Nothing but flowers

 I listed 10 Ebay things last night and practiced, getting a bit over an hour in. It went better than expected and that's to be expected, since I'm so new to the game still. If I practice regularly I'll improve rapidly. The two new notes are F and E, and what's funny is, F is the first finger on the right hand down, just like in trumpet, and E is the first two fingers on the right hand down, again just like trumpet. So that's kind of funny. 

Last night Ken brought me a package from good old Flute World that was a little bottle of some stuff called "pad juice" that's supposed to be good for, well, pads. And a book called Servicing The Flute which is a little 45-page thing, almost a booklet. I thought, "Wow, I paid $18 for this?" but it's got a lot in there about pads and bumpers and adjustments and the head cork, which is just what I wanted and has great illustrations. It seems to cover what you'd do in a COA (clean, oil, adjust) service and also replacing pads and the various corks. 

I'm due, I believe, a free COA for my new flute within a year of having bought it, and will take advantage of that and in fact I don't want to do any work on it myself if I can avoid it because duh, $2k new flute. But the used one I just got is fair game. And there's another one out there on Craig's List I'd like to snag if I can. I'd like to make a bit of a hobby of finding and fixing up made-in-Japan Yamaha flutes while they can still be obtained cheaply. 

I got up at just a bit after 3, and was riding out of here at 10 to 4. My first stop was the temple where I dropped off my pledge, kind of surprised at myself for being this late in the month. Then the post office where I dropped of a few Ebay things. Then the bank where I found that apparently the lazy IRS still hasn't cashed any of my checks. Well, in your own time, guys, meanwhile I'll keep my books in order. 

I went to Whole Foods and the buffet was really wiped out so I got a package of salami and a near-beer (they stock the Athletic Brewing IPA which is about my favorite) and ate and drank. Then I went to CVS and they've not restocked their A1C tester but I found some store brand foot powder and got that and some stamps - I only got the stamps because they had one of those in-store announcement things about how handy it is to get stamps there, so for that one time it worked. 

Next was the hardware store, where I got one of those things you put charcoal into to light it, sort of like an oversized mug with a handle, that you put some coals into, light them, then dump it out onto your fire. The reason for this is to use it to "shred" sensitive papers. I'd been putting my sensitive papers in a bag each week and burying them under one of the trash bags in the welding place's trash can, but Lo and behold, last night the bike-riding zombie had ransacked that trash can and I was worried about the papers falling into the wrong hands. I'd been trying to build my own "burner" for years and they've never worked out that well so now I finally have something that ought to work well. 

Then it was back over to Whole Foods for some shopping. When I'd first arrived to lock up the bike, there'd been one of those booths there with a couple people hustling everyone who walked by, and a Gypsy with two zonked-out kids and a large but unreadable cardboard begging sign set up where the cars go in out. After shopping, the booth and the Gypsies were gone, and now the scene was dominated by a skinny black crackhead lady whose habit is to scatter trash all over the place and generally get in people's faces until, I guess, someone gives her some money to go away and she goes and buys her crack the. end. 

As I rode out of there, I observed a zombiemobile, one of those old full-sized proto-SUVs, painted flat black and perhaps a window or two missing, with a shirtless zombie and one clad in what looked like a grab-bag of Dumpstered clothes, so I was glad to be outta there. 

I stopped at Nijiya on the way back for, yep, more shopping. J-town was pretty busy too. As I went out, the bench near where I had my bike parked had a dad and two little kids, who were carousing around and having a good time and I was wondering at how wonderful that is, and Mom came up and said something like "It's all day.." to me, and I said when we were kids we used to watch Kikaida on TV and so we'd do Kikaida stuff and our parents must have been really tired of it. We had a good laugh. "See? He's going to ride on the bike!" she said to the kids. "Actually, this is Zhaboga, (who morphs between robot-hero and motorcycle of course) and he's just pretending to be a bike, and he's giving me a ride home!" I said. Good times. 

The End Times wind had me slowed down riding home and it was a long slog, but I didn't have any zombie problems. And I'd found three books at the little free libraries: Lolita in Nabokov which I've wanted to read, "The Murder Of Adolf Hitler" complete with dental diagrams and photos, a good one to trade in at the book store, and a set of US maps on CD for Apple by National Geographic which is a good "prepper" item for that twilight time when the internet's no longer a thing but electricity still is. 

I had plenty of time to think, about the cheerful bands of the 80s and 90s like The Talking Heads, but then the 'Heads had also done "Life During Wartime" and "(Nothing But) Flowers" and I had that song in my head the rest of the way home. It's supposed to be a sad song and yet it's wildly, unrealistically optimistic as it assumes people will go and Nature will be fine, while instead it seems that Man will take Nature with him, leaving a cooking world. 

I got in here with the wind howling as I closed the door as if it was singing the blues over not getting to blow me over or something.