MLK day

 I got in well over an hour's practice last night but I have a far way to go. It turns out the Western flute is different enough from the shakuhachi that I'm pretty far behind on the ol' shak. 

I'm pretty sure if I practice well tonight and tomorrow night I'll be able to play an acceptable "Hinomaru" in class, and know the notes by name reflexively. 

I don't think much is expected, really. Rinban's going to have some of his PVC shakuhachi for anyone to use or take home, and we may have some beginner-beginners. 

I guess the club meets once a month, but who knows, maybe there will be some who want to meet up at Roy's Station or someplace more often. 

I expect to get wet going to/from the meeting, but I'll just get out my good ol' messenger bag and that will keep things dry enough. 

I woke up at around 2, and amazingly it's dry outside. It rained heavily and continuously yesterday and last night. Now we're getting a couple of dry days. 

I guess I'll expect Ken to come by on Wednesday and I'll get a 3X paycheck. At least that's a bit over a thousand bucks and rather satisfying to put into the bank. 

I think I will have to go "keto" again. I got into the habit of eating ramen every day since I'd gotten some of the (admittedly rather delicious) "Penang White Curry" type as a comfort food to eat while I got over my last covid shot, but I'm sure I've been gaining wait and it might even be the reason for "my" headache which was bad when I got up today. 

In all fairness, the last time at H Mart, they'd had a 24-pack of Kirin Ichiban beer for $20, and I'd gotten  that. When I tried it I found out why it was on sale - it was nasty and skunky. I drank it anyway, but wow, what swill. If I'm going to stay on the "beer cure" I'll stick with Asahi Dry. 

Keto plus beer seems counterproductive and it is, but it's still a big improvement over eating ramen, croissants, etc. as  I have been. 

The thing is, if I'm going to be a good shakuhachi player, I need to be a lot more fit. Two of the players I follow on YouTube are Markus Guhe and Jon Kypros and they're if anything, a bit underweight. If you're not overweight you can blow better. (For some reason there seems to be a real tendency for trumpeters to be overweight and with a few notable exceptions they're a real bunch of butterballs.)

I left here at about 3, with the FedEx packages which were all small enough that I didn't need the bike trailer. It was *not* warm out there. Hat and gloves weather. I had to detour around a zombie with their zombie dog near here. (zombie dogs are trained to either attack or be super friendly, in any case it gives the zombie a chance to get close to you and eat your brains.) The parking lot for the complex that has FedEx and H Mart was super busy. People stocking up for Chinese New Year? 

I dropped off the FedEx things and got groceries in H Mart. I only got the odd rain drop on me going out and back, and it was nice looking at the spectacular clouds. I was back here a bit after 4.