Lolita

 My stomach actually felt better once I decided to call it a night, but a plan was a plan, so I went to bed early and read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which I'd been meaning to for a while. Needless to say it's a very good book, and while there's a bit of eroticism at the beginning, that's not really what the book is about. 

I still woke up at 4 in the afternoon; so much for shifting my schedule earlier. I had one package packed, and had thought of a plan to go to the market today instead of taking any packages anywhere. 

So that's what I did. I went to Nijiya and bought some things, and got cash back. Since it's so cold (gloves not optional and once I give myself a much-needed haircut, my hat will be required also) the zombies aren't out and staggering around in the numbers they are when the weather is warm. Zombie nests but they're keeping pretty "tucked in". 

I got back here and played with my food - which means I weight out some beef into 4-oz portions to freeze, trimmed the good parts from some salmon "trim" from Nijiya and put the bad parts out for the gulls, and also put some scallops or "scallops" I'm not sure, that I got last week from Dai Thanh and are merely OK and leave a smell in here when cooked. Eh, fail. At least the package was only $5 which was probably the tip-off right there. 

I'm feeling pretty good because I'm saving money pretty well, have my December pledge money set aside for the temple, and there's a school building that I'm going to donate for too. I won't ever see it, leaving for home in two years, but the decision is just whether to donate $50 or more like $100. I they're hoping for a number of families to chip in $5000 each, which is par for the course for private elementary school costs, but they sent the donation form out to everyone. 

I see and hear the news every day and I think, It's amazing I was considering various things like staying here, or moving to New Orleans and just playing my trumpet, or moving to the Pacific Northwest, or any of a number of plans. New Orleans sounded like a good fit, because I can get to everything I need along just one street car route, and being a trumpet player is a real advantage there. 

But then I saw, as we all have over the last few years, how right-wing people are all over the place and even in the places you'd least suspect - like the Pacific Northwest was originally going to be a whites-only "homeland" and they're reverting to that. And as for New Orleans, there's a "cop show" with recent reruns on YouTube, where all they do is send a camera crew out with an ambulance crew there, and in one night they've got enough crime and murder and mayhem to fill an hour's show. If the place isn't the murder capital of the US in a given year, it's not far from the top. 

Israel is out. 120 degree summers and Arabs, yes, if I lived there I'd be as obligated to hate the Arabs as much as I'd be obligated to breathe air. And it's a hustle-y, conniving, chiseling culture, which some like but which is the very opposite of the culture I was raised around in Hawaii. Plus all their ridiculous gods! The Jewish god and the Arab god and the Christian one (which comes with a bunch of weird family members) and they all want you to screw over, kill if you can, anyone outside whatever group you're in. And all waiting for the Apocalypse and many of them hoping to hurry it along. 

This is a huge difference between "Western" and Asian culture. "Western" culture believes, deeply and fervently, in the Apocalypse. That's not a thing in Asian culture which believes in a Universe that's steady-state, or an overall steady-state where Universes come and go. The measure of time, the "kalpa", is described as the length of time of the life of one Universe. There's no one way to attain enlightenment only more and less easy ways. If there's a Hell, you earn your own way there. 

For instance, in Buddhism, there are realms both above and below the human realm most people live in. Below, there's the realm of the "hungry ghosts". A common depiction of this is beings whose stomachs are large and thus need a lot of feeding, but their necks are very skinny and only a tiny bit of food can be taken in at a time. There's never enough. I can't think of a better analogy to a real-life drug addict, who can never get enough of their drug, and who typically can't begin to afford or obtain the amount they want. 

There's a realm of animals, too, and while a good number of the street zombies around here are probably not living the lives of hungry ghosts, they are certainly just existing on the animal level. Drugs are certainly a big thing in their lives, but not "the" thing. There's also fighting, stealing, eating junk food, and the tons and tons of interpersonal drama (and the occasional burning of a rival's vehicle) that I've seen played out around here.

Getting bigger all the time...

 The Big Island of Hawaii has another volcano erupting again, Mauna Loa, a name anyone who's bought those somewhat plasticky tasting chocolate ("chocolate"?) cover macadamia nuts will recognize. (I, myself, growing up as an island kid, like plasticky tasting chocolate.) 

I did my practice last night and "Rustic Dance" is starting to sound a bit better. I'm subscribed to a guy on YouTube who simply has recordings he's done of all the exercises in the book, and that's very handy. He doesn't even allow for comments, and seems to have very few viewers. I wonder if he's a flute teacher or Band instructor who put it up for his students? 

I woke up around 4:30, and had coffee, black as I always drink it these days, and a couple of vitamin C pills. I got going with my 25 packages at 5;30.  

It was cold and windy so I'm glad I brought my gloves. I put 'em on after dumping a bunch of stuff at FedEx's dumpster. 

The ride up to the post office was uneventful, but my stomach felt irritated, and then very irritated. I dropped off the packages OK, then rode up to the little Filipino market a mile or so East. I spent $25 buying all sorts of things, because I anticipate not having a chance to go anywhere else before the rain comes in. 

Now my stomach was quite irritated but that's OK because I had a plan. I went over to the 7-11 that's just a couple doors down and looked for a little carton or bottle of milk. No luck. So I got a small cup of coffee and put a lot of half and half creamers in it, and that cost me about $2.50 although the guy kept insisting I take a free muffin. I probably should have, but I had some Filipino pastries I'd bought and had planned to have one of those. Something solid plus some milk ought to fix me up, I thought. 

There's also a smoke shop there, and a bunch of homies hanging out in front, playing music with the usual "nigga" stuff and something about a Glock 19. Really, I thought, everyone's got one of those now and they ought to rap about having a Sig-Sauer or something. After my milk and pastry I went in and bought some cigarette papers because the Yamaha flute pad papers are a joke. They're made out of some fibrous stuff that's not absorbent at all. The place is ghetto as all hell, and now was full of homies discussing the football game that was on the TV but I knew that if I just went in like I do every day and did my business, no one would care about me. 

The milky coffee and roll didn't help, though, and I rode back, stopping at FedEx to drop off the packages that go there, and then making my way back here. Once back here I had some Pepto-Bismol, the other two little pastries with lots of butter, and some tea, to no avail. 

It was painful, but I got a big combination order packed that would be "overdue" if I didn't get it packed in the next few hours. Everything else can wait. 

On my way back I'd thought a lot about why my stomach might be so irritated, and then I remembered the vitamin C pills. They weren't the big "acerola" chewable ones, nor were they the original type, small and sour but at least they dissolved fast. They're some kind of very hard, oval-shaped ones made to be easy to swallow but look like they take a while to dissolve. And I'd taken them, with black coffee, on an empty stomach. Mystery solved. 

What else is there to do on a weekend...

 But sleep? It's cold out there, I'm not up to busking yet, and if I don't go out, I don't spend money. 

I did my practice last night and am moving up another page. There's a piece called "Rustic Dance" that's next and it seems tricky but I'll keep working on it. Plus there are two more low notes to learn. Since I'm practicing everything as written and then an octave up, I'm actually practicing over a fair range. 

On the radio there's a piece where they're interviewing a mother whose son, 11 years old or so, Black of course, was killed by the sheriffs. I kind of remember the case (it happened some years ago) but the internet knows nothing. According to the internet, it never happened. We're not quite to the point where Google has a "Google doodle" in honor of Kyle Rittenhouse Day, but we're getting there. 

Today I packed  25 things which is a lot of things. It really felt like Monday because I was doing so much work but it's a Sunday. Best thought of as a "school night" as, it's best to pack things and have 'em all ready to go the next day. There are always things that sell over the weekend but with what's effectively a 4-day weekend, there should be lots of packages. 

The forecast is for rain starting Wednesday or Thursday so I may not even get to the bank this week. It's good we're getting rain but like all good things it does complicate things a little. 

 

 

Saturday, woof, woof, woof!

 I got 15 things listed on Ebay last night and got my practice in. I'm aiming for an hour a day but I think gradually it needs to become more than that. Like most students progress. 

If I'm to get any Christmas busking in, I need to find some simple carols I can play and get out there. 

I went to bed in the morning and woke up around 4, then went back to sleep until 6 for more of those good old weird dreams. 

The parking lot family had the kids out and around, and their dog. I think they're tying the dog up to the guy wire of a utility pole at the far side of the parking lot from them and the dog gets bored and barks. It's a young dog in the prime of its life and pretty active, and they probably get tired of the dog in whatever cramped living space they're in. 

