It's not easy

 Last night I listed the 20 things I had prepared, and dinner was the last of the big mushrooms and green onions in a sort of ramen soup (no noodles) with some beef, and finally I did some practice, a bit over an hour. 

A few days ago I'd happened to be looking around on YouTube and saw a video of Steven Taizen Casano doing some practice routines. One of them was on the note Ro, the lowest, which is played with all fingers down. I'd been playing the lowest Ro that way, and then the next Ro or mid-Ro, can be played with all down or two down. But here was this guy, playing the third, highest, one with all fingers down. 

The last practice or so I'd messed around with doing that, and could get it, a bit. Last night I worked on it a lot more and it's harder but if I get it just right, it gets easier. And wow does it make the lower notes easy! I am so thankful to this guy for showing me what's possible. What's funny is, I'm sure to run into him and may be around him a fair bit once I'm back in Hawaii as he lives there and teaches at places like the University of Hawaii and Punahou. 

I also worked on the shinobue a tiny bit, mainly going over the scale as shown in the book I have as opposed to the one that came with the Aulos one, and I think I like the scale in the book better. It's more logically laid out. 

I went out with 13 packages, stopped by the veggie dumpster and got a big bag of baby spinach leaves for Tom, checked the medical dumpster and it's chock-full of stuff but since the stuff is Rx only and has an expiry code, generally at or close to expiry, I passed it all up. 

I rode up to the post office and FedEx and dropped my things off, checked the EMT training place and they didn't even have their dumpster out, then stopped by Tom's and he was out too (he'd been there earlier). So I just left the spinach and the LED lights I'd borrowed from him to do research on. 

When I got back here, I noticed the salt place had hardly anything in their dumpster, mainly just some large sheets of thin cardboard. So I unloaded the bike trailer here and went back there, put cardboard in the bottom of the trailer, then dug out a lot of junky, nail-filled, old pieces of wood from behind the trash enclosure here and loaded them on the trailer. I have that area all cleaned up now except for some extra-long pieces I'll have to take somewhere else, and my trailer load fit in the salt place's dumpster just fine. So that closes out that project. 

I had some cheese and pate and onion and cleaned the place up and the usual things and Ken came by at his usual time. I got my check and we talked about stuff for a while, and after he took off I realized I was hungry again. Ken had brought over one of those small single-serving pizzas and ate it here (he often stops by somewhere for food before coming here) and ate that and had some ranch sauce left over and that gave me an idea. 

So I did a shrimp boil which is just shrimp, garlic cloves, and pieces of carrot boiled in some crab/crawfish boil mixture, and the sauce for dipping. It worked out great. Then I got involved taking things apart and that took up enough time to finish out my day.

Will it be the Summer Of The Zombies

 I got 20 things ready to list last night and started to practice but because the practice is after *everything* else I got sleepy, read another chapter in the book "Angry White Pyjamas" and went to sleep. Off and on, I slept until about 4:30. 

I checked Reddit and found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/13vu053/is_the_homeless_problem_getting_better/ when I was out yesterday it was just zombies everywhere. Governor Newsom, if he can come up with a practical model for "rehabilitation" camps for zombies, which he's talked about, will be able to ride that all the way to the Presidency and it will be about time, having someone competent in charge. 

Like the writers in that Reddit discussion, I've stayed off the bike trails since the pandemic started. Let the zombies cannibalize each other, I'll stay on the streets thanks. As it is, I might stop visiting the Target on Coleman and go to the one in Sunnyvale instead. I only go there for a few things. 

At one point today/tonight there were two different dogs (a pit bull and another larger dog of indeterminate breed) in the parking lot and I had three zombies right outside the shop here mumbling and grumbling about something, I think something wrong with their Zombicar(tm) AKA the clapped out piece of shit two of them were driving (the other zombie, with the pit bull, was on a bike). 

I have to watch out carefully to make sure it's safe to go in or out of here I guess, and may have to vary my routes in and out. It's the temperature; the speed of chemical reactions doubled for every 10C rise in temperature and this will make zombies more active. 

 

Memorial Day 2023

 I got in pretty much two hours of practice last night on the shakuhachi. This is what I need to do every night, since if I'm going to go out busking I need to be prepared to perform for a couple of hours at a time and really, need to be used to practicing more than that. 

Although at least around here I'm more likely to go out busking with the shinobue, as I'll seen have three of the things and it's a good instrument for being heard. 

I woke at around 4 in the afternoon, and took my usual hour having coffee and some Yakult and checking email and my usual routine. Then I got going to go to the Walmart south of downtown to get some witch hazel as I'd completely forgotten I have maybe 1/5 of a bottle left with no backups. 

Because it's warm there were zombies just everywhere on my ride, and I didn't help things by inhaling some piece of junk off of one of the trees and having to stop and hack and cough and try to wash it out with Listerine and hack and cough some more... I finally got it under control fairly well, and got down to Walmart and ... they were out of with hazel - both their store brand and the brand-name stuff. 

It was quite crowded and I didn't feel like looking for anything else, so I got out of there. I got back to Santa Clara street and rode East to the drug store across from the Valley Health facility there. I looked around and could not find the witch hazel and asked the manager and she took me back there and there it was, on one of the upper shelves. 

I'd asked a guy I thought was a security guard when I'd first gone in, and he had no idea. When I went out to put it in my bike bag and unlock the bike, the guy was out there and I could see he was an actual cop and we got talking. I was curious why he was needed because it looked pretty peaceful, and he said it is, *now* and that the Valley Health facility gets the psychiatric cases as well as medical ones. We talked a bit and I told him what witch hazel's good for, and a couple other things and then he had to go and I took off. 

I stopped at Cardenas Market and was going to really explore the place but my coughing fit had really taken it out of me and I just got a package of bacon at a good price and some pastries. I'm adding this market to my rotation because the prices are good and the "vibe" is very positive, at least as much as the Asian markets. The lady ahead of me with a big cart of stuff saw me holding two things and let me go ahead, and the guy ahead was buying some food things and then calculated that he would afford a bottle of tequila or something so he got that and I said something friendly to him and he was very friendly. 

I felt bad getting through that place so quickly and just getting on home but it will have to wait. They have a lot of things I haven't dipped into yet like what "farmacia" (pharmacy, medicines) things they might have, the prepared foods, and whether they ever have chapulines, which are fried grasshoppers. 

My Honolulu pal is always going on about "new world order" conspiracy theories involving "eat ze bugz" so of course I'm egging him on. So of course I'll have to get down to it and eat some bugz. 

The Sunday veggie box

 I practiced "some" last night, an hour by the clock but "resting as much as you play" like many teachers advise but I dunno, I could have used a 2nd hour. 

I woke up in time to have my chicory coffee and put labels on the 4 large things I'd packed last night.

As I loaded up the bike and took off, one of the guys next door, I'm pretty sure, called me a monkey in Spanish. Probably something like a trained monkey running around working on a Sunday. He didn't call it out to me but said to his friend so I could hear, the assumption being that I'd not know what he's saying. Well, I did, and I have no counter-argument as there I was, riding off with a bike trailer stacked with boxes, on a Sunday. Meanwhile they're having a cookout. 

On my way to FedEx I stopped by the veggie dumpster and pulled out a large bag of green onions. I took that along and went up to FedEx and dropped the boxes off, then got some good "shopping" from the veggie dumpster behind H Mart. 

This is the stuff I kept for myself. I picked up some small melons, a few bags of lychee nuts, a small watermelon, some bell peppers, and a bunch of "burro bananas" for Tom and put all that in a big Styrofoam box they had a few of lying around. 

I rode over to Tom's and dropped off the big box of fruit and veggies plus I had lots of other stuff for him like a bottle of truffle oil, seasonings, etc. So it was quite a haul. 

Tom was there as was his wife, and she and I ended up talking a fair amount. She told me BART is awful, and I said when/if I do jury duty I might just spend the money and take Amtrak, and we talked about retiring. I said 10 years ago I'd never have thought I'd want to retire back to Hawaii, the old place. But now that I'm so close to it, I very much want to get back home. She said she at least wants to spend a few months of the year back in Iceland. 

It was kind of cool and windy also, I was glad to ride back here once we'd talked out what we were going to talk out. 

I got noticed by the Shrimp

 The day's off to a good start, I got noticed by "Atomic Shrimp" on YouTube. His latest video has him trying some possibly poisonous starchy nodules from a plant, trying 1-2 and deciding to quit there. I put in a comment about frying mallow leaves as they're better than potato chips and I got a reply - yay! 

Also, my 7-hon shinobue (plus a shinobue cover for my 6-hon and the shakuhachi book) have arrived at Ken's so I'll have them next week. And the only reason why I was off by a few dollars when I went to the bank is, my comparison of what Mejiro charged me and theirs may differ - I put in the yen to dollar conversion rate into Google and just went with that. 

Yesterday as I was going around finding things and putting them away, I noticed a thing that ought to be just parted out, so later in the evening I got it out and ended the auction on it. And ... figured out I'd ended the auction on one thing by the same maker that looked very close but not that thing, so I ended that auction also and took those two things apart. Then I took another thing that will never sell and took that apart, also. 

The closest I got to practicing is watching a Miki Saito shinobue video that came up as a suggestion on YouTube, on how to play the song "Usagi, usagi" which just means "Rabbit, rabbit" and is a Japaneses kids' song. But it has such a wistful, plaintive sound. She doesn't explain things *that* well, but this is where being a natural ear-player comes in so handy. 

Then I got all involved watching things on YouTube and then went to sleep. 

