I talked about that while putting things away in the bike bags and getting ready to take off, and the guy actually packed up and left. Maybe it was just to go inside for a warm-up and a snack. Or maybe talking his ear off about airports can make him move on. 

I rode over to the Amazon place and picked up bubble mailers, and then on home. It was windy as hell and the ride was a real slog. On 10th street where the train tracks cross, they have it all torn up so it's not even possible to sneak by the construction site on the sidewalk. I had to circle around to 7th, then through  "Zombie Alley" and back to 10th. I guess they're fixing those bumpy train tracks - I wonder if they saw, on camera, that time I almost did "the flying W" on my bike going across there? 

I got back here, only stopping to pick up a large "Dish Pack" box from the other side of the complex, and put things away and now am in for the night. I'd left at 4 and got back at 7 so that was 3 hours.

Made it 1 year

 365th day sober. I've made it a year. It's a good feeling. Maybe someone people can have a glass of wine with dinner (the old trope of it being healthy has been disproved, it turns out French people live so much longer because they have national health care and can see the damn doctor when they need to) but I am not one of those people. 

The "scientific" technique works for me. Not AA, which is based on emotion. What works for me is learning, and reminding myself of, the damage alcohol does to the body and there's plenty of information on that! I read r/cripplingalcoholism on Reddit all the time, and just things like seeing Tom being so forgetful and crawling into the bottle by 6PM and how horrible and smelly his place is, which would not bother a committed alcoholic. The other day I saw a chicken bone on the floor at his place and joked that he needs to have some pork and beef bones "to balance it out" and he kicked it with his foot and said "I figure the broom will get it" - like he ever uses a broom. 

That life is not for me! Sober life is so much better, and I know how to live it better than my sober teens and 20s too, because I know more about eating enough, and the right things. You've got to get plenty of meat and veggies to have energy, while in my early 20s I often would eat a bag of potato chips and call it a meal. 

Last night I listed 20 things on Ebay, then got a good hour in doing the octave exercise and just long tones, on the flute headjoint. 

Before the virus, before all this craziness started, I was riding through San Pedro Square and heard a flutist. The guy was playing not by the Old Spaghetti Factory but over by the big, airy enclosed area that sometimes would have bands inside it, and generally had people in there, eating and milling around, because there are lots of little restaurants inside that building. The guy was good and I mean really good. He was able to get shakuhachi-like nuances in his playing and I was very impressed. 

I don't know if he was making any money, and I believe I'd gone by again when I saw a cop hassling him. If he'd played by the "Old Spag" he'd maybe not have made much, but everyone knows buskers play there so he'd have remained un-hassled. If he'd played by Whole Foods he'd have made a mint, I think, because he was really good. 

By that time, even, buskers were become rare and I wish I'd hung around and waited for the cop to be done with him, then gone over and talked to him, maybe bought him a meal and told him about Whole Foods. I'd really like to have learned how one gets to play that well, and to have shown him it's possible to busk in this town just not right where he'd tried it. 

I woke up at around 5 in the afternoon, as I'd told myself I'm having a day in and can sleep all I want. After coffee and nuts I took some time and went back to bed and read the first 6 chapters in James Galway's 1978 autobiography. I've got his later one too. This one's great though, lots of descriptions of his, what today would be called "feral", childhood "let's go burn some tyres" etc. childhood. In both his and mine not completely feral, because we'd both be in super hot water if we were rumored to have said a cuss word, for instance. 

His father was on him all the time to practice the flute, and this is where the magic happened. He describes playing his flute on his way to school, at lunch, and on his walk home. And by this time he was playing in flute bands that marched for miles and miles. I'm just to the part where he gets his first really serious teacher, who has him do exercises on the headjoint only for a month. It seems he was using a "hard" embouchure with the lips rolled in, and she wanted him to "use the soft part" as I believe he put it. 

After this reading which it seems I have to force myself to do these days, I fixed up dinner (some marinated herring in a jar I had around here with cheese, sour cream, and cucumber slices) and put the things I'd listed last night away, and packed a load of things to take with me on my way to the bank. Then I rounded up 10 things to list (I've got a pretty good idea of 20 to list tomorrow). 

It was really nice having a day in while it stayed rainy outside. During a break in the rain I "rescued" a lot of little foam envelopes from the welding place that are really good for packing small things. I don't know why but I don't think they like my digging in their trash can, and had 'em under a big black trash bag full of stuff. I actually pulled that out and had their can tipped over to get at the things I wanted, then picked everything up and neatened the whole area up. That's how fanatic I can get about good packing materials. I wish I had a use for all the little lengths of welding rod they leave, but so far I don't. 

 

Fires in snow land.

 364th say sober. Rain's coming in and I contemplated staying up all night and making my post office and FedEx run in the morning but I was, for some reason, so tired that while I got a batch of things ready to list on Ebay, I didn't even list anything. Just packed things to get shipped. 

I practiced a bit over an hour on the flute headjoint, the old octave exercise, before bed. 

I woke up at 1:30 or so. Flagstaff, and Prescott, Arizona have large fires. This is unusual as April is a month during which Flagstaff would often be snowed in, and Prescott not far behind. I lived in the Prescott area for a year after losing everything in the 2008 crash, and it's a very right-wing area. I'm glad I got out of there and wasn't around to see it become even more right-wing with the election of the Dump. Who knows what they think of the fire. God's Wrath because of Teh Gayz or something no doubt. 

I packed a few more things and got going at about a quarter to 3. The wind was going the opposite way of what it usually does, so the ride was easy going out. I stopped in to check out a cafe I pass all the time, but am usually too late. The cafe turned out to be the kind where the (hot) waitresses were wearing hardly anything and it's $14 for 7 chicken wings. So I said "Later" and I was outta there. The post office drop-off went fine, and I had to fight the wind on the way back.

I dropped off the FedEx stuff and then took my usual route out of there around the back. I picked out a few good boxes from the dumpster, and found 9 bottles of Coke Zero someone had tossed on the curb - probably the distributor or H Mart, where 1-2 in the box had gotten damaged. I set about rinsing the ones that needed rinsing and some lady bitched at me from the loudspeaker "Loitering by the trash enclosure, you need to leave immediately" she had this sort of defeated tone like Mrs Crabapple from The Simpsons. I finished what I was doing and threw the box away, and took off. 

I checked the medical place and their dumpster was out but no finds. The Hyundai place had a huge box out, full of packing stuff. Random pieces of bubble wrap, various hardnesses of foam, etc. I took the whole thing and put it on the bike trailer which made quite a bit load, but it worked fine. 

