A cool Friday

 After Ken being over and my having to put a lot of things away and sort things, I didn't list anything last night. 

I did over an hour of octave exercises on the headjoint while watching some stupid thing on YouTube about consumerism, and went to bed. 

I woke up in time to clean up a bit and head over to the bank with my check, and go around and do the usual things like have some buffalo wings and a near-beer at Whole Foods then do some shopping there, find free stuff, visit Nijiya, etc. 

Zombies were certainly out and about today. It's cool so it's sunny but not too hot. Nice weather for humans and the undead both, I guess. 

Today's freebees were the books "Native Son" by Richard Wright and "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, a DVD titled "Last Call" about the poet Dylan Thomas, and a large onion. 

After coming back, pretty heavily laden with groceries and things, I bypassed here and went to the bountiful dumpster where I got a couple of goodies that ought to bring us $100-$150 so I'm glad I stopped by to check. 

I got in, put all the treasures away, and I have a three-day weekend ahead of me because we've got a new federal holiday, Juneteenth, on Monday. I thought Juneteenth was about some slaves not being told they were free for a couple of weeks but no, it was for a couple of YEARS and of course they were kept illegally under slavery for those two extra years in Texas, the sweaty ass crack of the US. What a steaming pile of shit of a state. 

And for extra grins and giggles, there's going to be a big "heat dome" over Florida, the state that vies for the position of most hellish with Texas and the South in general.  That will be interesting to watch the news about, next week. 

I ordered the Japanese shinobue flute from Amazon, so that was about $31. But I realized I'd never taken the 3C cornet mouthpiece I got for the cornet, out of its sealed plastic bag and noticed on Amazon I could still return it, so I'm returning it. That will be about $32 back into my account. Basically I'm trading the mouthpiece for the shinobue which is A-OK with me. 

The shinobue is actually made by Aulos, the company that made that first recorder I had because it was all I could afford, back around the end of high school. It comes with a new bag like a shakuhachi is kept in, and a fingering chart, in Japanese. It's an "Uta" or song, shinobue so it uses the standard Western scale and will have the notes on the staff on the fingering chart so that's all I'll need. 

It's funny that the return options didn't include taking it to the Amazon hub place I pick things up at and get bubble mailers from, but showed as the nearest choice, the Whole Foods on the Alameda I go to all the time. I helped a guy take some kind of big piece of furniture in, today. Actually his cart got stuck and I helped him deal with that. He ended up getting another cart, we put the thing on that, and he wheeled it in. 

When I was busking there I saw lots of people bringing in Amazon returns. Not usually as large as furniture but some fairly large things at times. They'll be happy to get my little cornet mouthpiece. 

I'm really amazed at how much *cleaner* the flute is than the trumpet or cornet. I've got cleaning brushes and pull-throughs and such things scattered all over the place here, hanging off of magnets on the side of the fridge, and so on, and frankly it's kind of disgusting. I actually clean my lovely $2000 new flute with .... a paper towel. I just roll one up tightly and stick it in there and it gets what little moisture is in there, and doesn't seem to leave any fluff. 

I've got tons of pad cleaning paper too, but I'm big on having my mouth really clean before I play. Generally I've brushed my teeth, flossed, and then chewed sugarless gum for a good while. It's playing right after eating that can make the pads get sticky, I think. Hard to avoid when you're in high school and Band is right after Lunch, or you're a traveling musician and haven't eaten all day, use your "tab" at the venue to buy some dinner which you eat right before going up on stage. Charlie Parker, at one point in his career, swapped out heroin for hard candies and it resulted in a very sticky saxophone.