I saved a moth

 Yesterday, when I was in the Amazon place picking up bubble mailers, I saw a movement near the window. I looked and saw a large moth, which I crouched down and caught without too much difficulty. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna eat'cha" I said, and let it go outside. So at least I did one good thing. 

I went to sleep after eating a bento (except for the rice) and watching a couple things on YouTube about Philip K. Dick. It was maybe 1, or 1:30. I woke up at 11PM! 

The French guy had emailed me and said he's shooting for about 4PM tomorrow. 

I'm still corresponding with my evil moneybags old aunt. Her daughter had come to visit us when I was a teen, in Hawaii. She's expected, I think, to have us wait on her hand and foot while she spent her money on fun. Instead, finding us as poor as we were, she actually spent her money on food for us. She was actually pretty nice. I'm sure that's been trained out of her by now. 

My aunt swears she's a wonderful person but what's a wonderful person to the rich is very different from what I might consider a wonderful person. My aunt might leave unsaid, "She's the most wonderful daughter, why, just yesterday she kicked a blind beggar in the face!".  This aunt was appalled that her daughter had actually cares about us and fed us. 

When I last communicated with her daughter, K., K. wanted me to drop everything and go to the Southeast and work for her for free. That would be a standard attitude for the rich; since I had a few plates of scrambled eggs with chili on top, I now owe her my life or some damn shit. I had a small shop and an Ebay business starting to do well and could not drop everything especially not to work for free, and I remember K. getting very indignant and emotional that I would not. How dare a member of the slave class say No. The phone call ended there. 

I still want to communicate with her out of a sick curiosity, and also I want to be very well motivated if I get the chance to stick a few heads of the rich on pikes. It's always well to feel good about one's work! The thing is, she and the evil old bat use text to communicate and I'm sticking with my flip phone as long as I can. I even told the old evil one that it's a simple matter of technology mismatch and that in another year or two I'll probably have a smart phone because those things are just great for texting. 

Because I really don't have credit, it means marching into the local Verizon place and paying cash for whatever is the current Samsung, to the tune of $800 or more, but at least I'd not be paying that much more in interest. I can also get a cheaper plan that way. 

But I actually have to watch my money a bit. Last week, the teller at the bank had to hand-write in my account balance after my deposit and I think he put a 6 where there should have been a 9, because yesterday I had more money in there than I can explain otherwise. The IRS still hasn't cashed my checks, and I show a bit over 7 grand in there. That means about $2500 that's actually mine. 

Spending about $4500 on musical instruments in short order doesn't help, but the way things are going to shit, I consider it cheap money because when you can't get instruments any more at all because world trade is gone and a can of beans is $10, it's going to feel really good to have them. As Selco noted in his experiences in the Yugoslavia breakup, a willowy, long-haired, guitar geek did just fine because there was no electricity, no radio, and no music. Warlords would kill buff guys on a whim, but this guy was protected because he was the only source of music. 

The student Yamaha flute I just got was $200 out of busking savings. 

I just sent off for another flute repair book and a little bottle of flute pad stuff that's supposed to be good, from Flute World. That place is pretty amazing. They've got a shop up in the city that I want to visit but not until I'm able to go up there and busk also. I can't spend more than an hour in their shop no matter how wonderful it might be, but a couple hours busking could pay for the trip. It's about $20 for the train, call it $20 for lunch, and let's say I spend $20 on a book at Flute World. With busking that turns a $60 hole in my finances into a nice fun time and another book. 

There's nothing but bad news online and on the radio. The Russians are being complete and utter bastards, of course. And the US is lurching toward becoming (even more of) a backward hellhole on a par with Hungary or apartheid South Africa. 

I stayed up all night taking this prototype thing apart because no one wants a prototype but the various parts are good. Except I'll have to saw the case open to get the motor and the peristaltic pump assembly out. 

That took me right around to morning, and I packed a thing or two and got some trash ready to take out, and counted out and packed a *lot* of capacitors a guy had ordered. I really did this up, packing them in concentric boxes and insuring it and so on, because I'd charged the guy enough shipping to cover that and more. 

I left here around 9:30 in the morning and stopped at the lunch truck across from Tom's and got a couple of chicken skewers, for which I was charged $6. I went over in front of Tom's place to eat them and he was there, so he made me a small, strong cup of coffee and we talked about things. He's headed off to Alaska for the next month and he's not been practicing his trumpet. 

He asked how my playing had been going but never gave me a chance to explain that I'm trying the flute instead. That's OK because in a month I might be ready to busk with the flute and will have an idea of what kind of money I can make playing it. 

At least there will be tons more repertoire since I'll have more than an octave or a bit more than an octave of range. 

Tom's phone rang and he had to answer it and I said Bye and took off. I dropped off stuff at the post office and then locked the bike up at H Mart and took the FedEx package to FedEx, and got a roll of plastic bags at H Mart because the one I got a few years ago is getting really thin. 

Then I went to Lowe's and got a gallon of Windex, a new nail brush for the bathroom, and a new spindle thing for the toilet paper holder. 

On the way back here I stopped at another lunch truck and got a "combo" breakfast sandwich for my remaining $4, and when I got back here put the bread out for the birds and put hot sauce on the egg, bacon, ham, cheese and sausage part and ate that. 

Eventually I dug out the set of 3 instruments the guy's supposed to come by to pick up, and cleaned them up, and have them all ready to go. It's a matter now of staying up until about 9PM I guess, then I'll sleep until 6 or 7 in the morning, then decide what I want to do on a nice Saturday.