I stopped by Tom's and he was in, awake, sober(ish?) etc. We hung out and talked a bit, and a bum walking along on the other side of the street stopped to check a box on the curb, and went on. I walked over and checked the box and it was a 12-pack of Budweiser in cans, missing maybe 2. So I took it and gave it to Tom. 

I really don't know how shitfaced Tom is at any given time. I brought up how he'd talked about moving to New Orleans, and first he said, "I said that?" and then launched into how he's go a friend there and so on. He also thought, since I knew Rob's name was Rob, that I'd met Rob, the retired carpenter he works with now. But no, I just knew the name. So Tom could not remember if he'd introduced us or not. And he's not been away, just "going to bed by 6 or 7". He says he's been up by 6 in the morning, so it makes sense to get to bed early, but that would normally be by 10; I've been there. But going to bed by 6 means work is done (he "clocks out" from his remote job around 5 I'm pretty sure) and it's time to hit the bottle. 

So today's freebees were 9 bottles of Coke Zero for me and 10 cans of beer for Tom. 

I got back here and bagged up the packing stuff in 7 large-ish plastic bags and put the box in the trash enclosure. 

Dinner was two 4-oz. servings of beef I'd frozen at the end of March, with diced raw onion and mustard and mayo. Exactly what I put on a burger minus the bun. Even if the beef cost me $6 it was better than spending a bit over $10 at Five Guys, and the office would only smell like a burger not curry or anything when Ken comes over. 

I had the bathroom cleaned and the office vacuumed when Ken came over. I got my check from him and we hung out for a while; he needed some connectors that he decided to just take off of a couple of plug-ins he had, and I took the fronts off of the plug-ins for him to take home for the connectors, and since the plug-ins were little treasures boxes of ICs in sockets, after Ken left I took the IC's out and put the stripped plug-ins out for the scavengers. It was raining heavily by then. 

It's supposed to rain tomorrow with perhaps some thunder and lightning and hail, then clear up a bit late Friday.  So I've got a day in tomorrow.

I have no idea if busking is going to happen this weekend. I certainly need to get all the experience/earnings in I can, since it's the one thing I can count on being able to do regardless of access to the internet, electricity, banking, etc.

Planned my work and worked my plan

 363rd day sober.  I can say honestly that I  planned my work and worked my plan. I used to shudder thinking of that saying, as it was a favorite of Dr. Allison, the asshole veterinarian I worked for at the Blue Cross Animal Hospital, but it really is a good way to think about things and useful to me. 

The plan had been to do my taxes over the weekend but between worrying about it, and holding myself to getting some other things done first, like putting listed things away and re-organizing a bunch of stuff, the taxes got pushed into Monday. Monday's the day they were due. Then they got pushed into Monday night, and I figured I'll do an all-nighter, get 'em done, and get 'em into the mail Tuesday morning. 

This plan was monkeyed with (another Dr. Allison expression) by Ken coming by with a bunch of stuff. I settled down to sorting the stuff out, putting it away, and working on some of it, taking 20 of these little fans out of the assemblies they're in and taking some circuit boards and de-soldering the high voltage capacitors off of them, and putting the junk out for the scavengers. 

Early in the morning, around 3AM or so, it started raining. I was gambling that the rain would pass through and it would dry up enough by 9AM or so to be able to get out and ride to the post office. 

After some curry, and lots of coffee, and everything else being done,  I got the tax papers downloaded and had a browser process open for each of the instruction sheets. Last year I'd messed up, so I wasn't going to copy from whatever I did last year. I knew I needed the 1040 and schedules C and SE. They referred to schedules 1 and 2, so I used those also. 

I also knew from past experience that one I did the C and SE all the real work is done, so I did those first, then 1 and 2, then the 1040. I copied everything over to a 2nd set to keep for my records, as this is tons easier than taking everything to Kinko's to copy it. And in the end, I figured I owe a bit over $2900, this is in line with what I thought I'd owe. Only about $400 of this is actual income tax, the rest being socially responsible things like Medicare and Social Security. 

I had *one* check so I made that out and this weird little V-form that has to go with a check, and I packaged it all up into an envelope to mail, and into one for my records, and that was that. 

I had 14 small items all ready to pack, so I packed those and they all fit in one Whole Foods bag so that was easy and since they were in plastic bubble mailers, it wouldn't matter if I got sprinkled on. But I didn't; there were beautiful clouds all over the place but no actual rain. 

I'd left at 9AM so lunch trucks were going to be around, and I took a route that went by Tom's place and there was a lunch truck just about across the street. I got two chicken skewers for $5 and ate those in front of Tom's. I think he's out on vacation or something, or probably had to go to Alaska where his dad lives, because his dad isn't doing well. 

I rode up to the post office, dropped everything off, and headed for home, looking for more lunch trucks. I ended up riding out to Old Bayshore, where I found another truck and got some chicken wings for another $5 and took those back here to eat. 

Now it was 10AM (I'd only been out an hour) and I went right to bed. I had some trouble getting to sleep but for me that means maybe 10 minutes to go to sleep instead of 2. 

I woke up at about 7:30 in the evening after having a dream about hanging out with a lot of bikers - it was all pretty friendly as I really don't have bad dreams. I had to think a bit to remember the chicken.

It's a nice feeling knowing I have my taxes done, and as soon as I can get over to the bank and get a few more checks printed for me, I can pay the bill for the $1600-odd too. No waiting until June for me. 

That's a $4500 "hit" on my finances overall but that's why I save like crazy, when I'm not buying flutes and trumpets and things. I'll still have a couple grand in the bank plus I'd really like to see if I can make, busking, what I did last year which is a couple grand.

Zombiful

 362nd day sober.  I woke up late in the afternoon, after being up until nearly 10AM futzing around with the trumpet and then the flute. 

I still have no idea why my trumpet playing has suddenly gone to shit. It's forcing me to have a real re-think of things. 

I was thinking I might start a business making pull-through swabs of my design, but I've found that mine are shit compared to the ones I ordered from Tim Wendt. So that's out. 

Any idea of learning to work on trumpets is out because I don't have any kind of space that can become a workshop. The loft is out, being too hot 80% of the time and freezing cold the rest of the time. Plus being full of packing stuff as well as my personal stuff. Without a dedicated area, forget about it. I can rent one, downtown, in this artists' collective sort of place, costing me about $1200 to move in and $350 or $400 a month. But that would actually make more sense for sign-painting than brass repair, and I can't even get interested enough in sign-painting. 