Other than that it's pretty quiet and calm around here. What a change from when we first moved in, and there were 2-3 groups of bums living in the parking lot here, with their yelling and fighting and so on. 

I think a lot about how day to day life will be when I move back to Hawaii. I lived so differently, when  I was a young adult out on my own, working and going to college. I owned hardly anything. If someone broke into my place, what were they going to take? My radio? I owned hardly anything more when I moved to the mainland in 1986 to just work. 

It's very different now and what changed things for me was my career on Ebay. I learned to accumulate things. Living with "preppers" in Gilroy and there only being work about half the year there, taught me to keep personal stores, of food, toiletries, etc. 

So I imagine myself living in a rented room, but there being canned food stashed away under the bed, etc. Not to the extent I have here though. I probably won't be cooking much, at least during the period, perhaps months or a year, during which I'm adjusting to retired life. 

At least in the old days, one could pay the "activity fee" at the university and that meant you could do things like use the practice rooms in the music building and use the libraries and just in general be around the campus. I could also "audit" classes, especially in flute.  

Plus I mustn't forget, the Buddhist Study Center is in this little bunch of buildings across from the main entrance to UH, that I used to go by almost daily it seemed, and they hold shakuhachi sessions twice a week. 

Oh, well, a nice boring day. I took two pieces of equipment apart and listed 15 things on Ebay so I'm getting back to my old standard of listing 50 things a week.

Buy-Nothing Day

 I got things together to list last night but didn't list them. 

I watched a movie called "In The Garden Of The Finzi" which is one of those "arty" Italian films. The atmosphere of it, needless to say, is wonderful. The main family depicted in it are wealthy, and the secondary protagonists really and truly wealthy, living on a huge estate and in a genuine castle. All are Jews, and as the racial laws of Mussolini-led Italy clamp down, the first group along with other Jews, take some refuge in the huge estate, playing tennis and engaging in various interpersonal dramas. Eventually are all rounded up and sent to the death camps of course. One young man and a gal, hopefully, have escaped. 

This was a movie that was part of a list someone on Reddit said they've watched in preparation for times to come. I don't think they're Jewish, but it doesn't matter as the Nazis 1.0 happily killed off as many non-Jews as Jews, even erstwhile good Nazis who'd been insufficiently loyal. 

I did my practice while watching this, and it went kinda Meh. I think I'd skipped two days' practice due to my headache. 

I woke up, finally, at about 6PM (I'd been up until 10 or 11AM) and my headache is there, but very slight. It appears most people have been taking this day off too, as there's usually all kinds of noise, big trucks going in and out and so on, in the morning here.  But it's been very, very quiet. 

Now's as good a time as any to talk about how tone-deaf the internet is. I see tons of ads everywhere, and they're all for things I either hate like cars, will never buy again, like alcohol, weird shit like large ladies' yoga pants (wtf?), or moving to Portugal (uhh, it's very expensive to emigrate from the US and not at all within my reach) or even really off-the-wall stuff like advertisements for fantanyl. Honestly! Tons of ads popping up in Reddit , saying essentially, "You ought to try Fantanyl, you won't even taste it or smell it, mixed into your food or drink etc., and it's really nice and strong!". 

Like fucking hell, fentanyl, really? If I get seriously bunged up and am given pain killers, anything with opiates in it like Vicodin or whatever, I'll probably never fill the prescription and get by with aspirin or even booze. Because I know how to quit booze. 

I've actually used it for a root canal I had. That thing hurt and on my way home (was going to ride my bike home but was in too much pain and called a friend to come and get me. On the way back, he suggested I buy a bottle of E&J brandy and I did. I went to bed on a coffee cup of the stuff and when pain woke me up, had another cupful and went back to sleep. It was a boozy couple of days but then I was fine and went back to my "ground level" of drinking of a beer or two at night. 

What I'm getting at, though, is I'm not even sure the internet is sane any more. Tons of money being spent on ads and they can't be having more than a very slight effect. 

Not only that, but that Bozos guy who owns Amazon complaining about lack of sales, yet Amazon's effectively walled me out and I'm not welcome back until I spend hundreds for a smart phone and more hundreds a year to keep it connected. I was already on the fence about whether Prime is worth it, and now they want me to spend over a thousand more? 

As for cars, every car ad I see makes me hate the things even more. I'm seriously considering, when I'm back in Hawaii, just getting the state ID card. That would mean using Uber or taxis if I really need to go someplace in a car. Otherwise it'd walk, bike, bus etc., and only the slower and lighter of things like electric bikes and scooters. Which is fine with me. 

Over the last few years I've voluntarily gone to doing something like 80% of my shopping in Asian markets, and 19% more in Walmart. The booze companies aren't getting money from me any more. And of the things I used to get on Amazon, I can find those in other places and who cares if I spend a little more? And then The Internet complains about decreased sales and cranks up the advertising. 

Thanksgiving day

 After getting in last night my headache was still bugging me. It only hurts when I move, haha. I managed to get 10 things together that didn't involve a lot of heavy work, lifting and so on, and listed those on Ebay. 

I watched two movies from a list someone on Reddit came up with, that he's watched to prepare himself, in a sense, to understand and deal with the coming fascism. So I have a list written out on the back of an index card, and watched the first two I could find on YouTube. 

One was "Spirit Of The Beehive" which was interesting. It was meant to convey the sense of bleakness and anti-intellectualism and general limits of existence under Franco's regime in Spain and I'd say it does a good job. I got a sense of how limited life can be there when I was over for a week in the mid-90s. 

The other one was Sophie's Choice which is a masterpiece. 

My headache was bothering me all night so I went to sleep, telling myself I'd sleep all I wanted. With the result that I'm now out of bed at 7PM! I'd been up until almost noon watching the movies so it made sense. And my headache would go away with some sleep and not having eaten any chocolate ... 

It was bad when I woke up. I don't know what I'm going to do. Take it easy I guess. There's a bunch of lifting and moving I want to do in the warehouse but I guess that will have to wait. 

I managed to take a couple of things apart, a dead oscilloscope and another thing. And it's been really quiet around here. So much so that when I got up, I heard the crows calling, probably wondering where the hell all the people were with their food scraps and lunch truck trash. I had some raw walnuts so I threw those out there so they'd have something good to eat today. 

 

WWII shit

 After Ken leaving at 1AM and my making some (meh) shrimp garlic ramen, I listed 10 things and then went to bed, being very tired. 

I woke up at around 2:30, and got out of here at 3:45.  I dropped off two small packages at the post office downtown and then went right to the bank to deposit my check and my numbers agreed with the bank's numbers down to the penny. 

I went over to the SoFa mini-mall thing to use the bathroom, and decided to try what used to be Caffe Frascati. It's some wine mom kind of place now, all pink and the very air full of sugar. I got an almond croissant and an espresso, and that cost me just under $10, over $10 with a dollar tip of course. 

I was hoping the espresso might help my headache, which was bad when I got up. Last night, as a late-night snack I'd had coffee and some dark chocolate. I figured this would tell me if dark chocolate is the reason for my headaches and today this seems to be borne out. 

It was too sweet inside and the ambiance was 2/10 outside, plus there was a very talky bum who'd been talking another guy's ear off and one the guy escaped, Mr. Talky packed up his enormous cart of crap and started off in the direction my bike was, and I was worried he might give my bike a go-over. So I finished quickly and walked up there but the bum was just going on his way. 

I went to Dai Thanh and got stuff, then over to the Amazon place which was more crowded than I've ever seen it, and picked up bubble mailers - I  got a lot of those. 

I picked up a few books on my way to Nijiya, where I got ... more things. Including a "holiday" chicken leg. In Japan, they celebrate American Thankgiving with really really good KFC chicken. It has to be ordered in advance. They have osechi which are fancy bento boxes for all kinds of things, including super big (and expensive) ones for the new year. I swear if I could hack the language I'd be really tempted to retire there. 

Instead of course it's Hawaii, "Japan Lite". I've often wanted to ask, why don't weaboos (people who idealize Japan to an unnatural degree) just move to Hawaii? There, you can you "dial" up or down, as you like, how Asian or Pacific Islander or white American you want to live. But the thing with weaboos is, they seem to think that whites are idolized in Japan, and there may be a little of that, but it's a lot less than they think there is, and in Hawaii being white is not only not special, but it puts you at a disadvantage. 

I got my butt back here with bags hanging off both handlebars, and stopped to take a few circuit boards off of a big screen TV someone had dumped on the other side of the complex. Those only cost me a small cut on one finger and that's why I keep lots of band-aids around. 

