Thursday, October 6, 2022

Meanwhile in the 3rd-rate world...

 I practiced before bed last night and it's going well. I've been playing the exercises and then playing them again an octave up, going back and forth, over and over. Doing the 2nd octave was not going very well at all a couple of nights ago, my sound sort of "drying up" but now I guess I'm becoming more aware of little changes of position of the flute in my hands, and also my breath and technique getting better. This is all to the good! 

I woke up at 2:15 in the afternoon and was out the door at 2:30. First I rode past good old St. James/Zombie Park, past the staggerers and growlers and so on, all living their best zombie lives, and fortunately none of them got interested in me or my bike, and I was able to drop off packages at the post office there. 

Then the bank, and my calculations and what the bank thinks I have were only a few dollars apart so that's good. 

Then I went to Whole Foods and locked the bike up and bought a little bottle of black coffee and got on the 22 bus to Sunnyvale. Needless to say I got to observe some real characters. Most notable was a gal who was trying to find... well, no one could understand her least of all the bus driver. She kept at it though, and another guy and myself finally understood she was looking for "the muffler guy", a big statute of a lumberjack or something that at various times is holding a car muffler or a hockey stick. That's miles back, we told her, and of course she had no more money for the bus etc. We convinced her to try hopping on a bus back that way anyway, and that the driver will almost certainly let her ride back there for free because they often do let people ride for free who are in a bad spot. 

I kicked around Sunnyvale for a bit, bought some dry cured olives, checked out Han Kook supermarket which was a disappointment, and went into a place called the Halford, where I had fried zucchini strips and a half beer that was some ale connected with the Monterey FC, a soccer club. It was good, too. A couple of big beardy guys and I talked about soccer in general, the strong dollar, Europe's immigration problems and problems in general being caused by their not being open enough to immigration, and so on. It was a good ol' time really. 

I checked out a pawn shop by Santa Clara University and that was blah. They had a flute in there that might have been at a good price but at $750 I'm not biting. 

More oddball bus characters later I was back at Whole Foods and had wings and half a beer, then stopped by the Amazon place for bubble mailers, Lee's Sandwiches for some day-old croissants, and got back here. 

The "bountiful" dumpster is actually locked closed now so I think that party has ended. Interestingly, one of the free books I picked up today goes for something like $175 on Ebay and Amazon and I can't sell it myself because of the non-compete I'm under, so it will go into tonight's batch of stuff on Ebay. 


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