Flute is not trumpet

 I was up all night but still got at least an hour's practice in. Since I wasn't practicing, I'm back on page 14 in the book. 

I've been doing far too much of "trumpet-like" exercises like trying to make a tight little embouchure, doing octaves on the headjoint. I think that exercise has its place but for now I'm just going to stick with the book. The "Rockstro" alignment is working better  I think, and I still need to find out what works best for me, personally. I probably need to Google things like "right hand placement flute" too, because I can't figure out whether I want my right thumb under, or the tip against, the body of the flute. 

I had a lot of trouble with a "burbling" sound from the flute being too far rolled in and it still "wanders" a fair amount. You just know James Galway has a position that's just - click! - there and rock-solid reliable. I'm sure he's put in at least 2X the 10,000 hours though. 

And a horrible thing! I noticed a ding, like a cut from a sharp edge, right on the blowing edge of the sound hole of the flute. How in hell did that happen? The two used flutes I have, have "been around the block" and they don't have dings like this. I did a tiny bit of sanding and a lot of burnishing and rubbing and have it pretty much gone. But hell that's about a $500 head joint if I wanted to replace it. 

I slept in until 2. 

I had 4 things to pack but one was missing (because I'd gotten rid of it - that was smart) so I packed the remaining three and headed for the post office at about 5:30. For some reason my headache is bothering me and it was even before I did some exercises as I'm getting in the habit of doing at the start of my day. 

I got some celery and peppers at 99 Ranch after visiting the post office. There was a guy set up with a "keytar" and a speaker, not on the sidewalk right in front but in front of one of the "islands" in the parking lot. He didn't sound very good. I shouted out, "Play 'Free Bird'!" unhelpfully. He was gone when I came out.

Then I went up to the little Filipino store for some salted peanuts and got some near-beer at the liquor store there, then rode back. I didn't find anything other than some rather useful flat boxes (good for books and manuals) and rode back here. 

On my way out I'd gone by the cement plant and there had been a car parked by the curb, with ... some people doing something, frankly I didn't pay attention. I went by that same way coming back and there was a guy sleeping on the sidewalk. But not a homeless guy with bags and stuff and dirty clothes, this guy looked like a regular worker, clean and shaven etc. He was sleeping pretty soundly too. So I'm thinking he's drunk and passed out. At least whatever time he wakes up, at least the cement plant is right there and there's usually someone around. And some new tenants are moving into both front units in this complex and are working until pretty late getting moved in so there's light and people moving around. 

 

Ken emailed and said he's feeling better so that's good news.

Gridlocked

 I was up pretty late, and put out some filter things in a big -and heavy - box for the bums. Sure enough, pretty soon a bum came by and put the box, and the power cords he'd pulled out from under all the filters, onto the top of the trunk of his bum-car and drove off, only having them fall off a couple of times as he limped over the speed bumps (which bums cars can typically barely get over) and out of the complex, turning left of course to go to Crack Alley where the good rocks are. 

OK so he was gone, and I was all set to practice when another zombie came by, on a bike. This zombie rode up to the dumpster at the HVAC place and pretty much "lived" there for a couple of hours, doing zombie things. The damned thing danced around and arranged and re-arranged stuff, helped line up the two dumpsters there for the trash truck when it came, danced around more, etc. Meth is a wonderful drug. Eventually this zombie got on its bike and rode, with lots of looping around, over in the direction of Crack Alley. 

By this time I'd given up (any noise might attract the zombie) and gone to bed. 

I woke up around noon, and am reading on Reddit about the aftermath of the (latest) hurricane in Florida. They think there have been hundreds of deaths. Some people are saying the standard "why don't they leave?" thing, while others, even one guy who says he was very poor growing up but is a doctor now, are saying people don't leave because they don't have the money to. Another guy piped up and said when he was utterly destitute he could have gone anywhere in the country but he went where he had some family. 

This made me reflect that if I hadn't left Hawaii in my early-ish 20s I don't think I'd have left. I realize now I never should have left but at the time I was cursed with ambition and wanted to see the bigger world. I also didn't know that if I was going to get out of a place, I should have found some way to leave for Europe and settled there. But I wanted to go to the mainland and like anyone, where I had family which I did in Southern California. 

Said relatives were all spaced 100s of mile apart from each other, hated each other, and wanted just about nothing to do with me. Typical Americans. 

But it's weird to realize that even for myself and for members of my family, the only reasons any of us have left Hawaii have been the military or in my own case, getting that one-in-a-million chance to have a company move me, complete with a free apartment for the first month or two. 

Determining oneself to go to a place, and becoming a hobo to do so, because the only, way you can get there is to walk, hop trains, or hitchhike, wasn't a thing in the mid-80s. These days you have to be willing to give up just about everything, and start off in the new place from the very bottom. For instance, say you decide Ashville, SC is a place you'd like to settle down in and live. You have to be willing to take a Greyhound bus at best, start off being homeless in Asheville, and work your way up. 

This is about the process I'll go through in going home to Hawaii. I hope to not end up on the street but I am mentally prepared for it. 

Putin's Anschluss

 Last night I watched the 1st half of the 3rd part of the Ken Burns thing about the Holocaust on PBS. Yeah the video's hitchy but it does work well enough. I'm pretty sure I can buy it for $40 on DVD and I might do that, buy some Ken Burns stuff as a way to support PBS. 

While doing so, I got out the flute book, practiced a little, felt frustrated and got the trumpet out, got the first valve slide un-stuck (so it's good I got the thing out) and messed around a bit, then put it away and got the flute out again. 

I was playing an exercise fingering B for C, duh. I leafed a couple of pages back and started there. The "Rockstro" alignment is taking a little adjusting to, but I can tell it's better. I played a couple of pages and that make an hour's practice. 

A couple of days ago I did the math for the legendary 10,000 hours and I'd have to do 2.7 hours a day for 10 years to make it. In other words, if I started in right now at 3 hours a day, I'd be an "expert" at age 70. I don't know if I can do that, but that's the kind of practice time I need to become competent. 

It's a great feeling when the tone comes out pure and practicing the same exercises an octave up, I'm not too worried about not being heard, when I play out on the street. 

I went to bed and woke up around 1 with a call from Ken. He has covid so he won't be in this week. I said it's no worry, I've got money in the bank. He says he'll come in next week and the check will be for $1400. He also said he felt worse yesterday and for a guy with covid, he didn't sound that bad on the phone. 

So I got up and did a few exercises and was having a croissant with butter and some baker's chocolate when there was a knock on the door. It was an inspector who needed to take a little camera thing around and check the dimensions of the shop and take photos of things like the bathroom and check where the power panel is, and he was a smiley guy who likes to bullshit so we had a great time bullshitting a lot and eventually his work got done. The new owner is having everyone sign 4-year leases and raising their rents, and the welding guy up the way was *not* happy, the inspector said. 

Good old Putin has annexed, as far as he's concerned, some parts of Ukraine and he's drafting military-age males from there. Arm people who hate you, that'll go well. They're being mobilized with hardly any training and maybe there are some Russophiles among them but most will probably be looking for the first chance to slope off and join the Ukraine army. Even the Russians and Russophiles are a sad lot; a real bunch of Keystone Kops. 

I packed the big thing and took it up to FedEx, and got yelled at for taking some green onions from the organic dumpster out back. I stopped by the EMT education place and picked up tons and tons of "Pain Away" pills that are a mix of aspirin, Tylenol, and caffeine. Guess they make the pain go away? I'll donate them all of course. 

I stopped by Tom's and the light in the front room was on but he didn't answer my knock so he was out or passed out. I left at least half of the green onions and rode home, checking the "bountiful" dumpster which really didn't have anything at all. So I just got back in here. 

So went Monday

 I woke up at a decent time, had practiced some octaves with the flute assembled the night before and ... sounded like crap really. 

I'm beginning to think the octaves exercises are either too hard for a beginner, too "tightening" on the embouchure, or something. 

Yesterday / last night I listed 20 things on Ebay, packing about 10, and moving a bunch of stuff around to have a dedicated shelf area for motors, and finally getting the place all cleaned up for Ken to arrive. I finally called Ken around 11:30 and he's back from Italy but "jet lagged" and will come by Wednesday. At least they're back safely! I'll have to ask him about any election hype he saw - Italy's back to being Fascist for now. The average length of an Italian government is about 2 years so it's not as bad as it sounds? 

I made and ate a nice big curry and that nixed practice because then I felt bloated, a bit headache-y, plus I didn't want a curry-flavored flute. So I went to bed. 