Now I'm in for the next couple of days. 

There's constant news on the radio of course ... Putin's pulling pure WWII shit on Ukraine and if he's able to, Europe in general. I wonder, when WWII started, people said, "This is some Great War shit"? Because the Great War, AKA WWI, had only ended about 20 years before. 

It's just Tuesday

 I practiced last night and got to sleep OK. I had a weird dream where I'd gotten myself back to Hawaii and as I may well end up doing, was in a very nice hotel which I would be in for a couple or a few weeks. I wandered around the Waikiki area then walked a bit towards downtown and found a very decrepit area where a guy was looking over and pulling weeds away from a building his family had owned, that had been a barbershop.

I was up at 4 or so. Maybe closer to 3:30. It doesn't matter, as I got out of here at 5. There was a *lot* of traffic so while leaving earlier is better for it being warm, the traffic can be kind of crazy. This has goods and bads. Heavy traffic gets "congealed" so no one goes very fast, and that makes is safer for me. The bads are, well, tons of cars. 

I did my drop-offs, 19 packages, so that went well. I got back here and had something to eat, and Ken called, saying he was coming over tonight. So I put things away and packed a few things, two of them large, and Ken came over his usual after-work time. 

Ken's wife had told him to find a set of dishes that are in a box in here, somewhere. Ken spent about 2 hours digging around with no luck. I even tried helping a bit. It was a lot of work for Ken, plus I could not do much with him buzzing around, and I had to have the door into the warehouse open so I was freezing. 

When Ken was finally done, with no luck, I made cups of tea for both of us and we talked about various things, and he left at about 1. He might be back tomorrow night to look for those dishes again, too. There's been a standing invitation for his wife to come over here and I'd help her look for or re-arrange any of her stuff that's stored here. Also, she could have given Ken a bit more lead time. 

I managed to foist the two big packages off on Ken, who will take them to FedEx. This means I can just go downtown tomorrow, drop off two small ones at the post office there, and go to the bank. I'll pick up some things and get right back here because Thursday's a holiday of course and Friday is a buy-nothing day for me. 

Chilly new neighbors

 I practiced last night and it's funny how a couple of the exercises that were tricky the time before, were strangely easy now. The book always has new things to learn with just about every exercise, and the latest is where there's one way to play the end the 1st time around and a different way the 2nd time. 

I don't have enough notes yet to play much in the way of actual songs. On trumpet it's pretty easy to get a fingering chart and learn a chromatic scale, although one's range will be very limited and as I've learned, may be very limited for years on-end. With flute, range is not much of a problem at least if one has played trumpet for years on end, but I feel it's best to stick to what the book teaches. 

I have new neighbors. Since the crash of '08 children growing up in parking lots has been a thing, and last night in the wee hours I heard a sound and looked at the video camera screen. It was a father, two kids one being maybe 10 and the other probably 7 or so, and a dog. They were just walking around, then walked back around to an enclosed trailer that has been here for months,  maybe over a year. That trailer and a red pickup truck have been a fixture, never moving, always here. Earlier I'd seen the truck pull in, pulling the trailer and I was surprised they'd been gone. 

I saw this small family go into the trailer and get things, and take a large suitcase into the building so I guess they're "camping out" either in the building or in the trailer, in which case all I can say is, brrr. I woke up at almost 4 and my computer still showed the temperature when I'd gone to sleep at about 7AM - 38 degrees which is about 3 degrees C. 

I'd gone to sleep to the sound of the kids frolicking outside in this temperature, probably getting a little air and walking the dog. They look like normal people, not druggies/zombies. Maybe a marriage on the rocks and the guy's got the kids and dog for "the holiday" (Thanksgiving) and he's told the other half some cock-and-bull story about having a hotel room, but really he's got his truck, his trailer, and the shop he works out of. Or maybe they've lost their place to live because of capitalism and he's been keeping the truck and trailer handy for when the time came. In any case I wish them well - if he's got a job he'll be all right. 

Since my computer temperature thing stayed on 38 degrees for so long at 4PM I decided, Fuck this, I'm not going out in cold like that. It's actually 61 right now at 5PM but dropping fast. And I've already decided I'm not going out. 

I need to change my schedule where I've got things all packed and ready to take off like a shot during the warmest part of the day, anywhere from 1-3 PM, maybe as late as 4, to get the packages sent and get back in before it's really cold. 

I'm also thinking, Thursday's Thanksgiving so everything will be closed (except places like the casino where I might go for a T'giving dinner) and that might bollix my schedule up enough that I don't visit the bank until next week. This is all OK as I'm a good saver these days. 

Not sure I get real days off any more.

 I was up late as usual futzing around. I watched a movie called "Goodnight Mr. Tom" which I learned about on r/casualUK - it seems the Brits all watched this or read the book, which is even more brutal, around middle-school age. Tough bunch, those Brits. 

I did some practice, and am having fun with the new note, F#. The exercises actually sound pretty good, kind of like music. I get momentary glimpses from time to time of how good my tone can be someday. 

I went to bed at 8AM and woke up around noon, realized I needed about 4 hours' more sleep, and woke up again at about 3:45. 

It's been getting quite cold at night, down close to freezing. Even so, at about 5AM I heard a sound outside and there went two zombies, one on a (stolen) electric rental bike and one on foot, with a huge bag of plastic bottles and cans balanced on its undead shoulders. It was 34 degrees out there. 

The only way I can figure to take something like a real day or days off, is to get good enough at flute to do what I'd considered doing with trumpet, which is to go up to the city and play, probably making at least most of the cost of a hotel room, stay over, play some more the next day, etc. There are hotels up there that are affordable because parking is extra or the parking situation is bad and for me that's fine since I don't have a car. 

This is around the time of year I'll be leaving in 2024. I can stick around just long enough to vote in the 2024 election and then leave before the big Thanksgiving rush. 

All business

 I listed 10 things last night which isn't many but most were multiples so effectively it was a lot. I went to bed without practicing because I felt like taking some time off to disengage from my normal routine, read a book, etc. 

I tried reading a science fiction book called "High Rise" which was interesting (people in a very large high-rise residential building complete with built-in schools and markets, restaurants etc. go utterly feral) but it seemed to me like there should have been some science-fiction-y reason; some virus that attacks the brains' frontal lobe or something. It was kind of dumb. 

I woke up around 4, and was having some coffee and a snack and was contemplating going right back to bed with another book, when Ken called. He was coming over to install some shelves he'd been talking about for years. 

I had maybe 20 minutes to put things away and get ready for Ken, and when he came over he was all business, just got his tools and wood and stuff and got to work and I stayed out of his way except for getting him a dustpan and also a magnet for him to find the studs to screw the supports into. 

I listed the other 10 things I'd photo'd last night but hadn't listed, and watched things on YouTube, and eventually Ken was done. He didn't even want a cup of tea, saying he had to get back home and had to get hamburgers to take home too. 

Another quick out and back that was not so quick

 I practiced last night and, indeed, went on to the page where the note F# is introduced. There are some neat sounding finger exercises on that page, and it's always good learning another note. 

Now, on trumpet there are only 7 possible finger combinations, and really only 5 that get used most of the time. But for each one, you can get 5, 7, or even more different notes depending on your skill. So as I explained to someone once, "You really gotta know where you're going ... or you'll end up somewhere else!". 

Flute is ... daunting because there are so many buttons on the thing. But I'm coming to realize that it's not like a keyboard where the keys outnumber the fingers by far. On a flute the keys really only outnumber the fingers by a bit, and by and large, the fingers stay in a nice comfortable "home position". 

I got some things packed that needed to go, including one large thing that the buyer wanted sent on their FedEx account number. Except when I tried it, I'd written the number down incorrectly and it was one digit short. When I got back here  I checked the message on Ebay and wrote the number down correctly, and realized I had time to take it back up to FedEx so I raced back over there and ... it was just weird. No phone number for the customer, and the actual address was a super-fishy-sounding one where the company ostensibly buying this thing was a medical company. So I called it off. 

I got a couple of chicken thighs from the chicken place and came back here and ate them, then sent a message to the buyer of the thing, that unless I hear from him I'll just send it the regular way on Monday. Or we can cancel the order. If the guy's running some kind of scam, he might want to just call it off. 

On my way back I was also glad I had my long bolt "explainer" with me because while I waited for a light, there was a zombie on a typical zombie bike, squeaky and shitty since once one of 'em steals a bike they never maintain it since it's easier to just steal another. I paced myself as the zombie was going in the same direction I was, and slowly. I didn't let the zombie get behind me but wanted the nasty thing ahead where I could keep an eye on it. As we got near the railroad tracks, the zombie looked me over once again, I got ready to use the "explainer", and the damned thing turned around and went over into the parking lot behind the AAA place. I sped up and went on my way - I guess the zombie decided to hunt for brains elsewhere. 

