Just almost dying is all

 Last night's almost dying experience really knocked me out. I was not able to feel better (headache) so eventually I gave up - I felt OK as long as I didn't move much. 

I did practice about an hour messing around on the plastic shinobue. Frankly, it's a pretty crappy flute as such things go. When you consider that you can often pick up a nice Yamaha student flute for $200 or even $100 as the last one I bought was, it's hard to justify messing around with much of anything else. 

An actual shakuhachi would be the one exception to this because, due to how short and wide the bore is, it's possible to do neat techniques on one. But I'm thinking I'll hold out on getting a good one until I'm back in Hawaii where they are much more common on the used market. 

The guys next door put out a Coke stand-up cooler and it looked pretty nice so I put a fee ad on Craig's List for it, well, after 4 different bums were done with it and the two dishwashers put out too, there was nothing worth anyone coming to see, so I took the ad down again. But what's funny is, after the bums had gone over everything with hammers etc., I looked around and picked up two dishwasher controller units, that I (Ken) can get about $30 for. I bet the bums didn't get any $30 for the scrap metal. 

Ken came by and I got my check and he brought a bunch of stuff to list also, and because I felt so lousy I actually got 15 things listed during the day, so then I was free to feel like utter shit while Ken was over (although I forget all about it, talking about weird techie stuff) and just generally hanging out. 

The Mejiro company that I'm returning the bamboo shinobue to, suggests I use the US Postal Service instead of DHL to return it, and I said I will. I think I may have actually already had the money reimbursed, which I'll find out when I visit the bank tomorrow. 

Last cool(?) day for a while

I got stuff ready to list but didn't end up listing it last night, and decided that's probably OK because of the big batch of things I packed and shipped. I also took a gadget apart, and put the scrap metal out. Sure enough, eventually a bum came by and took the stuff and scuttled off with it (it was pretty heavy) and stashed it under the bushes a ways up. 

Since I'd put the stuff out Sunday-Monday overnight, and the stuff was still stashed, some of it anyway, last (Monday) night I swung by and had a look - there was an extra thing there that looked interesting so I grabbed it and it turns out it's a gadget I (Ken, actually) can get about $80 for, so it'll get listed. Bum 0, me 1. 

With all this stuff to do, I was pretty busy but I did what's really important and that's get an hour's practice in one the flute. I'm coming around to thinking that octave exercises on the headjoint are neat, but there's no replacement for playing exercises on the flute, and doing what I'm starting to like doing, playing them as written and then playing them again an octave up. 

When I'm playing an octave up and things are going well, I can tell it's a sound that can really carry. I've noted that at any distance it doesn't matter whether a busker is playing a sax or a trumpet or even a violin, at enough distance it sounds like a flute. So why not just make a nice clear flute tone? I'm beginning to realize this instrument can give the trumpet a real run for its money.

I woke up at 4. I packed a few more things and delivered them, not needing the bike trailer so I went over to 99 Ranch for some shopping. The tea eggs looked pretty old, so I got a lotus cake and ate that out front, then picked up some celery and 3 cans of pate'. When I was loading the things into the bike bags I realized someone had started to open one of the cans of pate, so it was no good - I went back in and they let me get a new one. This no doubt happened because they let bums into the place. It's not like they can keep them out, at present, but it'd be nice if they could. 

I didn't really find much coming home. A pear-apple, which I ate later with coffee. Some odd little fixtures from the bountiful dumpster that might be good for something. And so on. 

I got back in here and besides other things, took apart this big laser thing that had a red "take-apart" tag on it and that took a while because it was really put together well. But now we can sell the parts and it's less clutter in the shop. And more metal and wire etc. put out there for the bums. 

After that I was hungry so I got out my dried coconut flakes to munch on and inhaled a piece of one or something. It was really bad. I could barely get air, made lots of horrible sounds, and the thing kept re-lodging itself in my trachea so it was a real ordeal. I ended up taking a piece of cardboard and laying it down on the parking lot and lying on it for a while because I felt better lying down, and enjoyed the cool air. 

When I felt better, I took the bag of coconut slices and emptied it into the bushes. I like the stuff but I'm not willing to die because of it. I love raw carrots but many experiences choking on those made me swear off of them unless I've grated them and they're in a salad. This stuff was worse. Nearly dying didn't help my headache, always waiting in the wings, a bit. Fortunately (?) last night my headache was acting up too, and I was still able to practice flute OK. I'm not sure I could say that about the trumpet at all. 

Even after spending about $11 at 99 Ranch it looks like I'm saving $80 in my bank account this week. This is pretty good, but I did some math and realized I need to save about $60 a week to cover what I have to send the IRS each year, which is about 3 grand. Most of that isn't income tax, but is for things like Medicare and Social Security, things which help society which I am but a part of, so I don't feel bad about this. 

I want to keep my taxes paid, and I also want to have about 10 grand in the bank when I leave. That means saving a lot more than $80 every pay check. That's where busking needs to come in.

Brian May did it right

 I packed 17 or 18 things last night, did some octaves practice, finding it harder than the night before. Fatigue, maybe? I will win this thing. 

I was up in time to have coffee and finish off the 17 or 18 packages and pack more to bring the count up to 25. I took off and did a pretty unremarkable delivery route, got back here and unloaded one box then went right back out to the "bountiful" dumpster and found some random things, and a couple of poblano peppers from the veggie dumpster. 

On the radio they did a thing about Brian May, the guitarist for Queen. It turns out, I think anyway, he is a very good example of doing things right, if you're smart. That is, if you're cursed with an IQ above 120 or so. 

He got good grades in school, and you, the reader, should be saying right now, "So fucking what? Since when did that actually improve anyone's life?" Well, somewhere along the line, probably around that rebellious puberty time, he picked up a guitar and learned it, probably on his own and the one lucky break is, his parents allowed him to. 

So he had a band while in college, first "Smile", and then he went into forming Queen. And bestowed upon the world all those wonderful guitar licks. Now, if you can play the guitar that well you can always make a living and afford to indulge in hobbies, in his case, astrophysics. He's doing that now, but he's able to because he learned something practical first - music. 

He also did himself a good turn by getting himself born in England, where you can get a college degree based on your ability and not based on being born onto the right square on the class/race chessboard, and without going into a lifetime of debt. But even under the horrendous conditions here in the US, if you're a hot shit guitar player, you can pretty much pay your own way and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke and you want to study astrophysics. 

But like all STEM bullshit, these fields are all hobbies, not proper professions like playing the guitar is. That's where so many of us have it completely backwards. I keep seeing real-world instances of this, like that noted Japanese comet-discoverer, whose main job that allows him such frivolous pursuits is teaching classical guitar. 

A breakthrough

 Last night I decided to just work on octave exercises on the headjoint but with a difference: On Reddit someone had asked about embouchure and someone experienced had said that beginners will tend to either have a "loose, unfocused" embouchure that results in an airy sound, or they'll tighten up which *can* work, but while it results in a more focused sound, the sound is thin and incapable of much nuance, and besides it's tiring. 

I think I had been falling into the latter bad habit, a carryover from trumpet. With everything about the flute, you want to be relaxed. So I decided I'd do octave exercises but keeping as completely relaxed as I could, and pay attention to tone. It turned out to be really easy to do good ones for quite a while. Once I hit the half-hour mark it got harder, and I think eventually I just got tired. 

Even with a delicate task, like say balancing something, eventually you get tired and start to "muscle" it and that's where it's time to call it a day. But you can build up the time you can do it while being relaxed, and that's my aim. 

I'd been on considering scrapping octave exercises, too, because they'd been becoming very difficult with my tensing up. I'd started to think that maybe I'll just work on learning pieces and let my tone take care of itself somehow. 

But I really don't want to train-in bad habits. A good fundamental embouchure means a good fundamental tone. And I saw how a good fundamental tone helped my trumpet playing. I was making shit money because I sounded kind of like shit. Then I started sounding better and people started responding a lot more generously. 

As I've said more than once, people often have no clue *what* you're playing, but they'll tip if they like *how* you're playing it. 

Also, I've got a lot of lost time to make up for and I need to get a bit more obsessed with the flute. James Galway had the advantage of not having much else to do, and in his neighborhood, when you were a kid, you kind of had to have some "trademark" thing that you did. He describes this in his first autobiography. For instance, one kid had, as his "thing", that he beat you up. He was good at fighting. That kid probably went on to be a policeman, join the Army, or be a bouncer for bars, all of which are very good career choices now just as they were in 1950s Belfast. Little Jimmy's thing was he played the flute. 

My parents and especially my mom tried to make me have the "thing" of being an artist. Every time I turned around I was being given paper and pens, or those awful "oil pastels" or a paint-by-number or anything. This, in the end, didn't work because I was pushed so hard. Galway's parents were much more clever about it. His dad played the flute, and would make it a challenge for the kids to get to "have a go" and even used to take his flute apart and hide the pieces, and when little Jimmy found 'em, let him only get away with a bit of playing before he was busted. 

At the same time when you've got a father who's out of work a lot and playing Mozart all the time, it's hard not to get interested, and by the age of 10 little Jimmy was entering and winning competitions. He was playing every change he got, plus doing little stream-of-air exercises at the bus stop and such things. You have to get a little bit obsessed. 

I got going for downtown and first thing dropped off a book and 10 lbs of basmati rice in 1-lb bags, in the Japantown little free library. Then I went over to Whole Foods for dried coconut and olive tapenade. It was pretty busy for a Sunday and I was thinking, What a good day for busking. 

I went over to Dai Thanh for the one "Chinese donut" they had left, and ate that over at the park. Then I went to Walmart and shopped with my little list. I had $22 in bills and just a bit over $3 in change and it came to $22 even. 