I woke up at about 11AM after some weird dreams. My new, earlier, schedule is beginning to stick. 

I packed a few more things and rounded up some stuff to donate and headed out at 4. I dropped the donations off at the little free library in Japantown, and found some interesting books in the regular three of them I check. I dropped off the packages at the post office then rode over to the used book store and looked around. They still don't have squat for flute books but then I have all the flute books I need. I have the one series 1-4 that's based on playing popular tunes, and I have the first Trevor Wye beginner book. If I can work through the two Wye beginner books and the series of 4 based on popular tunes, that will be good progress for the next two years so no more flute books for me. 

I looked at the Vonnegut books and there's one that's kind of interesting; it's a bunch of quotes from his stuff called "Kurt Vonnegut In America" I think. I looked at the wall of DVDs and found the Ken Burns set, "The War" about WWII and it was only about $9. I'd been able to watch, sort of, the first episode that ends with the war starting and that was it - like all Ken Burns stuff it was good so I figure this set which is 6 or 8 DVD's, is a winner. At the check out I told the gal how YouTube is becoming just about unviewable these days and she agreed. 

I went back to Whole Foods and got some chicken wings and since they didn't have any near-beer, got one of those big cans of Foster's. The can can be made into a camping stove, and maybe I'll do that, I thought. I went upstairs and had my chicken wings and about half of the Foster's, the rest going into a planter downstairs. It was ... OK. 

I would say I am less sensitive to any euphoric effects of beer but much more sensitive to the smell and taste of the alcohol in it and it's not pleasant. I could actually smell the alcohol on my own breath. I felt dozy and a little bit euphoric but in a doped up way, and after rinsing the beer can out and putting it in the bike bag I craved a coffee so I went and got a can of black coffee and hung out with the petition-botherers by the bike racks while I tried to get through the coffee. 

I walked up to the hardware store and got some Simple Green and some stuff that's purported to do something for toilet bowl rings, and some free samples of some other stuff that's purported to do something for toilet bowl rings. Then hopped on the bike and headed over to Lee's Sandwiches where I got a couple bags of day-old croissants for $3, stopped by TAK Market for near-beer, and rode home. 

While riding, I thought about how that Foster's was really not cheap at all, as not only was it almost $3 but so was the coffee I needed after it. When I eat chicken wings, I want something to compliment them, and I thought, what if I got something pickle-y from the salad part of the food bar? I could get olives, pickles, that sort of thing and that would work as well or better than beer to go with chicken wings. That would go for the greasy meatballs I get sometimes too. 

I got back here and went right back out to the "bountiful" dumpster where I got some salt water chlorination things that look interesting and went back out for some tomato boxes and that's it for the night. 

A nice Sunday

 I was up pretty "late" into the early morning, and could not get motivated to practice. I need to have my practice during the day when I can really concentrate and have other things I don't care so much about - like my actual paying work - get done when my ability to concentrate is less. 

I slept until about 8AM and decided I needed more sleep so went back to sleep for a good while and looked at the clock - 8AM again. The clock needs a new battery. It was 1:30 or so. 

Ken's probably leaving Italy about now - he'd have seen at least the final run-up to the election there and maybe seen the announcement of the first Fascist leader since Mussolini. As I type, exit polls say Meloni, the Fascist, has won. 

Meloni, what a name. It reminds me of the movie Back To School, where one generation of the guy's family says something like "Keep your chin up, you're a Melone" and the next one is "Don't forget, you're a Melon". 

I really need to get geared up to get out there playing the flute. As I've mentioned, I've got two different flute method books. I've got the Wye beginner book, the first one, and then I've got a series of 4 that have an opposite approach, that of getting the student playing well-known, popular tunes as soon as possible. The Wye book has the student playing lots of exercises and unfamiliar tunes, I think to force the student to read the music and count things off. 

I appreciate the Wye approach, as there are probably far too many lazy players like myself, who will hear a thing and then just play it, without looking at the printed music. But at the same time, it's hard to maintain interest if you're playing obscure things from the 15th century. 

One thing for sure; if I'm going to get out this "holiday" season that's coming up, I need to learn a bunch of Christmas carols and a handful of other things like Danny Boy. 

I got going for downtown at about 4. First thing, I dropped off a big can of corned beef hash and a couple of books at the little free library in Japantown. It's pretty active, as the stuff I left yesterday was gone, along with a lot of things someone else had left. 

Next I rode for downtown, intending to check out the "SoFa" street fair music thing, but on the way over decided I'd have a slice of pizza at Pizza My Heart. I pointed out what might have been the lone slice of their poshest pie, as it was $6-something but it was sure good. It was kind of neat looking at all the pictures of surfers on the walls too - a lot of them names I'd known in my teens and a few were even people we'd known in person and it was nice remembering all the old beaches too. 

I rode/walked through the street fair and it was OK I guess. There were three different bands, all spaced apart fairly well, food trucks, and booths with various arts and crafts things. 

I rode down to Walmart because I wanted to get some diet 7-Up so when Ken comes over I'll have it for him to drink. They in fact did, in both cans and bottles. I got a 12-pack of cans and a few other things. 

After checking out, I heard the unmistakable sound of someone putting coins in the Coinstar. I hung around the Lotto machine and got talking with the sisters(?), Pakistani I think, who were putting a big ol' jar of coins through the machine. Explained how I'm a coin collector, said I'll buy any oddball coins ... they didn't have many at all. Out of a big plastic jar, they had one zinc penny that was all corroded, a car wash token, and a dime - "This one won't go," one of them said, and they handed it to me. "This is what I look for," I said, and handed her a $1 bill. It's a nice 1954 silver Roosevelt dime. The car wash token went back into the jar for next time. 

I rode home, in no hurry, and even for a time trailed a large family on bikes going quite slowly. It was nice, warm but not hot, and not too windy. I stopped to check out a bag of stuff left out on 3rd and it was a lot of groceries. There was good stuff like a big jar of peanut butter, instant udon noodles, etc. I decided to keep three "Tasty Bite" type packages of Indian food and put the rest out on the curb so it's easy to see what's there. Up at the corner I saw a down-and-out sort of guy with a scooter and a cardboard box on the scooter, smoking a cigarette. I told him about the food about halfway down the block, back the way I came, and he was glad to hear about it. 

Then on 10th, there was a car stopped and a gal out of it, in the middle of one lane. I thought she might need a push and stopped to help. What had actually happened is her phone and all of her cards had fallen out of her car somehow (how does that even happen?). She'd had some gal on a bike yell to her, "your cards have fallen out!" or something and she'd stopped right away, and was hunting around for her stuff. She'd found it all except for her EBT card. This woman was stout, tattooed, and her T-shirt was rather filthy. Her little boy was with her too. I helped her look but the EBT card seemed to be gone for good - she thinks the gal on the bike took it. 

As I rode off, I thought, first, how can someone use a stranger's EBT card without their PIN number? And why would a gal on a bike take just the EBT card? Why not just take it all? Scoop it up and sort it out once she's safely away. And how do your phone and all your cards fall out of your car anyway? If it was all a ruse to get someone to feel sorry for her and flip her some money then it all makes sense, but I only had about $3 on me. 

I need to get more serious about preparing

 I took some things apart today and did some looking around for one of the things first, and then tried to end the listing and of course Ebay won't let me end the listing so I added another digit to the price - if they won't pay $125 for the thing they sure won't pay $1125. The thing's sat around for years anyway and now it's parts. 

Ebay actually sent an error message saying I'm either a bot or using some kind of automated software. Me, on an old computer originally made for Windows XP and on a connection barely faster than dial-up. 

Shit like this is why I need to get a lot more serious about getting back into the busking game. Buskers are nearly extinct now, but that seems to actually work in favor of those very, very few who are the last of a vanishing species. 

In fact yesterday I was hanging out with Tom and mentioned all the regular buskers who used to be around downtown, plus an equal or greater number of passers-through. All gone now. Other characters are gone now too, like the old guy who typically had a dog and a cat, and sat, panhandling, a few doors down from Original Joe's. The last time I saw him, some official thug or "guard" or "protector of the peace and quiet of the bourgeoisie" had him standing up on the sidewalk near his blankets etc., and was talking to him. I didn't hear what was being said, but it's the first time I saw the guy standing and also the last time I saw him, ever. 

And the petition guy, annoying as he was, is gone now too. "Maybe they died," was the theory supposed by Tom and that could be the case, with covid one of the leading causes of death in the US now and likely to stay that way. 