The problem with sign painting, while it's needed back home and everywhere, back home a white person can get in real trouble if something physical is being sold. I can't exactly "busk" signs. And trying to get paid for sign work in the conventional way is out - having less rights, in any payment dispute I'll end up owing *them* money. Music is one of the very few fields where I'd not end up in and out of jail. 

There are even white guys playing electric guitar in Waikiki, for God's sake. And getting away with it. 

I was thinking that back home, I'd play trumpet *and* shakuhachi somehow, because being able to play the shakuhachi would really win points with the group that's in power - Japanese. Besides it being a great instrument anyway. But I've been devoting what time I can to practice, to practice on the trumpet and falling behind. It's just not adding up. 

Finding that the busking season in this part of the country is only 5 or even 4 months long is a come-down although it does give me more time to experiment around. Maybe this year I'll just suck on the flute and see how that goes. I've played flute before and did about the same as I was on cornet, playing in Mountain View. What's funny is I can't remember what my repertoire was. I know I played a handful of songs and I know a decent session paid me $20 or $30, about the same as it would now. 

I packed one big thing and had two medium-big things packed, and took off just a bit before 7. There were zombies everywhere. I'm back to calling them zombies. It's one less syllable than NPC, and it trips off the tongue better. There was a zombie walking a large dog, at least on a leash, on Queen's Lane. There was another zombie with a heap of trash and some kind of Mad Max bicycle and trailer tangled up in it all, on the side of the road under the bridge. The bike was a pink girl's model, so yeah, while I like to give the benefit of the doubt, this bike was certainly stolen not bought. 

I dropped the things off at FedEx, and on the way back visited the first-floor storage unit and got some things out to sell. Then I went over to Tom's and knocked on the door - lights on but no answer. And a fast-walker zombie walked past - I made sure it saw the "explainer" in my hand and it walked on by pretending not to notice. I then made the questionable decision to ride on Rogers Avenue and there were zombies all over the place including one undead dog - unleashed, but it didn't go after me, as I think the think sensed I'd happily make it the rest of the way dead.  Then coming in here, coming in the other side of the complex which I normally avoid doing, there was a zombie staggering around and a bunch of zombie clothes hung up to dry on the fence. A zombie that cares about hygiene, which is odd. 

I got back in here and put things away etc. Presently I heard a clatter going by and looked at the video monitor - it's that same care with the smashed-out rear window that always drives through. The thing barely runs. I don't know why it comes by here, unless the zombie(s) driving it are hoping to catch me with the roll-up door open. That won't happen. It's only ever open these days when Ken's over and then, I'm on a hair trigger watching out for zombies. 

I made an egg salad and was relaxing when Ken showed up. He brought boxes, stuff to sell, and a letter from the Treasury Dept. The letter was a bill for $1600-odd, just as I'd been expecting. They've been talking on the radio about the IRS being behind, and I guess they're catching up now. A quick glance at the few pages showed the charge, the reason for it, and it looks like a $50 fee for goofing up. Well, that's OK because that's less than a tax preparer would charge around here. So I can just do my taxes as best as I can figure out, and if I owe more they'll get around to sending a bill if I didn't pay enough. That's fair. 

Happy Easter to me?

 361st day sober. Last night I not only listed 20 things on Ebay, but I put into action a ton of re-arranging I had in mind. I had things I'd listed stacked up here in the office and had told Ken of my plans for each type of stuff to go, and he said something like I should put my plans into action and I agreed. 

So last night I did it. I moved things around and re-assigned areas and drawers for different things to make things fit, and after a few hours had it all done except for putting a bunch of small stuff away. I "ran out of gas" and called it enough. 

Practice was ... a bit discouraging. I had trouble playing at the top of the staff at all. I put in more than an hour anyway, telling myself I'm preparing myself for better playing in the future which is how it works. 

My new "Flow Studies" book is neat, not only for the exercises and little essays in it but also there are links to online video and audio. There are a couple of first chair symphony guys playing the exercises, so of the ones that are recorded (not all but a nice selection) can be heard being played by two different guys. 

I listened to some by one guy. I dunno .... the guy sure doesn't play it like I do. I mean, you can play it following what the composer has written and still have it sound nice, but this guy stretches it too far, I think. I like to stick to the note values written because I need so much help reading music anyway, and in my experience if I do it right it can still have "swing" and sound good. But at least I can hear others playing the exercises and that's a huge help. I'm glad I got the book. 

It being Easter Sunday, this would have been a great day to go out and busk. But instead I have to stay in and do taxes. Maybe if I had planned things better, I could have done so. "Ave Maria" is very non-demanding and requires going nowhere near the top of the staff. 

I decided some shopping is in order, so I rode up to H Mart and bought a bunch of stuff. I didn't see any zombies but ... (eerie music) that doesn't mean zombies didn't see me. On my way back I stopped at the place where Crazy Chrissie confronted me, and the dumpster enclosure was unlocked so I was able to go in there and clean things up some more. I was also able to pick up some packing stuff by the tire place. Right around the corner on Old Bayshore where there's a parking lot, there was a car with one door open parked angled across the spaces, next to a likewise parked truck, and I think there were zombies in there. I sped up and raced away along the sidewalk, going the "wrong way". A zombie won't run that far from their vehicle, and I know how to make it hard for a vehicle to catch me. 

I'm $14 over my goal of spending only half of each week's paycheck, but am pretty stocked up now. I portioned out and froze some pork I got and made a nice pork curry for dinner. 

Before getting into my taxes, I wanted to "clear the decks" by having all the things that sold gathered and ready to pack and ship. I also packed two things that had to go ASAP. And I put things I'd listed away; I had quite a bit of that stuff stacked up. 

I tried practicing and it went awful. I can only play to C in the staff. I don't know what's going on. My lips aren't cracked or chapped or anything. I played at least an hour and it did not improve. I have no idea what's going on but I'm not very happy about it. If I'm going to be a busker as my "retirement career", how much am I going to enjoy it if I never improve? It can't be that I'm practicing too much, at only an hour a day. 

I feel like I have some time to play with, as the actual busking season probably doesn't start around here until May or maybe it won't be warm enough out until June. This isn't Hawaii, after all, where the weather's nice all year. Or even Southern California, where the weather's at least not so wintry in the winter. 

In frustration I got the flute out and did some octave exercises. Maybe those would go terribly also? But they didn't, they went fine. So I put the thing together and went over the first three notes in the Trevor Wye book. I can do 'em fine, and do them an octave up just fine too. The notes are B-A-G in the staff, and being able to do the octave higher on the B means doing the note just below "high C" like it's nothing.

Faces and names, please.

 360th day sober. I practiced last night and it went OK .... while it rained pretty heavily outside. We got a good washing around here. I can see now that I was kind of jumping the gun, busking as early as in late March or early April. The season isn't really on until May 1 at least. 