I wandered back downtown, and snooped around the festival that was being held in the park there. It puzzled me. It was not a music festival; too quiet. Too big for a "health fair" which, sadly, don't seem to be a thing any more. I asked a security guy and he said it was "Pride" and I said that's amazing, I didn't know they held them in this city and I was not joking. 10 years here and this is the first sign I'd seen of one. 

I checked the other two little free libraries on the way home and got a very beat-up copy of "You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe, which I patched up a bit with tape when I got home. 

Because of course that makes sense.

 I got 10 things listed last night. So that's 50 for the week, which should be the standard. 

The guys next door had put a lot of dishwashers out in the parking lot and after everyone was gone for the night, a bum came along and because bums aren't smart enough to use hand tools (to take things apart that are designed to be easy to take apart, generally only needing a flat-bladed screwdriver) or to think logically (take the washing machines back to one's lair to work on at leisure) the bum spent hours smashing them up, apparently picking them up and slamming them onto the asphalt. 

On the street level, just about the most sophisticated hominid tool might be a rock, or a stick. The old fashioned latchkey, where to lock your door after you're in for the night you simply pull in a string, is as fancy a lock as is ever needed. And if you're got something "technical" made of metal and hence of scrap that can be sold for crack, of course it makes sense to just smash it up. 

Eventually the bum loaded a lot of the stuff onto his bike trailer and rode off into the night, coming back a time or two for more. I don't know what happened because I didn't want to reveal my presence by practicing, and went to bed. 

Since I didn't have to be anywhere, I slept in until about 5. I got up, had coffee, and got going about 6. I dropped off some books and some green tea I was not going to use up before it went stale, in the little free library in Japantown and went into Nijiya for some shopping. 

This last errand was pretty funny. Because "Blondie" checked me out and questioned me at length about making kim chi and I kept saying to just follow recipes online, and he was saying he needed to mail-order certain ingredients because you can't get 'em locally, and I told him about H Mart, and said they'd have everything and he guy didn't even know about H Mart. While being astonished that anyone around here could not know about H Mart, I told him they'll have the shrimp paste and all that, plus big jars of kim chi. And I told him about Dai Thanh downtown. "I know all the Asian markets", I said. "Are they cheap?" he asked, and I said they certainly are. 

In all of this, I not only forgot to pick up my customary stick of Black Black gum, but pushed the wrong button and didn't get cash back. Screw it, I thought, and loaded up the bike. Then went up to the little free library to put the books and stuff in, looked at the time, and realized Nijiya would still be open for 15 minutes so I went in for my gum and cash back, and thank goodness it was another checker this time. Ol' Blondie, man. I've got to learn his actual name, and draw him a little map showing how to get to H Mart by bike.

I stopped by TAK Market for near-beer and beefs sticks, and rode back here. On my way back, on 10th, I swung a bit wide to avoid a bum walking along there, who said as I passed, "Give ya $20 for the bike". I said "Can't do that" or something like that and thought as I rode on, that any crackhead would gladly exchange a bike they'd have stolen and thus gotten for free, for $20 which no doubt buys a nice "rock" these days. 

I got back in here and had my near-beer, peanuts, and beef sticks, and wondered at how, officially, it's about 70 degrees outside but it sure doesn't feel like it. It feels a bit autumn-y. Pretty soon I'll dig out the sweat pants and long-sleeved shirts and the new "Bear Paw" booties I got months ago. 

A boring day for now.

 I got 15 things listed last night and practiced at least an hour on the flute. I'm still catching up to where I was in the Trevor Wye book, I know because I'm on the page facing the page with an illustration of the caveman using a bone for a flute. I know in the past I was at least to the page with the American Indian swinging a "bull roarer". It's a good thing there are these illustrations in the book or we students would never know where we are. 

I got up in time to pack some things, and enough of them that I won't have to make any trips to FedEx this weekend. And since I had $7  on me, on the way back from FedEx treated myself to two pieces of chicken from the "Krispy" chicken place. 

I ate while listening (I didn't have a choice) to a Mexican guy (in California, all Hispanics are Mexicans) talking with family? Girlfriend? Girlfriend with family including dog? in Spanish in his phone. I thought about how, the way the caste system works here, if I learned Spanish I'd actually lower my social standing. 

In Hawaii, everyone kind of agreed on a language, "Pidgin", that people of all nationalities spoke, with the exception of the very upper crust and even they often knew it and could speak it also. So pretty much everyone could talk with everyone in a common language. But here on the mainland, the majority language is English and then there's the language of the lower end of the workers, Spanish. The people getting through their day in Spanish are a minority, maybe 20% or 30% of the overall population. They are a lower caste, that can be ignored, talked down to, ordered about, etc. 

At least in the Hawaii I grew up in, everyone could "talk da kine" and while the heaviest pidgin might be unintelligible to a mainlander, I could understand it fine. 

I picked up a few things from the bountiful dumpster and a couple of peppers from the veggie dumpster and got back in here. Things are just how I like them, nice and boring. Nice, boring days are going to be dearly remembered as we get deeper into the Apocalypse.

Test post

 As the internet breaks down, erratic things can be expected and the latest is, I come here to edit my latest posting, it signs me out, I sign in, it signs me out, I sign in, it signs me out ... etc. 

If I were smart, I'd carve my thoughts into some kind of stone that's not so valuable my carvings would be broken up for the material, but not entirely useless either. Just valuable enough that the pieces of stone, with carvings, would become somewhat valuable keepsakes. Like all those business receipts and so on that people wrote in cuneiform and are valuable trinkets today. 

(No, I am not stupid enough to think that even if carved in stone, my observations would be worth anything as we're heading into a bottleneck that there's a very real possibility that nothing multicellular will make it through.)

He puts on his aviators and ...

 Ken came over, I got my check, we talked about everything under the sun, and I worked on getting things ready to list. I'd pulled a lot of fiber optic cables out of the bountiful dumpster and only two ended up being worth listing - the rest were messed up or even damaged, with the result that I had to vacuum fibers up off of the carpet and was sure to hunt them all down with a flashlight. 

Plus I sorted and counted out a bunch of ICs so in the end I didn't get any listings actually done. I'd also taken a thing apart I thought might have good parts inside to list but it didn't, really. 

Yesterday it was announced that President Biden is forgiving $10k/$20k of federal student loans and there's going to be a payment plan something like they do in Australia, based on your income. It applies to everyone making less than $125k a year with their degree, and the number of people actually making that much has to be vanishingly small. With 80% of college victims not even working in the field they studied, and with tech pay so low other than a tiny portion of well-connected "winners", this is going to apply to just about everyone who fell for the college scam. 

Not long ago, one of the actual baddies in the Middle East, like one of the main baddies, got killed off by, essentially, President Biden Himself. I didn't remark on it here but I thought, "Isn't that just like the Democrats. The Republicans will make a lot of noise and spend a lot of money and even start a war or two, saying they have to get this or that baddie, and they never do after all the dust has settled. Meanwhile the Democrats will decide they're tired of this or that baddie's shit, and just go get 'em". It was this way with Obama, a good Democrat (you could tell by how much the corn-pone types hated him). 

Someone against giving anyone any break at all ever, said the plan doesn't keep colleges from keeping on raising fees and if doesn't rein in the banks, and those are very good points. But it's a step in the right direction. The biggest single thing that can be done is to educate the public on how much of a scam college really is. What started off as a "finishing" process for the brats of the rich, has ended up being pushed as a necessity and even that would be OK if it were made somewhat possible for the people who need college the most, the smart but poor, to actually get through to get a degree, and if in the end that degree conferred a decent standard of living. 

It's failed on both counts, and has come to resemble a scam or a cult more than anything practical for living. As I like to put it, the only difference between college and a 10-year meth bender is, at the end of college you probably still have most of your teeth. 

I got out of here the usual time, and rode right over to the bank and put my pay check in. I was off by less than $4, and as I rode off I thought ... say I have $4000 in the bank, 10% is $400, 1% is $40, 0.1% would be $4, and that's really accurate. I can't think of any electronic components that are accurate to a tenth of a per cent. 

I rode over to Whole Foods and got some chicken wings and mushrooms, and it seems the only near-beer they have now is the Lagunitas "Hop Refresher" which I was cautioned "isn't a beer" by the guy upstairs, where I had to go to get one. I ate, then shopped but all I could think of that I wanted to get was some butter, so I got that. 

I went by the Amazon place for a few bubble mailers then visited the little free libraries where I got a copy of "The Good War" by Studs Terkel so I can start that when I finish my copy of "'Tis" by Frank McCourt. Both books made their authors famous and are real page-turners. 

Some new rules I guess

 The leek and onion soup I made last night made me feel better enough that I got 10 things listed (and Ebay, in it's usual capricious manner, deleted one) and did a little practice on the headjoint but was really not up to it and went to bed. 

I woke up first around noon because some idiot knocked on the door asking about welding and whether this or that person was here. Because when faced with a place with a big sign saying they do welding, and a place that's unmarked, of course the welding must be going great guns in the unmarked place, right? 

I went back to sleep again until about 3 which is good. 

I'm still tussling with Mejiro about refunding the shinobue I bought from them. So, some new rules are in order. NEVER order anything from overseas. I already have the rule of being very cautious about ordering anything that's not Prime, but so far I'm going to be perfectly content to never do business with Mejiro again. It looks like I'll have to pay the return shipping but the box I've got it in weighs just under a pound so it won't be too bad. 

The plastic shinobue worked out OK because that was one they were selling from inside the US. Of course face-to-face, in person, is really the only way to do things and the way technical systems are deteriorating (ATM at my bank no longer works, sign-in system at the Amazon hub same) it's how I do things these days if I possibly can. 

Gmail has changed now to make it nearly impossible to read a simple email. And, forget about printing out an email. So, if you want to save something (you can't cut-and-paste from Gmail) you have to write it out in longhand then transcribe that to Notepad. It was like pulling teeth to get to read the message from Mejiro that they're out of the office until August 30th, which is even more reason why I deeply regret doing any business with them. 