 

A quick out and back

 I practiced last night, and am about due to move to another page in the book. I'm on the one opposite the illustration of a "Native" swinging a bull-roarer. The next page looks nice and busy and introduces a new note, F#. 

I woke up at about 3, and was out of here at 4. It always seems to take me an hour to get prepared to go. Back when I had to be at my job at 7AM ready and raring to go, I used to leave my apartment at about 6:20 and my getting ready to go activities took me about 10 minutes of the 40 I had, and often got there 5 or 10 minutes early. Not these days! I have a coffee and check on Ebay and relax a bit before heading out. 

I went right over to my bank and deposited my check and my own accounting was only off by a penny. I'll take that. It's really kind of cold out, which is keeping the zombies in their lairs which is nice. They're out wandering around, but not in the numbers seen in warm weather. 

I took a package over to the FedEx on San Carlos, then to Dai Thanh for some things including a package of those really nice little cucumbers, then to the Amazon place for some bubble mailers, and finally to Nijiya for things. My treat for the night (I like to get some sort of "treat meal" to reward myself for getting through another week and having earned another pay check) was a "holiday" chicken leg/thigh from Nijiya. 

I got home - it was about 5:30 - and after putting things away and throwing a few things that were cluttering up the parking lot into the welding place's trash can which had lots of room, I settled down and ate the chicken leg - it was really good. I munched on cucumbers while checking up on things online and reading Reddit posts. 

Like someone flipped a switch

 I did some practice last night, and am paying more attention to the breath marks. I have put myself back where I was on trumpet before I moved up here to San Jose from Gilroy, about 35 miles to the south and 35 years behind of here. I still think it's worth it, though. As I've mentioned, I think there are a lot of places where a trumpet would be considered loud and rude, but a flute would be seen as being more "humble" or at least not obnoxious. Humility is not esteemed much here on the mainland but it's a big thing back home. So I think it's worth it, setting myself back for a while here. 

Plus, I am making the savings goals I've set for myself, mainly because of quitting that damn #$%@$%#@$% alcohol that had been such an "essential" part of my life for so long. I'd started drinking in my late 20s, mostly just to fit in, but at times also because I found it enjoyable, or because, on a weekend, I didn't want to think about having to go back to work on Monday at all, or even think at all. There was a Trader Joe's on the corner, a short walk from my place, and Orangeboom beer was both very cheap and and strong. I think it was something like $3 or $4 for a six pack of bottles. 

Even when I was really "skint" I drank a bit, what I could afford. There was a bar I'd go to that had beers for $2 and at least I could get one. Drinking was just part of my life. I still don't think there's anything wrong with one beer on an afternoon but if it's something that's going to grow to take all of a person's savings as well as their health... 

I woke up and packed a few more things bringing my load up to 15 packages, and got out of here a bit after 5. It was already cold out there. It's been like someone flipped a switch and suddenly it's winter. 

The drop-offs went fine and I went to both 99 Ranch and H Mart to get a few things also. Then got back here and listed all but one of the things I'd gotten ready to list. I was just listing the last one when I heard Ken pull up. 

He wrote out my check and dropped off some things to list, and didn't stay for any time at all because he's coming back tomorrow night with some things of his wife's to put on the new shelving he just put in over the weekend. 

Once he was gone I finished listing that last thing.

I never know who I'll run into

 I got up at a decent time, had coffee, and loaded the bike up with two bags of (very heavy) books. Aside from dropping off a bag of trash, I went right to the Recycle Book Store. 

I had some pretty nice stuff, but all I was offered was $17 cash or $29 trade. I took the $17 cash as I already have $22 in trade credit. 

I rode back along The Alameda/Santa Clara St., using the sidewalk a lot because it gets crowded with cars and there's not a lot of room for a bike because there are cars parked along the curb. So I was tootling along, and a guy on a bike came swooping around the corner, and we both braked but could not stop in time and ended up a a bit of a pile. 

He kept asking if I was all right and I kept saying I was fine, and that he has to be careful about going too fast, because people pop out of doorways. My only damage was I'll probably end up with a small bruise near one ankle, and the bike is 100% fine. The other guy might have an untrue wheel now because he was on a skinny tire bike. Seemed like a working-class guy, too, so maybe he just got his bike to ride to work etc. on. Serves him right if he's got to take it to Bike Express and pay a little to have his wheels trued up again. 

(I'm pretty cautious about people coming out of doorways because when we lived on Portlock Road, one of my younger sisters was riding her bike and an old lady stepped out in front of her place and my sister hit her, I believe knocking her down. My sis being a sensible kid, dashed home and hid in the loft for hours.) 

I finished taking the books to the little free library/pantry on 7th where I put them all in except for one I kind of want to at least skim and then give to Ken. 

I went over to Lee's and got a couple bags of day-old croissants and croissant-like things for $3.50, then went over to Nijiya for various things - for these last I used up most of the change in my change bag that I keep on the bike, so that worked out just about perfectly. 

It wasn't even 6 when I got back here, and already felt late. 

I practiced last night, but mostly just the tone exercises, as I felt pretty tired and did those for a bit and then went to bed. Today while out riding around I had a song in my head which turns out to be "True" by Spandau Ballet. I was able to look it up on YouTube. I was thinking about how playing the vocal part might sound pretty good on flute.  And I was thinking about how the same part would sound kind of dumb on trumpet. That's one advantage of the flute, I guess, in that you can play a lot of things that would just sound dumb or pretentious on trumpet. Once I'm good enough to get out there busking, I'll have to try "Good Riddance" by Green Day, as it's the one song that, when I played it on trumpet, never got a tip. If I play it on flute, and get a tip, then that will prove my theory. 

Gotta watch those breathing marks

 I packed 16 things last night and then got my practice in. Besides my tone going to shit because the flute moves ever so slightly in my hands, I've not been paying close enough attention to the little marks showing when to take a breath, instead taking sneaky little breaths "whenever" which are not sneaky at all. The breath marks are there for a reason. So I'm working on that. 

I'm not sure if I'll be ready to busk with the flute at all this year. I seem to be back where I was with the trumpet, where I really sounded like crap, didn't have much at all in the way of repertoire, and was probably not worth the really crappy tips I got when I busked. The more practice I get in, day in and day out, the faster I'll get through this stage. 

I should be more worried about this, but I think my savings goals are realistic and I'm making them. I want to have enough saved that I can do absolutely nothing for a year once I get back to Hawaii, and have savings still, at the end of the year off. 

I woke up around 3, had coffee and packed 4 more things to make it 20, and left at the usual time. The cold is keeping the zombies in their hidey holes, so other than the cold the ride was rather pleasant. I counted 4 broken down cars on the way, but the drivers within all seemed to be alert so no need to stop. 

After doing my drop-offs I stopped by the falafel place for a side order of pita bread. But it wasn't on the menu under "sides" so the guy gave it to me for free. They're nice people there. 

I got back here and put butter and garlic granules in the pita bread pockets, and had that along with a can of fish in "paprika sauce" from Walmart, that was ehh... OK. I was hoping for an oily sauce but it's just a flour-based sauce. I like trying different kinds of canned fish from Walmart though, as they seem to always get new kinds in. 

I guess the Earth has a human population of 8 billion now. I remember when I was a kid in the 70s, reading about how the Earth was 4 billion years old and how the human population was 4 billion, so I figured that was just about right. 

I guess the goal of this game we're in is to pump up the population just as far as we can go, so we have as spectacular and horrible a crash as possible, and leave the Earth as unlivable for any surviving living things as possible. I think this is why my parents had 5 kids (they tried for 6) in the late 50s to early-mid 60s and every other pair of parents were doing the same. 

My four siblings and I have opted out. My Evil Rich(tm) aunt has had one daughter and I have no idea if she had kids but I think not. My boss, from what's now considered a large family himself, has had one daughter who is so far childless. Of his wife's two sons from a previous marriage, one has a daughter who I'm not even sure he fathered. This laying down on the job has the Christofascists extremely angry, of course, hence the attempts to set up the US as a draconian society where women are mere breeders and breed they shall, in parallel with a popular book and TV series that many compare this vision of the US to. 