Rabbit Trumpet Guy had at least said something about taking his van "up north" where I guess he had family or had grown up or something. So it was not surprising when he disappeared. But many others have disappeared, all around the same time. 

So it is becoming even more so, that kids are growing up never seeing an actual, live, musician. I can expect to continue to be a big hit with the kids. 

I've given up on YouTube and while videos on PBS.org are about as slow, there's not the full-lock-up thing that happens midway through, the sound's less fucked up, and with Ken Burns stuff it's less messed up that it's really not "video" at an average frame rate of 1-2 frames per second. There's a new Ken Burns series on the US's reaction to the Holocaust that's really good, and I've been able to watch the first episode and half of the second so far. 

I watched while doing octave exercises which continue to be really tricky for me. I'm not sure I should be doing to many of them. I think I'm tightening up somehow.

I need to get more serious about preparing, for if (when) things go sideways. Something happens to Ken or the internet crashes and never comes back up or some damn thing. 

Or, everything will go to plan and now I need to be able to play well enough to make survival money back home; well enough for people to be interested in me and give me a chance. 

Music is about the only thing I *can* do back home. People who are white or at least white-appearing are un-hireable for most jobs, certainly the more desirable ones but back home, even working at McDonald's is considered a "good" job, too good for anyone of lower caste to obtain. In Waikiki, non-whites can sell products, even draw caricatures, without being thrown in jail - a white-appearing person can't do this. Even being a "statue" or having some parrots for people to take pictures with will have you becoming intimately familiar with the accommodations at the city jail. But music, that last resort of the lowest caste, black in New Orleans and white in Hawaii, is sort of untouchable. 

Maybe this is because, like New Orleans, Hawaii owes so much of its economy to music. Music has powered the tourism business since the 1920s when it started. And other than its many US military bases, tourism is about all Hawaii does any more. If it weren't for Elvis singing "Blue Hawaii", the state would probably have 1/10th the population it does now. 

Another day

 Well here it is another day. I'd run flat-out of clear packing tape and ridden all over the place, from finding a place called Astec nearby which turns out to only be interested in semi-truck quantity sales, to finding tape at the storage place nearby but it's $3 a roll - nice to know it's nearby and not too expensive, but I passed. 

Then I did this epic ride from 99 Ranch where I swore I'd seen it before and my little container of food cost me over $11, to India Mart, the little convenience store nearby where tape's $4 a roll (but they might be 150-yard rolls making it a fairly decent deal) to H Mart (none) to FedEx Kinko's where it's $8 a roll(!) and my deciding to head downtown to Medex which is a furniture store now, Dai Thanh which only had narrow cellophane tape, to finally Walmart where I found some tape for $2 a roll that's OK, Duck brand. I got 5 rolls of that and a couple of other things and a lady in the line with me in the checkout told me the same tape's $1.25 at the dollar stores so that's good to know. 

It's not Ken's fault I was out of tape, it was mine for not keeping track of how much I had on hand. 

So I was able to pack the things I needed to pack, and yesterday didn't go out except to take a big load to the post office and FedEx. I didn't find anything in the way of packing materials, or anything at the "bountiful" dumpster. And it actually felt a bit cold out there, at 7PM or so, so the weather is changing. 

I've been reading, and watching, a lot of stuff about the WWII era. It seems there was a real shaking-up of the old class and caste systems, which gradually re-established themselves and were largely back in place by the time I came along and especially by the time I was trying to make it on my own as a young adult. 

College, for instance, was a huge, huge mistake. Unless you're in the top 10% at least, college will only make you poor and keep you there. Trade school is a different story - I might have made a very good welder and all that keeps me from pursuing it now is my age and the fact that welding is notoriously hard on the eyes and my eyesight is marginal enough as it is. But for some decades there my good eye was pretty good and I've always had a very steady hand. 

But the thing with college is, not only is a degree in, say, engineering, not guaranteed to get you any job but waiting on customers in a coffee shop or washing dishes somewhere, but if you are poor you're going to college on grants and loans and the thing with grants and loans is, you have to prove you're poor to get them so you're forced to never have any savings or financial assets. Right at the stage of life when savings and financial assets are the most effective. 

Outside of India Mart, a Chinese guy because of course the Italian restaurant there is owned by Chinese people, got talking with me. His family had come over in the 90s and his father, making about $3 an hour, could support 5 kids etc. We both agreed the 90s were great - anything was possible. He said they're saving their money, still renting, because they can't find anything (like a building) to buy. I told him to wait five years, holding my splayed fingers for emphasis, then buy. We ought to be about at the bottom of the real estate crash we're just starting by then. 

I wish I'd had the chance to tell him, Now imagine once you were 18 your family kicked you out of the house, never wanting to see you again. And your siblings all never wanted to have anything to do with each other. That you were utterly on your own, and had no one, family or friend, who cared whether you did well or starved in the street. In short, imagine you're part of an American family. But instead we discussed the drug problem in this country and I said that's American culture, where there's no shame connected with being a drug addict and all thinking is short-term. We agreed that Singapore was the best country in this regard, and I said also Thailand and Malaysia have the right idea. It's death or prison for decades on end (where a non-native will generally die before their sentence is up) for druggies in these places. 

I've been getting to bed relatively early, midnight to 2AM, and waking up relatively early, before noon, and generally before that and sleeping without a tons of trips to the bathroom so that's good. I think I was drinking too much coffee there. 

The bee

 I guess yesterday was a day off, because reading "The 25th Hour" took, well, many hours. Great book though. The author, through one of the characters, really calls out the modern machine-society where people try to behave more like machines than like people. 

I went out with some trash to get rid of at about 10PM and did that, got some boxes out of a dumpster on the other side of this complex, and checked the bountiful dumpster - now it's a tall dumpster with a lid. I could peek in there and see that there was not much at all in there, but now I guess I'll have to bring a step stool when I check it for stuff. 

What I'm finding in there is pretty minor lately, but it's like those games at the fair where you fish for things and they're piddling things but interesting and you never know what you'll get. Plus they throw out some nice pink antistatic foam stuff that's really handy. 

I tried again to watch things on YouTube last night and it's just a no-go. I tried watching a DW documentary and it just froze halfway through and never un-froze. 

So I am going to change how I do things: I'll get books out of the little free library to read as always, and when I'm done with them I'll take them to the Recycle Book Store and get what store credit I can, then put what they don't want back into the Little Free Library on 7th because it's generally on my way to Dai Thanh and other things downtown. With the store credit, I'll buy DVDs of any interesting video I might like to watch, even if it's stuff like Victory At Sea or old TV shows, because I'm not going to be able to watch video online except for things a few minutes long at most. 

For some reason, though, the YouTube algorithm suggested a short video to me, someone playing "The Bee" on Page 22 in the Trevor Wye book. So I watched that, and I remembered, I'd gone at least that far in the book because I remembered now, playing it. I'm on Page 20 right now but now I know I went to Page 22 at least, in the past. I don't know why my memories of playing flute before are so scant. 

I was up at 9 this morning, as I'd gone to bed around 1:30AM last night. I had a look at Reddit at good old r/collapse and it appears that since Putler's declared some kind of mobilization in Ukraine, it now costs 9000 Euro for a plane ticket from Russia to Serbia. I'm pretty sure that's something like myself flying from here to Vegas so it's not a long flight at all. I can't imagine a flight from here to Hawaii costing more than a thousand bucks even these days, one way. So it's a matter of supply-and-demand, plus good old profiteering. And desperation. 

Ukraine's got more people who want to serve in the military than they can actually use, while Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel, drafting criminals out of prisons and nuts out of mental hospitals.  In theory Russia's got plenty of "war toys" but they're dragging old WWII-era stuff out and losing things at a high rate. 

Today I got on the ball and photo'd up some things around midday, and in the process of taping up a box, realized I'm all out of clear packing tape. I finished the photo'ing and did some searching around, and found a place called Astec that sells packing materials right nearby. 

After getting lost a bit and having to come back and look at the map more closely, I found it. There was no one at the front desk, the door was locked, and all I saw was semi trucks coming and going to the loading ramps they had several of. I don't think they wanted to sell tape in the quantity I wanted to buy it in. 

No problem, I thought, I know I've seen packing tape pretty cheap at 99 Ranch. So I rode up there, got some buffet food which turned out to cost me over $11, and even the dim sum is much more expensive than it used to be. I sat and ate at the counter there where there are chairs, and also a sign saying "no eat-in" but I guess I got away with it because I was wearing my safety vest. As I ate, I heard a voice behind me and thought, "Uh-oh, this is where I'm told to leave" but it was an Indian kid with his dad, asking where the won ton wrappers are. I told them. 