Internet is slow as hell, of course. Which is sad because I found a new video on YouTube, James Galway at the BBC which is a sort of biography like "Being James Galway" but different. It's got some great footage of him in his prime and also neat stuff like how he'd futz around on a pennywhistle to annoy his dad, playing two at once! And, I believe, a nice shot of him having a go playing a shakuhachi, very well of course. Because I have to stop often to let the video load, it takes a while to get through an hour-long video. Maybe a couple of hours. 

Ebay is hanging by a thread. Last night, as often as not looking for my own items, Ebay could not find them. Now, I can't read messages from other users because their security certificate has been revoked. That's confidence-inspiring! 

Last night I had a weird but kind of neat dream, that I went with my friend in Hawaii to go "shelling" or, collecting seashells. The shells were rather sparse in the dream but unless we really are in the ecological doom times, I know where shells are amazingly plentiful even on "overcrowded" Oahu.

A sick day I guess

 I felt worn out and tired last night and didn't even practice but went right to bed. I had a dream that I was selling stuff at a flea market and hardly made any sales, which made me really sad. I then cheered myself by going to a model train show and the enthusiasm of the guys who were into trains cheered me up, and I also tootled around a bit on a sort of go-kart that was battery powered and not street legal so I had to stick to a little side street. 

I woke up feeling really weird. I had coffee and so on and packed things that just had to go to FedEx, and took them to FedEx. I got some leeks out of the organic dumpster, and stopped by Tom's on the way back and dropped off some leeks for him and we talked for a bit. He said the Mad Max truck without things like doors, lights, license plate, etc., belonged to a bum he knows named James, who was probably off to get one of his other junk vehicles to jump start this one and get it going again. 

Tom said today he called off of work because he had the "Rogers Avenue Blues" - he felt very depressed and "off". He went and joined the gym up the street and I guess that dispelled them enough. I suggested all sorts of things to do that might be "cheerful" but he's already eaten, and didn't have any ideas. 

As we talked James The Bum showed up with another apocalypse-mobile and got to work jump started the first wreck. Soon a bum SUV I've seen sneaking around showed up and the bum in it got out to help or "help" James. I had to go, also, so I went. 

I picked up some peppers and tomatoes from the veggie dumpster and found exactly zero things in the "bountiful" dumpster and got back in here. I unloaded the bike trailer and made two trips taking the pile of networking wire support things out to the side of Bayshore, where they'll be seen by many more people and someone will pick them up. 

Now I'm contending with a headache and feeling really lousy. I pre-packed the things that have to go and even that felt like a lot of effort. Then I cooked up a leek and onion (and cheese) soup and ate that, which made me feel a little bit better. 

One major baddie down

 I didn't list the 15 things I had ready but then, I have to stand up for having a weekend. I did photo the things, so I can list them anytime today. 

I did octave exercises on the flute headjoint, which are seeming easier again now. The thing is, really having a handle on this tricky exercise requires gaining some control over small muscles that there was no need for fine control of, before. 

I've decided to return the bamboo shinobue, as it really does not play as well as the cheapie plastic one and it's a lot of money tied up in something I'm really not going to spend much time on. The plastic one, with real bindings and texturing the outside to look like bamboo is the best of both worlds - plays reliably and in tune, no worries about cracking etc. and could actually play it in a rainstorm etc. 

I have it all packaged up and would take it downtown with me but I'm waiting for Mejiro, the company I bought it from, to send me a mailing label. Fortunately, even in a fairly big box, the package will come out to just under a pound so even if I have to pay for the mailing it should be OK. 

In the news, a major baddie, the daughter of "Putin's Rasputin", got killed in a car bomb explosion. She was as rabid as her father is, and while I think they wanted to get him, I think this is actually better. Like France had Le Pen, and while Le Pen dying in some unfortunate accident would have been great, his daughter's been carrying on for him. So the next generation being nipped off is actually better. 

I left here a bit before 4, for downtown. After dropping off a bag of trash at my favorite trashy bus stop's can, I put a can of mackerel I'm not sure how long I had (still good until 2024) and a big box of microwave popcorn with 21 bags in there, into the little free library in Japantown. The popcorn *was* out of date which is why I didn't just save it for Ken and family. 

In return, checking one of the other little free libraries, I got a neat little book titled "Why Socialism?" by G.A. Cohen, a real gem. I'll read that very carefully before passing it on. 

I dropped off 4 packages at the post office, then rode over to Whole Foods where I got a bag of dried coconut. Then I rode all the way down to Wal-Mart for diet soda, a can of boiled peanuts, and something rubbing alcohol. 

I had enough to go to Lee's Sandwiches to get a treat which ended up being chicken wings, 5 for $4 with tax of course so it was $4.50. I ate at the college and it was crawling with new students. After eating I rode around a little thinking I might find a pile of stuff like I did on Sunday, but did not - I finally reasoned that they'd not want a bunch of stuff out with random students tromping around everywhere. 

The wind was nuts coming back but I solved that problem by simply not being in a hurry, then it didn't bother me a bit. I got back here and unloaded and hitched up the trailer and went over to check the bountiful dumpster which was bountiful this time, with some interesting stuff. There was a bum car or in this case a bum SUV I've seen around my complex late at night, watching me, so I made sure they saw me picking out lots of lovely pieces of packing foam, and empty boxes. Eventually it sped off. 

I got back here with my trailer load of goodies just as a gaggle of student types were helping load the large desk into a minivan. When that was done they congratulated each other all around and left in the minivan and a few other vehicles. I got on Craig's List and took the listing down and told one guy who's been emailing me that it's gone now.

Practiced anyway

 Ken didn't show up last night, and I got 15 things all ready to list which sounds simple but in reality to come up with the last few things I had to do some digging around and researching (whether the things I found are worth it) and then digging into a big box of circuit boards and taking off the transformers and a bunch of chips that were in sockets. That took a while. 

I put the box of now-depleted circuit boards out for the bums and it disappeared after a short while. 

I was up into the early morning as per usual and the guys next door put out tons of office trash cans with lids, and some furniture. I went out to have a look and one piece of furniture intrigued me, a little rolling table with a lower level, but it was sticky like it had been used in food service and I'd want to refinish it, and replace the ugly gold plated casters as well. I thought about how much roomier the loft is with less stuff in it, and decided Nah. 

I actually felt like I might be catching a small bug, like my throat felt a little scratchy. I practiced anyway, but didn't feel tip-top, and probably got about a half-hour's honest practice in. But I *did* practice, which is the important part. I've been having fun doing the exercises and then doing them again an octave up. That's trickier and it's a good feeling when I get a nice pure tone an octave up. 

I slept in until almost 4, waking up from a weird dream about trying to vote. It wasn't too hot, and I made some coffee and got my day going. 

My plan was to go to H Mart and get some pork, an onion, celery, and a can of red curry paste. It ended up going beyond the $15 or so I intended to spend, though, because spicy peanuts were at a good price and I found they had Iguacu instant coffee, the original kind in the can, and I got the 3 cans they had left. And they also had little boxes of the treat that I can't stop laughing about, "Coque de Asse". The little boxes were only $1.50 so why not.

On my way out I checked the organic dumpster and got 2 young coconuts and 2 Korean melons for Tom and one young coconut and some turmeric roots for myself, and took off. 

I stopped at Tom's to deliver his stuff and we hung out and talked for a long time. Tom told me the latest from the rural place is, one of the freeloaders yelled at another of the freeloaders, who walked her dog by the first freeloader's place. Said he'd shoot the dog if she walked it by his place again. So now the owner is in the process of formal eviction of the  jumpy guy. I said that's odd because one guy there (who's since hanged himself, which I find hilarious) threatened to stab me because I sneezed, and somehow that was OK, so there's reason 2349742395749239431 why I left. 

Plus the owner used to make really decent money doing environmental testing but now his testing income is dropped down to nearly zero. When I lived there, his income was far in excess of his actual needs and things were pretty jolly. We ate a lot of steak. Money was just not an issue. But now, the guy's got about 10 freeloaders living there, and Tom and I ran down what they're probably costing the guy. In my own case, I used the owner's electricity but it was probably $20 a month worth or less and the owner and I agreed it was a small expense not worth fussing over. I paid for my propane and Coleman gas etc. But if he's got people using electricity for cooking and heat and big TVs and so on, with the way the cost of electricity has gone up, that's got to be bad. 

Tom says the owner figures he's just going to make a living now from ... inventions. I said one possible way to scare up a living is to write how-to books and publish them on Amazon. It's about $100 to get an ISBN number, and the idea is to write a lot of them. But a small stream of money, perhaps even a medium-sized one, is possible and it's a thing I've considered myself. But who are we fooling? The owner of the Gilroy place is really good at talking about ideas, and not too great at actually pulling them off. 

Tom also told me how a zombess who's one of the denizens of Crack Alley here, stole some copper or something from another zombie and got hit on the head with a pipe for her trouble. Is going around with a big bandage now. Those creatures are always up to these antics. 

By now it had been fully dark for a while so I rode home. I got a few peppers on the way home from the veggie dumpster, and got back here. There were a couple of bums on bikes hanging around the dumpster enclosure and one of them even said something to me in Bum, which I don't understand. I just kept my "explainer" in my hand and got myself and the bike inside here and closed the place up. The bums hung around a bit longer and then rode off.

I kind of expected to see Ken here when I got back but I guess I'll see him on a weeknight.

Keeping on budget

 Last night I got 15 things listed, and did other various Ebay things. 

Finally I really didn't feel like practicing but in the end I did anyway and I'm really glad I did. That's the only way to get anywhere, regular practice. 

Ken was supposed to bring some things over so I wanted to get out of here. I woke up around 4 so I just made a coffee and got things together (a bag of trash) and got out of here a bit after 5. 

