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.