Homeless help

 I start my day by "dropping a dime" to the homeless complaints email for the city of San Jose. The bum who pretty much lives out in front of H Mart, I'm convinced now is a bit of a lost soul, probably aged out of foster care, and is deserving of being assigned a guardian by the city/state because I'm pretty sure he's a bit developmentally delayed and not about to "just go out and get a job". He told me yesterday he "has no family". 

I've actually had good results emailing to that address in the past so I can cross my fingers and hope. This guy isn't your usual burned-out zombie. Sure he asks for cigarettes, but that's the tobacco industry's last stand, to try to keep the underclass hooked on them by practically handing the things out where they can to this segment of the population. 

The guy's annoying because he bugs people for money right at the door (this is a no-no in begging circles, and years ago Trader Joe's ran me off for doing this, but I'm not developmentally delayed and have enough of the gift of the gab to simply say "OK!" brightly and shove off for greener pastures). 

Now, I just hope the guy can get help and he might be kind of handy for watching my bike while I dash into H Mart. 

I practiced last night, and due to the prompting of Rinban, I practice the full scale, two octaves (and three of Ro) up and down, before working on songs and just noodling around. It was being complacent, just doing those exercises in otsu, the lowest octave, and calling it a day. 

But no, Rinban is having us learn songs, and learn songs we will. I found a lot of Jodo Shinshu stuff on Youtube. often played on things like electric bass, piano and shinobue, all sorts of odd instruments, but it's there. It's great for those of us who have to hear it to be sure of playing it right. 

Today's a holiday but not for FedEx and UPS, so I packed a few really large packages so I'd not have to make two trips tomorrow. It was surprisingly warm out, not windy, actually kind of nice. The UPS one was just a few inches under their length and girth limit, and I even noted that in pencil on the white edge of the label. 

I stopped in at H Mart for more sumo-sake and some spicy peanuts, paid for 'em and got right back out to the bike quickly, so I didn't see if the beggar was there or not. I got away from there and over to FedEx and dropped off packages there, then headed for home. 

I stopped at the tire place for some large boxes, picked up 4 bags of spicy potato chips at the produce place (could have had tons of red bell peppers... I wonder how hard it would be to set up a dehydrating setup to preserve windfalls like that?) and got back here. 

Surprisingly, I'm not interested in drinking coffee any more. It's so much easier to just boil some water and make a cup of regular tea, and so far I like "Ty-Phoo" from England best. I'm finding I feel better without coffee and I just kind of got tired of the routine, the filter and grounds, all the fiddling around it takes. I know, I could just get a Mr. Coffee but I'd rather just drink tea. Ty-Phoo is Ken's favorite also. 

Tea's cheaper than drinking sodas, and I've gotten a couple types of green tea and jasmine tea, this last one being the type my Vietnamese co-workers used to drink all day and urged me to. 

I find also that sake feels a bit healthier to drink than beer. And the trouble with makgeolli is, that one kind I like tastes so good that it's easy to drink a lot of it. I think a lot of this comes down to sugars. Beer's for a fair amount of 'em, makgeolli has also, soju's sweetened, and sake's just a straight rice wine. Sure it's got some sugar in it, but because it's brewed from rice there's probably a lot less "fusil oils" than you'd find in grape wine, or whatever the hell it is they use to brew soju. 

I think getting off coffee is a big step, though. I've done it in the past, when I had a French press and I got tired of all the fol-de-rol of dealing with the thing. 

After my FedEx drop-off, I went over to the "Krispy" chicken place and got two thighs. I had $7 left on me and that order is $6.50 so it worked out just fine. The thighs are a little smaller these days, and they're no longer giving out fancy napkins with their logo on them, but at least a couple thighs are still only $6.50. 

That's how things are now. Just slowly degrading. The internet winks out fairly frequently these days, but so far it's always come back. I just need things to hold together well enough for the next couple of years.