A good entrance

 I practiced last night on the flute headjoint and on the shinobue, and I dunno ... I can do octaves beautifully at first but then it gets hard. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm new to this, or I'm tightening up too much, or what. But it takes years to develop a good embouchure so ...

I read about half of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s last book, Timequake, and went to sleep at almost 9AM. I woke up at almost 6. It's the weekend and I must have needed the sleep... 

I continued on my new practice of not eating first thing. I kind of ate; I had the last Keto Cup, along with some aspirin, with my coffee. Keto Cups are, in my opinion, awful. There are all these processed "keto" foods that seem to be some kind of plot against keto eating, as they're worse than just ... regular foods. But it may be personal opinion, as I loathe Diet Coke but for some reason like Coke Zero. 

I cleaned the front door and doorway with rubbing alcohol, then masked off the parts I don't want to paint with masking tape, then got to work painting the door/doorway. It needed a 2nd coat to really do it right, so after an hour or two I put a 2nd coat on. 

Unfortunately, I managed to lose one of the brads that are used to fasten the door numbers on, which I'd removed for the paint job, but found one to a picture hanger that will fit. I'll need to get a little black paint to re-paint them, though, as they're both dull and have a few chips. 

... And a new "No Soliciting" sign because when I pulled the masking tape off of the one that was on there, the letters came off too. 

At least when it's all put back together and Ken comes over, it will make a good impression. A good entrance, you might say. 

I've been nervous during all this painting because normally on a weekend, especially a Sunday, there are few zombies around. But that giant dumpster down at the other end of the parking lot is a real zombie magnet and the comings and goings of zombies are constant. One set of zombies came in a pickup truck and had an ill-behaved dog. They dug through the crap in the dumpster for a couple of hours, and at one point I think went into the truck for a fenanyl break, leaving the dog outside. It's a little cold outside, in the 60s, and the poor dog was running around and yipping, wanting to be let into the truck. 

This doesn't decrease my watchfulness, though, zombies often use a dog, or even a cat, to use to get into peoples' shops or homes. The way they do it is, let the dog or cat, being ill-trained, run into the house or shop. Now, their precious dog or cat is inside and Can they please come inside to get it? Now you've got zombies in your place and if you're smart you know it's a fight for your life now. They'll kill you and eat you and live in the place until the neighbors begin to wonder and then move on. This is why in a rational world, zombies would be rounded up and put into camps far away from normal people, to eat each other or whatever the hell they want to do - away from humans. 

I've had to keep the door open for the paint to dry, and that's meant being extra watchful. Even just now, I heard a sound and looked outside, and a zombess rode by on a (stolen) zombike, and croaked out something that sounded like "Get you" but it's hard to tell what zombie gibberings actually mean. If the local zombies have any memory and I'm not sure they do, they'll remember that I chased 'em out of here by encouraging the neighbors to shut off outside water taps, told them the zombies are only here to fight and steal (true) and complained to the cops and the city whenever they were doing something complaint-worthy (which was often). 

It'll almost serve that company right, when they come in tomorrow and see what a mess the zombies have made of their dumpster. They're moving out but are still responsible for any mess they leave, and the zombies have scattered trash and garbage all over around the dumpster. I say garbage because earlier, a large number of crows were going through the piles which means there are food scraps mixed in there.  

So the property owner will have to pay to have it cleaned, and the company that moved out will get the bill, I guess. 

I did more stuff and a bit past 2:30 in the morning, the zombie truck with its two zombies aboard and ill-behaved zombie dog, for some reason pulled up right across from my front door here, and stayed for 20 or 30 minutes. I peered out through the mail slot and could see the dog moving around but not much else. Did it mean something or nothing? Zombies do some really random shit. I've seen a zombie, in Arizona, pull up to the gas station I was hanging out at (it had a nice convenience store and I guess I was kind of buddies with one of the guys working there) buy a pack of cigarettes, light up one, set the pack on top of the gas pump, get back into its zombie muscle car and roar off. The stupid zombie didn't come back, either. If you're human, smoking is expensive and I guess if your head is filled with zombie virus infested rotting matter, it's even more so. 

To give an idea of how randomly the undead can behave, one of 'em actually took the bag of trash I had sitting out in front of the dumpster enclosure. It was a paper Daiso bag with handles, holding mostly rotten lettuce leaves and other vegetable trimmings, plus some random household stuff. Nothing with any names or addresses or so on, because of opsec of course. It was just ... trash. But some zombie took the damn thing. Maybe the zombess on the bike. I had the nasty things take bags of garbage before, really nasty stuff I didn't want to have inside here before I took it to the FedEx dumpster. Zombies like rotten stuff. 

In other news I put the rest of the shelves into the book case and in the process of going through my remaining box of books, found an old busking diary. It was from when I was playing a Getzen 390 trumpet, so this would have been far back into the Before Times, probably a bit before moving to this new building here. I was playing for tiny amounts of money. I guess at the time I was happy enough if I was making money at all, so if I made enough for a bottle or even for part of one, it was enough. Besides, playing for $5 after two hours was all I knew.