They didn't have tape there, so I rode up to India Mart with no luck. The little convenience store nearby had it but wanted about $4 a roll which I thought was too much. I rode back down to H Mart and they didn't have it either. And at FedEx Kinko's, they wanted $8 a roll. 

I headed down Oakland Road for downtown. I stopped at Medex, which is now a furniture store. Dai Thanh didn't have any, just large rolls of narrow cellophane tape. I finally rode down to Walmart where they had "Duck" brand tape for a bit under $2 a roll. I got 5 rolls of that. At the checkout, a nice Mexican housewife, shopping with her husband, and I got talking about this and that and she mentioned the dollar stores have the same tape for $1.25. 

So now I had my tape, and rode home with just a stop at TAK Market for some O'Doul's and back here. I dropped things off and took the bike trailer and a step stool and had a look at the not-so-bountiful dumpster, and got a small keyboard that fits a tablet and a stick of RAM. Nothing exciting at all. 

A fairly large adjustment

 I stayed up a little late, listing things, and went to bed around 2AM. 

I woke up around 10, and started in reading the book I'd left at my bedside, and read not only that one but a much longer one, "The 25th Hour" by C. Virgil Georgiu which is about WWII. Mainly about the hellish life of concentration camps, and jails, and jail hospitals, and Displaced Person camps, and internment camps, in which people were often bounced around from one to the other for 10 years or more. It stayed true to history except at the end where the Americans are recruiting Eastern Europeans into some kind of volunteer legions against Eastern Europe; it's that or go back into camps indefinitely. The main protagonist had been in camps by this time something like 15 years and had only been a day or two before released from one and reunited with his family - wife, teenage boy already working, younger boy, and a little half-Russian child, the product of his wife's rape while he was gone. 

I'm getting more into reading books because due to the little free libraries it seems there's quite a supply, and mainly because YouTube has become just about unusable. It's OK for short things, like if I want to hear some snippet of music or how an exercise in the very popular Trevor Wye flute beginner book sounds. But forget anything like a documentary or a movie. It's just not a thing that can be done any more. 

This is a pretty big change for me, but a necessary one as the internet is not going to get any better, but only progressively worse. 

But interestingly, reading an even halfway-decent book is more engaging than anything online. And the stuff online is so dumbed-down. To give an example, back when it was possible, I watched first a recent documentary on Alan Turing. Then, because it came up as something similar, a much older one from the 1960s or so, both by the BBC. It was no contest. The older one was really excellent while the new one was pabulum. 

No fun, everyone.

 I not only finished reading that one book and read the other, but at about 10PM last night I got some other books together and was going to go to bed and read until midnight, then go to sleep. But I went to sleep a little early, I think, maybe 11PM, and woke up around 7. With a few breaks for pees, grrr. What am I going to do in a rented room back in Hawaii? Keep a chamber pot? I'm sure no one will want to hear the toilet flush at 3AM. 

So I was well awake by 8AM, the ideal time to get up under the rules of my new schedule. Perfect for getting out there to busk during the lunch hour. 

I'm glad that poster on r/flute started a discussion that reminded me of the Rockstro flute alignment. Even all these years later, Jennifer Cluff is still the best person to learn flute things from online. People can struggle for years and a simple re-alignment of the flute parts can clear up difficulties that have had them ready to quit. 

I could fork over lots of money and go to a flute teacher, and maybe I'd get one who knows about these things but chances are I'd pay $100/lesson for a hack. Someone who can't even clue me into stuff I can find myself online. 

I almost typed "on YouTube" but the truth is, the decay of the internet is becoming more and more apparent. Video is not very watchable. Shorts ones on somewhat obscure subjects like Oh I dunno, playing the flute, are still watchable. Documentaries, things lasting maybe an hour, are an exercise in annoyance and movies are out, these days. 

The "Recycle Book Store" downtown has a nice wall of DVDs and I think if I'm going to watch video from here on out, it will have to be things I get from there. I kind of like starting a documentary or a movie and halfway watching it while doing my practice, and thus also knowing I put in an hour, or an hour and a half, etc. I'll have to get out of that habit. 

The Queen's funeral is on and it seems those in charge are determined to make sure her evil lives on. Medical appointments canceled, people being arrested for saying a peep against the monarchy, amateur footballers being punished for playing, etc. 

Rockstro

 I stayed up a bit past midnight last night, mostly because I wanted to stay awake until the rain came in, but it didn't come so I went to bed. I woke up at 7:30 this morning. 

It was wet outside although it was just little sprinkles that came and went until the sun when down and then it became more of a steady soaking rain. 

I follow r/flute on Craig's List these days and someone asked a question I might have, of how to keep the flute from moving around/rotating while playing. The "Rockstro" hold was discussed and that brought back memories. The single most helpful internet resource I've found is a lady named Jennifer Cluff, and she has the only diagram of how to use the "Rockstro" flute hold. It was described by a fellow named Rockstro, back in the late 1800s. 

All it comes down to is, when you assemble the flute, you align not the center of the headjoint hole with the center of the keys, but you align the edge of said hold that's away from you, with the center of the keys. I'm glad I found this again, because I remember having this problem and also reading a lot of Jennifer Cluff material and I dimly remember coming across this and I guess assembling my flute this way because I remember having zero problems and being out busking for hours without problems. 

I read books today, finishing "The Good War" by Studs Terkel and reading "Jailbird" by Kurt Vonnegut. "The Good War" is an amazing book. One guy interviewed was paid by the US to pamper and pal around with Klaus Barbie, who, along with other high level Nazis, was supported by the US. "We", the US, wanted to know all they'd found out about the USSR. 

Another thing that stood out to me was the idea of "premature anti fascists" which comes up from several interviewees. Being anti fascist was cool when the war was one, but if you were anti fascist before then, you were really considered suspect. Like if you'd gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War, like Ernest Hemingway did.

The big 6-0

 I managed to get to bed at midnight, and sleep until a bit past 8AM, so that's going well. I don't know why I'm waking up to pee so often, like 3X a night. I think it's light sleeping, though, as it's a lot more normal for me to sleep without getting up and then doing one large pee when I get up. 

I got out another one of my "prepper store" boxes and took out stuff to donate, and left here at about 11AM. I dropped off the stuff in the little free library in Japantown, and rode over to this Veggie Fest thing being held in Discovery Park. 

Overall, that was OK. There were lots of booths, heavy on public services like Cal Fire and the Sheriff's and the water department, and the forest rangers had a pet king snake out, trying to convince a little kid it was OK to touch. I said, "I can hold the snake" and the guy let me sort of halfway hold it - they feel amazing and I told the kid it feels like when you put the back of your hand on your own cheek but he wasn't having it. 

I was all set to buy some food there but ... why, when food is vegetarian or vegan, do people have to get all weird about it? Plenty of traditional dishes are vegetarian and often vegan as well. A good traditional guacamole with chips is vegan. So is a nice bowl of hummus with some pita bread for dipping, garnished with a bit of olive oil and a kalamata olive or two. But no, they had all this weird stuff, and overpriced! Vegan tacos were 3 for $15, and they had all fruit and shit in 'em. Tacos are supposed to be a bit filling and have some "meatyness" to them, whether it's done with meat or not. So how about some tofu or wheat gluten, or mushrooms, or even boiled peanuts, with plenty of, say, pumpkin seed oil, and don't forget a small slice of avocado for garnish along with the salsa? Nope gotta have fruit and I dunno, jicama or some damn shit. So I noped out of that scene. 

I visited the snake once more, learning it was found in Hellyer Park and they kept it and raised it. And then took off in search of something to eat. 

I ended up at Lee's where I got one of their little plate lunch things and some day-old croissants because for some reason I crave croissants lately. I ate over at the college, as usual. At another bench, an Indian (I think) couple were being berated by an Asian lady about her Christian religion. I listened to her blather and concluded that people who do this must be really horrible people who've done horrible things to feel they have to do this to atone. Did she starve her children to death or do-in an elderly relative with a pillow or poison their boss? It's got to be something really bad. She eventually left, leaving the Indians to mutter, about what a pain she was, no doubt.

Then I went over to the "SoFa" area and got a coffee at what used to be Cafe Trieste, and is now some pinky-themed place where the very air smells like it will give you diabetes. A plain coffee was almost $4 with tip and they didn't take cash so I had to use my card. Years ago I was a regular there, now I can say I've been in once and don't have to do it ever again. 