I got up in time to have my chicory coffee etc. and head out at ... I think about a quarter to 6. I stopped at Nijiya in Japantown and got a $4 package of chicken kara-age and ate that sitting at one of the tables in front, washing it down with a Coke Zero. 

My real reason to be out was to go to Walmart for rubbing alcohol. The chicken and Coke Zero gave me some energy, and I set out for Wal's with a bit more energy. "Fanime", for fans of anime, is in town and I got to see some interesting costumes downtown, then went down to Walmart. 

Nothing exciting, they had rubbing alcohol and of course the price has gone up. I got some other things also. Then rode back, saw more interesting costumes, and got back here. I didn't even pick up any books as it's just not worth it to take even what I think are rather nice ones to the used book store. 

I did, however, learn "blondie's" actual name, which is Nicholas. That's good because he's not blonde any more. He's still not quite finished with the one book I gave him and I said I'm working on another one that I'm taking forever to read. I'll give it to him when I'm done and he said that's good because by then he might be done with the one he's working on. He was buying a couple different kinds of natto, which he's "fallen in love" with. Natto is awfully good, especially with the little packets of toppings they include with it. 

With Fanime around, this would have been a great time to be out busking, maybe playing at least some of the simpler tunes from some anime on the shinobue. There's one called "Xenoblade" that seems to have a lot of shinobue music. 

 

Signs of decay

 We're in collapse, of course. It's just that the economy and the country are so large that it's taking time. Kind of like how a large building takes more time to fall down than a kid's building made of blocks. 

Web pages often take minutes, sometimes several minutes, to load. Not obscure ones, I'm talking about major ones like Google, Ebay, etc. 

I'm hearing on Reddit that they've made the California driver's written test a lot harder. There's a ton of nicky-picky things you have to know about how much alcohol in one's bloodstream is bad (you have to memorize a chart for a lot of different body weights) and lots of legal stuff about what punishments for this and that. Since I might have to re-take the written test to get my "Real ID" so I can fly, this is a worry. I'm a pretty good test-taker so I'll probably just memorize the booklet and probably pass the test, but I've been considering just getting a state ID once I'm back in Hawaii anyway so I may just go that route. 

And, today I've found that it's getting a lot harder to search for things on Google that aren't in my immediate area. I guess if you're planning to move, tough luck. You'll find out about the banks etc. when you get there. If you can get there. (One thing that has me spooked is the banks in Hawaii are all different than the ones here. I'm trying to find out if there are any credit unions that have branches here and there, and not having much luck.)

I take for granted as we get into the "doom times" people will move less not more, as they'll be less able to move. This was noted after the 2008 crash. For all the people moving their wife and kids back to their parents' places and striking out on their own to look for work, and all the people moving back in with parents themselves, people were moving far less overall. 

I'm just hoping that in a year and a half or so, Hawaiian vacations are still a thing at least for some, and the facade of normalcy will still be held up sufficiently that a reason for travel like an innocent vacation or going to visit an ailing relative, or some normal-times excuse will be enough. 

Plus, you know, the has-become-normal background buzz of terror .... 

"First, it’s not economically feasible for anyone of a child rearing age to actually have a family, so our birthrate is plummeting. This means the available labor pool will be shrinking dramatically in the next few decades and by the law of supply and demand means that labor pool will have exponentially greater bargaining power. This is unacceptable for a system built around perpetual growth.

Second, and this is more important. The fascists on the right are actively trying to make it unpalatable for anyone left of Mussolini to live in Republican held States. They want anyone who disagrees with them driven into the blue states. Their goal is to establish control over 34 American states. Once they have that, they can legally trigger a constitutional convention and dissolve the Federal Government with carte blanche to rewrite the constitution however they see fit. This makes the will of the citizens of the blue states irrelevant. With their enemies already consolidated into centralized locations, it will also be much easier for them to facilitate a purge." -- u/Stentata on Reddit. 

This sort of thing makes me want to not only get my ass back to Hawaii ASAP, at least putting me furthest from the bulk of the empire, but to consider taking a week's vacation somewhere even further away that's not part of the empire, so that I'm watching on TV from far, far away when the next coup attempt happens. 

Kind of like how I woke up one fine morning in Hiroshima and got the newspaper from its little holder in front of my hotel room door and right on the front page was the destroyed Murrah building in Oklahoma City. My room mate was sure it was "Arabs" and I said, pretty much, "No, Arabs have got taste. They'd bomb someplace important in New York or something. This is domestic". 

That bombing wasn't enough to set off a civil war but it was certainly a funny feeling, being on the other side of the wide Pacific and seeing, on the front page of my hosts' newspaper, the first signs of my country destroying itself. 

New market

 After Ken left last night, I looked around and took some things apart and came up with 15 things to list, but by the time I'd done all that I was pretty tired so I went to bed. 

I woke up around 3, cleaned up a bit, and took off to put my check in the bank - I'm only off by about $4 and that could be the fee I pay when my account balance is too low) and then went over to Whole Foods. They had my favorite near-beer in single cans and I got that and a slice of pizza. That was pretty good and only a little over $6. And the pizza they serve has a very thin crust except at the outer edge, so it's not too bad to just eat the part with the toppings on it.

I walked up to the hardware store and got some toilet bowl cleaner then went back and got on the bike, with the plan of going to Walmart. But my heart wasn't in it so I just went to the Amazon place for some bubble mailers and then, on my way to Nijiya, remembered that I wanted to go to Cardenas market, to buy some pigeon peas. 

I locked my bike a half-block away as there are a fair number of bums in front of Cardenas (and behind, and, for that matter, on both sides) and went in, and kept finding things to buy. A pepper, some broccoli, celery, liquid smoke which I'd been hoping to find for years, etc. My hands were pretty full and I went looking for a hand basket, not seeing any. I took a vegetable box and put my stuff in that and it worked just fine. 

I found canned green pigeon peas - pricey at $2.69 - but no dried ones. I wanted to try the fresh ones first though. I've become very interested in this type of pea, because it's a staple food in Africa and India but now well known in the US and it grows well in Hawaii. There are tons of different kinds of legumes in Hawaii, from tiny plants to huge trees, and some grow the pigeon pea for its pretty flowers and popularity with butterflies. 

If I like 'em, I'll buy some dried ones at the African store and see if I can get them to grow around here. 

I'm enough of a survivalist to be interested in things that can be eaten that are not generally recognized as food, so others don't want them. Like sweet potato leaves. People generally thought they were poisonous, or at least no edible. Knowing they are was a lifesaver at one time. 

I stopped in at Nijiya for a few things and rode home, stopping at one dumpster to pick up a few "fuzzy melons" which are a young form of winter squash, and then got back here. I offloaded things and started out because I wanted to have a look at the medical dumpster.

On my way back here, I'd passed what looked when it was ahead of me, like a guy doing DoorDash as he had one of those big rad box-shaped food carrying bags on his back. Then I caught up as the ostensible Door Dasher circled the parking lot and then stopped to fiddle with the bike. I passed and got a look - it was a scumsucker. I can just imagine someone working DoorDash and stopping in somewhere to use the loo, leaving his bike and bag out front for just a moment. And coming out and his bike and bag are gone. 

So as I was coming out of here onto Old Bayshore, there's the scumsucker walking the bike, heading into this complex here. I rode past then circled around and slowly came back in by a circuitous route to see where the scumbag was going. To sit down in the shade across from this shop, that's where. And I was seen. 

I took off again, checking the medical dumpster (nothing) and checking the sign shop's dumpster where I got a small room heater, a beach towel, a gym bag, and a few cloth bags like people use to get groceries with. So that was good. 

I came back here and the scumsucker was gone. I put the bike away and got some bubble wrap out of the welding place's dumpster, then took a box and did some picking-up around the parking lot and found that the bum who'd picked up the scrap metal I'd left out last night, had just stashed it behind the trash enclosure. So I took that out and put the metal in the welding place's trash can also. You snooze, you lose, bums! 

The average Boomer has the financial skills of a basset hound...

 ... that's decided it likes the taste of dollars bills. Thanks, u/LemonFreshenedBorax on Reddit! I can't let that one go, it's hilarious. Ken would be sunk if it weren't for his wife, Suzy, who granted is a Boomer too as I am, but who went through actual poverty, as I did, and is healthily paranoid. 

I stayed up all night for the HVAC maintenance person who was supposed to show up 7:30-8:30 and all I saw was a plumbing truck with a hurrying-around guy who I think did some stuff next door, then left. I finally went to bed. I was awakened around 10? by a guy knocking on the door and got to the door in time, told the guy we don't really have any HVAC in this unit, he seemed satisfied and I went right back to sleep until 3, when there was another knock and I wasn't out of bed fast enough, I guess. I opened the door and called out "HELLO?" loudly but that was it. I heard some drilling etc. on the common wall with the unit next door and maybe that's it. 

I've had the Neil Young song "After The Gold Rush" on my mind a lot lately, and it's not too hard to play on the shinobue. I'm thinking it would be a  good one to busk with. If there's one thing I've learned out busking, it's that it's not *what* you say, it's *how* you say it, or in the busking context, a lot of the time people have no idea what the hell you're playing but if they like how you play it, you're golden. 

I need to come up with an actual song list that I can have written out on an index card and have all practiced up and can busk with. 

I'll also have my 7-hon shinobue next week, as it should be delivered to Ken's house on Friday and Ken will bring it over on Wednesday. Plus I'll have a cover for my 6-hon one. I also have a shakuhachi book that might be good in that order, which is costing me right about $75, leaving me with 90-odd accumulating in the bank this pay-week. 

