We're not allowed to ...

 First, because this is important, I've been working on the octave exercise, trying to figure out what's been making it so hard. It seems to come down to, I have habits that were fine for trumpet, but not good for flute. Flute is all about making a small, controllable, aperture and when it was it right it's great. 

I was thinking about this last night. Trumpet requires the mouthpiece to be right on your mouth, with a fair amount of pressure so of course yukky stuff will go down inside. Clarinet or saxophone require the mouthpiece and reed to be IN the mouth and there's nasty "grot" that gets in there as a result - I'd swear it's worse than the trumpet. But flute merely requires the "mouthpiece" to be near the mouth, and the stream of air to be generated with no crutches like a mouthpiece that you mash against your mouth or a reed. 

Last night I cut out and rolled up the sections of the plastic plant pot I'd bought at Lowe's and put my "new" set of shelves together. It worked out great. This inspired a lot of re-arranging of boxes of my stuff and the realization that I have far, far too many boxes stored up there in the loft, and the piece of carpet I put up there when I moved in, really ought to go. I originally planned, and promised Ken, to paint the whole loft floor and the stairs with some durable paint, and still even have the cans of paint I bought, if it's still good. 

The thing is, I need to adapt to living with as few "things" as possible because when I'm back in Hawaii, I'm almost certain to start out living in a small rented room. Things will be right in line with my observation and prediction, that in 2000 I had a car, in 2010 I had a motorcycle, in 2020 I had a bike, and by 2030 I'll be doing well to have a pair of shoes. 

I woke up at almost 4 with a start. I had two large, not heavy but bulky things packed, and wanted to get them over to FedEx today. So I had coffee and so on, and got going a bit after 5. 

The drop-offs were fine, and then, in the store, I thought a bit. "I ought to buy some paper," I thought. I looked around and there did not seem to be any - not on the shelves, not in the usual "promotional" things near the checkouts. The guy there was one I've known a while and he's a nice guy, and I jokingly said, "Do you guys still sell paper?" He replied, "We're not allowed to" and explained that the supply chain has gotten so bad that they were told to keep what paper they had for themselves. He pointed out there there's "A little HP" over on the far end and there were indeed two packages of HP paper, and I paid a bit over $13 for one. It's premium, extra white paper so I guess we're going to have some really nice labels on our packages now. 

We talked a bit about ... things. The computer took forever to process my simple $13 and change sale, and the gal there said, "That usually means the system will go down". We discussed how everyone's using their air conditioning and it "sags" the grid, and he said we should expect rolling blackouts. Just another day doing errands, in the beginning of The Troubles. 

Around back, I checked this green dumpster H Mart has started always having out, that often has veggies. It was full of really nice, normally expensive, mushrooms. I went up to the back side of Baja Fresh and got a couple of veggie boxes and went back and collected about 5 lbs of these mushrooms. I want to try drying them. 

I stopped by Tom's on the way back and we hung out for a while. We laughed it up telling travel stories, airline and also, on my part, ship, train, and Cuban bus stories. I told him about my plans to re-do the loft here, right down to paint, and he mentioned how he's working on the loft in the back half of his building. I said if something happened here and I was not able to go back to Hawaii, I'd rent that loft from him but he says he's fixing it up for himself. But, he said, if the shit hits the fan, he'll always have a place for me. That's a good, solid, Alaskan way to be, for he is an Alaskan originally. He travels to Alaska a lot to visit his ailing father, and he told me about flying on the "red eye" flight up to Anchorage, and some passengers would get off the plane shitfaced drunk, so the cops would follow them around the airport until they had some reason to arrest them, then hold 'em down and grind their faces into the carpet. We both laughed hysterically over this. 

I rode back here along Rogers Avenue and there seem to be more car-dwellers along there, but not the old, drug-addled, chronic ones but some new ones who have acquired large solar panels somehow and thus there were four or five large panels leaned up against cars to catch the late afternoon sun. Really "gone" ghouls don't care about having a phone or anything more complicated than a crack pipe, but less "gone" people would care very much about keeping connected. 