My first stop (after dropping off the trash) was Nijiya where I got a sort of cold noodle salad thing and a near-beer. It was really hot outside. I ate out front, then checked the little free libraries on my way downtown. I got a couple interesting fiction paperbacks and a big book on learning French by "The Capretz Method". 

I actually looked over the French book (it's big and heavy) and didn't take it  on my way out. I went over to Wal-Mart and got odds and ends, the most interesting "feature" of this trip being a crazy guy hanging around in front of Big-5 yelling, alternately, "BITCH!" and "HAAAAAAAAH!". As I was in the checkout at Wal's, I saw they had little bags of Werther's Originals for $1. On reddit they're always joking about how the old folks are always getting out the Werther's for you and I'm old now so I figured, why not? Maybe the guy's having a lot blood sugar episode due to undiagnosed diabetes. 

So I walked back to the bike with my stuff and he was still there, yelling. I tossed him the candies, which he took but I guess that wasn't all of the problem as he just kept up with his routine. 

On my ride back I was thinking about the French book ... if any book's going to teach me French, this one will. It's set up in little lessons where you read some stuff in French and if you can't understand it, tough tittie. But it's easy stuff to start out. And any fairly educated English speaker will know more French than they know they do. 

I decided, riding back, that I was going to get onto 5th street and follow it even as it weaves through the college campus. This was kind of fun, plus I found a big pile of boxes and tubs of stuff just left out. I went right to work on that. I took out things any passer-by, bum or not, might want like bottles of water and Capri Suns. I took out a big box of "Pop Weaver" microwave popcorn for Ken and his family. And I got a lot of keychains to stick on Ebay. So that was good. 

I continued following 5th along until I got back to the little free library where the French book was and it was still there so I picked it up and rode on home. 

I've done pretty well, budget-wise. I have about $14 cash on hand and about $14 left in what I'll allow myself to spend out of my bank account, to still save $100 out of this last paycheck. And the last paycheck, I saved $97 of. 

Slowing ad infinitum

 I pre-packed a lot of things, got a batch of things ready to list, and this on top of my traveling around yesterday so I didn't actually list them. 

I *did* get an hour's practice in on the flute, while watching a rare, watchable, YouTube video. I didn't want to do more because I could feel that I run the risk of doing too much, on my wrists, arms, shoulders. The flute is not heavy, but it's an odd position to hold and will take time to get used to. 

On trumpet, it was too tempting to rest my elbows against my body while practicing at home. But with flute, I kind of have to sit very upright and proper, so at least my practicing at home is good practicing for busking. 

I am fully aware that the flute is not as loud as the trumpet, and know of areas with good resonance to play in. I don't want to feel like I have to be loud like I'm in an Irish flute band. Then again, being in Irish flute bands right off might have been key to James Galway doing as well as he did. 

The internet is just getting slower and slower. I just need it to hold together for a couple-few more years, and I forecast that it will continue to slow down, and will be the standard way to access government services and do basic, text-based things. 

A good example of how I see things going is how they've gone at the Amazon Hub downtown. At first, there was a neat sign-in kiosk. You'd key in your email address and the staff would be alerted that you were there to pick up your stuff. After a while, the backlight went out and that was never fixed, making it difficult to use. Then it stopped working at all, and was never replaced. I now use an index card with my email address written in large, clear, letters. I show 'em that, they key it into one of their phone/pad things, and go get my stuff. There's still some internet involved, but my customer interface is a paper card. 

A great find

 After Ken left last night, I actually felt tired and after eating something, I did random chores around here and got down to some flute practice. I found some watchable things on YouTube, and put in over an hour, working from about the beginning in the Wye book because of how I've not been practicing. 

My tone sounds better,  I think. I'm not sure if it's special exercises like all those octaves or just that I've been playing at all. The more time blowing into a flute, the better. 

I went to bed at 5AM and woke up around 2, cleaned up a bit and was out of here a bit past 3. I dumped some trash and visited the bank ... my yearly Amazon Prime fee has come out of my account so while I was saving about $97 over the week, $150-odd came out. It could be worse! 

I rode over to knock around Willow Glen, the last refuge of buskers. I saw a violinist but I think he was just ready to take off, because when I doubled back he was gone. Cranky Guitarist was there, playing away, bits of "Roundabout" by Yes and other odds and ends. A loud band was setting up, with drums and I thought maybe a flute player so I locked my bike up and walked over, but it turns out the flute sound was just "My synth" the guy said, gesturing toward the DX-7 he had there. 

I went into BevMo thinking I'd try to track down a liquor called "Centerba" which Ken occasionally mentions, that has 100 herbs and "smells just like a freshly mowed lawn". It turns out they don't stock it, plus it's pretty expensive. I was figuring I might get a bottle of it for Ken and family for Christmas. A better choice, I think, is to get them a bottle of Tuaca, which is this weird super-aromatic stuff that a food writer might say "dances on the tongue". As opposed to Ken drinking his grass clippings and everyone else going, "ewww". The family could have a rollicking night on Tuaca and the bottle not last the night but they'll have fun and remember it. 

I did, however, find something really great. I'd been wishing for years they made a non-alcoholic Guinness, and it turns out they do. I got a 4-pack of tall cans of that, and I can say that it's excellent. I also found a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, which had been a small bottle for $4-something at Whole Foods and impossible to find anywhere else, well, at BevMo it's $6-odd for a bottle twice as big so I got that also. 

Downtown Willow Glen is a classic example of a downtown area that needs to be made pedestrian-only. Traffic there is horrible. So after snooping around a bit I got out of there. 

Then I followed my usual route of Dai Thanh to Nijiya and in between them, the little free libraries where I picked up a book on Greek myths by Robert Graves and a softcover copy of "Civilization" by Kenneth Clark, which we had in hardcover when I was a kid. 

I got back here, unloaded, went and got a few things out of the bountiful dumpster, and got back in. All the metal pieces were taken from the pile of racks, so I now have a free ad up for the cable management stuff which hopefully someone will take, and if not, I'm going to load it all onto the bike trailer and put it out by Old Bayshore. 

She's still a republican

 On the radio they're fawning all over Liz Cheney, just about the only Republican who's anti-Trump. For some reason this makes her some kind of a hero and wonderful person to the Left. In reality she's still a republican and this means she honestly believes that "nigras" and "coloreds" ought to not have citizenship and should be either 2nd class residents or chattel slaves. She believes that white women should be brood mares to produce lots of white kids to fight in racial wars and to displace the non-whites that are to be wiped off of the planet. And so on. Utterly evil. 

I went to bed around 7AM and for some reason could not get any kind of real sleep. I finally gave up at a bit past 2, and got up to do things. I packed 6 things that had to go to FedEx, and when a guy came by to pick up a thing he'd bought, I had it cleaned up and ready to go. I also photo'd and started listing a batch of things on Ebay. 

The guy coming to pick up his thing was my signal to get to work packing things though, and that and the usual coffee, nuts, etc. and before heading out, a snack, took me up to just before 7. 

The FedEx dropoff went fine and I found a few useful boxes on the way back and a few things in the erstwhile bountiful dumpster. 

I got back here and finished listing my batch of stuff, and managed to get that done and the office and bathroom cleaned for when Ken came by, right on time. 

During the day, someone had dumped a huge load of server racks in the parking lot and one guy had loaded up a lot of stuff in a van but didn't come back for more. I put a "free" ad on Craig's List which brought one other guy who took a few things, but the stuff was still here when Ken came here. So after talking about tons of stuff and my getting my check, and Ken bringing in some stuff to list, we went out to take some parts off of the rack stuff. So Ken muddled around with part of it while I got out a 7/16ths wrench and took out some pieces with a lot of holes that are particularly useful, and the hardware fastening them in. Those last kind of shake out in the process of "rolling" the rack over to reach all of them, and didn't it make a satisfying bang as a couple hundred pounds of steel is flopped over. 

By then it was a quarter after midnight and Ken had to go - I think his wife is getting on his case if he's out too late which makes sense. 

Temperature inversion

 I was up all night, at least got in an hour octaves practice on the two shinobues. I didn't sleep that well but better than the night before, and woke up at 4. 

Usually it's 10-20 degrees warmer inside here than outside, but when I woke up it was 95 degrees outside and only in the low 80s inside. 

I finished up the things I'd staged, and it wasn't too bad, riding up to the post office. It wasn't even as busy as I expected. Maybe people were taking the day off due to the heat. 

After dropping off the one FedEx box (not sure what's going on, shipping costs are 'way up and for some reason two boxes were cheaper to send by the US postal service) I checked the organic dumpster and got a cucumber, and got yelled at by some lady on a PA system they have set up. She rattled off a lot of stuff like how they save photographs of people loitering around and supply them to the police and so on. Like the police would bother. I said, in the hope they have a microphone set up too, "All that, for minimum wage!" and took off. 

The dumpster where I was getting all the neat medical stuff is a shadow of its former self now. They're not getting stuff, or someone else is getting it, or they're being more careful or something. I got a little point-of-sale printer which I took apart, and that was about it. 

I'm working my way through "'Tis" by Frank McCourt, and ought to get a copy of "Angela's Ashes" to re-read. I'm really glad to have such a nice supply of books, from the little free libraries. The internet continues to get worse and worse, and YouTube "breaks" a lot these days. It's OK as long as I pick really old stuff to watch. 

There had been a pretty new looking, red Toyota truck parked in front of the shop all day and in the evening I found out what the deal with it was. It's Chuy's. He bought it, I'm pretty sure, for $58k. He just barely speaks English so it's a little hard to communicate, but when I said, "Cinco... ocho ... thousand?" he agreed. Wow. I told him how beautiful it was and how great, and I'm sure he felt great driving it off. That's a LOT of money considering he could have had a whole new engine put in his old Saturn wagon for a few thou. The guy sure worked for it though, and like as not he paid cash. 

Tomatillo curry

 I cooked a curry using the tomatillos I'd picked, and it ended up with a very citrus-y flavor, as tomatillos will do. 

