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.