After relaxing a bit I got to work on the loft. I took out tons of stuff, a little bedside table thing and a little rolling cart and a fairly large folding table, tons of odds and ends, about 200lbs of really nice circuit board material, household stuff, you-name-it. Shortly after taking the last of the circuit board material out, I was putting something else in the collection and some guys in a van came up. "You got any diamond plate?" the guy asked. I replied that I didn't know what that is but this stuff here is copper. They took a bunch of things. 

I took some time off to eat, "shrimpshuka" which is shakshuka with some shrimp in it too, that came out great thanks to the fact that, when I was dropping books off at the little free library/pantry thing on 7th street, I took two cans of tomato sauce. So along with garlic and hot pepper and actual tomatoes, it had a half-can of processed tomato goodness. 

Presently Crazy Chrissie came up in her little zombie car with the flat-grey paint and the trunk held closed by an electrical cord, and she not only took a bunch of things but I'd even rolled up the carpet I had in the loft and put that out, and she took that too. That carpet was clean when I got it but it was not now. They don't call her Crazy Chrissie for nothing. 

The Ford Crown Vic with the busted-out rear window had been by too. I could not see the driver but riding shotgun was a female zombie, one of those who's probably 24 and looks about 54. Nervous system all messed up due to drugs, darting around nonsensically, picking up some shiny wires and waving them around then tossing them away, zombies are easily amused. 

I decided not to mess with trying to dry the mushrooms. My original plan was to wash them, let them dry a bit, then lay out on cardboard, in slices, and let that hot air up in the loft do its thing. But I'm also starting a major renovation of the place that involves my finally getting it painted, doing the painting in strips starting with the back wall. I just kept enough mushrooms for a nice meal and put the rest out there with the stuff. 

I kept going up into the loft to sort out more stuff and find things to put on the pile for people/bums to pick up. I even moved the bookshelf I've had up there, with maybe two shelves installed, I've just neglected the loft for the few years I've been living here and these are all things that should have been done right upon moving in. It actually took me a while to be able to afford the $150 or so for deck paint, and well, drinking kind of got in the way of everything. 

I don't know why I feel so inspired to do this now, but I picked the right time of the year, great for paint drying, and cleared out things I really don't think I'll need. After all, I'm gambling that things will hold together fairly well for the next few years. My assumption is that in 2024, vacations to Hawaii will still be a thing. There will still be fairly free travel between states; certainly between California and Hawaii, presumptive members of a Western Alliance. 

In order, my things are: 

(1) Things I'm taking with me when I go home to Hawaii. This is a very small set of things. 

(2) Things I'll need in the meantime. 

(4) Things I want to leave here for Ken and his family when I leave. 

(5) Things to sell on Craig's List. 

(6) Things to put out for the bums or put in the little free libraries. 

I'm done with the whole book thing, where I find good ones in the little free libraries, clean them up, and sell them to the used book store. The economy seems to be taking another dump... of the books I have, I figure I can keep maybe a banker's box or two of the things and that's it. The rest will go to the little free libraries, bit by bit.

Likewise all sorts of handy little things will go into the little free libraries. I'm already in the habit of having things to put into them in the bike saddlebags, now the saddlebags will be just a bit more full, as I round up stuff I'll just never use but is useful. 

I've thought about this quite a bit, that I could make a "side job" of selling off lots of my stuff on Craig's List, but I'm supposed to be making my side money by busking. Do I want to be a good busker, or good at buying and selling stuff to Craig's List weirdos? I'll use Craig's List to find homes for my trumpet and cornet, and the Shakuhachi Yuu also, but I just finished putting out the radios and chargers, the bike kid seat and rack, the 200lbs or so of circuit boards, an oxygen concentrator, etc. All things I picked up because I thought "I can sell this on Craig's List" but I need to concentrate on developing busking skills, not scrounging around and flipping things, as anyone can do this. 

I've got the loft cleared out enough to paint the first "stripe". I'll be painting as far as I can reach, while squatting down, so 24 inches at a time.