A bit after eating, I pondered listing some stuff and could not get enthusiastic. I have to do something, I told myself, and since I had a couple of weeks' worth of small things I'd listed in boxes all stacked up, waiting to be stored away in the warehouse, I put almost all of that stuff away. 

In the process, I moved a bunch of books around to make one filing cabinet drawer that's now for blank computer media like tapes and electro-optical disks. That needed doing. And I went through some more stacks of small drawers, putting empty ones nearer to the top in exchange for ones with things that hardly ever sell, now put nearer the bottom. And put new labels on all the ones that needed it, and now had yet another drawer for stepper motors and for display modules. 

I was glad to do this, as it's going to be hot and it's best to do things like this during the coolest part of the 24-hour cycle. 

I also found and printed out a couple of things for flute, Amazing Grace and Danny Boy. Really, a ton of stuff I felt like I was chiseling out of stone to learn on trumpet, ought to come easily on flute. On trumpet it's a matter of having anything more than an octave or so of range while not sounding like a wounded animal, while on flute range isn't a large problem, and it's a matter of developing a good fundamental tone or "wind". 

Thus, a lot of things that were a real challenge on trumpet and that I could only play when I was fresh, ought to be fairly easy on flute because of the greater range, and it's just a matter of sounding good while playing them. 

A book I'd found yesterday was "'Tis" by Frank McCourt. It's about his time as a young adult, picking up where "Angela's Ashes" leaves off. He goes to the US on a freighter, courtesy of savings and mainly of a loanshark lady he worked for dying right in front of him. He grabs some of her money, call it a "tip" or a wage well-earned (he wrote the threatening letters she sent out) and there he was, on a freighter to America. 

He gets a ton of help from a priest who's on the ship too, who sets him up with a rental room and a job. The priest turns out to be gay, of course, so he has to extricate himself from that situation but that's not hard and he's got the crucial things to get started: a safe place to sleep, keep his things, and wash up, and a job. 

The job is horrible though and he's glad when the Korean War starts and he's drafted. Army hijinx ensue. That's about as far as I got. 

I tried to sleep which is normally no problem but I could not get to sleep. I finally slept a bit, I think, from noon to 5. That's when I woke up. Horrible, really. I know citrus can amplify the effects of coffee, and I wonder if tomatillos have the same thing that does that, in them. 

On Reddit r/collapse they're talking about the Colorado River running dry and the first rumbles of the water wars. They're talking about how difficult it will be for all those people to leave Vegas, and where will they go? We all know how California treated the Dust Bowlers almost 100 years ago... 

What is interesting to me is, Ken's daughter bought a house in North Las Vegas using her 401k as a down payment. The rationale being that the monthly cost is "the same" as she was paying rent in Far Rockaway, NYC. I have a feeling the basic payment, $1600, is the same but by the time you add in utilities and property tax and the money you have to always have on hand for repairs, it's significantly more. And now she has made the choice of the house OR her 401k. It's not like she still has her 401k, it's been "eaten" by the house now. 

So all her eggs are truly in one basket, that house in North Las Vegas. North L.V. is notorious for crime and despair, but it's OK because she's in a "nice" development that's gated. And she's got a room-mate, she needed one right away, who works sometimes as a bouncer. 

This is part of things I'm hoping can hold together for the next 2 years. Because when Las Vegas runs out of water and Ken's daughter is trucking water to her house, and the value's down so she's "underwater" and her room-mate can't find work (he's peripatetically employed) and the "good" development keeps having break-ins, she may have to walk away from the thing and move home. At least she'll have her old bedroom to move back into, but it will be a big blow. No house and now, no 401k. All gone with the jingle mail. 

That's going to add more stress to Ken's family. And my leaving is going to be a huge stressor. I know at least some basic human psychology and while Ken ought to be glad for all the years of excellent, and underpaid, work I've put in, it won't go that way. There will be resentment. Why's he gotta leave? Now I have to do the listing, the packing and shipping ... 

I saw this the last time Ken was over. He asked about the place I was finding boxes and boxes of over-the-counter medicines, because I hadn't given him any bags of pills recently. Mainly his family uses a decongestant called Loramed. I said it's really dried up, but I anticipated this and had already found Loramed in big bottles at a cheap price on Amazon and had put one in my Amazon cart so I could show him. But the way he asked, it was like he was accusing me of slacking off in my "duty" to provide him with decongestant pills. And Ken's a nice guy; he's not really aware of how he's acting entitled and if called on it would straighten right out - in fact my finding the "expensive" pills for cheap online was a nice and functional way to call him on it. 

So when I leave, there's the temptation to leave a box or two of belongings here, to have Ken mail me when I've settled down in Hawaii. But because I will be resented for leaving, I don't want to do that. I want it to be a clean break. 

A very rare sighting

 I woke up in the afternoon again, at a bit after 3. I finally got up and had coffee and so on, loaded the bike bags up with the 16 lbs or so of rice I had left, and headed into town. The rice all fit into the little free library in Japantown so that's where it went.

I rode by St. James Park to see if they had the City thing set up where they have lawn games and sometimes show a movie, and have a taco truck and even a beer and wine truck. That had been set up yesterday but it was not there today - just tons of zombies and a couple of Canada geese. 

I rode over to Lee's Sandwiches and got two pork egg rolls for $3.25 and stashed those away in the bike bag, and went by the little free pantry by the Peace And Justice Center. They didn't have anything I could use but their tomatillo bush in the planter there had a bunch of 'em so I picked those to go in tonight's curry. 

I rode over to the college to eat my egg rolls and Lee's had really outdone themselves in that they were so greasy there was a little pool of grease in the bottom of the bag and the grease ran down my fingers. In other words, just right. There was a guy sitting at one of the other benches playing classical guitar and he was really good, too. When I was done eating and had cleaned up I told him he was really good and how much I regretted not sticking with a classical guitar class that was held at my local junior college - Orange Coast College - that went for 3 semesters but a student could repeat each, so it could be milked for 6 semesters. It was a hell of a deal and I'd have really learned guitar. 

I rode over to Paseo de San Antonio and was reminded that San Jose Summer Jazz Fest was on, and it was loud. There was a guy playing flute with a bass player so I doubled right around and hung out there - I was the only person I observed putting a dollar in their tip jar too, bunch'a cheapskates hovering around. 

The bass player plays around and has played at Cafe Stritch, now called Mama Kin, and the flute guy's a student at the college. I told him about switching to flute from trumpet, how they're "very different" and how I plan to get out busking. These guys were really good. They were "official" buskers for Jazzfest, sponsored by Google. So I can't say they were buskers "in the wild" but rather, they usually played indoors, at bars and weddings and such things. So this may or may not count as that rare sighting, of buskers in San Jose. 

I rode down to Wal-Mart and got a bag of black walnuts, a can of Kraft powdered Parmesan cheese, and a jar of olives. That worked out just right. The ride home was nice and boring and not even very windy.

DeSantis is pretty smart

 Last night did my usual octaves practice but I think I've been doing enough. With trumpet playing, there's this huge emphasis on learning to play higher because without making it a way of life, you're limited to about an octave and a half of range and that's pretty limiting. 

With flute even a noob will have a couple of octaves to play within, so I probably need to work more on exercises in the first Wye beginner book and work through that book so I have an excuse to get the second one. 

Really, I ought to have the same (tired old) repertoire I had on trumpet by now. 

Last night's gathering went pretty well and among other things I now have a Samsung "Galaxy 9" smart phone to play with if I like. It's pretty neat but it may have a battery problem. I need to look up where to get a charger for it and also if the battery can be changed in one. 

I went to bed, woke up at noon, decided I needed two more hours of sleep, and woke up again at 4:30. So I got up, weighed out about 21-22 lbs of rice into 1-lb bags, and took 6 of them along with a bunch of other odds and ends and headed for downtown. It all went into the little free library in Japantown.

My original plan had been to go to Wal-Mart, stopping at Nijiya first to buy some gum or something and get cash back because cash is the only way to go at Wal-Mart. But I reflected on the fact that it was a Saturday and Saturday at Wal-Mart was not something I wanted to do. 

So instead I went over to Whole Foods and first, get something to eat. I noticed they had carnitas so I came up with something I'll call a "Burrito Box" where I take one of the small food boxes and load it up with carnitas and other burrito-like things like onions, soft cheese, roasted peppers, a little black beans, and hot sauce over it all. There was no near-beer and no club soda so I decided I'll get a beer and see how that goes. I got an Anchor Steam which tasted rather awful - like chemicals. It was only good for washing down the food and I only got through 2/3 of it. 

I went back in and got things, and got $20 cash back. 

I'd passed through San Pedro Square on the way there, and passed through again on the way back. No buskers, Loud Band hadn't started yet, and it looked pretty busy. It looked like it might be busk-able.  The beggars and assorted no-goods that used to clutter the place were absent too. 

Whole Foods had looked decent too, except for one zombess who kept walking back and forth on the sidewalk in a hurry, waving her arms - not sure what that beastie was all about. If I busk there again I'll have to remember to keep pepper spray handy.

The ride home was nice and boring, for the most part. As I got onto Old Bayshore, I saw two zombies on bikes one with a trailer full of crap, heading my way. So I crossed the road to ride on the "wrong" side. Lo and behold, now the zombies crossed also and headed for me. I sped up, crossing the road again, and ducked into the armored-car place. Luckily they hadn't followed me - probably guessing correctly that they'd not be able to catch me, and deciding to hunt for brains somewhere else. 

The raid on the Dump's Mar-A-Lago compound has gone well, it seems, and it seems also it's DeSantis / DeSatan who engineered it. Kind of like Goering deciding he can run the Nazi Party better than Hitler and trying to get him deposed. Smart move on DeSantis' part, comfortably before the midterm elections and well before the 2024 election, to give time for "the dust to settle" and for the Nazi Party 2.0 to get used to DeSantis being its leader. Before the Dump declares that yes, he is running for President so pretty much the optimal time. I don't like DeSantis any more than Trump but you gotta give the guy credit for political cunning. 

