Trying a few things

 Last night I got out one of my two Yamaha flutes and carefully oiled all the little places that need oil once in a while and treated the pads with "pad juice". 

I'd gotten out my "Complete Flute Player" books and started messing around with the basic fingering chart in the first book. But wow, the low notes are hard, I could not do them. People say the shakuhachi is hard but the concert flute is probably harder. I put the thing away. 

I got the trumpet out and tried a few things on that. I can get a good tone, but as always, high notes sound like a small animal being tortured. Plus, I may be able to get a good tone but I'm sure it could be heard that my heart is not in it. I put the trumpet away. 

I settled in for another episode of "The Century" with Peter Jennings and practiced on the shakuhachi. It may not be as loud as a trumpet, or as easy to play Western popular tunes on as a concert flute, but it's where my heart is and if I'm gonna busk, it looks like that's what I'm gonna busk with. 

At least I've already bought some dark stain to make my plastic flutes look a bit more bamboo-like, and I also have a Dremel tool around here that I think should work well for adding details to the designs - the Shakuhachi Yuu may be an excellent student instrument but it's kind of crudely molded and could use some work to make the root end look more like a root end. 

I also got the "enhanced" Yuu out and played it a little. I think I'll need to develop more as a player to really appreciate it but I got better sounds out of it than the last time. 

I started in on packing things and my printer would not print at all, jamming the paper every time. I looked the problem up on google and found a youtube video for a different printer of the same make with the part I needed to clean in a different place, but it was obviously the same mechanism. I cleaned that, and the printer fed the paper again, but it would still jam. I remembered a day or two ago taking a piece of paper that was jammed, out, and a little slice of it missing. So I opened it up again and it was in there, under the toner cartridge. So now the printer works again and I was able to pack 14 things that were small enough to not need the trailer to take them to the post office and FedEx. 

I started out my usual way, through the parking lot that has FedEx (but the hub for drivers, I can't drop off packages there) because I put my trash in their dumpsters. I noticed something lying in the driveway as I turned in. I went around to go pick it up, and it was an interesting thing: a piece of thin wall steel pipe that had been hammered flat on one end, to hold a Stanley knife blade. A rather nasty weapon. I noticed far ahead of me, a zombess with a bike and trailer, and surmised this lovely playtoy had been dropped accidentally by the ghoulish gal. I hammered the knife blade end sideways etc until I got the blade out, put the pipe in my bike bag and the blade in the little pocket, and pretty casually rode past the zombess, and put the parts of this thing in the dumpsters along with my trash and rode blithely on. 

With the warming weather, the zombies are becoming more active again, and I saw a couple more that I pointedly ignored. 

Marty Levinson had sent *back* the $3 I'd sent him, telling me in a handwritten note to give it to a homeless person or something. So when I stopped at H Mart, I looked for the bum and there they were, huddled in a corner in front of the bagel shop. I said I had a few dollars for 'em from a friend, and handed over the $3. Of course this led to their asking for "another dollar or two". I asked if they were finding the smartphone I'd given them useful and they said they have, but I've not seen them use it at all. I'm pretty sure it's long gone. 

This is why the bum will stay a bum for the rest of their (probably) very short life. They have no concept of the social contract. No kinship with other humans, who are just seen as a sort of vending machines. Would never pass a Voight-Kampff test. 

I went in and got things, including a little package of dried scallops that was something like $20.  Tomorrow will be a rainy stay-in day, and Wednesday I'll be loaded down with packages and not able to shop in H Mart. And Thursday I'll go downtown to visit the bank and will have my shakuhachi club meeting in the evening so I won't be able to go to H Mart again until the weekend. 

Around back they were throwing out lots of good stuff including shiitake mushrooms so I took some for myself and then loaded up a Walmart bag for Tom with vine tomatoes, shiitakes, green beans, a bit of cauliflower, etc. 

I rode over to Tom's and dropped it off but he wasn't able to hang out and talk because he had an electrician over working on the lights. At least he said thanks and like it meant it, for the veggies. 

I got back here, found some bubble wrap in one of the dumpsters around here, got rid of a big box by putting it out by the road where someone will probably take it (there's an SUV for sale out there too) and then was in for the night. I weighed the dried scallops out and put 5, 1-oz. bags of them in the fridge and had an oz. to eat along with some cheese and a cucumber, and they're pretty good. 1 oz. of them is a pretty decent serving.