Sunday, July 17, 2022

Boring hot Sunday

 Last night I moved more things around, allocated some stuff to put in the little free libraries, and did the first coat of paint on the first side (!) of the bookshelf as well as painted the corner of the loft; the one part with the most of that annoying railing to paint. Even at 6AM, when it's at its coolest, it's hot up there and I raise a sweat. 

I did a little practice on the shinobue, not enough of course but some. I realized something: If I'm working on high notes and want to switch easily between octaves, it's best to work on being able to blow not as hard but still get the high notes. I believe James Galway mentioned this in one of his books, that high notes automatically come out louder, and low notes quieter, so he'd practice the other way around -  he worked on loud low notes and quiet high notes. 

I left here at almost 7, with the bike loaded up with a bunch of containers of fideo pasta, two quart bottles of shoyu, and the book I'd just read. A dropped off pasta and the shoyu at the little free library on 6th in Japantown, a bunch of fideo on the other one further down 6th, the book in the one on 5th (that has the books-only sign) and the last of the pasta at the one in front of the Justice Center on 7th. 

Then I went to Lee's. The idea was, I'd pick up one of those cheap bags of croissants they often have near the end of the day. But they were out. But they were selling everything 2 for 1, and I told them I didn't need that much, just gimme this one skewer and a pork egg roll. That was $5 and I put the 40c or so I had after that into the tip jar. 

I ate at my usual place on the college campus. An older zombess who looked like before the zombie virus got her, may have been an upper middle class lady, pale and was once blonde no doubt, was wandering around carrying things in bags. When she wandered near, I asked her if she was hungry - I'd give her the egg roll. She said the was OK in upper middle class (in other words, clear, non "mumblemouth" English) so that was that; I didn't press the issue. Maybe I should carry an extra bottle of soda or something around... 

There were zero squirrels! The last time I was there, there were tons of them. Now not even one came around. Did predators get them? Or an extermination service? I'm no squirrel expert though. 

There was drumming that sounded like taiko so after eating I rode over by the music building to check it out and that's exactly what it was. I guess a class doing their "lab". It was pretty great to see. 

I rode around the area around Cafe Stritch and it was dead, dead, dead. I rode up 1st street and it was the same. And through Japantown and .... the same. Actually downtown "Good Karma", a vegetarian cafe/bar was open and doing fine, some comedy show had a line, and in J-town the shave ice place was doing a ton of business. 

But what bugs me is, someone painted over most of the panda wall. This was a wall with a neat painting along it of pandas doing various things like going to the panda restaurant and doing various panda things. I think it would be hilarious to do a mural in its place, with bums doing various bum things like shooting up, smoking crack, prostituting, having a knife fight, etc. 

As may be gathered from my giving away two quart bottles of shoyu, I'm going to start going through my "preps" and giving them away. Some of the stuff, like canned beef and tuna and so on, I can eat myself. Most of it will go to the little free libraries. I honestly think it's a good bet that things will hold together for the next couple of years. As an example, as Nazism 1.0 got going in Germany, it became physically dangerous to be a member of an out-group fairly early in, but food didn't become scarce until much later. 

 

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