We are all heroes

 I got 10 things listed on Ebay last night, some of them worth a lot more money than I thought they'd be like an obscure little microscope light it appears I can ask $100 for. 

Practicing flute at the end of the day isn't that great ... generally I'm tired from the day and all I feel like doing is very simple exercises on the shinobue. The new bamboo one that cost me almost $200 isn't necessarily that much better than my $30 plastic one. With the treatment I'm giving the plastic one, giving it a "bamboo" texture and putting real bindings on it, it's really easy to say now that  I have the bamboo one in-hand, that I'd recommend anyone just get the plastic one. Assuming the appearance either doesn't bother them or they can modify theirs like I have mine. 

I woke up at a bit past 3. While puttering around thinking about things I realized that not only my family but Ken's family are heroes. Back in the classic "baby boom" time, it was the thing to do to have all the kids you could. It was 5 in my family and Mom had a miscarriage or it would have been 6. Ken is one of 5 kids also. 

But in my family we have chosen to be "climate heroes" in that none of the 5 of us have kids. And, thinking about it, Ken only had 3 kids and two were from his wife's prior marriage, and of those three, I think none have kids. One of Ken's sons has a daughter but I think she's from his wife's prior marriage. So we're going from families of 5 to families or zero or very close to it. This is what the planet needs. 

Would the average American ever be happy living like a traditional Okinawan, walking everywhere and living on fish and a little rice and lots of vegetables? Obviously, no. Even in Okinawa, only some of the olders are living that way still.

Victorian Habitrail

 I got things ready to list last night, and did the laundry I'd had soaking for so long and hung it up, and had the place all nice and clean and presentable and Ken came by the usual time. I got my check and we talked; the usual routine. I showed him how these decongestant pills that I used to get from the EMT training place but can't seem to now, are cheap and easy to get from Amazon. I even had some in my Amazon cart so now Amazon thinks I use decongestant pills. 

He left, again at the usual time, and I did a fry-up of green/greenish bananas, shrimp, and fried the leftover flour in a sort of savory pancake so it was quite the stomach-bomb. And made me sleepy as hell so was that for the night. 

Ken had brought the shinobue I'd ordered from Mejiro, and the bike tire, so I have those now. The shinobue plays different notes going way up high than my plastic Aulos one. Both are beginner level instruments, really, so I'm not sure there's any requirement that they be dead-on in something like the 3rd octave. 

I woke up with plenty of time to clean up and shave, shine shoes, etc., and headed for downtown. I dropped off a bag of trash at this one trash can I always use, and this bum who'd been following me for some reason finally lost interest - if I was putting it in that nasty old can, it must not be worth much after all. 

Next I stopped by the little free library in Japantown and dropped off rice, a few books, and a couple packs of gum I'd bought at Nijiya a while back and never tried because they're not sugar-free. 

I went over to the bank, riding my usual route past the post office. My account balance agreed with my own accounting to the penny and that's always a good idea. On the way there, by "Scott's Seafood", I'd seen an old Asian lady sleeping or resting or passed out or something, against a planter on the sidewalk. So I asked at the bank if they had a bottle of water I could have and they didn't have anything. 

So I rode over to San Pedro Square and locked the bike up and got a bottle of fancy-schmancy "mineral water" from "Station 1" which was nice of them - it was gratis. I walked over to the lady and asked if she was OK and she said she was fine. The bags around her told me she was homeless, so she was that rare kind of person, an Asian homeless person. And she didn't even want the water for later. So I walked back over and gave the bottle of water back to them at "Station 1" and went on my way. 

I didn't exactly go, though. I went into "Dr. Funk" and sat at the bar. They didn't have any near-beer so I ordered a soda water and a menu. I was prepared to pay almost $20 for some "coconut shrimp" they probably buy by the bag at Whole Foods but I was pretty much ignored. I managed to be able to tell the kid at the bar that, growing up in Hawaii, we used to decorate our houses with stuff like glass floats and nets and stuff. He was not interested in the slightest. He probably could have told me how he ended up working there because McDonald's wasn't hiring. I ended up stage-muttering something about leaving my cash in the car, darn it, and walked out. 

I rode over to Dai Thanh and got a can of coffee because any trip there guarantees buying one of those, and a "Chinese donut" which I ate while walking a bit on the street and then back. I'd never noticed two of the big old Victorian houses are joined together by a Victorian "Habitrail" sort of enclosed walkway in-between. When I thought I'd seen all the Victorian architectural craziness around here ... 

I went back in and got a few other things, then stopped by the Amazon hub for bubble mailers, picked up a hardcover copy of "The March Of Folly" by Barbara Tuchman, and went over to Nijiya for a few things. And on back home. I did not have a lot of imagination or feel like going a lot of places today. 

Gonna have to get out there

 I got my 15 things listed on Ebay, rounded up things to ship, did an hour's practice of mostly octaves and some Midnight Special on the shinobue, and went to bed around 7AM. 

I woke up around 4, packed the things, and fielded the 2nd email from a guy who wants to buy the shakuhachi. I've marked it and the books down to $175 and he'll like as not offer $150 but that's OK. 

I'm marking the cornet down weekly and need to put the trumpet on and then gradually mark it down until it sells. If nothing else, I'd like to have the storage space back that they occupy. 

I need to learn at least a few simple songs and get out there busking. The warm weather's not going to last forever although I plan to play during the holiday season this year.

The Midnight Special

 Yesterday evening I not only listed a dozen things on Ebay but I found a thing or two in the bountiful dumpster and I found some interesting indoor/outdoor carpet squares and rectangles and also four "Metro Cart" shelves and two uprights, so it was a 2-tripper. I put the carpet pieces upstairs as at the very least I can put carpet on the stair steps and I may carpet part of the loft. 

Then after listing, I practiced octaves on the shinobue for an hour and read the rest of "Frightful's Mountain". I'd say it's the perfect book for a teenager who is interested in nature and falconry.

I slept in until 6. Nothing had sold so I didn't have a trip to the post office to worry about, and told myself I could sleep in. 

I still checked the bountiful dumpster and only found a few small things. There are bums who live in that parking lot and I think they may be going through it first. Sadly, they may be taking the fiber optic cables and other neat stuff just to sell the stainless steel. I can only hope the bums eventually lose interest, as they do not tend to have long attention spans. 

It doesn't matter to me whether I find tons of stuff or not stuff there. My pay stays the same: a fixed $350 a week out of which I have to set aside about 20% for taxes. There's really not any things in there I like to set aside for myself. And I can't just set things aside and put them into a storage unit for myself, to sell later, as Ebay has me under a strange "non-compete" clause where if I started an Ebay account of my own, they'd accuse Ken and I of "shilling" and shut us both out for life. I can't do that to Ken. So whether the bums get most of the good stuff first isn't even worth worrying about. 

I've been keeping the shinobue out of its sleeve and on my desk here more and more, and after I got up and had coffee and did some push-ups and doing my little ride out to pick up a few things, I found I can play "Midnight Special" just fine and not only that, but I can then play it again, an octave up! Take that, trumpet! 

I think getting back into exercising and building up "core strength" would help me a lot as a flute player. Plus, I must assume when I'm back in Hawaii, that I may be homeless for a while and will need to be physically fit for that. Interestingly, the better I get at playing the flute, probably the less worries I'll have about being homeless. 

Raid the Dump!

 Last night I got things that had to shipped together, and also cleaned and re-labeled my old "bike parts" tool box and now it's "flute stuff". Now instead of being scattered all over, I have one place for my sticks of lacquer and black hemp cord for bindings and flute pad "juice" and the clear plastic rod I got at TAP Plastics to push old flute corks out, and my 2-3 Yamaha flute cleaning kits, and so on. It's all in there. 

I put in my hour or so doing octaves on the shinobue, of course. It's too bad the loft is in such chaos, because somewhere up there, there's my roll of black sign vinyl which I want to use to level out the places I intend to put bindings on, and then do the bindings. I really like the little thing but it can't be seen in public right now. When I'm done with it, I think it will look so good, I might send photos to Mejiro just to show what can be done.

The reason I've veered away from the shakuhachi is I've realized that playing any blow-across-the-hole flute is good training for any other, and transverse flutes seem to actually take more strength of breath. Plus I'm no longer in love with the idea of getting an "enhanced" plastic Shakuhachi Yuu from Monty Levinson, but plan to hold out for an actual bamboo one once I'm back in Hawaii. 

I'm hearing on the radio they raided the Dump. You know, Dum'old Dump, the fat idiot who polluted the White House and tried our country's Beer Hall Putsch. They raided his shithole compound in Florida because he took secret papers there that are not supposed to leave the White House. Types like him will never understand that the office of the president is bigger than any individual president, and there are papers and things the president is allowed access to, but are not his but are the people's. 

At least half of the populace of the US are on the Rethuglicans' "To Shoot" list and it seems that slowly, very slowly, they are starting to realize it. 

Things robots can't do

 I woke up at 4.  I'd stayed up most of the night, and read more of the book "Frightful's Mountain" and practiced octaves for an hour or so on the shinobue, and so I woke up at what I thought was 5, but turned out to be 4. 

Last night I'd gotten down what I thought was an empty, plastic cheapo tool box Ken had put 'way up high on top of the stacked parts drawer things in the shop here. I figured it was empty and I could clean it up and use it it to put flute stuff in. 

I have three tool boxes, all good metal ones, and wanted to free up one of those but they were all too full of stuff to think about it - even the "bike parts" one. 

The "empty" plastic tool box turned out to be heavy, and full of soldering stuff we'll never use and that I can put on Ebay so that's a win. But the tool box itself was really cheapo and the top was filmed with dirt and crud; it was kind of disgusting. So I put it outside, the only thing in it a crusty old roll of solder with like 5 turns of wire still on it. It was funny because later two bums fought over the thing. 