I think the rate of population increase is another billion every decade, so I guess I'll have a fair chance to live to see it become 9 billion, and some chance of seeing it increase to the magic number of 10 billion. During that time, I will undoubtedly see the vanishing of elephants, rhinos, chimpanzees and gorillas and orangutans in the wild, very possibly whales and orcas, tuna, and lots of other species that simply must go because the object of the game is to cover the Earth with as many humans as physically possible. 

Another collapse-y day

 I practiced last night even though I didn't want to, it was tempting to just go to bed but I practiced and did a good hour or a bit more, and it went pretty well. I have to build up my skill for when I can get back out there. 

I used the Amosan before bed and when I got up my mouth was not all the way better but it wasn't worse then the night before, so I think it might be on the mend. 

I got up at around 1, and was out the door at a bit past 2. I went to Whole Foods of course, bought some walnuts because I'm just about out (and the ones at Walmart aren't really any cheaper and are too dry) and got some money back. I rode over to Falafel's Drive In where I got a burger and onion rings, which were pretty Meh. People go on about how that place is great but it's more like a big nostalgia thing. 

In fact Falafel's Drive In reminds me of a place in Southern California called the Rock Store, which is a big deal if you're a motorcyclist. The only thing special about it is people think there's something special about it. In all fairness, at least the Rock Store had beer, pretty decent food, and you could meet some interesting people there. Like I met Arnold Schwartzenegger. Falafel's Drive In is just really Meh. Dry burger, dry onion rings, screaming kids, my bike got into a family picture, and the owner and I talked about classic 70's rock a bit. Blah. 

I rode over to the Verizon place (had to cross a very busy/dangerous intersection) and once they got bored with gossiping and hanging out, they got around to me and the gal told me I can use their handy-dandy new kiosk to pay my account up. I tried it out and it said it's not set up for payments. I walked out. 

I rode back over to Walmart where I got a bunch of things, got some bubble mailers at the Amazon place, got a few things at Nijiya, and got back here. I was amazed to see it was only 6PM when I was back, as it felt much later. 

A few hours later I tried fiddling around with the customer service on my phone and amazingly, was able to use the automated system to make a payment using my new card, and set it to auto-pay. Interestingly, my account is a $30 a month "smart phone" account so I wonder if this means, if I get a smart phone, my monthly bill won't go up. It may well be the case, where it's an account with what to a lot of users is hardly any data or call time, but it works fine for me. 

I wonder if they could take the "SIM" card I guess I have in my flip phone, and put it into the Galaxy S9 I have sitting around here, and thus I'd have a smart phone on this same plan? The one thing that slows me down is not being able to text very well, and everyone's on text these days. 

 

Out riding around, I'm amazed at how run-down large parts of San Jose look. I have a feeling with tons of internet companies losing money lately, I won't be around to see Google take over downtown and turn it into some kind of a Google theme park as there had been talk of their doing. There's a large area around the train station and extending along San Carlos that's really run down and we're talking, I've gone into places and they had dirt floors. But if companies from Facebook to Amazon to Shitter, er, Twitter, are losing money like crazy, then I have to believe this will affect Google also and at least they'll be a bit more cautious. 

I keep seeing little indications of things heading downward. For instance, not only is Amazon losing money but I see them getting chintzier with their packing supplies. Shipping a lot of things that used to go into bubble mailers, in single-thickness plastic envelopes. Besides, as I've experienced myself, cutting out customers who aren't in the Smart Phone Club. They don't want people like me who order coffee filters and vacuum cleaner bags and zip ties, they want people who will spend serious money. They probably literally can't afford customers like me, hence their making it impossible to log into my account. 

On Reddit I read subreddits like r/povertyfinance but I've become dis-interested because they really *are* in some serious poverty. But I wasn't interested in r/personalfinance because it seemed all the discussions started with things like, "I'm 24 and have saved $80k in the bank....". While there are still those types on there, there are actually people on there who I can relate to now. Maybe it's the crypto crash and the many thousands of tech workers being laid off, but I'm starting to see people on the same channel of reality I'm on there. 

I know things are "gearing down" but I'm still assuming that things will degrade slowly, ever downward but I'll be able to keep pooping along here working for Ken for the next two years, keep up the hypernormalisation. 

Really stupid idea

 On my way back last night, having stopped at Whole Foods for some things, I saw, in the beer cooler among all the other beers, pint bottles of Guinness. These used to be an old standby for me, way back before my drinking got bad. I'd have my pint of Guinness in the evening and I was fine. And the last time I'd had a beer, I'd gotten a tall can of Lagunitas "Lil' Sumpin'" and it had made me feel really euphoric for a couple of hours. So I'll have a pint of Guinness for old times' sake, I thought. I'd drink while reading r/casualUK on Reddit, I thought. It'll be great. 

After getting settled in back home, I got out some walnuts and black chocolate and brewed up a coffee and settled in to enjoy my Guinness. Enjoyable, it was really not. I only felt a tiny bit euphoric, and it brought my headache back. So now I was all headache-y and didn't feel like practicing so I didn't. If anything my headache is worse now, the next day. It was a really stupid idea.

I used some Amosan before bed but my mouth and throat still hurt. I can understand maybe a piece of food get jammed in between my tooth and gum, but why does my throat hurt too? I'll keep using the Amosan though. If this doesn't get better, I guess I'll have to see my dentist.

I'd tried hacking into my Verizon account again last night, but it was no-go. And waking up at 1, I have a couple of "we want you back" message from them. Yeah, well, I want me back too. 

I left here at almost 2, went to Whole Foods and got some tandoori chicken on rice and a soda water, and the chicken, I think, was not fresh. This is where I found out how "white" Whole Foods is: So much so that there was NO hot sauce anywhere. They had salt, not sure about pepper because I didn't see that either, ketchup, and a few kinds of vinegar in the salad area. I ended up using some of the chili flakes from the pizza-slice bar, by unscrewing the cap because if you're really, *really* white, you want to shake that bottle of red pepper flakes over your pizza without actually, you know, getting some actually on it. 

I was able to eat about half of the chicken and rice, and left the rest on a trash can out on the public street where a bum will find it - bums can eat anything. 

Waiting for the bus, I got talking with a guy who told me he'd lived out here for about 40 years, lived in Buffalo, NY now, and had traveled from Buffalo to here on Amtrak. It's about 3 days traveling, but "beats flying".  Interestingly, for some reason my Clipper card works so maybe under the new system, it just takes longer for the card to be updated. Newer = slower these days.

I got where I needed to go and then went to India Cash & Carry which I'd not been in for years. I got some tea, some Indian sweets, some veggies, and some "filter coffee decoction" , a package of 5 tubes of liquid in a little box. It's 80% coffee and 20% chicory and that's what decided me, because chicory coffee is best coffee. 

Then I went into Han Kook Supermarket where I was pretty sure they ought to have xylitol gum and they did, the minty kind and then when the guy in front of me grabbed a bottle of the black minty kind with guarana in it, I realized they had that too - and at a good price - and got some of that too. They had a security guard at the front who made me leave my bag from the Indian place with him, but that's OK, they're right to be suspicious about anyone non-Korean going in there. 

The bus coming back was a #522 so I got back to Whole Foods pretty quickly, went in and got some half and half to use with the coffee liquid as it's called for in the directions, and saddled up and rode home. It was windy and cold! 

Thus I never got over to the phone place. In theory, I'd have been able to get back to Whole Foods and then ride over to the phone place and there would be plenty of time to get my phone situation fixed. But it was seriously windy and cold and all I wanted to do was go home so I did that. I'll have to get to the phone place tomorrow and if anything, get an earlier start. 

 

Kick Veterans In The Ass Day

 Ahh my favorite holiday, Kick Veterans In The Ass Day. 

I managed to get some things listed last night, and some practice, after all the work and frustration and drama last night, I was pretty tired so I did a lot of the tone exercise and the finger exercises a couple pages later. I also worked out the first thing that's like actual music that they teach you in the Mel Bay Guitar Method. Anyone who's been through that book will know it, where ol' Mel gives you something musical-sounding to play with the first handful of notes you learn, so you can show your friends (more like your Mom) that the guitar was not money down the drain. I called it a night and went to bed. 

I didn't use any Amosan last night, thinking my mouth was feeling a lot better but when I got up it felt bad again. Not bad enough to wake me up, but not as much better as I thought it ought to feel so I'll have to make sure to use the Amosan tonight before bed. 

I got going a bit after 2 in the afternoon, went to Whole Foods and bought a coffee and some sushi, the sushi mainly because it doesn't need much chewing, and also put $20 on my Clipper Card. They have a new system with a little handheld terminal thing that a higher-up employee had to use, but it all seemed OK. 