I sat outside and had coffee and a croissant, and in walking back and forth saw from the posters that Symphony San Jose is going to have a concert with Tine Thing Helseth, only one of the best trumpet players in the world. If I were still playing trumpet the decision would be simple: I must go. Herb Alpert actually came through town and I didn't get that excited because he was never one of the best trumpet players in the world. But since I'm not playing trumpet any more ... 

I went down to Walmart for a few things, and on my way in, went in the wrong door and noticed I could check out the Coinstar machine and there was a handful of change in the reject slot, which I scooped up. Near the back of the store I had a look thinking there must be a bit of silver and foreign coins but it was all mundane stuff. Just 75c in regular old change. 

I stopped by Nijiya on my way back for peanuts and chewing gum, and got back in here. It's my birthday and I can take it easy.

An abnormal to me, normal schedule

 Yesterday, after having had a few hours of sleep, it was all I could do to stay up until midnight and then I hit the sack, hard. I'd only been "allowed" a few hours' sleep because of course as soon as it's 8AM I had to get the required spam phone calls or at least one, purporting to be from my medical plan but I'm not that easily fooled. 

So I was staggering by midnight and went to bed, and woke up at 6AM for some reason so I stayed up. I packed the few things that had sold, and at 10:30 left for downtown. I dropped the packages off at the post office and by that time I'd dropped a big can of corned beef hash and some other stuff off at the little free library in Japantown. 

I decided I'd take the bus to Sunnyvale, look around the old place and eat somewhere, so I waited for a while at the bus stop in front of Whole Foods where I'd locked up the bike. It took a while, and so did the ride, but I figured, that's OK because I'll take the train back; that'll be easy. 

I looked around in the Goodwill and ate a "red sea" curry at the little Thai place where I used to do that rather often when I lived in Sunnyvale, and looked around at places, and saw that there was a rather decent lunchtime crowd since they've shut off Murphy Street to traffic and there are a lot of chairs and tables outside. And by now it was close to 1, so I was seeing the tail-end of the lunch crowd. It looked like a good busking situation. 

After eating I had an espresso at the Bean Scene, which really hasn't changed over the years. I had a laugh with the guy who made my drink about the "Gritty Kitty" which they still serve. It's a sort of coffee-flavored shake with coffee beans tossed in the blender too. It's ... gritty. 

I'd actually started out to have a (expensive) bowl of ramen at the ramen place, but after I sat down they started playing loudish rap music and I suddenly thought, "Wow, I'm going to overpay for ramen, and I've got to listen to this?" and walked out, saying I forgot the time and had to meet someone. 

After I'd looked at everything, and I'd already bought a package of oil-cured olives at the Halal market by the bus stop on El Camino, I decided it was time to hop on a train and get back. That turned out to be more involved than I'd planned, because first I guess they were single-tracking so everyone had to wait on the northbound side, and then that was called off so those of us going South went back to our side, but it was all moot because for the longest time no trains came. Then two came through, one right after the other, going North, and after a while one came through going South and it was a quick ride back to Diridon. 

Once back, I treated myself to a bag of train station popcorn, and sat on a bench and ate it while watching all the lost people and people figuring out the ticket machines and the odd crazy. A crazy guy kept saying "Si" to this one machine with a touch screen, and interacting with it in his crazy way. This is when I realized that if there are lots of robots around ever, they will interact with all the crazy people because a robot designed to interact with the public is not going to know when to ignore someone. 

I walked back over to Whole Foods and bought a bag of walnuts and rode over to Dai Thanh and got some veggies, and got back here. We're supposed to have some serious rain come through from Sunday to Tuesday, so while I rode I thought about how I'll best use my Saturday, tomorrow. 

I got back here, put things away, and headed back out to get rid of a bag of trash, check the "bountiful" dumpster (it wasn't even there - I think the gravy train has just about ended here) and get a few things at H Mart. That all went without a hitch, only coming back here, there were zombies fighting in a parking lot nearby and when I got to my front door, there was a zombie on a bike digging around in the pile of stuff featuring what's left of the Coke cooler and I just got in here as quickly as I could while being unobtrusive about it. 

I think the schedule of midnight to 8AM is a good one. Ken seems to take pains to not stay (much) after midnight when he comes over, and I can go to bed just about immediately after he leaves. Getting up at 8, I can get a lot done before noon. When I was a repair tech, my daily goal was to get a lot done before noon because then I knew the day would be a good, productive one. It would allow me to get to places before they close, to busk during lunch hour, and to go to and busk at farmer's markets on the weekends. 

All of this ties in to being back in Hawaii. People are generally early risers there, to get things done before it gets too hot.

As things slowly break down

 I stayed up all night, listed 10 large things, and packed some things including a couple large ones, that had to go. When the internet died I left here, just a few minutes after 10AM, and after dumping trash at the FedEx dumpster, went up this little connecting street to get back to Rogers Avenue, but on the way noticed the lunch truck was at the Zee Medical place. 

I zoomed in, and for $9 got a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a diet Pepsi. A guy standing there was joking around about "if you can make just one more", I assumed about rounding it up to $10, and then the sandwich he had in his hand landed - plop!- on the asphalt. "Oh, no! A diet for you!" I said, commiserating. But he wasn't even annoyed, it seemed, as he picked it up and cleaned the spot up. I think he was the owner of the truck. He said, "No diet" and I said, "That's because if you say 'diet', you have to say 'die'" and we both chuckled a bit. 

I went over to Tom's and sat at the grubby table he has out in front to eat, and to marvel as the busy-ness of the area. Rogers Avenue is like one of those streets in pioneering movies, where everything's happening at once or at least trying to. Huge scrap metal trucks, a cement mixer, bums in bum-mobiles, bicycles, at times a freight train, and maybe a character or three, on their own two feet, trying their best to complicate things. 

A bum Tom's befriended who looks like a lion; instead of a beard he has a sort of mane that goes all the way around, was right in front of Tom's and I know he noticed me. I wanted to say Hi but I could not remember his name, Benjamin or something? I could not think of it and I couldn't go calling him "the lion". 

I got back here and the internet is back up for now. I got an email from Ken - his wife, who's a travel agent, had "set up a trip to Italy" and he's there. He'll be back in a couple of weeks and will pay me then. That explains the phone call I got from him at about 8 this morning, where he was trying out some kind of wi-fi calling method. His end sounded fine to me but to him, I sounded very fuzzy. 

This is why, these days, I'm what I'd call a "super saver". I could try selling off some stuff that I want to sell off anyway like a batch of headphones I have, the smartphone, and of course the trumpet. And I think I've come back around to my original plan for the Shakuhachi Yuu. I'll use it as my first attempt to make the outside look like actual bamboo, then I'll be sure I could take an "enhanced" one and make that look good - it'll certainly sound good. 

September 13

 I stayed up all night, listed 20 things, and gathered together everything that had sold. This was quite a job, as one guy had bought about 10 things and another guy 14. 

I packed all the smaller things, only about 5 of them, and took the 4 smallest with me in the morning. I went downtown and mailed those at the downtown post office. It was sure nice being out of the shop, at 79 or 80 degrees, and outside, at 62 or 63. 

After the P.O. I went to Whole Foods and got a little jar of beetroot powder, which was my reason for going downtown. It's supposed to lower blood pressure and I'm hoping it will help with the headache I seem to always have waiting in the wings, and not always waiting in the wings but taking center stage. 

I went over to Dai Thanh next and darn it, no more Chinese donuts. I asked, and the gal said the guy who made them had gone back to Viet Nam. He might be back in a month, she said. I secretly hoped he'd found a way to stay, as leaving the US is a dream for so many, but honestly I don't know how much more tenable it is vs. the Bay Area. But anyway I got some leeks, because when I was feeling really lousy, leek soup sure fixed me up.

I rode over to Philz Coffee to see if Gabriel the violinist might be about, and saw two old guys sitting at a table out front (it was the larger one, come to think of it, the "disabled" table, which is popular with everyone but I guess if someone comes up with a wheelchair the right thing to do is let them have it) and I asked them if they'd seen a violinist around here. They hadn't but asked me if I knew of a good bike shop because one of their bikes has a flat. 

I gushed to them about Bike Express over on Williams and how it's walking distance, and figured I might as well have a seat, so I settled in for a good old bull session. I went into Philz and since they didn't have croissants got a "koign aman" which is just stuffed with butter, sugar also. We talked mostly about how to fix capitalism. It pretty much came down to my theory that people like to trade freely, and they like to "win", but the game has to have the brutality removed. There have to be social mores where it's unthinkable for a person not to sleep under a roof, or have basic food and so on. I didn't say this at the time but basically: France. 