I figured I'd get up, pack the smaller of the things that have to go to FedEx but not so big that I'd need the trailer. Things I could carry in Whole Foods bags, hanging off the handlebars. There were 4 things like that and I packed them up. Then, it'd be logical to stop at Lowe's on the way back and I'd find a tool box or tool bag to buy, to put my flute stuff in. 

I took off at a quarter after 5, dropped off the packages, then locked the bike up at H Mart. I got some garlic, celery, and a little package of pork gyoza. I ate the gyoza sitting out front, then decided it was a really good idea to walk over to HomeGoods and Ross and see if they have one of those "art/craft" boxes I could use. It was not a good idea. 

I walked back over to H Mart and rode around to the back and the organic dumpster was a veritable cornucopia. I got all involved loading up two Whole Foods bags, one for Tom and one for myself. The one for Tom was literally heavy, on bananas and plums and melons, and red and Rainier cherries. Mine was veggies and since I like cherries, red and Rainier cherries also. 

As I rode out of there, I remembered that I was supposed to stop at Lowe's. Then I thought a bit more and realized, the "bike parts" tool box is one I hardly get into. It's tools I have never used like a bottom bracket puller and things like that, and spare light sets of which I have about 3. Plus a lot of other stuff. I could take a decent cardboard box, label it "bike parts" and put it where that tool box is kept, then clean up the tool box and I'll have a "flute parts" box. And not have to spend a penny! 

So I blew right past the turn off to go to Lowe's and went right over to Tom's. He was glad to get his load of vegetables and was hung out and talked until the sun went down. The guy who's been living in the back had a commercial-grade barbeque, the kind you set up at a fair or a farmer's market or very large party. He'd wanted something like 10 grand for it, and supposedly had gotten a business license for it, which would be part of the deal. He's left for Arizona or Texas, Tom and I can't agree, but he's gone and the thing got left and Tom got it for $50. They'd (Tom's wife was over) just cooked on it. So that's a neat story. 

We talked about suchlike things, and the story of the barbeque came about because I asked if they'd eaten, thinking I might dash on my bike and get something for the three of us, on the "You buy, I fly" plan. Tom's "car" is a big commercial truck that probably costs $1/mile just in gas. So if they hadn't barbeque'd, they'd probably have been happy to have me dash and get us gyros or something. 

I got back here, put things away, and sorted through my veggies and fruit. After that, and the cherries and peppers were washed and drying I cooked and ate a shrimp curry. I'm getting to the point where the food I cook here at home is better than almost anything I can get at a restaurant, plus cooking at home seems to be saving me a lot of money. 

On the radio today there was some weird puff piece about how "robots" (in most of the cases, pieces of software) were replacing humans and putting humans out of work. But there was hope, they said, and had a speaker who'd been in charge of writing up reports on how much this company made, and that company made. And a "robot" (software) could do this, so who needed him? So he became a personality, writing little poems about companies' revenues, and doing pieces like how he "lived like a billionaire" for a day and so on. 

I listened to this pap and thought about how things that are "human" and "artistic" have been proven to be very easily accomplished by software for years, in some cases a decade or two now. Inventing things, writing music, creating visual art, doing 1:1 talking therapy, etc. The things people are most sure robots can't do, are in fact things robots can do just fine. 

There are, however, things robots can't do. They are things humans can do quite well. They are: 

Continue working just fine without electricity or fossil fuels. That list is long, so as shorthand I'll just day everything people did before about 1850. 

Produce more of themselves without "high tech" or much tech at all. 

Do useful work on 3000-5000 kcal a day. 

Self-repair to an astounding degree

Work in conditions that tend to utterly fuck up machines. Cold, heat, dust, it's the machines that break down. 

The thing is, robots are not going to "take over the world" at least not in the way a lot of people think. The closest they might get is a situation like the Marshall Brain's neat little short story, "Manna", where there's a burger chain called Burger-G, where the kids who work there put on headphones and the computer tells them what to do. It's almost relaxing, to just put their minds in neutral while the computer tells them to empty the trash or get out more buns or what-have-you, and they get little rewards like breaks or their favorite music. Burger-making gamified! 

Even this only works with everything is working smoothly, no supply chain hiccups, no pandemics, no computer network outages, and so on. 

All of this, even if the "robots" are largely just software in computers, depends on a firehose of energy and parts and materials. This is where these future-thinkers make a huge mistake. They think energy use per capita will keep going up exponentially like it has been in recent history. 

Even as recently as the 1970s, conventional middle-class life was very low-tech compared to now. Living on Portlock Road with the millionaires when I was a kid, we had one black-and-white TV and a lot of books. We had one phone. We had one clock, in the kitchen and perhaps a mains-powered alarm clock in my parents' room. Dad had a record player and a collection of records. We had one car, and we kids had bikes. The electricity might go out for a few hours and we'd not notice until it was clearly becoming evening and the kitchen clock still said it was 3 in the afternoon. My older sister may have had a manual typewriter. 

We have to prepare for a life more simple than that. Scrap the car, more riding around on bikes and walking. Envisioning that Portlock Road place, that big back yard and the front yard also, would be gardens. Instead of dialing 543-3211 on the phone to get the correct time, we might consult a sundial to correct a wind-up clock  where the electric one was. 

It's fairly easy for me to imagine living a few rungs lower on the energy ladder than we did even in the much more energy-thrifty 1970s, but I'm an oldie. Someone who's 30, born in 1992, has grown up with everyone having their own computer, cell phone, a car per family member, computer gaming as the most popular sport, etc. If they can't imagine living like the 1970s, how will they cope with a step down from there? 

I watched a documentary last night about Cuba. It's been rough over there and one of the guys they featured is a shoe-maker who makes very good shoes. He's lucky, luckier than most Americans, because he has a skill he can take anywhere. He's leaving for somewhere else in Latin America like a lot of Cubanos are. (He was originally a gov't statistician I believe, and did shoes on the side, and his gripe was that the Communists didn't allow self-employment. I think they're doing Communism wrong if they're driving this guy out; they need guys like him.)

So Americans are worried about robots taking their job, and the kind of jobs robots *can* do are going away anyway. When the electricity's only on for a few hours a day, and you have to walk a few miles with a homemade trailer to go get water and living a basic 3rd-world lifestyle, who cares if you have a comp. sci. degree? Just like my case. The electronics technician jobs are gone and they're not coming back. Will Americans be willing to learn actually useful skills? Like gardening/farming and building soil, making and repairing essential things, and living like their ancestors did 200 years ago? 

Read a good book

 I got out all three flutes (my fancy sterling one, the one I just bought, and the shinobue) and had "great fun" playing octave exercises last night. It's equally difficult on all three. I need to get a lot more diligent about practice, because I need to get out there busking. 

The internet is dying and as I've said, it may not be around in 10 years. I just need things to hold together for the next couple of years, but the decay is becoming hard to ignore. I'd just about given up on video. Or, for example, these days in my old neighborhood in Sunnyvale, along El Camino Real, there's an REI and a Dick's Sporting Goods sort of across the street from each other. I'd like to check them out. 

So I went on the web page for Dick's, with the idea of looking at their knives and multi-tools. You can verify that they *have* knives and multi-tools, and even get an idea of what brands they stock, as these things are all text. But pictures would probably take an hour or more to load. So the internet is more of a combined Yellow Pages and Thomas Guide. You can see what's in your town, their hours and where they are, and you may learn a bit about brands and services offered, just like in the old Yellow Pages. But for things the internet is supposed to be good for, like pictures, ehhh ... that's going away. 

Amazon still works well enough, and Ebay still works well enough and that's what I'm hoping will hold together for the next few years. In the meantime, I'm getting back into books. 

The Little Free Libraries are an amazingly good source of them. Last night I read "The Red Pony" by Steinbeck, a book I've read a couple of times over the years, decades ago. But I only remembered bits of it. And I'm about halfway through "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George. It's great if you're interested in falcons and falconry.

Not being able to view video on the internet will take an adjustment, though, because I'd gotten in the habit of putting on a video that's an hour, and practicing during it and thus knowing I'd put in an hour. I'll have to forget about that, because it's gotten to the point where it takes forever to find something interesting in YouTube's ever-decreasing catalogue, and then getting it to actually play. 

The shinobue I ordered (through Amazon) from Mejiro in Japan has arrived at Ken's house, so Ken will bring it over mid-week. I'll probably get the bike tire then too. And I already picked up the Victorinox rescue knife. Those things represent well over $300, and add in my monthly pledge to the temple and call it $400. So I'm surprised, pleasantly, to see that I'll be saving $100 in the bank out of this week's pay check. 

I really need to get out there. One thing I've found is that playing outside Whole Foods markets can work out well, and contrary to what I felt was good etiquette, playing for "terraces" or gatherings of diners at outdoor tables, can work great. It does in Sunnyvale, although on Murphy Street there it's possible to play while not being too close, so people who don't like it can tune it out, but those who do, on their way out, can tip. So, markets and terraces, check. 

Mountain View has terraces also, and I'm sure the people there would rather hear something rather than that ear-pain saxophonist. "Red", the flute player, used to in fact have a steady gig playing outside the little Chinese bakery and said they actually paid him. 

I finally got going at almost 7, and rode for downtown. I rode by Nijiya and noticed they were open, and got a package of fried fish for about $6.50. I ate that at one of the tables there, while last minute shoppers dashed in and out and they closed up. 

I went around the corner to the little free library and put in 12 pounds of rice I'd weighed out in 1-lb bags, plus a large jar of "chili crisp" to make the rice taste good. I checked the other libraries for books and found nothing I wanted. 