I was able to pack things and drop them off at FedEx just fine, and got back in here at 8, the equivalent of being out until 11 in the before times of course. 

Now, it's fun to bag on Boomers and they do indeed suck, but I think there's a huge mistake being made in who's being called a Boomer. They're counting everyone born from about 1945 to 1965. That covers a large swathe of people with very different experiences. The older Boomers were old enough to serve in Vietnam, to go to Woodstock or at least be the age to go if they could, college was nearly free, draft cards were flammable, beads were groovy, etc. 

But after 1960 or 61 or so, things were wildly different. This later cohort of Boomers has been called Generation Jones. This covers my siblings and myself with the exception of the oldest, born in 1957. She's the one who got private school, "poor" was having a small car rather than a large one, etc. The rest of us got really bad public schools and forget the car, just having shoes was enough to strive for. Life started being on "hard mode". 

I'd also say that the characteristic selfishness attributed to the Boomers also started about 10 years earlier, with the Silent Generation. And I saw on Reddit today a good write-up on the effects of "Ethyl" gasoline, which became popular in the mid-1920s. 

Here's a good write-up:  https://environmentalhistory.org/about/ethyl-leaded-gasoline/

By the time my parents came along in the mid-1930s, something like 90% of gasoline was "Ethyl" and huffing gasoline was a way of life in the Los Angeles area. Cars were far dirtier back then anyway, but especially in the cities, you were probably huffing the equivalent of a gallon a gasoline a year just by the act of breathing. 

And it's really with this "Silent" generation that the great American "Fuck You, I've Got Mine" ethos started. It explains why my grandparents' generation were actually rather nice people who helped other family members out etc.

Being born in the early 60s myself and especially if my parents had kept us in the Los Angeles area, I'd of course have huffed lots of gasoline, myself. But one thing my parents may have done right was to move us to Hawaii, and we were not downtown but instead in outlying, suburban areas. The good old Hawaiian trade winds no doubt kept the level of gasoline vapors in the air to a minimum. 

My parents were around the Pasadena area and both of them were ... odd anyway. Dad was very flighty and could not stay with things, buckle down and work and carry things through. From what I've heard, Mom was kinda nuts. Even in my own memories of her, she could not keep friends, and was a hyper-perfectionist to the extent that it kept her from keeping house or garden at all and we kids had to learn to. They both had the money-management skills of the aforementioned basset hound. 

Really there is something to this. This cohort of people, late Silents to early Boomers, don't suck because of propaganda, or cultural decay whatever that might be, or creeping socialism, or the alienating effects of capitalism, but because they were poisoned. 

Finally got to try it

 I listed things last night except for one thing that didn't power up so I'll take that apart. 

I woke up around 4, packed some more things, and got going around 6. There wasn't much to find for Tom other than another paper organizer thing, so I grabbed that. 

I did my drop-offs and while there were some food items left behind H Mart they were all fishy things I was not interested in. 

I stopped by Tom's on the way back to drop off the organizer thing and put the bike and trailer inside so we could sit and talk. "How about going somewhere, like that hotpot place?" I suggested. Tom was all for it, amazingly, as most of the time he's like, "I've just eaten". 

So we got in his truck and boogied over there, and I got a call from Ken, making sure I know about the HVAC people coming over tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning or something. I do. I thanked him for the heads-up though. 

The place, "Sizzling Lunch", was a bit more busy than it had been earlier, but we had a table pretty close to right away. I got beef udon with vegetables instead of beef, and he got some tofu thing with extra kim chee. The food is served in a cast iron frying pan that's so hot, you stir the food around and cook it right there in front of yourself. It was pretty good, and Tom seemed happy with his. At $15 per person it was cheaper than a lot of burgers. I had $13 on me and kicked that in. I'd been going past that place for years and it was nice to finally try it.

Then we went to Lowe's and Tom took forever choosing just the right carriage bolts for a project. It was confusing because they had the carriage bolts spread out over a few different areas in the aisle and Tom was intent on getting the very cheapest ones he could get by with. Then he looked at nails for a pneumatic nail gun and abruptly remembered that he had tons of them already in his shop. 

We left there and went back to his place and talked for a while. Our mutual friend, up in the Santa Cruz mountains, is in trouble for having an illegal septic system which it turns out he built *after* he got complaints about polluting the little stream that runs through his property. Plus, he refuses to take Tom's advice, and Tom's a good guy to take the advice of as he has a lot of experience in these matters. 

We talked about people, both that we knew or that we'd seen on TV shows like "Hoarders" who refuse to take anyone's help and end up destroying themselves. We were mainly shooting the shit and there was a lot of laughing, but I think Tom feels a bit better now about how he'll have to just sit back and watch this mutual friend damage himself and lose his land. Here's hoping the guy doesn't end up on the 6 O'Clock News. 

By now it was 10 and I had to go, Somehow, after riding upwind on my way out, it was upwind going in the opposite direction and the wind was cold so I was glad to get back in here.

The Big Coin

 You've heard of The Big Short, now it's ... The Big Coin! I woke up at 4 or so, and turned on the radio and they were talking about how a law was enacted in the 90s that said, in very vague, general, wording, that the US Mint can make coins out of platinum of any denomination. This was originally intended for making collectible coins, but the law can cover minting a coin worth 1 trillion and then just sending that to the Federal Reserve, and that takes care of the national debt. 

I thought about this and thought, "This is like the stone coins of Yap". It'd make us look like a banana republic but we already do look like one with a big military, and I think it would be a hilarious way out of the government default the Republicans are trying to force us into. 

It also occurred to me that the Republicans are trying to do this awfully hard, and for what, to cut back on benefits to retirees and disabled and veterans even more? The Republicans hate these groups, but I think the reason they're trying so hard is that they want to cut off aid to Ukraine. The Republicans being Russian assets, it all falls into place. 

I finished getting 10 large things ready to list last night and put a bunch of stuff away but I had a serious case of "the gurgles" and decided not to take Pepto for it, as that might only delay things rather than resolving them. 

I did practice though, and felt stronger due to the practice the night before.  I'd watched some Steven Kaizen Casano practice techniques ... guy was practicing on the University of Hawaii Manoa campus! I never thought I'd miss that place but I do. Of course he teaches there so if anyone challenges him for being there he's got something to answer them with, but I used to not only go to classes there but wander around, use the libraries, etc. 

I felt better today, packed 4 medium-large things, and got out of here at a quarter to 7. I stopped at the veggie dumpster and got a few yellow bell peppers and some bundles of cilantro and put those in the bike bag. I steamed on over to FedEx, dropped the packages off, looked in the vegetable dumpster behind H Mart where there was a giant FISH HEAD in there and noped out, rode back to Tom's to drop off the veggies and knocked on his door (he was there) but no answer. He's a reclusive one...

SoMuchFor Sunday

 I slept in until 5. Again because I could. I got in a fair amount of practice last night, and got out the "enhanced" Shakuhachi Yuu to compare it more with the plain one. Frankly I don't see enough of a difference to justify having spent $700 on the thing but here we are. 

I also played around on the shinobue a bit. I really like my little 8-hon Aulos and am glad a 7-hon one is on the way. The big 6-hon bamboo composite one is a bit "boomier" in sound due to being bigger, but I have a feeling it would really be great if it were an Aulos. 

All of these things take much more practice then I've been doing. If I'm not going to be a passable busker with these when I'm here, I certainly need to be so by the time I'm back in Hawaii or I'll have to find something else to do. 

Not that there aren't tons of other things I can do, it's just that street music is a rather nice thing to do. It's social and takes no materials, there's nothing physical passing from hand to hand. This is important in Hawaii as if someone who's white or white-passing does anything but music they're destined to spend a lot of time in jail which would not be pleasant. 

Somehow *buying* things is A-OK and I could simply go around buying stuff and throwing it on Ebay. I'll be out from under the "non-compete" once I'm 3,000 miles away, and the nice thing about doing this is, even in fairly hostile environments people would be happy to see me because I've got money and am buying, then the other half of my operation, where the things get put onto Ebay for a much higher price, is not seen by the possibly-hostile locals. 

I saw this in action when I was getting started on Ebay in Arizona. The locals were 99% white, of course, and some were actual Nazis. I was tolerated though because even after I'd declined their offers of joining the local Nazi party and "learning the facts about the Jews" I was still not kicked out of stores etc because I had money and was not just a lookie-loo. I shudder to think how hostile that area is now, though, that their Dear Leader has been president. 

At least in Hawaii I can say I went to high school here, and I worked for the Blue Cross Animal Hospital and for Foodland and for the Bowfin museum and all kinds of local things. Hell I could even look up Jeff Hakman and see if he remembers us bratty kids. It's been 37 years and I still know more people there than here. 

My headache was back today and now I don't have the leaky propane tank to blame it on. I had a hard time getting going but finally did at a bit after 6, picked up one of those paper-organizing things (the vertical kind) and dropped that off at Tom's, then went up to H Mart and got some things. I found some of those yellow apples behind H Mart and bagged those up for Tom and dropped those off on my way back, but now his truck was gone - at least he'd picked up the organizer thing. 

I got back here and hooked up the trailer and gathered up some stuff that the bums didn't want that I'd left out here, plus some stuff I'd dumped out by the sign on Bayshore, and took that load to the medical dumpster and dumped it in. I took a different route out of that complex as I told myself I could justify swinging by Tom's again if I checked for packing materials up that way. 

I found a new place to get large boxes, and loaded one up and some foam, and swung by Tom's but he was still gone so I just came back here. 

It's Stupid Map Saturday!

 Here's a new thing, stupid maps! 