I went to the Amazon place for a handful of bubble mailers and then stayed on 3rd street right on down to TAK Market for some near-beer. I came back here and had cheese and olives and near-beer to get sleepy and went to bed around 2PM. 

I slept right around until midnight.

Heat over for now

 Of course at 10 at night, it's 62 outside and 81 in here because there's some weird law that says it must be 15-20 degrees warmer in here .... 

I stayed up all last night and packed things, and took them to the post office, FedEx, and UPS in the morning. I stopped by Tom's place to eat a couple of chicken skewers I bought at a lunch truck across the street, and I ate and watched as Tom negotiated buying some steel gates from a guy with a truck - with Tom having no cash on hand, of course. 

I'd left here at 8AM, and I noticed the traffic wasn't as bad as when I'd left before at something like 7:30. The drop-offs all went fine, and I came back by Tom's place to see how the deal went. He had the gates, which he intended to cut up to make window bars for some windows he'd installed, and the guy would come back for the money tomorrow. 

On my way back here I got two fried bean burritos and ate those, and shortly after that, did some octaves practice on the flute head joint and went to bed. 

I woke up a bit after 5, then went back to sleep again until 10PM. I guess I needed the sleep. 

I was about to write a rave review of "It Can't Happen Here" on Amazon, when I got an error message saying there's been "unusual review activity" on my account and not only can I not leave any more reviews but the ones I've left have been removed. I wrote an email to the support address they supplied, so I'll see how it goes. Frankly, leaving reviews is work the buyer puts in for free for the benefit of Amazon (and secondarily, other prospective buyers) and if I can buy there but not leave reviews, then that's fine with me. A bit less work.

It could happen here

 I've pretty much taken the day off* and am determined to read all of "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis before doing much else. I'm just a bit over 2/3rds of the way through. It's funny how, before the internet, reading used to be something I took for granted and did a lot of. 

*By day off is meant, some time reading the book but Ken called me to have me pack up  a thing for an overseas buyer that he needed dimensions and weight of, and "not over 12 inches" so I did that, and answered a bunch of Ebay questions when done with that, and after the book is read, will get right to packing up a lot of stuff to ship tomorrow. 

A change in schedule?

 I guess I lost a day there, blogging-wise anyway. Yesterday I'd stayed up all night and went to the bank in the morning, ran other errands, visited Tom for a bit, etc., and finally went to bed, rather exhausted, at around 6 in the early evening. 

I woke up at about 4AM, so that was 10 hours of sleep. I'd been able to keep it down to a relatively comfortable 80 degrees in here so sleeping was fine. 

I finally got going around 10:30 and put stuff in the little free pantry by the Peace And Justice Center downtown, namely, another huge can of corned beef hash and some "kasha" buckwheat, as I'd gotten out one of my boxes of "prepper stores" and kept pretty much all of it to use myself but I'm never going to get around to cooking that stuff. 

I went to Dai Thanh and got some ginger but they didn't have "Chinese donuts" so I went over to Academic Coffee and got a croissant, which ended up costing me $5. It was $4 and I tipped $1, and it's cashless so I had to use my card and this little machine. Blah. 

I didn't feel like it but I went over to Walmart and got stuff, and as I was checking out noticed a couple cashing in a lot of change at the Coinstar. I looked interested, and although there was a language barrier I managed to tell them I'm a coin collector and if they get any odd coins that are refused, I'll buy some of them. In the end I paid $2 that the guy seemed happy to get, for two 1964 silver quarters, a 1964 silver dime, a 1943 steel penny, a Mexican 50c piece, and a very weathered Chucky Cheese token. They'd run something close to $300 or $400 through the machine, which had also spat out a bunch of Mexican coins but I didn't want those. 

So in the end it wasn't a bad trip to Walmart, even though they didn't have the 6-bottle packs of diet 7-Up at all, and I had to settle for the last 12-pack of cans that had one end opened for some reason so it had to be handled carefully. 

I swung by the Amazon place for some bubble mailers, then stopped in at Nijiya. One of the guys working there came out and started out with "You're a regular customer..." so I was waiting for him to tell me I can't park my bike in front any more or something, but it turned out he simply advised me to "do other errands first" because he had a huge line going in there. So I took off. 

Most of the ride back, I realized I hadn't dropped off my September pledge to the temple. So I came back here to the shop, dropped things off, and started out again. It had been windy and gusty and now the wind was even stronger. In fact about the time I'd remembered about the pledge money, I was being sprinkled on a bit with large drops. It was slow going against the wind, which seemed to be going opposite the usual direction. 

I dropped off my envelope, then looked at the new chalk sidewalk painting being done. The gal doing it goes by the artist name of Momo Cha. "Peach Tea," I said to her. She said, "Yes!" and we talked a bit. I warned her about possible rain tomorrow and higher winds, and it was a pleasant little talk. 

I went back over to Nijiya and got snack things and then over to TAK Market for near-beer. Now I can stay in all day tomorrow if I like. I didn't get sprinkled on again coming home this 2nd time, but on the radio they've been talking about potential rain tomorrow and now I can stay in and listen to it pitter-patter.

Q.E.R.I.P.

 It's been hard to keep up to date on this with the heat and the internet conking out, and I expect this to only get worse over time. 

I stayed up last night and had packed two things when the internet went out. I knew a third, very large, thing had sold so I went ahead and packed it while the temperature was bearable, around 6AM. Without the internet I couldn't label it though. 

I took off with the two small things and also the shinobue, all packed up, to go back to Japan. I stopped at the lunch truck across from Tom's and got a little ham and cheese sandwich thing for $3. 

I went over to Tom's to eat it and he had his friend Rob over. Tom introduced us and told Rob all about how I'd helped him the other day when Rob's trailer, parked there at Tom's, had started to roll out into the street. Of course Tom didn't have anything for chocks handy so while Tom held onto the thing I went around and found 2X4's and stuff and chocked the wheels. I didn't realize at the time, the thing would have rolled right out onto Rogers Avenue and would have stayed there until Rob could have come by to move it with his truck (Tom's truck is a box truck with a lift gate but not really set up for towing). I guess I really did save the day. 

I finished my sandwich while the two heaved some pallets and things into stacks. I had to laugh and told them about how, when I was very little, we had two pet tortoises, "Fast & Flimsy" and "Slow & Stolid". I said I was watching the real life "Slow & Solid" (Rob) and "Fast & Flimsy" (Tom). It's a good thing Rob's a bit deaf. 

I went up to the post office and was about 20 minutes early, but that gave me time to fill out the Customs form a helpful guy at the PO box desk gave me, and lent me a pen. When it was finally time to mail it, the poor clerk had to type in the info from the card, and I'm surprised I only had to tell her a few things that were hard to read. 

$28 later, it's off to Japan. Mejiro already refunded me so it's no hurry, but I hope it gets back to them safe and sound. 

Next was 99 Ranch, which wasn't open yet. So it was me and several old Chinese people, all pacing and "jones'ing" to get in. It was pretty funny. Once it opened, I swung over by the dim sum as I'd planned to get so, er, sum, but after eating that sandwich thing I really wasn't hungry. So I got other things, and was out of there a bit after 9, maybe 9:30. The heat was already very apparent. 

I'd gotten some peanut butter mochi and wanted to stop by Tom's to share it with him but I guess he was off with Rob somewhere so I just rode back here. 

I drank a near-beer or two and had some peanuts and read more of "It Can't Happen Here" and went to bed around 10-10:30. Other than getting up a time or two to whiz, I slept until 6. It was in the high 80s in here. 

The internet was still off so I had coffee, ate peanut butter mochi, and generally futzed around until it was time to check the bountiful dumpster which by way of bounty only had a single audio cord I didn't need. At least I got a package of Romaine lettuce from the veggie dumpster. 

I got back here and tried a hard reset of this computer with no luck. So I got my "new" step stool which being taller than most is perfect for reaching the internet box, and unplugg-plugged it in and hit the reset button and slowly, it came back to life. So I was back in business and there were no things to ship that needed to go out before Monday. 

I did Ebay stuff and thought I had an hour to clean the office and bathroom but it turned out my computer was an hour off and I only realized it minutes before Ken was due to show up. Oops. So he's fine and the AC at his house is fixed in that, he's found a coil ices up and to fix it he just runs the heater to de-ice it and it's fine until next time. I said it's got to be a relief because if the AC was not working, Suzy (his wife) would need to get a hotel until this heat's over. 