I took a look at Reddit and it seems some Nazi had gotten onto an Amtrak train somehow and was harassing a couple of gay guys taking a train trip with their two adopted children. As in, followed the kids into the restrooms where they were alone, threatened the parents etc. The guy refused to leave the train "You'll have to kill me first" (and it's too early to simply kill the guy and toss the body onto the side of the tracks) so the cops were called and he was dragged off. 

I wish they'd show a photo of the guy. I might have to shoot right-wingers like that and I'd like to have some faces on file so I know who to hunt down. As an example, the guy who shot a lot of employees on the VTA a while back. I'm halfway convinced it was the guy who was driving the #323 bus who heaped me with abuse (it was so extreme it was kind of funny, actually) for simply asking some little question about the bus schedule or something. I actually wrote out a complaint about him at the VTA office. Since he had a long record as being a right-wing troublemaker, he was probably driving the bus as punishment for some of his behavior. 

Now, if it were socially acceptable to hunt down and plug Nazis as it was in WWII, the guy'd likely have been mopped up well before he got a chance to do the damage he did. It's all pretty obvious. You know what a Nazi is; you know what a Nazi does, just as you know what a rabid animal is. You put it down. So it'd be a big help if the authorities would publish the train guy's face and name. This is why it's also important, if you witness a Nazi incident, to get video, audio, any sort of evidence to not only help in the case but to help track the Nazi down. 

Needless to say, I'd leave this shithole country if I could, but moving to a war zone like Israel isn't the answer, and I'm too young to smuggle myself into France, pick grapes for 10 years and show I'm a good egg who's learned French including all the cuss words, and petition for citizenship. The best I can do is move back to Hawaii where I grew up and I don't even know if that will be possible in a few more years. 

My only ace in the hole in Hawaii is, I'll have Social Security which will go about 2X as far there. It's not really possible to live on Social Security outside the US, because the plane flight back to whatever address I'm maintaining in the US once a month to collect my check in the mail would eat up the $900 or $1000 a month it would mean. 

The biggie to get into Asia is to teach English but that's not possible without a college degree and due to my choosing an utter loser of a profession like high tech, that was not available to me. If I'd done something sensible like Creative Writing, getting the degree would have been easy, I'd have been able to make good side money writing papers for students, and getting the English teaching certificate would have been almost an afterthought. 

But this is the modern age; anyone can teach anything on YouTube. You even get paid if you're super popular. Except that it's the modern age for perhaps the top 10% around here. Posting video on Youtube is effectively impossible for me. Hell even *viewing* YouTube is becoming untenable, with frame rates of 2-3 fps between the freeze-ups, the only saving grace for now being passable audio. 

So, yes, I could be an English-teaching YouTuber if I were in an actual first-world country, but I'm not. So I'd have to become something I can't become, to be able to leave here for a place where I can become that. 

This is why I'm so big on having paper, printed materials to learn trumpet from. It's why I'm such a stickler for printed books and don't own a single "e-book". This is why I don't use backing tracks or have "Venmo" when I busk. I have to keep telling people, when electricity is down to a few hours a day or a week, my decisions about what level of technology to use are going to be golden. 

I keep remembering a story by "Selco" about life during the Yugoslavia breakup. There was a guy who played guitar, skinny and long hair etc. the very caricature of someone who plays guitar and does little else. And the local warlord, who'd kill people on a whim, kept him alive because there were no radios and no electricity and he was the only way to have music. I honestly see things going back to how Louis Armstrong describes in his childhood when there were no phonographs and of course no radios, and all music was live. People hired bands for all sorts of things and bands even hired other bands for their own parties. 

I can actually easily imagine this for Hawaii, where music has always been such a big thing. I'm not really crazy about "Hawaiian" music as a genre, as it's old 1920s Tin Pan Alley stuff and not in a good way, but I certainly know a lot of it. For the working people, music was the one outlet they had. Churches were busy stealing their land and near-enslaving them, but they were allowed to sing. It's an echo of the old New Orleans where the slaves were whipped 6-1/2 days of the week but they were allowed to "let it out" on Congo Square. 

I'm not sure where the trumpet can fit into this but I'm sure it can, somewhere. With the huge military presence there's sure to be some demand there, and a lot of bands like to have a trumpet to fatten up their sound. Plus, "Hawaiian" music being so 1920s influenced, 1920s stuff in general might go over well. 

Zombies vs. NPCs

 359th day sober. I listed 20 things on Ebay and then went right to packing 7 small/smallish things I could take with me to the downtown post office the next day. 

I did some practice but I tried doing too much too fast, too much emphasis on high notes, and my headache started bugging me so I went to bed. 

I woke up around 3, headache still bugging me, so I had coffee and aspirin and a niacin pill for breakfast and got going at 4. 

I dropped off trash at one trash can, then dropped off the packages at the downtown post office, then went over to the bank and deposited my check. 

All my drop-offs done, I went over to Whole Foods and locked the bike. There was a Stereo Bum-O-Rama going on, with some hokey "charity" with a table set up and a couple of people bothering shoppers, and another bum sitting on one of the bike rack posts with a sign, bugging people too. One of the booth people, a very outgoing, well-dressed Black lady, bantered with me back and forth. She was fun, but those fly-by-night charities are really just panhandlers with a little better image, and I never give money to them. A ragged guy outside a bodega asking for beer money? Wait a minute, let me see what I've got. 

I walked down to the hardware store and bought a half-gallon of Simple Green, at the price a full gallon used to be, because c'est le guerre. There are new employees every week, and this week's was a very outgoing black guy who was really "on". Super helpful. This is what a lot of people don't understand, that if you've got a job that's Meh, you can make the day go by easier by "game-ifying" it by being super helpful. 

I came back to Whole Foods and put the Simple Green in the bike bag and then went in for some shopping. I was not enthusiastic about eating there, so I just got some things and took off. I picked up some bubble mailers at the Amazon place, then headed for home. 

I stopped at Nijiya where I got several things including some nice raw fish as I like to have a "special" meal on payday. The good old end times wind made the ride back a bit of a slog, but I eventually got back here and put things away and enjoyed some delicious raw fish. 