I took my coffee and sushi and put 'em in a Walmart bag I had with me on the bike and went to the bus stop and the bus came just about right away. A place I wanted to do business with in Sunnyvale was closed for veteran's day though. So I sat on a curb in the parking lot and had my sushi and coffee.

I walked over to the Verizon store that's behind the REI, next to the Foodland. It turned out they could not help me because I don't have a smart phone, and I need to go to a "real" Verizon store, not an "authorized reseller" like they are. At least I got to use the bathroom in the Safeway and found a Canadian dime in the Coinstar.

Fair enough. I got back on the bus and stopped off at another place to do some business I'd planned and that went fine. The one thing that went fine. Then on the bus again (by now it was dark, and cold) back to Whole Foods. All this time, my Clipper card had been registering as "Invalid Card" on the card readers and the drivers just waved me though. Maybe they're seeing a lot of this lately. 

I got a few things at Whole Foods like eggs, and rode back here, finding a couple of interesting books on the way. 

I'd left without even checking in with Ebay, so now that I'm back I checked with Ebay and now, although I've not had to do it for at least a couple of years, maybe three, I have to do this 3-part dance where I try to log in, the Secret Code Number is sent to Ken's phone, and I'm on the phone with Ken who gives it to me, and I log in. Without a working phone I can't do this so I'm shut out of Ebay until I get a working phone or Ken begins to wonder what's going on and comes over. Am I glad I got all the shipping I could, sent out yesterday! 

So now I need to either find a "real" Verizon store and get my phone working again, or say fuck it and get set up with a smart phone.  

After dinner and relaxing for a while, I tried hacking into my Verizon account again and it's no go. So I've got a Verizon store lined up to ride to tomorrow and if they can't make things work for me I'm going to go with Boost Mobile because it seems I can pay $20 or $30 a month even if I get a smart phone while Verizon wants to charge $60 a month. 

The only real change for me in going to a smart phone is I'll be able to do text as well as talk, and since they all have pretty decent cameras in them these days I might start putting some photos in this blog. And I might use it to check Google Maps occasionally. That's about it - no movies, no games, nothing that's going to run up against even the most modest data cap. 

What a difference 2 hours make

 I didn't list anything last night but settled for putting away the stuff I've listed for the past week or so, and that was a lot of stuff! And I packed about 13 things to grab and go, to the post office. 

I didn't feel like practicing at first but I did feel like having something to eat so I had some canned mackerel and some nice, lovely, raw celery, my favorite snack. I ate this while watching a documentary or something, then practiced, noticing when  I was about done that I'd neglected to chew gum after eating, but since it was raw celery my mouth was pretty clean. No big deal, I thought. 

Practice went well, and when I get discouraged I think about what the guys next door are hearing, because they *are* hearing me, as they congregate outside in the early morning. And what they're hearing is starting to sound more like music. 

It's a big improvement over my trumpet practice, frankly, where I got to a certain point in the Rubank book and got stuck on the same three exercises, not able to reliably go past them, higher in the staff. 

I went to bed at about 8AM or maybe 8:30. I was dreaming some weird dream when I woke up due to pain in my right lower molars. It was bad enough to wake me up ... 

I could not get to sleep so eventually I got up, used some original Listerine, had a cup of decaf Ty-Phoo tea and a couple of aspirin for the pain, and got out this stuff called Amosan I'd gotten a while ago for an irritated tongue. The stuff tastes soapy and one is not to swallow, but after that I was able to go back to sleep and got up at 5. 

I can now tell what I suspected - it's not a toothache but some kind of irritation of the gums back there. I'm thinking a piece of celery got back in there and in the same way you can eat certain snack foods and scrape the hell out of the roof of your mouth without being aware of it at the time, I'd irritated that area with some sharp little piece of celery. Somehow I was able to eat the celery and then practice for an hour and go to bed without feeling it until 2 hours later. 

I took off with 13 packages at about a quarter to 6, got 'em dropped off, wow there was a lot of traffic. I guess this is effectively Friday for a lot of people, due to the holiday. And Thursdays always had heavier traffic due to some people working a 4-day week. Except the traffic, it was pretty nice. No bum encounters, etc.  

I got back here and relaxed a bit and ate some dinner, and got the place all cleaned up and the internet cut out although I tried every trick I knew to get it working again. Ken came by at the usual time and so he tried every trick he knew, most of them the same things I'd done, and then it started working again as suddenly as it had stopped. So that was fun. As things get worse, outages of various  types can be expected to happen more often. 

Ken had forgotten his check book because of course he did, and I said the bank's closed tomorrow and I'd probably not deposit the check until I got next week's to deposit. He could just write me a single check for both weeks, next week. So he'll do that. 

Not quite as horrible as I thought it would be

 Well, the election results are pretty much all in, and the election didn't turn out as horrible as many thought it would turn out to be. "Dr." Oz got thrown out, some other bad guys got thrown out, a bunch of good guys won, here in San Jose we might be stuck with that Mahan idiot but I'm sure he'll do a bad enough job that he'll immunize the city against voting for any Republicans for mayor for a while. 

I did my practice last night, and did a new page in the book, page 24. I remember the illustration of the "native' swinging a bull-roarer but I don't remember if I played that page in the past. I may have looked at the music on the page to see what was ahead and not played it but counted out the rhythm of the notes. 

I got to bed around 8AM I think, woke up at 1:30, "rested my eyes" and got up at 4. 

I packed 4 large/heavy things to take to FedEx, and took off at about 6:30. I got a real fright too, as I passed by a side-street that's had a bum camp. I heard the most horrifying sound, and was trying to figure out if it was a zombie making horrible zombie sounds, and it was gaining on me. I finally figured out that it was a zombie in a zombie truck with a zombie dog/puppy that was barking/howling it's undead head off, its voice all weird-sounding from hollering for its very existence for an extended period of time. Maybe the thing was traded for a rock of crack, or maybe it was going to be the centerpiece of tonight's cookout. Not My Business and I was glad to get away from there.

As I was packing Ken had called to say he'll come by tomorrow night instead of tonight. Also, the post office is closed on Friday so I'll have to ship out all I can tomorrow.  My bank will be closed on Friday so I'll have to wait until next week to deposit the check I'll get tomorrow night. Good old Veterans' Day - making life complicated for veterans. I didn't even realize this Friday was a holiday until someone said something about it on the radio. 

There's a lot of talk about the election results on the radio, and also the perennial mention of how the minimum wage in (blank) isn't enough for a person to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. Well, in my experience that was always the case. The old-time "social contract" was, at least up through the 90s, that if you worked, you got to sleep under a roof. 

So I checked the Hawaii minimum wage, which is $12, and did the math, showing a month's income is about 2 grand and after taxes are taken out, 25%, that leaves $1500, which is enough to live on and rent a single room. Even these days. At 1/3 of one's take-home pay, it means $500 for a room and the other $1000 to do other things with. At 1/3 of gross pay that's about $700 for room rent which is very do-able even these days. 

The key to making these numbers work is to not smoke, not drink, and not waste money on a motor vehicle.  A lot of people complain about the high cost of living there because of the island thing of feeling like you're missing out if you don't have a car like mainland people do, and drink like mainland people do, and at least in the past, smoke cigs like they do on the mainland (even if you find Marlboros rank and can only smoke Kools, the official cigarette of the 50th state). 

On Reddit someone is congratulating themselves on getting an electrical engineering degree and making $60k a year. Well, a full time job at Hawaii's minimum wage will earn you $25k a year, and if you can double that, by getting some grubby but necessary blue collar job, ideally for some branch of government, then you'll get that same amount without going a quarter-million dollars into debt for a degree that's damned hard to get, and comes with a side of zero job security and the probability of having to cash out and live off of your 401k and stack shelves at the dollar store every 7-10 years because such is the life of a tech worker. 

Even on my old early-mid 1980s financial routine, if I worked at it I could save $200 a month and as noted earlier, that's $2400 a year, and after 4 years just about 10 grand. If I'd stayed the hell away from college and just worked and enjoyed myself, I'd have a solid middle-class life now. Just work, go fishing and shelling and learning music when not working, and save, and all this while I was young and healthy so there'd be no chance of losing it all due to illness, and then I'd be set. There was even a time I could have bought the old house on Portlock Road and who knows, that time may come again because the US economy seems to be going through more and more extreme oscillations. 

The money cycle

 I got 25 things ready to ship but pretty soon I was late enough that I decided to set them aside and have some dinner and practice. 

