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.