Ken not only wrote out my paycheck as usual, but delivered the strangest thing: A check from the federal government for about $650. Apparently I overpaid my taxes somehow.

Even nicer, Ken's going to take the big box to FedEx for me, so all I have to worry about is small things so all I have to do is visit the downtown post office on my way to the bank. 

Ken told me he's signed a 4-year lease on this place which is good but of course the owner's raised the rent. He's going to consolidate the storage units into one, and I said I'm determined to keep the numbers good here, and have been with all the medical stuff I've been finding. 

Oh and the Queen's died. I thought something was up when it was mentioned on the radio that the new blithering idiot who's going to run the UK, a lady with the ominous name Truss, had to go up to the Queen's place in Scotland to officially take office. I guess that's not usually the case. 

As I understand it, the Queen's first foray into the mainstream of life was in WWII, where she volunteered in an Army motor pool, gassing up Jeeps or something. At least she went out and got her hands dirty. There was no global warming then (there actually was) and the main thing in life was to beat the Boche and get that war over with. Other than that, the outlook was just peachy. New technologies and post-war prosperity and so on. And what a place she's left. Will it be called "Elizabethan", the time she reigned, the way they say Victorian or Georgian? And is jug-eared Charlie King Charles now? At least he's an environmentalist. 

 

Dealing with the heat.

 I woke up at 5.

September 6 - 109 degrees

 I was up, got my 10 things listed on Ebay, didn't do any packing, and finally, after doing some octaves practice on the headjoint that didn't go very well, went to sleep at about 9AM. 

I woke up around 4, and it was 109 degrees outside. I had coffee and (almost-melted) chocolate and was able to pack 8 things to go to FedEx so larger things, but I figured, get those out of here then I can work on the first-class stuff later.  The FedEx place didn't have its usual AC on but just fans, because I think commercial places have to cut their power use especially when it's this hot.

I got out of here at 6:30, ran the stuff up, went around the back and got yelled at on the crappy loudspeaker for picking out some rather nice packages of white mushrooms out of the organic dumpster, and swung by Tom's to give him the larger packages. He had his guy Roy helping him ... or more like ... he was trying to help himself get out from under some of Roy's clutter. I'll have to point that out to him later. 

I came back here along Rogers, so I got to check the "imperfect foods" dumpsters where I got a rather unripe melon, some medjool dates "with pits" and a funny little nutrition bar.

I got back here, put things away, and went back out to check the bountiful dumpster. It's back but didn't have much. Some little sticky feet which I always find useful, and a fan. That was pretty much it. 

I got back and put those things away, and rode over to M8trix thinking I'd get out of the heat for a few hours. I'd brought the book "It Can't Happen Here" and figured I'd eat, drink, and read. I sat at the bar and ended up next to a talkative guy and got tacos and a Guinness - it was taco Tuesday so the tacos were only $5. Guinness with alcohol in it was OK, except for the alcohol. After eating my tacos and listening to the guy prattle on for a while, and he'd gone and come back with another beer in his hand, I "went to go get a coffee" and went over to the cafe for some of the drip coffee they give out for free and a croissant and actually got through a few chapters in the book. I had another coffee and a ham and cheese croissant, and read another chapter or two, and decided I'd been out of the heat long enough and rode home. 

Once I got back here I was reminded why I'd left - it was still really hot. But at least in the middle of the night now it's a mere 78 or so outside.

A breakthrough

 I got 15 things listed last night and because I felt tired (I'd also dug out all the things I need to pack) I just did octaves on the head joint. And I had a breakthrough. I need to do the low note with a small, fine, concentrated stream of air, then it's easy-peasy to do a beautiful octave. I can tell I'm doing it right when I actually feel the head join "ring" in my hands. 

I'd been doing ... I don't know. Tensing up too much, doing a wider stream of air then tightening it up (can work but doesn't last long) doing things that make sense for trumpet or shakuhachi but not the flute. 

So it's a real breakthrough. Even though I honestly think I'd played "The Stoat" before and haven't played it yet this time. 

It's 100 degrees outside and this is why Fahrenheit is dumb. Celsius makes so much more sense. Water's everywhere. It has pretty distinct states. So let's make zero where water freezes and 100 where it boils. In any case the heat wave is Higher Than Expected(tm) and lasting Longer Than Expected(tm) and no doubt these changes are happening Faster Than Expected(tm). 

I think people are going into more of a "fuck it" mode. So according to NPR, traffic fatalities are up at or past where they were sometime like the 1950s, a particularly bloody time. 

I ordered a new filter for the HEPA filter gadget I just got - it powers up and works fine, but I think what happened is, someone spent the $100 or so to buy the thing, used it and when it was time for a new filter, didn't want to pay for a new one. It's costing me $34 or so but may cost closer to $50 in the store. I'd not want to fork over $100 for the thing myself, but at the cost of a filter, it's about the same or less than I'd expect to pay to make one of those improvised filters people talk about making. And when it's red air time, I won't have to breathe so much of it. Red air doesn't actually bother me, but that's at the conscious level. It can't do me any good. 

I'm also taking the first of the huge cans of corned beef hash I bought in 2020 to donate. They're past date so I can't donate them to Yu-Ai-Kai or I would. I'm less worried about needing them these days, and if I move them out I can move the pasta I've still got up in the loft, downstairs. Pasta really does last for years but of course I'll have all my "prepper stores" either used or given away over the next two years.  

I left a bit after 6, dropped off trash and dropped off the big ol' can of corned beef hash at the Japantown little free library, and toodled on downtown. It was really hot so there were lots of zombies around, acting a bit crazier than usual - shirtless, sprawled on the sidewalk, shuffling, gibbering. The paid parking garages have amazing AC going and there's luscious cold air by the entrances and exits, and even alongside the buildings is probably quite a bit cooler  but I'm not sure how many of 'em know that. I was even thinking last night how I might get a hotel room for a couple days if it gets that bad but that's a zero-budget solution. 

I got my "Chinese donut" that I'd forgotten to get yesterday at Dai Thanh and want over to the little park to eat it. There were really hardly any people around at all. I rode down to Walmart and did some shopping to the tune of $37 and after that, wandered on home. I took a swing by the "bountiful" dumpster but it's missing so obviously there was nothing in it, but got some peppers and mushrooms from the veggie one. 

Keeping practice up

 I got my practice in last night and am up to pages 20-21. Do I have faint memories now of learning "The Stoat" on page 21, years ago? It's weird as hell. I know I had a flute and was out playing the thing and making some money, about the same as I did on trumpet in those days. But I honestly have no memory of what songs I played or how far I got in this same book back then. I can only blame it on drinking, and wonder what else I can't remember. 

In any case, I've found a guy on YouTube who seems to have recorded all the exercises in the book, and while he's not a great player he's still better to listen to than those recordings done by a computer or something. 

My main problem is the flute moving around in my hands. I don't remember this being a problem but as mentioned above, there's a lot I don't remember. I do remember eventually feeling quite secure. But there's a caveat - I was playing a student flute, the aim of which is to enable the student to make a sound and have that sound be in tune. The intermediate flute I'm playing now is capable of a "bigger" tone but I think takes being more exact about where the lips are placed in relation to the embouchure hole. Lots of practice is the only cure I can think of for this kind of thing. 

So I did a bit more than an hour last night, featuring, on almost all of the exercises, my new habit of playing them both as written and an octave up. "Making a racket" as both James Galway and my dad would put it. Playing an octave up is fun because I can get good and loud. 

It was 95 degrees inside and a relatively cool 85 or so inside. I woke up around 5, and got going for downtown. The plan was to go to Dai Thanh where I'd get a few things and a Chinese donut, which I'd eat in the park then go to Walmart and get some things. But on my way between Japantown and downtown, I found a "HEPA" air filter left out on the curb that looked like new - it still had the clear plastic over the control panel. And it fit in a Whole Foods bag so I bagged it up and went on with this thing hanging off of one handlebar. 

Now I had a bit of a load, and changed plans. I went to Dai Thanh and got more things than originally planned, like a can of coffee and a bag of frozen shrimp in addition to the little cans of coconut milk I'd originally planned to get. So now, no Walmart, as I wanted to get the shrimp home before they defrosted much. 

I took a little loop around downtown just to see how things are going. Mama Kin, which is what Cafe Stritch is being called now, was utterly dead. There was supposed to be something going on but it was open with no one in there, someone mopping the floor, 80s radio playing, and two gals eating bowls of something out front. 