Practice went fairly well; due to a little peeled place on my lip it was interesting - I was able to get a good tone an octave up (when the flute wasn't moving slightly in my hands and messing things up) but on the lower octave it was not great - I think because it uses a larger part of my lip and was affected by the little peeling place. This would have been a killer on trumpet though. 

I went to bed and had weird dreams. One was about having, and then losing, my old SRX-6 motorcycle. I was in some town where everyone was in party mode, and while the street was not jammed with people there were a fair number around, partying and laughing and whooping it up. I parked the bike on the street across from one of those old-time theaters that have been there since the (last) 20s and came back and it was gone. I looked around on the street but it was gone. 

In this dream, upon finding my beloved bike gone, I sat down and wept. I actually cried, knowing how odd it would seem to all those other people who were so happy. After waking up I was puzzled that I'd cry over that bike. At the time I had it, it was just a machine to modify and race around on. I realized I was crying over the loss of how my life was when I had the SRX-6. It was completely different than it is now. It was different for everyone except the few "the end is nigh" survivalists/preppers who existed at that time. 

The next dream was a sort of sequel. I was trying to decide whether to buy a car, another motorcycle, or just get a bicycle - this last because they're so cheap and hassle-free yet you still get so much transportation out of them. I ended up with this weird little bicycle and then was in the market for a replacement laptop. I went to this real estate office where I'd bought one from 'em before, and they had this one that was supposed to be the latest thing but I was skeptical and decided not to get it, but somehow inadvertently walked out with the thing, and was walking back up the street to return it and that's when I woke up, at 6. 

Since it's such a horrible date on the calendar, mid-term election day, it's understandable that I make for myself a bit of respite from watching my country die by having weird dreams. If I were still a drinker I'd sure be drinking. 

But getting back to that dream, about the motorcycle. My life certainly *was* different back then, in the mid-80s. It was the last hurrah of the white working class, and I was able to have a nice little apartment, pay down my student loans, buy motorcycles, and I never cooked at home so I must have been pissing away a ton of money on restaurant food. 

I could describe various phases of my life in term of money cycles. When I was a teen, and earning a little money doing artwork or any odd work I could find, the money cycle was pretty simple - the money went into food for myself or food for myself and my two sisters, depending on need. It was simple in those times: Spend it and literally eat it up, or it'd be taken and someone else would eat, or get their cigarettes. So money had a sort of Weimar Period quality in that it must be spent at once. 

As a young adult, money followed pretty much this same pattern. Making about $350 a month with rent at $150, it all went to rent, food, other things needed and the very cheapest way possible. I had $500 in the bank for emergencies and after a while when my pay went up a bit, $1000 in the bank. Once the $1000 was in the bank, it stayed at that level although obviously I could have saved more. 

I believed that I was not to worry about saving, as I'd do that later when I started making a lot more. 

This is also where college exerted its pernicious damage. "You're smart, you ought to go to college" is really on a par with "I hate you, I hope your bowels rot out with cancer". I got that message from several people, the rotten bastards, and so I fell into the college trap. Being in college meant financial aid, and that meant having to prove I needed it by not having savings. Thus passed a few years. 

Then I moved to the mainland and entered the wonderland of having an apartment of my own and being able to buy motorcycles. I didn't worry about saving, as that was a thing for the far-off future, when I'd somehow be still working for the same company but for a lot more money. So money came in, and it went out. 

Looking back, moving to the mainland might not have been so bad (although if I were wise I'd have stayed in Hawaii) if I'd "game-ified" saving money. I thought a measure of coming up in the world was not having to cook, and although a full meal, the daily special, was $5 at Norm's and a fairly decent breakfast was $3, it all added up. Let's say I spent $12 a day on food. That's $360 a month and much, much more recently I've eaten really well on $150 or $160 a month. That makes $200 a month that could have gone into the bank, or $2400 at the end of the year. That's just shy of 10 grand at the end of the 4 years I worked as an electronics repair tech in Orange County, California and that was enough for a down payment on a place, or to buy a quite nice "mobil" home, large enough to get a room mate and save even more. 

I had no friends who'd sit down with me and work out the math, I believe partially because for some reason talk about money is considered "dirty" and partially because they weren't any better with money themselves. So the money went in, and it then went right back out. In fact, I didn't even maintain the $1000 in the bank that I did back in Hawaii when I made $5 an hour. 

Since then, money's come in, and it's not, and I've been very poor, or I've had thousands, in cash, in my pockets, and about the best I can say about it is I've survived and that's about it. Discovering Ebay was a huge step up for me, but it did not teach me about game-ifying saving money. 

In fact, it was worse and that's what I've realized that spurred me to write this. If I had money, the "best" thing to do with it was to go out and spend it on something to resell. This actually makes sense, but only in a perfect world where there's never a need for a financial "cushion" and where the rents will never rise and a person will never need to think about buying a house or saving for retirement. The real world does not work this way. And I was still eating tons of restaurant food... 

If I go back to Hawaii and get back into selling on Ebay, that's what I'll have to be careful about. To never, ever, borrow money like on a credit card, to buy some "good deal" and to be extremely careful about what kind of life am I buying? Because selling on Ebay requires a place big enough to store things, and shipping supplies, and going out and scrambling around every day for stuff to buy to resell, etc. 

If you end up doing this, the Ebay treadmill, scrambling around, selling and packing and shipping and dealing with all the complexities, paying for a bigger place than you'd need otherwise, and eating mac and cheese, vs. doing something very simple and in both cases sleeping on the same kind of bed and eating the same mac and cheese, it makes far more sense to choose the second option. 

This probably explains the guy I was told about by my neighbors (Really! I was on friendly, gossiping terms with the neighbors!) when I was back in Hawaii in '03. The guy had done something with computers, and burned out. Now he detailed cars. He did a couple of cars a day and that was it. That's all he needed. At least back in '03 you could live just fine on $50 a day in Hawaii, and my really large studio apartment was $600 a month. I could have put a 2nd person in there and we'd each have paid $300 a month and barely bumped into each other. 

The car-detailer guy may have paid a bit for soap and sponges, but his money flow was pretty simple. Work out, money in. And if he was smart, he was saving a lot, buried in a hole or under his mattress or someplace sensible like that. 

Well, back to the horrors of the election...

Wake In Fright

 Last night I sifted and sorted and cleaned stuff, and in the process of finding a nice ribbon cable to take apart to make shorting wires for some HV capacitors, I found what's left of the very same gadget I just took apart, so I took that apart and left the scrap metal out for the bums. 

I eventually settled down to watch the great Australian movie "Wake In Fright" which I'd not watched in a while, while practicing. My practice went well too, with my blowing that just little fraction stronger and my fingers just a little bit less confused, and faster and more in-time, as always happens each good practice. 

Of course the movie is so good that I just had to watch all of it so while my practice was maybe a bit over an hour, I had almost another hour of movie to watch. I ended up having some of the decaf Typhoo tea and a "Chinese donut" so I could sleep deeply which I did. 

Wake In Fright is *such* a good movie I have to gush about it, and like "On The Beach" there's also a more modern re-make that's good too. 

I woke up at 3? 4? I'm still confused. I packed 9 things and had some coffee and peanuts and dark chocolate and started out. Some rain came through while I was packing but it passed and it wasn't too bad when I went out - cold, but I didn't get rained on and there wasn't a puddle problem. 

I was just a simple out and back, all packages going to the post office. There was a ton of traffic, probably because I left at 5:30 plus the rain always bollixes things up. 

I came back by the most direct route, along Junction, and of course although it was raining the bums were out and around on their bikes. I guess the need for crack doesn't pay any attention to cold (which it is) and rain and so on. There's junk to find and catalytic converters to steal. 

Now it can rain all it likes, as I really don't have to do another mail run until Wednesday.

The calm before the storm

 I was so tired last night I didn't practice. I also stayed up too late waiting to "feel" more like practicing; I was so damned tired I didn't want to practice while I was not able to concentrate on it well, and should have just told myself to go to bed. 

I also felt a bit discouraged the night before last and only realized yesterday that the previous evening's practice had not gone as well as usual because I had a little torn flap of skin on my lip that of course was making things less than ideal. It would be almost a no-go on trumpet though. 

I woke up at 3? 4? something like that. I had coffee, loaded the bike bag up with stuff to donate, and headed out. 

First was dispose of a bag of trash at my usual no-one-will-ever-suspect-it trash can on a street. Between my making sure all trash is "sanitized" and how far away I deposit it, I don't think anyone will figure out where I am, who I am, etc. Just good practice, I think. 