For instance:

Yep it's the good ol' murder rate map. Even our least murder-y places are only matched by the very worst parts of Europe like Lithuania and Latvia. 

Then we have ... 

 

I don't like the color choices but the funny greenish color is for the longest-lived states. Spoiler: Hawaii's the longest-lived with California and New York not far behind. 

This data is not a big secret and I'd expect people moving to a different state would, in their research, find it. But these are Americans we're talking about here so: 

Americans are leaving the least-stupid states for the most stupid ones. They're aiming for maximum stupid.

OK so on with the day.  I slept in until almost 5, because I could. I didn't feel like doing anything, and moped around drinking coffee. I thought about how, when I was still mostly asleep and was thinking, "I could not possibly ever be homeless, because S- A- would never let me be homeless". S- A- is a friend down in the Los Angeles area. For some reason this was a big relief. 

I finally got going, and rode over to Japantown. I was actually there before Nijiya closed, and got a little plate of yakisoba which I heated up in their microwave and ate out front. That was just to take the edge off my hunger, so I could walk around and take my time deciding what else to get. 

This was the yearly Japantown Immersive festival, the centerpiece of which was San Jose Taiko. I'd gotten there between sets and I wandered around the closed-off street, deciding finally to get something at JT Express. 

And there was Ben Yep, with his wife and kid. I did this little "Ex-er-ci-ses" thing with my fingers to entertain his kid, and Ben and I talked up a storm. In fact we talked so much I stood off to the side so other people could order their food - Ben and company were waiting for some takoyaki. I finally ordered a poke bowl. 

Their food came and not long after, mine did too. They've have been happy to have me sit with them but they've had "close calls" with covid and his wife is very pregnant. So I sat nearby and when the taiko started up they took off. I sat and ate until I heard a shinobue and I hurried off too. 

I stood with the crowd eating my rice and fish and watched the one shinobue player, dancing around and playing a little riff that kind of sounds like "We Are Flintstones Kids" so, pretty easy to learn. But that turned out to be the only shinobue playing tonight, maybe because this was the taiko group's third set and maybe the shinobue player was tired. 

It was still great fun. It turned out to be San Jose Taiko's 50th anniversary and they'd been traveling around to places like the various internment camps and other places of Japanese-American historical interest. (I thought about how it's one thing to be sent off to a camp for 4 years, but it's far worse to come back and have lost your house, your farm, your business, your savings, etc.)

Once the show was over everyone dispersed and it was pretty cold by now due to the wind. I'd helped a guy with his bike, too. Some regular old Middle-Eastern Joe Workingman who said his bike had tipped over and now the brakes didn't work. I'd offered to help, seeing him fiddling with the thing near me. He'd managed to turn the handlebars all the way around and the brake cable was wound around the headset. I got him to turn the handlebars back around 1 turn, then we tried to get it so the brake cable didn't have so much slack. I said at least you should be able to ride it home, and sometimes I'm carrying things and can only use the rear brake, I just stop more slowly and plan ahead. 

On the way home I decided to try finding this weird little convenience store that's nearby but in an odd location. I found it, having realized the other night that it's on Taylor not Jackson. It *is* on Taylor, and just East of the railroad tracks. I went in and got some Clausthaler near-beer and some pork rinds and rode home. 

I'd been busy last night, taking the Apple computer stuff apart and listing parts, and I also cut up and froze some pork I'd bought at H Mart, and finally practiced a little. 

Last night I also did an order from Mejiro for a shinobue cover for my 6-hon shinobue, a 7-hon Aulos shinobue to match my 8-hon one (at least those come with covers) and because for some reason shakuhachi covers have doubled in price, I spent what I would have for one, on a shakuhachi book that might be pretty good. 

Why I don't trust banks

 I woke up in time to gather up the things I needed to take to the downtown post office and the FedEx on the Alameda, and got out of here at a quarter to 4. 

The park across from the post office was a zombie fest as usual, but I got in and got out with no problems as none of them were right around the post office. The yellers and screamers are out in force though... 

I went to the bank and put the checks in and for some reason I'm about $80 lower than I thought I was. I'm thinking I must have spent some money and not written it down, and it might have been anything. 

In fact, now that I think about it, I'd been in 99 Ranch and checked out and not seen the little sign saying "NO CASH BACK" and requested cash back. The machine allowed it, so they had to honor it. I apologized profusely, and they had to get the money from another counter, and I wonder if I didn't write that one down? 

So it might be totally my fault but I still don't trust banks. 

I went over to the FedEx and dropped my package off, then went to Whole Foods and got some sausage from the hot bar and chowed down. I thought about taking the bus to Mountain View and checking out the 99 Ranch down there and stopping at Hankook Market on the way back. Then I realized I was wearing my yellow jacket and I could not possibly ride the bus wearing that jacket, not because of the needs of fashion but because my clipper card is in my other jacket. 

I then realized I had time to go by the Amazon place for bubble mailers, stop at Nijiya for a few things, get back to the shop and pack one FedEx thing that needed to go out, which would take me to H Mart where I could get a few things, and I'd be able to check the computer place's dumpster. And that's exactly what I did. 

I pulled out a bunch of Apple stuff like laptops - one huge on that, if it works, I might keep to use - cooling fans, and lots of anti-static bags and things like that.  I also neatened up a bit, and was getting on my bike to ride away as a guy was walking up in a determined way. "There's still metal if you're looking for metal" I muttered as I left, and indeed there was, as there were many aluminum laptop lids and a big heavy Apple desktop frame. 

On my way out I'd picked up a couple bags of "Hearts of romaine" lettuce and some red bell peppers and left them at Tom's, and I stopped by again on the way back. He'd taken the things but he didn't answer the door. 

I got back here and double-checked my math, yep, still about $80 down from where I thought I was. So much for having an extra $100 to play with this week. 

I'd even looked in at Nikkei Traditions in Japantown to see if I wanted to buy another Reyn Spooner shirt and all the ones they have now are the American standard, labeled small and actually medium. If I buy another before I get back to Hawaii, I'll have to look at another place that stocks them like a Macy's or a Neiman-Marcus or something.  I want "one to wash and one to wear" but I also want to travel as light as possible back to Hawaii so I could get by with the one I have and buy another after I get there. 

I'd just go over to good old Ala Moana Center and get one from the original store, the name of which used to really bug me. Reyn's. Was it pronounced "rines" or "rains"? Turns out it's "rains" as the guy's name is Reynold and Reyn was short for that. 

It was that boring

 Yesterday was so boring I didn't even write anything about it. Nothing much happened. I took some packages to FedEx and found a some stuff I dropped off at Tom's (he didn't answer the door) and got back here and messed around with things. I had the office and bathroom cleaned in time, Ken came by on time, I got my check, and I sold Ken some stuff for $100 so I got an extra check for that. 

Ken told me to not put the checks in the bank until Friday because he had to transfer some money into the account and besides, he had to pay a water bill (less than $200) etc. I promised I'd wait until Friday. This probably has more to do with Ken's awful money-management skills than anything else. 

I also did a load of laundry, so how's that for boring? 

I got up today with plenty of time to clean up and give myself a haircut, and was at the temple for the shakuhachi club meeting 20 minutes early. I found a bench along the side of the building that was out of the sun and actually a pretty nice place to sit and practice or warm up anyway. I was looking down on the garden and could see the two ladies who come to every meeting, crossing the street. I blew a few more notes and then joined them, going inside. 

It was the two ladies, Kevin Who Bought My Trumpet, the guy from Palo Alto, and Rinban of course. And it was the usual fun, but awful-sounding shakuhachi club meeting. Rinban had us working on one piece and then decided it was too advanced, then started in on another piece, that I think is too advanced for all of us, including him! 

We wound up playing what was started the session with, Nori No Miyama. At least through brute-force repetition, we kind of know what we're doing there, and that's the problem with this. On the "too advanced" pieces, we ought to be working on just the first line, and really we ought to be working on simpler stuff. 

As we were leaving, one of the ladies gave Kevin and myself a couple of little gifts, as Rinban and them had been to Japan and seen all kinds of neat things, and they'd brought back "omiyage" or small gifts, obligatory in Japanese society if you go on a trip or vacation. We got little Japanese candies "You're only getting a couple because they're so sweet!" and a little envelope with something in it - this turned out to be a very nice little mechanical pencil. 

Apparently the next big Jodo Shinshu Buddhist convention will be in 2026 in Hawaii. There will be thousands of people attending that one. At least I won't have to travel far. 

I checked out the "night market" that's near Gordon Biersch on Taylor and it was ... ehhh, not that interesting to me. There were food trucks but lines to 'em all, and booths with artwork and stuff like that, and a bit of a crowd. So I just rode back here. 

The warmer weather is bringing out the zombies, and their undead dogs too. I had to wait for a zombie with its zombie pit bull went past before leaving here. The zombie was actually on a bike, which zombies remember enough from their human-time to know how to ride, but it gets comical when it comes to taking care of the thing. The tires seem first to go, and you see zombies riding around on tire-less rims. 

I had to pass yet another zombie-and-zombiedog pair on Old Bayshore, fortunately the zomb' was busy messing around with a car somehow and called the dog back before it ran into traffic. 

Then on my way back, in the dark now, I had to wait for a light at Old Bayshore and 10th and came shuffling along a zombie holding a cardboard box with something in it. A fresh human head, maybe? The zombie seemed pretty happy with its treasure, and this one was further along, carrying with it the characteristic odor of rot, of a thing that properly should be 6 feet under. It seemed not to notice me even as it got uncomfortably close, and when the light changed I sped away. 