I've discovered that on YouTube there are many people "documenting" what they jokingly call NPCs. In video games, NPCs are Non Player Characters. They're essentially characters generated by the game that have simple behaviors. The joke is, these YouTubers take videos of bums, crackheads, crazies, etc. and the joke is that they're NPCs. It makes sense, too, because NPCs tend to have simple, stereotyped behavior like a game might have an NPC that won't let you cross a bridge in the game unless you give that NPC a game token (kinda spitballing here; I'm not a gamer) or an NPC that always jumps out in front of your car etc. And these real-life NPCs are the same. As they say, ThatsTheJoke.htm You can count on certain real-life NPC to always ask you for a "siggurit" or shuffle along wrapped in an old blanket, flailing their arms in a certain way, etc. 

NPC is a much better fit than "zombie". Zombies hunger for brains, or at least are attracted to noise and motion and in either case want to bite you to make you a zombie also. But the homeless/crackheads/bums are not at all like this. Most don't give a damn, a few will be intimidating or even violent to anyone foolish enough to get close, but mostly they just engage in their limited set of behaviors. Drug use, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, mental retardation, all narrow the sufferer's range of behaviors. 

The resemblance to "extra" characters in a video game is striking to me now that I've thought about it and must be even more so to people who play games or even help create them. 

My trumpet swabs came in today, so I have one to use and one to save in case something happens to the first one. Also, I went on the Austin Custom Brass site and tried ordering the "high speed" (a bit stiffer than stock) valve springs that are supposed to fit my King Master cornet and .... I guess they have them because the order went through. I just hope I can take the valves apart and replace the springs without buggering something up.

You sunk my battleship! - Putin

 358th day sober. I sifted and sorted things and took some stuff apart and put the scrap metal out where a scavenger stopped off and picked it up pretty quickly. I didn't list things but did practice. 

The practice went pretty well, and I'm doing things like learn the "flow studies" in the book I just got and also doing things like lots of lip slurs high up, holding the note for a while, going down and then up to it again. All aimed toward building strength and endurance. 

It was supposed to rain overnight which it didn't but it was nice and "juicy" out when I woke up at 4. There's a nice steady drizzle going on. 

Some humor for today. A Russian cruiser (not a battleship but in one article I read it's about the equivalent of the US losing a battleship in WWII or a carrier now) kinda sorta blew up, which Putin said is totally not due to the Ukrainians. The Russians then tried to tow it, and the fucker sank. 

On the radio an erstwhile ambassador to Ukraine said Putin's the kind of guy who only understands force, and diplomacy and kindness probably only confuse him. I was thinking while listening to this, and really, it describes the situation with street bums and scumsuckers in general. A normal person will extend some kindness, say giving them some gently used clothes or something, maybe for instance they give them a lawn mower or some car-washing stuff they can start a biz with, or a used bike. 

The scumsucker sells the equipment or bike, and comes around demanding more. Because the scumsucker has no concept of the social contract. They just see weakness, and will seek to take anything more they can get. If the normal person is smart they do what we did here: Cut off all contact and do what they can to make life uncomfortable for the scumsucker so they leave the area. A scumsucker might have some dim concept of life before all the drugs, and wonder why they're suddenly not being talked to, cops called on them, etc. Since they won't be able to comprehend that it's because they're a leech, they'll decide it's snobbery on the part of the normals. 

And it might as well be, which might be a clue as to where snobbery originally came from. The idea of an old boys' club is the old boys will look out for each other. You can't just let anyone in because they seem like a good egg. They might have horrible families, or they might have fooled you. So the club tends to be people you went to college with, or better yet, high/prep school. Then you'll have spent your formative years together and you'll know them thoroughly and they'll know you. 

Social classes work this way also. If you're middle-class and you invite middle-class people over, you can be pretty certain they won't pilfer things in your house, or kick your dog, or try to wipe out your liquor cabinet, the most expensive stuff first. (A while back, Ken was irritated that his daughter had a heavy drinking session courtesy of some fairly expensive Scotch of his. I commiserated, saying something like "Everyone knows, you have the first shot or two of the nice stuff, and then if you just want to drink, you use the cheap stuff for that".) 

But among the lower class, they *will* pilfer things, they *will* try to drink any and all alcohol you have around the place and the best you can do is try to drink as much of it yourself as you can in self defense; they *will* kick your dog. Life among them is one merry-go-round of theft, fights, drinking and drugging, in a tiring whirl.

A sad clown.

 357th say sober.  I practiced last night, even after being super tired from all the things I did and putting that copper upstairs which meant lots of trips up and down. High notes were working well, which I'm going to ascribe to my doing more long tones on high notes. 

I was up around 3, had coffee etc and had time to not only finish off the packages I'd staged with labels all printed, but pack some more to make a total of 24. 

All but two were dropped off at the post office, and the last two at FedEx, then I got a Diet Pepsi at the fish place, hoping it might help my headache, and went over to Five Guys and had a hamburger. 

The medical place was locked up, and I think someone's staying late and then only unlocking their dumpster when they leave. I'm not going to worry too much about it. Free aspirin is OK but I must have a pound of it by now. And free other meds are OK but all I do is donate them. And Ebay's shut down our selling the more interesting stuff like AED pads. 

I went to the storage, to the upstairs unit I have a key for, and picked up a good load of things, which means more stuff to list on Ebay for the next couple days after I list the batch of stuff I have ready to go. 

I went by Sanmina and yep, the copper I didn't take was gone. There was a lot of pink bubble wrap though so I left with my bike trailer covered in rolls of the stuff.  Almost all the way home, I checked the dumpster over by the karate school and found a rather large, framed, pointillist drawing of a sad clown. The frame's nice, anyway. I took it along to put onto Craig's List.

I got back here, put things away, and got to work finishing the load of laundry I'd started last night and hung it up and still had a bit of time to clean the bathroom when Ken showed up. He finished his fast-food burger and fries and soda then wrote out my check and then we BS'd for a while except I was tired and kept yawning. Ken didn't get the hint, but eventually did leave, at midnight. 

I fixed up the last batch of ramen I'd gotten for my sick-time, and ate that. Now I can go back to being full-on "keto". 

Windy but at least not raining

 356th day sober. Like the night before, I practiced last night and ran into trouble, which I should not have, with high notes. I've been doing "free buzzing" where I buzz my lips alone, and I realize now it encourages rolling my lips in too much, hence the trouble with high notes. So I'll stop doing that. 

My aunt is still corresponding with me; she's going from a walker to a cane (recently had hip or knee surgery) so she can more ably move around her huge house and around those pesky piles of money heaped about. 

I am still amazed how empty the light rail was last night. No one even getting on or off at Gish. That station's right in the druggie, streetwalker, etc zone and there are *always* plenty of sketchy people getting on and off. And since I'd gotten on at the station by Zombie/St. James Park, and the train had been effectively empty, it means no one had gotten on at Santa Clara, another super busy station. It was eerie. 