Next was to put my donations into the little free library in Japantown and on the way over I put my monthly pledge in the slot at the temple, so that's taken care of too. 

Then I went down to Walmart and got a few things, most notably diet 7-Up so I'll have that on hand, and I was also after rubbing alcohol but for the 2nd visit in a row they were out. I can always buy it from this one little corner store, where it's something you have to ask for, and it's 2X the Walmart price but at least they have it. 

For a while early in the pandemic I was getting by using high-test Chinese liquor mixed with 100% methanol, it was a piney-smelling concoction that worked OK but I'd rather avoid doing that again. 

On my way back from Walmart I stopped at Lee's and thought I saw bags of day-old croissants on top of the display case so I went in - they were bags of slices of French bread but the workers there, at it was about to close, made up a bag of 3 croissants for me. Near closing, lots of things are two for one but even a single bag at their price is a deal. 

I rode back here and that was my day. It was pretty warm, and not too windy.

Wet and busy Saturday

 I got up, and had 5 things to go to FedEx, including one large one being shipped on the customer's number, to Germany. I was getting ready to go, when Ken called, saying he's going to work on the shelving and he wanted me to clear out part of the loft that was piled high with boxes. That area's been a pet peeve with me, since I'd not dug into that pile of boxes in literally a couple of years at least, and had been meaning to clear that mess  out. 

I told Ken I had to go make a FedEx run, so since he said he'd be here in 20 minutes, "there's no hurry" because I needed a little time to clear that area. 

I then realized it would only take a few minutes to throw that stuff into another part of the loft, so I went up and did that, then took off with my packages to FedEx. That went well, with my just having to supply the sender information for the one going to Germany. 

Then I went over to the "Krispy" chicken place and got two thighs for $6.50 or so, and ate at one of the outdoor tables. It's been drizzling, to raining, to letting off, then drizzling again... all night and today but I lucked out and stayed dry while eating. 

Then I got back here and was just awarding feedback for the stuff I'd sent when Ken drove up. Then for a few hours he worked on his shelving and I went through the boxes and stuff, deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and cutting up a lot of unwanted boxes. I deposited the unwanted stuff in front of the shop and when I was done, I hitched up the bike trailer and took it over to the FedEx hub where they have a very large, very underutilized, dumpster. 

I got back and we worked a bit more and then Ken did a Burger King run so we had burgers and fries, and he said with the coupon he had it was only $6 for both of us - that was less than my chicken earlier so not bad. 

I packed a large package, also going to Germany, for Ken to take to the post office on Monday since it's probably going to be rainy on Monday and Tuesday and who knows what other days of the week. The problem here is that my printer got its first ever printer jam and would not stop jamming. I eventually got two usable sheets (it was a 4-part Customs form) and I took the higher-grade paper I've been using out of the printer and put in some of the "old reliable" and gave Ken what was left of the fancy stuff, about half a package. It might work fine in the printers at Ken's house. 

Once Ken was gone, at about 11PM, I got to work taking stuff apart that he'd piled up for me to sell. So that kept me busy for a while. 

Friday around here

 I listed 20 things on Ebay last night and then got out about 5 things that I wanted to mail today, and tried out this weird ramen that's got oat (??) noodles. It's ... OK. I'm not sure if I want to eat the rest of it or donate it. The broth is vegetarian and kind of generic chicken-y tasting. 

I did my practice as I'm developing a strong habit for. I'm really not ready for busking but might be able to work out "Amazing Grace". If Ken comes by and wants to do a ton of stuff I might just join right in, rather than go out with only "Amazing Grace" to offer. Or I could take the flute with me and make a show of going out busking but not really do it. But if I've got the flute in hand I want to busk at least a little. 

I woke up at 4, packed the 5 things, and most importantly, have my ballot all filled out and ready to mail and want to get that in. "You can vote your way into fascism, but you'll have to shoot your way out" the saying goes. The safest safety valve being to keep from voting ourselves in. 

It's winter now

 Or at least it sure feels like it. After taking some packages to the post office I went to 99 Ranch and got another package of "Curry Mee" instant noodles which are actually pretty good - and spicy. I also got some beef to cut up and freeze. 

I got straight back here (had to drop off a small FedEx package also) and did a nice thorough scrub down of myself, and had the place pretty nice and clean when Ken came by. He had pallet rack cross-pieces I helped him bring in and stow away. 

Then I got my check and we talked a while. He remarked when he came in that the shop smelled like root beer. I wish I'd remembered to spray it around here a 2nd time, but that air freshener I got at Walmart did the trick. I'd rather the place smell a little like root beer than a lot like fish. 

After Ken was gone I had some egg salad and futzed around with various things, and then got some practice in. I'd read some question on r/flute on Reddit about "the Bb key" and I looked that up, and it turns out there's a key I can press with my left thumb that makes a very slightly clearer Bb note, instead of the way I've learned in the book, using some fingers. The discussion on Reddit was that a student ought to learn the method using fingers well, but when more advanced and doing advanced pieces like in performance, they'll use that little thumb key. 

I got up around 3 and left here just a few minutes before 4. I went right over to the bank and put my pay check in, took some cash out, and set the PIN for my new debit card. I was able to activate it, but not set the PIN, on the phone before leaving. 

Then I rode over to Dai Thanh and got a couple things and used my new debit card and it worked fine. So that's all taken care of. 

It was seriously cold out, and I'm glad to have changed over to my "winter uniform"; my cargo shorts won't be seen again until April. It's all long sleeves, sweat pants, and layers for the next 5 months. 

I stopped in at Nijiya for some things also, most notably some sushi, and then just got back here. It was cold, dangit. 

I might really want to look at getting out busking this weekend, too, not because I feel like I'm ready, which I don't, but because Ken might want to come over and do a lot of work and I'd rather skip out on that so I might come up with some cute story about having arranged to play with some people at a certain time etc. 

Brake Job

 After listing 20 things on Ebay last night, and packing 5, I got some practice in. I was happy that it seemed I was more consistent, and had a good strong tone both in both low and high octaves. I practice the exercises in the book in the octave written, and then again in the higher octave. According to some guy on YouTube, the 2nd octave is actually the same fingering as the 1st, then it's when you get to the 3rd that you use different fingerings so I'm on the right track. 

I need to keep being consistent like this, so I'll be able to do Xmas tunes for this holiday season. In theory, the flute being easier as far as range goes than the trumpet, I'll be able to play some stuff I've long wanted to play like the one in The Grinch when all the Who's in Whoville get together and sing. 

I'm also helped by one guy on YouTube I've subscribed to, who has simply recorded himself playing all the tunes in the book. It's handy for weird tunes like "Lullaby", to make sure I'm playing it right (I am). 

I finally went to sleep and there was thunder and lightning and hail, and I woke up around 4. I'd had a weird dream where I was adjusting the front disc brake on my motorcycle and it took special tools, which I had, and was very realistic like I was in real life. I wake up and when I think about it, I think "What a stupid dream! Hydraulic disc brakes are self-adjusting." 

Tone-deafness

 I got a decent practice in last night and finished it up with long tones. I need to get my tuner out and play to it, to make sure not only that I'm not sharp or flat, but also that I'm not wavering too much in tone. I'm on pages 22-23 now. That "Lullaby" thing is weird, very modernistic. 

It rained while I was asleep, so I missed it. I didn't go anywhere today because of the rain, but apparently it was a nice rinse and watering for the plants.

The stock market report on NPR had those sad sounds so ... stonks sad lol. It's a good thing I'm not involved in that. 

But most people are not involved in that. It seems like a recipe for losing all of your money. My older sister and her husband tried playing the stock market in 1999 or so ... and I was told something like, "After  losing half of our money, we decided that was enough". 

But what really strikes me these days is the tone-deafness I see from the powers-that-be. I get ads when watching YouTube of course, but the ads are for things I'll never buy, like medical scrubs, or things I actively hate, like cars, or things that don't need advertising at all, like Clorox Bleach. I mean, come on, it's Clorox, it's like advertising air. The amount of ads for this last thing are not going to make any difference in whether I keep some of it around, which I do. 

Meanwhile, I haven't left Amazon, more like, they've left me. I'm not intentionally buying a lot less at Whole Foods, but finding I can get the same stuff at Walmart and other interesting things besides (they have some pretty interesting things in the international foods aisles). 

There's this huge disconnect between the documented, advertised, world where we're all ostensibly middle-class, and what I actually buy and how I actually live.