I'd had a chance to mention in the meeting today that my plan is to leave for Hawaii in September of 2024, but I have decided that if it gets bad enough that I feel I need to carry the Glock with me on my errands, then it's time to pull the plug and get the hell out of here. 

 

The Disappearing White-Collar Job

 I got some practice in last night, mainly long tones. I've not been practicing worth a damn and it showed. I'm beginning to see that the shakuhachi will be just as demanding as the trumpet, where to really succeed hours of practice a day are needed. And it's all I can do to get in one. 

An interesting thing came up on Reddit on r/collapse: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/13irda1/the_disappearing_whitecollar_job/

As soon as I started reading it, I thought, "Of course!". Some years ago I thought about it and realized robots are not going to take everyone's job. There's not the electrical grid to run them anyway, and what anyone who's not been a repair tech knows is anything mechanical, that has to operate in the physical world, wears down and breaks down all the time. 

Someone on r/lostgeneration I believe, put up some saying that goes something like, "Computers were supposed to free us from drudgery so we could do art and poetry, and now we've still got the drudgery and computers are doing art and poetry". 

Well of course! Because a computer can sit there and *calculate* art and poetry. And computers are still expensive while humans are comparatively cheap. This was striking back in the early and mid 20th century when human work-hours were valued less than small amounts of time on a computer. Humans accommodated their work around the (more valuable and expensive to run) machine. 

It's still that way. And humans can go out and do things far more cheaply than computers or machines. A person on a bicycle is still far, far cheaper for doing deliveries than a drone or a robot or any of the cute but ultimately doomed "modern" ways to do it. 

Given practically unlimited amounts of energy to run it all, the future looks like Marshall Brain's short story "Manna" with the computers doing the thinking and the humans running around getting things done in the physical world. Fortunately there's not the energy to run a world like this. But the powers-that-be will sure try. 

I packed one more thing that I could send First Class and took those up to the post office. I then rode up to Dai Thanh figuring I'd buy a couple of packages of the little cucumbers they sell but they were out. I got some "angel wing" cookies instead and on the way back stopped at 99 Ranch for some packages of peanuts, then checked behind H Mart. There were things left out but nothing I wanted to take, although I took two packages of sweet potatoes to drop off at Tom's. 

I stopped by Tom's next and he's got his lazy pot-head sidekick back since Colin left. They were hanging out inside and I handed over the sweet potatoes and some packages of coconut milk powder I won't use because I've found a better brand. 

I asked Tom to send me a link to the violin song he was raving about yesterday and he called it right up on his smart speaker. It's the most generic country fiddle thing ever, but hearing the stupid thing has Tom all interesting in learning the violin now. I told him he's in a great place to do it, with a good violin shop right over in Japantown and plenty of country fiddle groups around. 

I got back in here and called it a  day.

Getting back to normal

 - I think! 

I listed 10 things last night but about 4 of them got taken off - Ebay's cracking down on medical stuff so the bonanza of the medical place is over. Not that I won't keep checking it, though, as I get non-banned things like computer software and packing stuff from there. 

I woke up at about a quarter to 3. I packed 6 things, 5 of them in tortilla boxes I got from behind Baja Fresh. Those are really useful boxes and I try to get all I can. 

There was no food drop so I didn't have to worry about taking tons of cans over to Tom's place. Food stamps are going back to pre-pandemic (or probably a bit worse) levels so tons of people are being cut off or are having their allotments decreased, say from $200 a month to $25. So maybe someone who needs those cans of food more are picking them up, and good for them. Tom's got a job and doesn't need the food that badly. 

I stopped by the veggie dumpster and picked up some apples and peppers and took those over to Tom's. He was busy "I have to keep tapping on my computer for a while". So I went on over to FedEx and dropped my packages off, and picked up a few things behind H Mart. Namely, a package of shrimp tempura and two little tubs of this "Kaukauna" cheese spread. 

I also took a steel chair that's been behind Baja Fresh forever, along with some guy's stash of stolen bikes/parts and other stuff. Mr. Bum can just sit on a milk crate like a normal person. 

I went back over to Tom's and gave him the chair and the cheese spread. He was overjoyed. He wanted a steel chair he could chain up outside, and as for the spread, his wife will love it, he said. "Europeans love spreading stuff on crackers". We hung out and talked while he peeled and sliced up apples and I ate some of his raw peanuts, tossing some to the crows also. 

I got back here, stopping at a couple of places for packing foam, then loaded up a box of stuff I can't sell on Ebay any more and went and dumped it in the medical stuff dumpster, where I'd gotten the stuff in the first place. Then I got back and loaded up more stuff, scrap wood and junk, and ran that load over and dumped it. 

OK enough Mr. Neat for tonight, I decided, and got back in here and settled in for the night. I feel like I'm finally getting back to normal.

The gurgles strike again

 That double dose of Pepto Bismol kept the lid on things for a couple days but last night the gurgles were back. I'd started feeling a tiny bit queasy after dinner, watched some weird documentaries about chess players like Bobby Fischer "against the world" and so on. Then a visit to the loo made me realize the battle was not over. So I took a single dose of Pepto and read a bit, then went to bed. 

I did a fair amount of thinking about how I really am, now that I'm old, a real example of that story about the rich guy who goes down to Mexico and gets talking with an old fisherman who's lying on the beach, a bottle of beer next to him, and a single line out. The rich guy says the fisherman ought to buy more boats and get people working for him and build a fried-fish stand and do all sorts of go-getter things. The fisherman says, "Why?" and the rich guy says so he can kick back and relax, just lay on the beach with a beer beside him and fish only for fun. And the fisherman says, "But that's what I do now". 

All I want to do is play the shinobue and shakuhachi, pick shells, explore and "talk story" with people, scrounge for things. (I'm just going to pass on any more kimchi gyoza left out behind H Mart, lol!) 

When I was young I wanted a car, I wanted a better motorcycle than I had, and I remember agonizing with desire for one of those radioactive military watches. One could be gotten for as cheap as $60 or so for a while, then the prices started taking off. I remember also wanting a bicycle very much when I was a student intern and because I hadn't mastered the technique of saving money, in cash, well-hidden, I wanted to borrow $200 from one of the engineers who'd actually kind of sponsored my becoming an intern, but he was not about to lend me $200 and I think now, he was doubtful of my money-management skills if I couldn't have saved up $200 on my own. 

I started this day with a dose of Pepto and coffee, and took off for Japantown. To Nijiya, actually, where  I got some eggs, a couple packs of Yakult (enough to take 2 a day for 5 days) a bento, and a couple of packs of ramen. There was a super long line so I'd picked the wrong time to come, but I got a chance to tell a couple who were shopping around and in line behind me my hard-fried-egg hack for ramen so that was good. 

Some kind of lost guy tried skipping the line and I told him "There's a line" and he looked like he was trying to pretend he hadn't heard me so I pointed out where the end of the line is and he went back there, saying some hostile things but then the couple behind me told him to just relax. When I got to the till and was greeted warmly as a regular is, that probably showed that guy where he stood in the social ranking around there. 

I rode back here and had my bento, relaxed a bit and had two Yakults and then relaxed some more and then got some things from the loft to take over to Tom's. I picked up some apples and sweet corn on the way too. 

Tom wasn't there although his truck was so he was probably out walking somewhere so I just put the boxes on his table and watered his plant (some kind of mint we think) and rode back. I picked up a couple of those folding chairs of the type people take to things, that actually sit you down low but you're thankful to have a chair at all. But by the time I got back here I'd decided they weren't that great so I put them on either side of the chair that's by the trash enclosure. A couple hours later I looked and they were gone. 

All in all, pretty boring stuff. The news isn't boring though. Florida's suspended the Hippocratic Oath not just for doctors but for anyone connected with health care, at all. So if you're an EMT and you decide your religion or "beliefs" say you don't have to treat a Black or Jewish person, or one who's wearing a rainbow pin, you don't have to. You can let them bleed out at the accident site, or refuse to load them into the ambulance, or whatever. It's all OK in Florida. Which is right in line with Nazi 1.0 rules regarding treating Jews or other "Undermenschen" once Hitler was in power. 

Not to be outdone, Idaho is trying to outlaw leaving the state to get an abortion or even if you're suspected of doing so, or aiding someone who is. I believe they're using the old fugitive slave laws as the framework for laws like this. 

I probably could have bought a place in either of these states instead of coming here to the bay area in 2003. "Liar loans" were a thing, where basically if you could fog a mirror you could buy real estate. It was entirely your own lookout if you could make the payments. Or earlier, when I was getting my Ebay business going in the late 90s, I could have bought a place in just about any town in flyover shithole country. 

Instead I wanted to come back to California at both times, and my instincts were right. Besides, I'd read a book called "The Wealthy Barber" and one of the things pointed out is you don't have to buy property to do well financially. You can be a lifetime renter and just save money, have investments etc. Considering what I was paying in rent has been less than my home-owning friends were paying just to keep the lights on and the water running, I've never felt that left out for not having bought property. 

But this is a real problem for people who *have* bought property in some Red shithole, maybe even grew up there, maybe even being the 3rd or 4th etc generation living there. Whether to leave. How to leave? This was a problem the first time around too. The world was not exactly crying for European Jews, and most didn't have the money to leave and to do it successfully you needed to do so before 1933. Because afterward, the Nazis stripped you of all but 50 marks or something and unless you were very clever and very lucky, you couldn't get out. 

Wake up and smell the genocide

 Well, I guess all the riding yesterday did tire me out a bit, but I got some things ready to list and got some practice in. 

