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.