The sidewalks were very busy around the convention center because there's an anime convention in town. I went into the "SOFA Market" to use the bathroom, then rode down to Wal-Mart. I had just under $50 in cash on me and spent around $40 of it on things like rubbing alcohol, paper towels, canned fish and meat, and so on. I even got a bottle of HEET methanol to use for dissolving lacquer for working on flutes. 

Riding back, I thought about the fact that I could allow myself to spend just a bit over $10 more out of my bank account and still save $100 this week, and how, if I detoured over to Whole Foods, I could get cheese and stuff and not feel any need to ride downtown again until mid-late next week. 

So I rode over to Whole Foods and did that, and observed how busy or un-busy it was, it now being after 8 in the evening which is the equivalent of being after 10 or 11 anywhere else. It was not that busy, although a busker might do OK. Sometimes the tips get better this late at night... 

I rode home going through San Pedro Square to see what's up there. Loud Band was playing, and what appeared to be a busker with amps and at least one guitar and a mic and so on, packing up. He had some comedy routine playing through the speaker, with the comedian saying he liked to listen to the "raunchy" records to hear the bad words, and I said "Yeah, we used to listen to this Cheech & Chong routine called 'Earache My Eye'", and the guy said, "That's old school!". Other than Loud Band and him, I didn't see any other buskers, or beggars, or crazies, etc. 

The ride home was nice and peaceful and the wind had even died down. 

Voight-Kampff

 I went to bed at about 2AM last night and woke up at 10. That works out about right. I guess yesterday was my "day off" as I didn't list or pack anything, but essentially goofed off, going to Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz. 

I put the "new" flute together and played a few notes. The headjoint has a very light out-of-round dent but it goes together fine, and at least for the notes I know, the flute seems to play OK. It also came with a gadget called a "thumb port" which  I don't think I'll need, but will go in with my flute stuff. 

Last night was the night the welding place puts their trash out and occasionally there's treasure. Last night was one of those. I was able to grab 147 (I counted later) really nice pink bubble liners, great for packing things. There was also a sandwich on top of the stuff for some reason, which I left on top of the lid when I was done. 

Unfortunately, as I was grabbing the bubble liners which only took a few minutes, a zombie rode by on a bike coming by pretty close and mumbling zombie gibberish. That could have gone badly and I'm thinking the next time I see there's a lot of stuff worth digging for, that I ought to roll the trash can up to my doorway here, get the stuff I want out, then roll it back. 

That zombie could have seen that I'd left the door open here, gotten inside, and now I've got to mount an assault on my own place. It might be nearly impossible to dislodge the zombie, which would then have a huge advantage even if it didn't find the weapons I have in here right away. My favorite technique for de-zombifying an enclosed space would be to use inert gas. Clean, simple, would deactivate zombies with a minimum of fuss, then it's just a matter of airing the place and out and getting rid of the deactivated zombie(s). Even that would be no-fuss, as it's the night the dumpster's emptied and an extra zombie or two would not be noticed in the load. But this means I'd have to have the aforementioned gas and other siege tools stored at a secondary location. Better to avoid it all in the first place. 

I keep seeing on Reddit how "homelessness" is increasing all over, and while some of it is actual homelessness, a lot of it is zombification. By which I mean what was discussed in a documentary I saw, where they tested schizophrenics and saw that the parts of the brain that normally light up when a person interacts with another person, don't light up. In other words, to a schizophrenic, persons = things. And that this is a spectrum where a lot of people who are dysfunctional but not obviously schizophrenic have this lack in brain function. 

This, I think, is why these street zombies have no idea of the social contract or of human give-and-take. Do 'em a favor and they have no concept that they owe you one in return, but instead conclude that you're "weak" and to be taken advantage of. 

So the first thing you'd want to do in evaluating and helping, if possible, the homeless is to run them through a sort of screening with the (fictional for now) Voight-Kampff machine from the movie Blade Runner and figure out who's operating at a human level and who's not. Those who are not, are the ones sent to Happy Fun Camps(tm) where they get all the junk food and drugs they like, to live out their "lives" away from us humans. 

I listed 15 things that I'd prepared yesterday, and had time to pack 5 things. I could not find one thing, bit rot strikes again. So I refunded the customer for that one - if it shows up later I'll re-list it and tell the guy he can buy it, but these things never seem to show up once they've disappeared. 

I didn't need the bike trailer so I took the things to the post office and did some shopping at 99 Ranch. The guy right after me was buying a package of butane fuel canisters so we ended up raving about how great those little butane stoves are. 

I'd spent enough to get a $1 coupon back, but those are always dated for a week later and I'm never there a week later so as usual, I put it up on the notice board where people post rooms for rent and such things. 

I didn't find much of anything for packing or anything from the (usually) bountiful dumpster. The veggie dumpster only had bundles of mint which I have no use for, and I forgot to stop and check the dumpster behind H Mart. 

Another Flute

 The guy with the flute and I had agreed on our meeting at the Scotts Valley transit station, or rather, the Tony & Alba's Pizza restaurant next door, at noon. 

Last night, after entertaining Ken and winding down for the day, I noticed the water coming out of the tap in the bathroom was a trickle compared to how it usually is. I figured either they're working on the pipes somewhere, or something's going on and there may not be water tomorrow. So I filled up three gallon jugs of water, enough to wash up in the morning and get through my day, and give me time to make other arrangements. That took a little time. 

So I went to bed at a bit past 2AM and I wanted to get up at 8. The flute guy called me at 7:30 and it's a good thing I'd just woken up on my own. I left here at 10. 

I rode over to Whole Foods and locked the bike up and walked over to Diridon Station and had about a half-hour wait. I just had to get a $2 bag of popcorn and sat at a bench in the shade that had a guy sitting there with a pack and bedroll and skateboard etc. He asked if there was food there and if it was just vending machines etc. and I said it was a little store sort of thing. He said he hadn't eaten, and had had only a sandwich last night.

He packed his stuff up and left, and came back in a few minutes. He couldn't find it. I got up and went to the little store and looked around, assuming I'm a hungry skateboarding guy. There were burritos and stuff. I asked the lady if there was a way to heat up the burritos and she said there was. I went back and told the guy "Saddle up; I'll show you in" and he grabbed his stuff again and I showed him where the little store was and left him to figure it out. 

He came back to the bench after a short while and said he's eaten, but not one of the burritos because they were $8. The cups of ramen were $2.50 which was also crazy. I wonder if he'd just settled for a cup of ramen, and should have offered him a couple dollars. He said he just travels around the West Coast, I guess meeting up with people he knows and skateboards. It makes as much sense as a way to live as anything else, these days. 

The bus came and I bought a day pass for $14. The bus didn't take much time at all to get to Scotts Valley, as it's not the weekend and the traffic wasn't bad at all. As the bus passed the summit the flute guy called me and I said I'm at the summit and will be there soon. 

I got off at the transit center and walked over to Tony & Alba's. The only minivan there was him. I looked the flute over and it looked to be in really nice shape. The case, also. I'd gotten the flute listings on Craig's List mixed up and for a bit though this flute was $200 but then had looked at the ad again and the guy only wanted $100. So  I said something like, "It's $100, right?" and he said yes and I handed over a $100 bill and then we talked about instruments for a bit - he was from a sax background and making the change to trumpet. 

Business done with, I checked out the coffee shop at the transit center. Lots of sugary stuff for fat housewives. I got a butter croissant and it was pretty good. Presently a #35 bus came, and I asked if it goes to Santa Cruz, which it does, and the day pass worked fine. I got off at the Santa Cruz transit center and noticed the Vietnamese noodle place there is gone. There's a little convenience store type place in there with trashy people milling around and a very skeptical looking clerk. 

I did a tour of Pacific Avenue, where some things have changed and some places are still there. Starving Musician is there in place of the old music store, and Book Shop Santa Cruz is the only book store left. There were a few street vendors, of jewelry and things and one guy had record albums. There were also a few street musicians, notably a really good sax player. I had some deviled eggs from the little Italian deli/sandwich shop, and walked past the restaurant "Chocolat" as the violin guy was setting up. He told me he's working three jobs, has a place to live in a "gated, senior park" and a car, out of which someone stole his old violin which I'd asked about as he was playing a different one. 

I walked back to the transit center where a #17 bus was there but it was a "hurry up and wait" situation for some reason. Eventually we got on and the ride back to Diridon Station was uneventful. 

I walked back over to Whole Foods and got a few things, and rode down to Willow Glen to look around a little because I still had lots of day left. Willow Glen seems to have a little bit of what downtown San Jose had: street musicians and people sitting at tables having actual conversations. The guitar guy was there, cranky as ever too but so far I'm on his good side. 

I rode back downtown, went by the Amazon place to pick up the Vicorinox "rescue" knife I'd ordered and a bunch of bubble mailers. And had plenty of time to get some things at Nijiya. 

I felt tired, I don't know why riding a bus is tiring but it sure can be, and treated myself to some O'Doul's near-beer from TAK Market on my way back here. The wind was really strong riding home. 

Big Time Shift

 After listing 10 things last night and forcing myself to do at least a little octaves practice on the shinobue, I went to bed a bit past midnight and went right to sleep. I woke up at maybe 3, went back to sleep, then woke up again a bit before 6. 

For a long time, for reasons of work or school, I would wake up around 6 and start my day running. I've also had long periods where I woke up around 8AM. I wanted to sleep until 8AM today but that didn't happen. 

To have the most enjoyable life back home, I need to be in the habit of getting up early, if I need to get out to do things then getting out and doing the things, then taking it easy in the middle of the day, then doing more things in the early evening, which would most likely be my busking time. 

Ken's scheduled to come by tonight and the idea is, as soon as he's gone, generally around midnight, I'll go right to bed. And I really want to hold myself to this, because I'm still sending emails back and forth with the flute guy, and right now the plan is to meet with him tomorrow. I'll need to go out to Scotts Valley on the #17 bus. My latest email to him says I'll probably be there around the middle of the day, what with visiting my bank and the time waiting for and catching the bus.