I need a handful - a literal handful of 5-10 songs - on the shinobue I can go out and busk with. Nori No Mayama will certainly be one, but I also need Sakura, the Japanese national anthem (because it sounds so cool) and some others, so I can get out there busking. 

I say on the shinobue because that little thing can be heard across the street while the shakuhachi can't really. Right now I have shinobue in C and Bb, and I want to get one more, another Aulos in B which is the same pitch my shakuhachi are in. That should make it super easy to play the same music and the B will be larger and "gutsier" than the C. It's also a popular key in taiko. 

I woke up - wanted to sleep all I could especially as the guys next door were whooping it up and messed my sleep up a bit - at a bit after 3, maybe 4. I did the usual reading of Reddit and found this: 

I'm not allowed somehow to make it bigger but it's readable. That's right, the Hippocratic Oath as well as tons of legal precedent no longer matter. And, sadly, I'm dead-on correct. It won't be "Middle Eastern" people as Ken thought it would be, who will be sacrificed - they have powerful countries behind them and there's Muslim solidarity too. It won't be Asians - not with Japan as an ally and with the might of China behind them. And for the most part it won't be Jews, although things are getting worse for them here too. Nope it will be the one group that the fascist interpretation of Christianity doesn't like, that doesn't have a homeland, and that is a small percentage of the population. 

Just as in Nazi Germany, a doctor would get pats on the back for watching an easily-curable Jewish patient die, now it will be LGBT people or even those people suspected of being so. This is showing up in the news also - the analogue of being suspected of being Jewish in the mid-20th-century. 

I don't know why more LGBT people aren't coming out here to California. "Calexit" is looking better and better. Any land army would have a hell of a time just getting across the Sierras, and we could ally with China to both of our benefit. We could set up an "underground railroad" to get LGBT people and allies in general out of red shithole areas. In fact this is quietly happening now. 

I realized it was a quarter to six and Dai Thanh closes at 7. I needed to get out of here. It was hot outside! Probably should have worn shorts, Oh well. I forgot my phone too so I asked a guy in a car at a stop light for the time and I made really good time. I probably got to Dai Thanh at a quarter after 6. 

I just wanted to buy beef and a couple kinds of veggies and that's what I did, besides looking at the fish and then deciding I had enough stuff. 

I went to H Mart next and got a bottle of diet 7-Up for when Ken's over because it's always best to crack open a fresh one. I also got some near-beer. 

I stopped by the computer place dumpster and didn't find anything because if I'm not right there by 6 or 7 Friday night, someone else goes through it and they're very thorough. I did some cleaning up there though, and shut the gate properly. 

Next was Tom's place. His wife was over for a visit, and we hung out and talked, and Tom and I had near-beers. It was nice to sit around and relax while things cooled down. I'd left a bag of 10 apples at Tom's on my way to Dai Thanh also and we discussed ways to make dried apples. I said what I really want to try is biltong, which is a South African type of beef jerky that's supposed to be very good. 

We also talked about Hawaii vs. here, and how rent are high all over these days, even in areas that used to be cheap. My old $200 room in Colorado Springs is probably $1200 now. It's become crazy.

Tom's wife wanted to know how much I'd get on Social Security and I said about a thousand a month which should always ensure I have a place to live. I added that I feel very lucky as all the things  I want to do are super cheap. Fishing costs next to nothing, playing Japanese flutes costs next to nothing, gathering shells, etc. 

Eventually it was time to go and I took off and came back here. I've ended the listings for all the things I had on Craig's List except for two, will give one to Tom and put the other out for the bums. Craig's List won't let me log in to end the listings because they seem to be in a contest with themselves in how much they can suck, and they're winning. At least back in Hawaii I'll be out from under the non-compete I'm in with Ken, and if I want to sell something I can just use Ebay. 

 

I visit Cupertino

Last night Ken had come by right on time, although I was worried a bit. I got my check and we hung out and talked for the usual time. He and I both think he's got a nerve pinch, but after he left I did some reading and it could be a stroke. 

A stroke means more in the future .... plus Ken keeps getting more and more overweight, around his middle because that's where he injects his insulin and that's at least twice a day, maybe after each meal.  Plus Ken's diet is a classic "one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas" American high-sugar/carb diet, which as a diabetic he should not follow. 

Ken had brought over burgers and fries for us both - he uses a coupon and gets two of each for $6 which isn't bad except that it's burgers and fries. At least  I didn't eat the buns. And I had diet 7-Up for us both. 

I listed 15 things and got some practice in. Now that I'm not poisoning myself with harmful gases each night, my ability to play long notes is improving.

I woke up at 3. I had my coffee and cleaned up and all that, and got going at a quarter after 4. I rode right to the bank and deposited my check, and it was dead-on to the penny. I should actually be paying a little fee each month if my account is under a thousand or two, but it's been a bit less than a month since I had a bit over 3 grand in there. 

I went to Whole Foods and got some vitamins and stuff, not much, mainly I just wanted some cash back. I wanted to go to a thing in Cupertino that starts at 7:30. I thought I had plenty of time so I went to TAP Plastics for a small, less than $5, purchase for one of my innumerable projects, then lazily started off. 

I tried riding down to Moorpark, thinking I'd take that to Mitsuwa Marketplace, which has the best bentos and the best prices on same, but Moorpark was closed for some reason. I went back up to Stevens Creek and slogged along until I got to Saratoga, took that down to Mitsuwa's and went in and got a nice chirashi don and ate that quickly as I'd figured out that the two hours I thought I had were not going to enough time, really. 

I tried taking a street West thinking it's major enough, it will go through to De Anza. It effectively stopped at San Tomas and there was no way to take it up to Stevens Creek as I ended up on a pure freeway on-ramp and had to wrong-way it back the way I came to Saratoga and up to Stevens Creek again, and stayed on that until I got to De Anza and then I was where I had to go. It was maybe a quarter to 8 by then. 

It was OK, the meeting was kind of fun, and what else was I going to do, mope around here for my Friday night? It was past 9:30 when the meeting was over, and as I rode out to Stevens Creek I did a time-check and it was 9:45. 

The ride back was actually rather pleasant. Traffic was far lighter, it was cool, and I was on a very gradual downhill. Everything was closed though. 

When I got back to downtown it was close to 11:00 and I took a little ride around 1st and 2nd street and the "SoFa" area, just to see what's up. It's really dead except for a few bars which are fun to the kind of people who start their evening with $100 to drink up and like thumping, pounding music. Otherwise it was dead, and well, I hope the city of San Jose is proud of themselves because they have rid the city of buskers entirely. It is buskernrein. 

Santana/Satan's Row, on my way out to Cupertino, looked a bit promising though. I've heard that are buskers there sometimes. Just the bit of sidewalk where people pass in big crowds, waiting for the lights, going between the big mall on one side and the Row on the other side, of Stevens Creek, looks promising. Tons of Asians. Of course I imagine myself playing the shinobue, a characteristic Asian/Japanese flute, and able to be heard over street noise, not a trumpet. I'd think the reaction to trumpet would be, "Who's that idiot with a trumpet there? That's noisy! Geddim outta here!". 

After making my little circuit of downtown, I headed back here and everything but everything was closed. I got back in here at 11:30 which is the same as getting in at 2:30 in the before times. 

So I put in 4 hours on the bike today. In the past this might have tired me out but as I wasn't time-trialing it, it really wasn't very tiring. This is why once I'm back in Hawaii I can easily imagine doing something like riding around the island of Oahu on a bike, including Ka'ena Point. I could even make it a 2-day trip, take one day to go out around Pearl Harbor and around Ka'ena Point and on through the North Shore to the Kuilima (or whatever the Kuilima is called these days) then on the second day do the windward side around to Waimanalo to Hawaii Kai, Kahala, etc. and around to home. Two days would be neat because I could stop at places and explore a bit. 

No more kimchi dumplings

 I thought I'd steamed those kim chi dumplings well enough before eating them last evening, but maybe not. I got 15 things ready to list, but decided to call it a night and somehow didn't feel like practicing. 

As soon as I went to bed there was a lot of gurgling in my insides and I had a nasty case of the runs. I took a double dose of Pepto and went to sleep. 

I didn't sleep that well but did get some sleep and woke up at 3 in the afternoon. I turned on the radio and there's a Republican being interviewed on NPR, foaming at the mouth over how immigrants who want to be landscapers and dishwashers are somehow responsible for fentanyl coming into the country. As if (a) the "fent" isn't coming in from China, ordered by dealers inside this country and (b) there would be no "fent" problem if white trash didn't have a prodigious appetite for drugs. 

On r/sanjose on Reddit I learned that, investigating a burglary, the police have found a "bomb factory" not near enough to me to be a danger but in this same area. The typical bearded white guy who looks like he needs a run through a car wash and a visit at the barber's is shown. 

CNN Shits The Bed

 I was able to do some good practice last night. Actual progress! That time with the propane tank leaking in here was awful. I'd doze off before even getting 15 minutes of practice in, wake up with a whacking headache, and I'm sure it messed with my ability to breathe deeply. 

They sell gas detectors at places like Lowe's and I might look into getting one although I think those are more for fire risk than the lower levels that won't cause a fire but will mess a person up. 

It seems CNN, once a reputable news source (years ago I remember hearing that the founder of Al-Jazeera said they "wanted to become the CNN of the Middle East") has apparently been bought by Nazis and is now a Nazi organ. They're holding some kind of a "town hall" for Donny Dumpo and I guess this is when I start boycotting anything by them so of course I won't watch it. 