There was some kind of music thing going on in the main park, the kind of thing that you have to buy tickets to, and that's about all that was going on. And I stopped at a garage sale and bought copies of Saving Private Ryan and "True Stories" by that Talking Heads guy, for $3. Japantown was really dead too - there used to be things like car shows but except for one sushi place it was all closed. 

I got back in here, divided the shrimp into three bags and put it into the freezer, and settled down and went through the bag of Da Heo brand pork rinds I'd bought at Dai Thanh. 

 

Bye-bye cornet

 The guy who wanted to buy the cornet said he'd call me, so after an hour's practice on the flute early this morning I went to bed, only to be woken up an hour or two later by the guy - he was coming over. 

So I put my bedding away and got dressed and he was here without having any trouble finding the place. He had his son with him. Both were hugely, massively ... fat. I think beyond obese, maybe morbidly obese? Their house had burned down, he said, and his son's cornet was melted into a sort of lump of metal. So his son needed a cornet and here one shows up on Craig's List. 

He looked it over and had a blow and let his son try it, and handed over two $100 bills. We talked about Hawaii and stuff, and he said how we went over in the 70s to the Big Island and it was all, "Haole Go Home!" until he said he was Portuguese then everything changed drastically. Thinking now, I was racking my brain over why there would be such a change, before realizing - it was their accents. Mainland accents. That would do it. 

I mentioned that I have a "really nice" trumpet I want to sell also, and he said, "Let me put this in the car and I'll take a look" and had trouble - "I can't walk" - walking back from the car right out front to the door here. I got the Xeno out, including the factory hard case. I tried a blow, thinking I'd impress him with some nice high C's but only made some miserable noises. Such a fickle instrument! He had a blow and liked it, "A lot easier than the cornet". I told him this model is considered very free-blowing and even tiring to play but that I'd not found it tiring, when I was out busking. 

He took down the model number, serial number, and so on and I said I'd get all the stuff for it together in one place because I was pretty sure I had a Schilke mouthpiece for it and a few other bits and pieces. So he took off and I dug around and found the Schilke and a bunch of corks and sent him an email telling him a list of what goes with it, and he's going to tell his band director "although, I'm tempted myself!". 

I'd told him although I was taking "big losses" on these horns, it makes it feel a lot better that they're going to be played in the San Jose Portuguese Band. I even know where the Portuguese Hall is now, it's right around the corner from Kumar's Island Market. 

The answer is more practice

 I got 15 things ready to list, including researching and taking apart one gadget because the parts were worth more than the whole, but by the time the stuff was ready I decided I'd done enough and called it a night. 

I got my hour of practice in and am just up to "Muffins" in the Wye book - again. The thing is, there are two beginner Wye books, and I'm only partway into the first one. I need to get a lot more determined. The book so far has a lot of exercises and a lot more work on time signatures and things like slurs and staccato than you'd expect in a beginner book, but when the student only knows a handful of notes, you have to keep it interesting somehow. 

The other series of books, 1-4, that I have that teach flute by way of popular music the student will know, get into things like Annie's Song and Greensleeves pretty early on, but I still have to get further along than I am now. 

A guy wants to buy the cornet, for $200. He says the ad isn't on Craig's List any more, and I said it's still here, for sale, and I'll have to look into why the ad is gone. Anyway, the guy wants to pay $200 and he'll either come here or I can take it to the Portuguese Music Hall in Little Portugal which might be interesting. It won't feel so bad that I'm taking a huge loss on the thing if it's going to someone who plays there. The truth is simply that I really overpaid for the thing. 

My practice went OK I guess. I did some octave exercises on the headjoint to warm up or something but mainly because they're kinda fun. And did my practice, doing a lot of playing an exercise and then playing it an octave up. But I sounded pretty crappy. The flute keeps moving around in my hands and making the sound bad. I think more practice will solve this. 

Ken had brought over the cable I'd bought on Amazon, so I was able to charge up the Galaxy S9 phone, which should bring about $200 on Craig's List. I've messed around with it a bit and I just have no interest. 

Plus I want to put the trumpet onto Craig's List because like the cornet, I'm not using it and don't plan to. 

Ken called and said the large package I'd handed off to him to ship, can't be shipped as packed w/o spending a bit over $400 which he didn't want to do. But, he said, we can split it up into two packages and pay a mere $80 each. I said when he comes by tonight to bring it by, I can pack it into something smaller while he waits. 

While waiting, I thought up a plan. The package has two plug-ins. We had four, which meant two just like 'em were still on the shelf here. So I took those, packed them in a smaller, lighter box, and weighed it etc., and not only did Ebay show viable shipping methods but the one box with the two things came to $90 so I went ahead and bought/printed the label and packaged it up. And called Ken, telling him it's a done deal and all he has to do is drop the bigger box off, because I can just take the smaller one on my post office run on Tuesday. 

So Ken came by the usual time, dropped off the bigger box, I showed him the smaller one and explained how it worked out, and then we unloaded a lot of stuff to list so there will be no shortage of things to put on Ebay. 

On r/collapse on Reddit, one of my regular reads, someone started a thread about how almost everyone there is eager for the Apocalypse or something. Many may be, but in my own case it's a combination of things that keeps me reading that sub-reddit every day. One is that it's not a bad source for a lot of news, most of it "doomy" but then most news is these days. Also, it makes me feel a bit less alone. Yeah I have Ken for a friend and see him on average for an hour or so once a week, which is a lot of friend-time for a Silicon Valley person to have. But Ken is as pure a "suburbian" as I have seen, with his beliefs that one will live forever, that the more cars a person owns the better, that real estate goes up forever and thus his daughter losing her 401k to buying a place (N. Las Vegas) that will soon have no water, is an excellent financial move, that Trump/Trumpism is "no danger to anyone" (since to a suburbian, "everyone" is that tiny slice of "pure whites" and no one else) and so on. These beliefs are not very easy to relate to. And lastly, I'm gambling that things are going to hold together for a bit longer. That we might be in something closer to 1929 than 1939. 

We *are* going to end up with some fairly serious warfare soon. We've got a healthy proxy war going on in Ukraine, and it looks like we might get something going in or around Taiwan. Wars are what capitalism does because wars are profitable. It really doesn't matter who wins as long as it's kept away from the US mainland. And it really doesn't matter how many or few of our own troops we send over. What matters is selling lots of war toys. Things have to be kept nice and hot, but not too hot, or it becomes a nuclear war which everyone loses. 

If various wars become hot enough, we'll start to see things like travel restrictions and economic depression on the home front. But in 1929, a Jew could still travel around Europe or even travel to the US, assuming the US would let them in, whereas by 1939 that was all off the table. Do I have ten years? Do I have two? I am hoping I have two. So I read r/collapse to fill in what I see when I'm out doing errands, and hear on the radio.

First day of heatwave

 I practiced some octaves on the flute headjoint and it went Meh. I was too tired to feel like doing more. 

I woke up in time to do a haircut, shave/trim including shave the back of my neck, do a good scrub-down overall, and jump into clean clothes before taking off for the bank. 

I've already gotten the money back for the bamboo shinobue from Mejiro, and they've told me it's going to be a lot cheaper for me to mail it back to them using the US Postal Service rather than DHL if I don't have a DHL account, so I thanked them for the tip and will do it that way. 

It was really warm out there. After the bank I went over to Whole Foods and got 4 meatballs and some mushrooms which only cost about $4.50, and a Lagunitas hop drink upstairs, and ended up talking with a guy about records and record collecting etc. I asked him if he knew about Needle In The Groove, and he said a friend of his owns it. He said people come in there and spend thousands at a time. We talked about old video games too, and apparently the "treasure cave" underneath Fix Laptop has only improved. It's fun running into people like that. 

I rode over to Willow Glen and it was really hot over there. I got some alcohol-free Guinness and a 6-pack of O'Doul's too, at the BevMo there. But it felt like the heat was so bad, people just didn't want to be out and about. None of the musicians or other hanger-outers were around. I almost felt a bit ill from the heat and since I'd parked my bike by Peet's, I figured I'd go in and get an espresso and some ice water but they'd closed. I was just too late. Maybe the musicians *were* around an hour earlier. 

I puttered my way back, not hurrying at all so I'd not get overheated, and pretty soon was downtown again. I noticed that downtown Willow Glen had been really hot, but because of the tall buildings in downtown San Jose, it was quite a bit cooler. Call it the canyon effect or something. 

I stopped at Nijiya for some things, then got back here, went to the "bountiful" dumpster for a few things, then got back and settled in for the night and sent a message to this one guy that he can come over and get his Ebay thing, which he did with no problem.