The stores and buildings all empty, many boarded up, I've gotten used to that by now. But the druggies and street ho's being gone, that's a bit unnerving. Like my being the last busker in a city of over a million - it doesn't feel like winning at all, it just feels weird. 

I got a late start, waking up at 3, and packed three large things, taking one to the post office (going overseas) and the other two at FedEx. It's windy and cold, in the 50s. 

At Samina I found they were throwing out circuit board material, a thing they seem to do only once a year or even once every 2 years. I loaded up a good heavy load and rode back here. As I came into the complex I noticed someone with a truck around the side where I was going to go, and the hindquarters of a dog, maybe a pitbull, visible. So I doubled around before the dog knew I was there and went in a different way. Poorly trained dogs are a thing around here and I'd be asking for trouble, trying to get around a narrow area where, to the dog, I'd be a threat. 

I had a can of pate' and some coffee and decided to go back for another load of circuit board material. I want to try selling the stuff on Craig's List but if I can't, it can always go into the Ebay stuff. 

So I put on my warmer jacket and went back out there and got another heavy load. And I still have to stash the stuff away upstairs - my back is gonna thank me for this. But I think the stuff's worth having around. Let's say something happens to Ken, now I'll be moving into a storage space and buying a new laptop to use from my bank hotspot or something, and probably establishing myself on Ebay again, on my own. The circuit board material could be a good bread-and-butter item.

Super windy day

 355th day sober. I woke up a bit after 12, maybe 1, then finally got out of bed around 3. I wanted to be out here at 4, so I found a few things that have to go out today and packed them, plus had time for one more thing. 

I dropped off the things at the downtown post office, and the ride down had been easy, not only the "no wind" feeling when I'm going with the wind, but the wind pushing me. This is going to be rough coming back, I thought. 

Before the post office I'd dropped off my pledge at the temple and went into my bank to drop off the pen I'd "borrowed" too. 

It was so windy that there were tons of those little seeds the trees drop blowing all over the place. Just before the post office I had such a strong coughing fit from the things that it's a good thing I didn't eat anything before starting out or I'd have lost it. After the post office I stood over the grass in front and blew my nose out and washed my face with a bottle of water from the bike, right in front of gaggles of lawyers coming out of the courthouse for the day. Classy.  I put my mask on - better to just wear it all the time in this weather. 

I rode down to the exercise equipment place and bought a pair of dumb-bells. Like everything else, they're much more expensive than they used to be. The guy working there and I talked about bums, their characteristics and the problems with them and what ought to be done with them (internment camps where they can have all the drugs they want). 

Done there, I rode the block or two to the used book store and got a book I'd wanted to get yesterday but didn't have the money. I believe it says the same things Morris Berman's "Why America Failed" says but says it better and I might even find that Berman has plagiarized from it - I'd not be surprised, given how much he levels that accusation against Chris Hedges, another author Berman hates out of sheer jealousy.

But a gal working there was busy re-arranging the whole set of shelves where the book was and I could not find it. After what felt like a half hour of her trying to shelve books and my trying to find the thing, she suggested looking on Google giving various hints about the book (since I could not remember the exact title or author). She found it right away. And while I was searching and had mentioned Hedges books, she found a Chris Hedges book I've wanted to find, "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning", a title the rather obtuse Berman thinks is unironic. So I ended up with two books I wanted. 

I felt hungry so I went over to Whole Foods and got some broccoli and veggies and meatballs. That was a bit over $7. I ate upstairs, to get away from the seeds that were blowing around. After eating, I went back downstairs to look for some things. I wanted to find "Vital Wheat Gluten" which, after looking for a while, a worker helped me look for and suggested the baking department. It was there.  I also noticed toothpaste and floss, which I needed, on sale and got those and some baking chocolate. 

As soon as I got onto Santa Clara St. I knew the ride home would be an ordeal. The wind was really cold and slowing me down to almost a walking pace. I could not imagine doing the whole ride home in these conditions. Fortunately I had a secret weapon: my Clipper card. I rode over to the station by the courthouse and a train was coming. The Clipper machine didn't seem to be working so I just got on. There was no need to worry as I was the only one in that whole train car, with someone else in the rear car. 

During my ride no one got on or off. Not even at the Gish station, normally the busiest. I'd not ridden the light rail for months, maybe a year or more, so I got a look at how much more broken-down things were on that route. Also on the train itself, the PA system was even worse and tended to play two messages at the same time - the Japantown announcement was like a B-movie special effect. 

I got off at Karina and stopped by Tom's but he wasn't in. So I just rode past all the resident bums back to here. The car with the smashed-out rear window doesn't look like it's mobile any more. And the zombie car that had been abandoned in the parking lot here is now parked neatly by the cement plant, like it's a normal car that can be driven - no doubt it was towed or pushed, probably pushed, there. This ride home, being downwind, was easy. 

On Reddit I've learned today that the US is far ahead in the Covid Olympics. We've now officially passed 1 million deaths and the next runner-up, India, with several times the population in a smaller area, have only achieved a half-million deaths. Come on, India, you can do better than that! What's the matter with you people? You trust scientists or something?

Time your covid shots for a weekend.

 354th say sober. Friday evening, late, I started getting chills and at about 2AM when I got up to use the bathroom my teeth would chatter. So, just like the last time. I didn't get *as* sick, but for the last day I'd read books or sleep, and a few times just close my eyes and next thing I knew it was 6 hours later. 

I still considered going out and performing today, but just after opening my eyes at noon, I closed them for a moment and it was almost 4. Plus I still hurt a little all over. This is why it's good to time your covid shots for a weekend so you can recover without interfering with the work week. 

The wind's whistling and howling out there, although as I remember it, Murphy Street in Sunnyvale doesn't get windy at all. So if I felt up to it, I could still get over there and play this evening. But I don't.

At least I got some reading done. No sense in watching videos as what, in the glorious year of 2022, in the glorious high-tech utopia of Silicon Valley, passes for "video" is not. A few frames per second, at times not even that, generally the sound track comes through OK although it may or may not be in sync with the video. In other words, ask a far-rightist what "Communist" video might look like, and you'd get this. But Communism gave us wonderful movie makers like Tarkovsky, while this is pure Capitalism video, through and through. Utter crap unless you are rich enough to be a Kool Kid with a solid-gold-cased iPhone and a $1000 a month connect plan. 

And uploading video, forget it! This is why I don't even think about recording or video'ing myself to put on line. A minute of video takes hours to upload from here and that's if everything goes just right. If I get good enough, said Kool Kids will take care of that. So far I think I've been video'd a bit, and one lady recorded me to use as a ring tone, although whether that's because I was musical or jarring it's hard to say. 