I watched a bit more than half of this when I practiced last night: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Hitler_Stole_Pink_Rabbit_(film) and it's quite good. No it was not the inspiration for Jojo Rabbit which I also want to watch. It's also really eerie as the time it's framed in, 1933, is analogous to the time, 2024, when we may fall into full-on Nazism here in the US. It's based on a true story and I'm sure there are lots of "true stories" coming in the near future. 

The best I can do is get myself halfway across the wide Pacific. Whence from there? Do I study French and hope to make it to French Polynesia? Do I study Japanese and hope to make it to there? Do I just lay low? Right now this last seems like the best plan. 

I had one very big package lined up to pack today, and fortunately I'd taken a couple of really big boxes with those creases to fold them into various sizes, because I needed something that size. 31 inches on a side and about 15 inches deep. I got one of those out and put it together and got the very heavy instrument out and figured out a clever way to avoid the one lift that messes my back up, that of lifting the thing being packed up and over the edge of the box and its flaps to put it in. Instead I cut foam of a size that it fit into the bottom of the box without falling out, set the box on its side and the thing next to it, wiggled it in, tipped the box over to upside up, positioned the thing and put foam around it etc and packed it up. The box weighed 82 lbs. 

I also found the best way to get it onto the bike trailer is to put it on the trailer first *then* hook the trailer up to the bike. Otherwise the bike just falls over and nothing really works. 

I toodled along with this thing and got it up to FedEx, no mean feat considering Brokaw is a "corduroy" road right now because they're working on it. I dropped the thing off and didn't find anything at my usual places, except a couple nice boxes and some foam-core which I really like to find. The road was so rough, though, that the foamcore pieces actually fell off the trailer and I never noticed. Nor did I feel like going back to look for them. 

The medical dumpster looked good though so I raced back here after checking it out, and went back with the step stool. I was digging out some good things, and a guy from a shop a couple of doors up came over and I guess tried to be the "heavy". I told him how I was mostly looking for packing materials, worked selling electronics surplus and always look for boxes and bubble wrap, etc., that I can see why he's concerned because there are people who live in campers around here who leave a mess, etc. He seemed satisfied with this and just told me to be safe, and I got things out and onto the trailer, a number of them just based on "this box has something in it" and nothing more. 

I got back here and put the stuff up into the loft for now, still not knowing what I've got. I can take care of that later. 

I cooked up $16 worth of kimchi gyoza with butter and Worcestershire sauce and garlic chunks, and ate and then put some things away, cleaned the office and bathroom, and was all ready for when Ken was expected. He called and said he wished the doctors would make up their minds what's wrong with him, and that he's too wobbly to come by tonight. I told him about the big box and how I was now glad I took care of it myself. Ken said he'll come by tomorrow night and I said any time is fine, even stopping by on his way to work or any time. 

I also told Ken how I'd been poisoning myself with that leaky propane tank. He told me about how he and a buddy had made a boat based on boat-shaped fibreglas "radomes" - anything that covers an antenna to protect is is a radome, and they come in a variety of shapes. They'd built a trimaran, sailed it around on a bay, and eventually Ken gave it to his sister. 

I can't even bug Ken too much about getting paid this week, like offering to ride over to his job to pick up my check and save him some driving, because he's skipped a week plenty of times and just caught it up the next week. 

It's going to get interesting if Ken can't drive though. His wife can drive him a bit. Ken could take one of their cars, the Toyota Corolla probably, and insure me to drive it. I'd have to go out and get new glasses, but maybe I could follow a routine of going and picking him up and taking him to work, then taking him from work to his house in the late evening. It would keep Suzy from having to be his driver all the time, and other adding the post office and FedEx as stops on the loop I'd drive with the Corolla, I'd stick to using my bike for everything else because I like riding my bike and have everything down to a system that works fine. My license is good into mid-2025. 

Keeping the Corolla here would be no problem as, as sketchy as this place gets at time, car break-ins don't seem to be a problem. 

I can keep this place going for a couple more years just based on the stuff I find and the stuff that's in here. So Ken, if I can convince him to, can stop with his auction buying. So no more need to go to Gilroy or Berkeley to pick things up. 

Another annoying zombie trick

 I woke up around 3, packed 10 small things, and headed out with the bike trailer anyway for a couple of reasons. 

One was that there was sure to be a food drop and there was, so I had 3-1/2 boxes of cans of food to load onto the trailer after taking out the cans of chicken soup, black beans, and things like "beefy burger soup" because Tom's having a try at being a vegetarian. Except for fish. I also took out the peanut butter as it's got "poison" in the form of hydrogenated oils in it ... 

It made for a slow slog of a ride because cans are heavy, and I slogged over to Tom's and put the stuff on his table out front and took off for the post office.

I dropped off the things there and then went around behind H Mart to see what was around and picked up two packages of grilled saurys, 2 of shrimp tempura, one of tempura seaweed rolls and 4 packages of various gyoza. Over $50 worth of food. 

I got back as quickly as I could because I wanted to get this stuff into the fridge. I only stopped by the "used food" place to pick up four of their large boxes because I've used four to package up my Hyundai manuals and will probably use them to toss out what I don't want. 

I raced back along Rogers Avenue super fast and with one of my reel bolts in my hand ready to go, because it's exceedingly "zombiful" there. By the time the creatures noticed me I was well past lol. 

I got back here and put my treasures away, then went back out to take a box of rotting veggies and fruit, and the peanut butter, beans, etc. out by Old Bayshore where they're certain to be seen. A zombie piloting a huge, not sure if based on one shopping cart or two, mobile mass of the kind of junk zombies love to collect, very slowly shuffled and rattled by. I ignored it and it ignored me, while an actual living human would have noticed the goodies I was putting out and come over to take some. Nope, it just kept on shuffling. 

I was checking out a dumpster on the other side of Queen's Lane (nothing but construction debris type stuff it turned out) and there was another zombie with its undead zombie dog. I figured I'll ignore it as I've seen that one walking the dog around and at least the dog wasn't a zombie pit bull. 

I looked again mere seconds later and ... the zombie and dog were gone. I got on the bike and looked around, and ... just ... gone. I have a theory that being animated but not alive, in that grey, brain-hungry realm between life and death, zombies may be only partially corporate and thus, in some cases, perhaps inadvertently, learned to translate themselves across space. To, in essence, wink out of one location and wink into another. That would be scary if they had any control over it but I'm sure they don't - these creatures stagger around, crap their pants, ride bikes with no tires on the wheels without noticing, etc. 

As I got back in here, I saw the zombie with the big mass of stuff, shuffling and rattling along, heading for the crackiest part of Crack Alley. 

I got in and had the shrimp tempura and the seaweed outside off of the seaweed rolls to start. I'd picked up $50 or $60 worth of food. I put in hours sorting out a bunch of stuff to sell and then took another break, fried and non-fried pork gyoza, with my homemade chili oil and some Chili Crisp. 

 

 

Warming up

 I went to bed last night at a fairly normal time for me, counted and labeled and photo'd a bunch of things, to list today/tonight, but didn't really practice much as I felt tired. 

I woke up around 4, and packed one thing that's not heavy at all but big. I'd spotted a food dump and wanted to run the cans of food over to Tom's and take that one package, that's not heavy but big, to FedEx. 

I got my food for Tom together (stuff from before, plus a couple packages of Datrex) and took the bike with trailer over where the food dump was, loaded up the two boxes with cans (one was veggies and fruit, going bad) and rode by the veggie dumpster. The bags and bags of red onions were still there, and some unshucked corn on the cob that looked like at least the shucks were spoiling, that I didn't want to mess with. 

I went over to Tom's and deposited the stuff and he heard me making noise and came out and we hung out and talked for over an hour. Just random stuff. We talked about cars, for one thing. Our friend up in the mountains has a "Honda box" AKA the Element, and I raved over what a great car it was. If I'd gotten one instead of my Prius, I'd probably have had a go at living in the thing when I lost everything in the crash of 07/08. Or even a Toyota Matrix, which we both raved over as a neat car. 

But I said, ultimately, living in a car is more expensive than living in a rented room, and if I get a car I'll wait until I'm back in Hawaii. I'll just have to see how things go. 

We also talked about how to get back and forth to Hayward, probably, for my probable jury duty. I said I'd found there's an Amtrak train that goes from Diridon station that's a bit spendy but looks fun, and he said BART's the way to go, and the "Airport Flyer" bus goes to Milpitas BART now.  Tom knows a lot about getting around the East/Northeast bay.

It was cool and cloudy now and as Tom and I talked, it got a bit cold so I went on my way. I just took the package to FedEx, didn't find much of anything other than some new packaged toys I can donate in the electrical lighting place's dumpster, and called it a day.  Just as I was taking things off the bike and putting them in here, a zombie rode by, so that means at least one zombie knows exactly where I hole up. That's not good. 

But then, when we had nests of zombies in the parking lot here, before we ran 'em out, they all knew I was in here so I guess it's not "new news". Goddamn I hate zombies. Later, a zombie and zombess rode through, the Mr. with his bike heaped with scrap metal across the handlebars, the Mrs. riding behind, yakking at him about I dunno, zombie stuff. The weather is warmer and this means the damned creatures will be out more. 

Target goes into the electronics surplus business

 Since I'd stayed up all night the night before, and slept from about 5PM - 11PM, I went back to sleep at about 6PM and woke up around 1 I think, then went back to sleep until around 4. It was in this last bit of sleep that I had a dream that along with a lot of other strange things, involved Target going into the electronics surplus business. Imagine a Daiso but for circuit boards and the usual junk. It was very popular! 

I woke up and my back hurt. I'm coming to realize that if I ride my bike just everywhere, I end up in the same sort of situation as someone who drives a car. I lose my fitness for walking. So I need to get more walking into my routine. Maybe shopping at the Target that's near Whole Foods more, and *not* cheating by parking my bike in Little (microscopic) Italy. 