Old-time browsers used to have a thing called "Bookmarking" where you could save the URLs of sites you liked but that's gone. You have to be good at memorizing URLs and typing them in. You used to be able to print out emails, but that's also gone, for some reason. A lot of functionality that was in, say, Windows 95, is gone now.  In ten years, there may not be much of an internet to bitch about. 

After all, this is all in keeping with my observation of an approximate halving of wealth every decade. I can actually say I'm wealthier now than I was 20 years ago due to having no debt and money in the bank, but it's been due to downgrading my life ahead of time. It's certainly been true that in the year 2000, I had a car; in 2010 I had a motorcycle; in 2020 I had a bicycle, and in 2030 I'll be doing pretty well to have a decent pair of shoes. That's yet another reason to move back to Hawaii where shoes are not as necessary as they are here, and where you can make workable ones yourself. 

I had coffee and aspirin and got going at about 5. Other than a brief stop to drop off some trash, I headed right for the Amazon hub where I picked up some bubble mailers and my latest order, an SD card reader because my present one is crapping out - probably the tiny wires breaking inside the cable with the USB connector on the end. Sure, I could get out the soldering iron and another USB cable and fix it, but it's easier to just order another one. It was nice to just go in and pick one up - not so nice to have to step around the dried vomit by their front door.

Then I went over to Recycle Book Store and had an interesting book on US history (and why the US is so dysfunctional) that looks better than anything Morris Berman ever wrote, and also was going to buy a music book. Better check my money .... I thought I had $11 in my wallet but I guess I'd spent that at King Egg Roll on Friday. Oops. So I just had my little bag of "emergency quarters"  I'd brought in with me, and that was enough to buy one of the cheaper music books, a book of exercises by Herbert L. Clarke, because I felt silly not buying anything. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got a lot of groceries, highlights being that I got the last little package of cheese rinds and the 2nd to last of Kalamata olives and club soda. Then I remembered I'd planned to get something to eat, so I picked out some pulled pork and veggies, and just a little bit of chicken tikka masala to taste it. 

I went outside to eat, and the chicken tikka masala was good and I thought of a hack: Next time they have both things, I'll take the pork and put the tikka masala sauce on it. Then I packed up the bike and rode home. 

There were tons of zombies staggering, gibbering, flailing about and due to obeying traffic lights, once even got a bit too close for comfort. We're not to the point yet where it's like the Argentina "Ferfal" wrote about, where signals are only suggestions and you primarily look out for attackers, but we're getting there. Yesterday, there was a huge fire the burned a Home Depot store on Blossom Hill to the ground. The fire was started by two guys, who seem to be the same ones, the video shows, who burned down a Wal-Mart in Fremont, in both cases as a distraction so they could steal stuff.

It was also very windy and surprisingly cold, so not a very good even for busking and I didn't feel like I was missing out. The actual busking season here may only be 5 months long, May 1 to October 1, with a little space of time around Chrismas also being good, and the rest of the time, just hunker down and don't spend money. In other words, a shorter time-window for work than when I was hustling "awareness" ribbons Santa Cruz, when my work-year went from April 1 to November 1.

I do a lot of thinking when I'm out on the bike, and I thought, well, what if there were a real-world zombie virus? Not one that you could get by being bitten by a zombie, although God knows what other horrible germs you'd get from one of the filthy things. And the zombies wouldn't want to eat your brains like in the movies, but they might want to attack you because the voices in their head told 'em to, or because they want to rob you because they want drugs, very much. Also the virus wouldn't be able to be isolated in a lab, but there'd be a pretty clear-cut "zombie syndrome", familiar to anyone who observed homeless camps. 

So what if there were sweeps to round up these sufferers of "zombie syndrome" and put them into camps, where they'd have a safe, clean place to stay, decent food, TV and arts and crafts, and basically a pretty good life, just one that's not out on the street? Most of the sufferers of "zombie syndrome" would evade said sweeps, and spread out into the suburbs, taking their drugs and filth with them. So we'd not have sweeps, we'd just sort of tolerate them and try to avoid the worst of the filth and the violence, and hope they speed up with the process of drinking and drugging themselves to death. 

And that indeed is what's happening. Homeless camps are "swept" and those not functional enough to keep a bank account and keep important papers in a safe-deposit box lose those things, and of course the ones who are really batshit-insane fare even worse. Drugs are provided, by "off-market entrepreneurs" AKA drug dealers. They manage to drink plenty, and do far more than their fair share toward keeping the cigarette companies in business as they'll smoke those all day in addition to anything else that can conceivably be smoked (crack, meth, dirty diapers, cat hair ... ) 

Plus the really killer drugs, Fentanyl and some kind of really potent meth that's going around, are being made really easy to get. Plus I wonder if all the conspiracy theories about covid vaccinations are aimed at those with zombie syndrome because the less-educated, less-intelligent sector of the population believes in them. Get talking to some of these zombies, and I have, and they're all far-right-wing in their political beliefs. I mean 1950s style right-wing. Cigarettes are good for you, everything they don't understand is a Communist plot, the Vietnam war was good and noble, etc. 

The younger sufferers of zombie syndrome aren't even capable of that level of discussion. This is why, ultimately, places to put them, call them "mental hospitals" or even "asylums" need to be created. 

I got back here and noticed the zombie car had been dragged off somewhere which is good. I threw some stuff away in the dumpster and as they had a book case there that no one was going to want, I broke that up with a hammer and tossed the pieces in.

Shot Day

 352nd day sober.  I got 20 Ebay things listed so I've met my self-imposed quota of 50 things per week on Ebay (subject to variation like if I list a lot of large things). 

I practiced to the extent of getting warmed up, then decided in favor of sleep and went to bed. 

I woke up around 2:30. I really wanted to be out of here by 3:30 so I got to work cleaning up, washing hair and shaving, and just had a cup of coffee for "breakfast". 

I got out of here at 4, and visited my three regular little free libraries, dropping off these loaves of really dense bread, I think like a dense raisin bread, at each one - freebees from last night. And the Japantown one got a box of black tea too. 

Then the bank where I did my deposit. when I was done I really had to "go" so I rode over to the food court on S. 1st street and was locking my bike up when I noticed this female ghoul staggering around. She looked like she'd put on her make-up by having someone paint it onto their fists and then give her face a good pounding. She looked like a very dysfunctional juggalo, the kind the other juggalos would run away from. She staggered up to me and started nattering on about something, then asked me for a dollar. "I just happen to have one..." I said and pulled the $1 I had in my wallet out and gave it to her. She started on some tale about how some "Mexican lady" who works in the food court had "beat her up". Then took off to spend her dollar. 

Whatever. I used the loo and spent a few minutes talking with the tall skinny black guy who works at The Fountainhead. He remembered me all right, and I told him I was back to playing trumpet. 

Then I got going to find the place to get my 4th shot. South on First, then turn right on Keyes which is where Burger Barn is, then it was a long ride along Keyes which becomes Story, through a super Vietnamese area then into a more Hispanic area. The vaccination place was supposed to be in this one mall, with numbers on the shops that looked like No. 1775 was in there, but I'd have to walk around. 

So I parked the bike in front of Harbor Freight and found I was right next to the place. I filled out the 4 pages of forms and said I'll get Pfizer again, because maybe they'll want to do a study of people who've only gotten Pfizer. 

I was led to a table with two nurses, an older nurse teaching a student nurse who is taking nursing at San Jose State. Frankly it was kind of funny because the older nurse was telling the younger one what to do at every step, and why to put this sticker on the front of my vaccine card and not the back, and "Now you've compromised your clean field" and so on. Eventually we got to the shot, which she made a bit of an ordeal of, pushing in really hard. But she got it done, and I looked when she was putting the bandage on. "Your hands are shaking" I observed and she said, "I know" like she knew she was nervous as hell. I wonder if I were her first dart boar... er, patient? 

So that was that, and I headed back. I was really hungry and I also wanted to pick up some diet soda because it's really nice to have when I'm sick. I passed a King Eggroll and stopped in. I ordered 4 chicken wings and 2 egg rolls, and that was a little over $10. Wow. I didn't want to eat inside so I sat over at the far side of the front, which made for some fun people-watching. That area has bums who are really far gone. Really. 

I was surprised as I ate my chicken wings, as apparently to King Eggroll, 2 wings are 4 pieces. No one's counted them that way for decades but they still do. So I have a ton of fried chicken and tried an eggroll, which turns out to be a real carb-bomb. A bum was riding around on a bike so I called out to him and gave him my untouched egg roll and the bag with the little cups of nasty pink sweet sauce. He was thankful. Also, "Did you know your forks are backward?" I asked about his bike. "I know, that's the way a guy built it". Well, you can't argue with that. He had a flat rear tire too but "That's my life!" he said. 

After eating I rode past tons of bum camps and "gone" bums and got back to the Vietnamese area and stopped in at a market there I've been to before and like. I found some chicory coffee that's $5 a can, as the French Market stuff is now $7 or $8 a can, even there. So I got a can of that, and looked at their soda offerings. They didn't have diet Pepsi or diet 7-Up, but I noticed cute little 6-packs of diet tonic water. I looked at how much each held and did some math and realized if I got two of those little six-packs, I'd have the equivalent of two, 2-liter bottles. So I got those. At the check out I found out that they must have been about $7 each but it saved me a side-trip to Wal-Mart. 

I stopped at the Amazon place and picked up a couple of things I'd ordered, most importantly being the Cichowicz flow studies book, and a bunch of bubble mailers. I'd also ordered, last night at 4AM, a USB SD card reader as mine is crapping out. First I thought it was just a dirty connector, then I thought maybe it was the connector on the computer, but it's the reader which has a little flexible cable and that part's failing. If this were Cuba I'd get in there and fix it but it's so easy to just order another one on Amazon. That isn't in yet, though, and I won't need it for a few days anyway. 

I stopped at TAK Market near Japantown for a 6-pack of O'Doul's and a couple big Slim Jims because I figure for this weekend I'm going to go off my keto diet for a bit. I've also emailed Ken and said I don't know how functional I'll be this weekend because of getting my shot. So if he comes over on Sunday to do things, I might just stay in bed while he does his work.

The Russians really are the enemy.

 351st day sober. After sifting and sorting and getting a batch of Ebay stuff together, after Ken having come over and in general a tiring evening, I set the things aside and did some practice. 

Surprise surprise the high notes are almost completely back. Plus I'm doing more long tones on them. And I need to make sure to do this every day. Ideally, since I perform for 2 hours at a time my practice should also be more than an hour. 

Last night Ken brought over a part a guy in Russia had ordered, that got returned. Today I found out that Ebay not only refunded the guy but charged us a $20 "return fee". So I sent Ken an email, saying that if anyone from Russia or associated countries (Belarus, Kazakhstan) manage to buy something from us, I'm going to find a "problem with their address" and cancel the order. 

I took off at the usual time and didn't even need the bike trailer. All but one package went to the post office. It was really hot outside, and had peaked at 90 degrees. It was about 85 at 6PM. The drop-offs all went OK and because I didn't have the trailer with me I was able to lock the bike and go into H Mart and buy some fresh ramen kits to tide me over if I'm going to get a booster shot tomorrow and be sick over the weekend. 

I found some packing stuff, and today's freebies were about $5 worth of green onions for the ramen, a gas can for Ken, and a neat child seat for a bike that I think goes with that rack I just picked up, that I can sell as a set on Craig's List.

Shoes ...

 350th day sober.  I got 15 Ebay things listed and got some practice in. High notes are still suffering. I guess it was no trumpet practice for months on end, practicing flute instead, and then going into a fairly full busking schedule. I'll just keep the practice up and that should fix things. 

I packed some things and got going about 5:30. First stop was 99 Ranch, where I bought a few things and got $60 cash back. Then I went to the post office and dropped off my packages and took a break, having a bag of boiled peanuts and a can of black coffee, both from 99 Ranch. 

Then I went back in and bought a money order for $47, which I'm sending off to Tim Wendt for two of his trumpet swabs. One to use and one to hide away for later. 

I stopped by the medical place and their dumpster was out but all I found was an Amazon bubble mailer. Then I went to the storage and got into the 2nd-floor unit I *can* get into, and did a lot of re-arranging of things and got out a bunch of things to list. 

Tom was "home" so I visited with him for a bit. We had some good old laughs and it's kind of semi back on the schedule again that I'll bring my trumpet with me and we'll have some practice on Monday evenings. 

I checked the dumpster over on the other side of here where I often find tape, and today's freebee is: a pair of Adidas "The Road" cycling shoes, so new the laces are still in that weird configuration new shoes come with and the tags are still on. They go for $100 on Ebay so I'll probably put them on Craig's List. 

I got back here and cooked up 8 oz. (burp!) of Whole Foods hamburger and garlic and broccoli, garnished it with some Kewpie mayo and ate that. That's the way to eat, really. I have a cucumber later for a snack, and while the boiled peanuts were pretty nice they're too carby for my present diet so that's a one-time thing.