So I washed aspirin down with my morning coffee but at least I didn't have a headache. 

I practiced a bit on the 6-hon shinobue, and put some time into sanding down the exterior and trying to get the ugly "seam" on the outside sanded down - with mixed results. This is why it needs bindings, to distract from that. I'm not that impressed with it, actually, as I think it sounds richer/louder just because it's bigger, and if I could buy a 6-hon Aulos I would, but they only seem to come in 6 and 7. I will, though, as soon as possible, have another order off to Mejiro for a 7-hon Aulos and a bag for this 6-hon flute. The 7-hon Aulos will only cost about $20 and a bag maybe $17 so I'll probably pad the order out with a book too. 

Around 5:30 or 6 I left, first stopping at the veggie dumpster. There are 20 or 30, 25-lb bags of red onions left there right now. If they were yellow onions I'd be all over 'em but red onions ... farty as hell. I didn't take any to Tom's or anything. I left there and passed by Tom's and he wasn't there anyway. I went on to H Mart and spent a little under $20 on things, which means out of this last pay check $100 or a tiny bit more is going into my bank account. From about $800 to about $900. 

Among other things I got a small can of coffee and a package of "home run balls", a cookie I'd not had since I was in Korea in the early 80s. Back then, they'd really nailed the concept, which was to make tiny cream puffs with the same texture and not-too-sweetness as full sized ones. These days, 40+ years later, Home Run Balls don't have the texture nailed any more, and in my opinion are too sweet. 

I ate those and drank my can of coffee sitting out front, people-watching. I love H Mart; I'd never hang around a Safeway as there would be sketchy people and a possible bum fight in the 15 minutes or so it would take me to have a treat sitting out front. 

Around back I got some "burro bananas" which are these short stubby ones that remind me of some of the non-commercial bananas you find in Hawaii, typically growing in your backyard or at a veggie stand in Chinatown. 

Tom still wasn't back when I rode by again, so he's probably visiting our friend up in the mountains. 

I came back here and dawdled around a bit to make sure a zombie on a bike that was riding around didn't see where I was going, and noticed a 2nd Harvest box. The zombie had gone and I picked up the box so I have 9 cans of food/jars of peanut butter to drop off at Tom's tomorrow. 

Dinner was fried shrimp and fried burro bananas. An island fry-up. It was pretty good too. 

Today was "brightened" by two mass killings, both by white supremacists, against non-whites. At least a third of this country thinks this is just dandy. Both perps were making a huge mistake and I don't mean the part about going to prison, probably for life. 

No, the big mistake was in thinking they have a cause worth fighting for. I know, because I thought in this mistaken way long ago, and it was why I left Hawaii. I'd grown up seeing that the Japanese people largely associated with each other and did well, and the Filipino people, and the Samoan people, and so on, so I thought that if I got where it was mostly pale people, we'd all get together and have the same kind of society that I've seen among these other groups, where while everyone is expected to pull their weight, people don't tend to get forgotten or go hungry or homeless. 

I should have seen a common sight soon after the bus got off the pali road and headed into the windward side of Oahu, that of a falling-down drunk lady, who had a habit of passing out on or near one of these highway concrete median barrier things. She was white. In fact the vast majority of homeless and/or weirdos were white. 

You can't assume that a hyper-individualistic group to whom "family" means next to nothing, will mirror the society of a group with 1000s of years of tradition and Confucianism, just because there's no one else around. 

So in both cases, one murdering with a vehicle and one with a gun, if either one of these mass killers were able to somehow bring about a whites-only America, they'd find it to be the dog-eat-dog, backstabbing place it is now, only more so. Meanwhile, these brown people they believe are The Enemy, are really rather nice people and if you get to know them and you join up with them either by befriending them or marrying into their family, you'll find they really do believe in family as a concept and look out for each other pretty well and you, too, if you're not an utter POS. 

If either of those creeps really wanted to bring about a better USA, they'd push for things like Spanish required as a second language to learn in schools (we *are* part of the Americas after all, and English is a required 2nd language in tons of other countries) and for allowing more immigrants in, and a push for more sharing of the wealth by means of general strikes and other actions. You know, like are done in other places in the Americas, with good results when the CIA doesn't stick their noses in. 

Things are certainly "hotting up" in this country and I'm just glad that I'm making progress in my plans. 

Improvement appears to be "sticking"

 I stayed up all night because I wanted to go look at a shakuhachi in South San Francisco. I left here around 8:30 in the morning and rode over to Whole Foods. They didn't have the full breakfast buffet out but what they appear to do is cook up a lot of bacon/egg/cheese croissants, cut them in half, and have them out at the hot bar. Easy grab and go breakfast.

My croissant and a bottle of coffee cost me a bit over $14, but admittedly a bit over $4 was the coffee, and the croissant was top-rate. I was surprisingly hungry and at least discarded the top half of the croissant for the birds. 

I went over to Diridon Station and although I'd downloaded it the night before and printed it out, my CalTrain schedule wasn't right but it was close enough. I had almost an hour to kill at the station and I passed it, apparently, by giving bad information out to certain semi-lost ladies who were just in town to sing (I think?) in a choir composed of long-time San Jose State University alumni. I told her Clipper cards can be obtained from the VTA office downtown or, maybe, from Whole Foods because I put money on my card there. It turns out you can buy them from the Clipper machines there at the station. 

Eventually the train came, and we took a very short ride to Santa Clara Station. It's where the bus bridge began. And here it got weird. I lived in Sunnyvale for years and am well familiar with the northern part of that city and the route we took from Santa Clara to Sunnyvale looped all over the place. The bus was supposed to just visit the usual train stops so there was no reason to loop around like that. 

The ride from Sunnyvale to Mountain View was even weirder, as we passed the same restaurant twice. It was nuts. I saw parts of Mountain View and Palo Alto I'd never seen before and the California street stop didn't even seem to be near the California street CalTrain station at all. 

We finally got to Menlo Park, cool and almost foggy, and in 10 minutes or so got on another CalTrain. That one took its time getting up to South San Francisco but I eventually got there. I had a mile or so walk to where I needed to meet the guy with the shakuhachi, a Starbucks, and I decided to pass. One of the authors of one of the Westerner-meets-shakuhachi books, Ray Brooks, spoke of beginning with a turned wooden shakuhachi he called a "bed post" and I've seen 'em around, turned out of ash I think, the same wood used to make baseball bats. I thought it would be neat to have one, but I could see why Brooks was so happy to move on from his.

Ah well, no biggie, a lot of this was just to have something interesting to do on the weekend. I walked back to the train station and rode the train to good old Menlo Park again, and then since I was going to get off at Palo Alto, I sat next to a young guy (so I had the outer seat) so I'd not have to ask someone to get up when I did.

The guy and I got talking, and he was from Germany, Munich in fact, and I'd been there and we hit it off talking about all sorts of things. He was getting off at Palo Alto too, and was here - for the first time - to do an internship for a few months. He was to meet his friend at the "Stanford oval" and when we got off I got him pointed the right way and we wished each other well. 

I walked in from the train station just far enough to get an espresso and use the loo at a little coffee shop, then decided there was not that much I needed to do in Palo Alto unless I was there to busk, so I went back, through the train station and to the bus station where I was happy to see the #522 runs on weekends. It's a Limited, that only stops at the major stops. 

And here I'll add that it was my observation all along that Who is riding public transportation on a weekend tends to be those who are not doing that well in life. Young Germans visiting our shores to make history in genetic science aside, there's a greater weight than normal in the numbers of people who are not winning in life. 

Thus, when the #522 arrived, there were a few impressive things. One was a homeless guy with an impressive number of bags, so much so that he appeared to forget that one, in plain sight, was his. He was a traveling caravanserai and in this case, traveling on the bus. Second was that the driver was really eager to get where he was going and the modest capabilities of the bus' suspension be damned, we rattled along at a pace that outdid the cars. Lastly, a Black gentleman got on and told us all that people in Arizona can take a sample of your blood and clone you, that he'd been helped by JEWISH family services, that's JEWISH JEWISH, that something or other food was better than in the slammer, which he didn't like (the slammer, I believe) and that goes for the mental hospital. He was telling us about his love-making prowess as "Big Bear" when he finally got off at the Santa Clara station, to bother people there. Hopefully someone called the nice men with the big net... 

It was a relief to get off at the Diridon bus stop and walk back to Whole Foods and collect my bike and head for home. I got back here at 5 in the afternoon. I set my bed up and was going to read more of "Angry White Pyjamas" but instead, burrowed under the covers and went to sleep until around 11. 

Immediate improvement

 I got 15 things ready to list last night but since it involved some time sorting and counting things out etc. I didn't actually list them. 

But most importantly, I took the propane tank - which does indeed leak, I could smell it  - and put it out for someone to take. Someone eventually did, who came up in a small sports car and somehow got it in and drove off. 

The improvement amazed me. I felt OK, with no need to take aspirin before bed. I was able to practice without feeling like the deep breathing would make me doze off, but stayed alert right up until it was time for bed. (Then alert in bed but meditation techniques had me asleep in no time, as usual.) 

In the morning, no headache! And no need to take aspirin. I felt really good. I woke up at 2 in the afternoon instead of sleeping in, feeling lousy, until I absolutely had to get up. I was able to pack things while I drank my iced coffee (made the night before) and a Lipovitan. 

Of course it then rained for a while, so I cooked up some bacon and eggs. Last night at Whole Foods I was looking over the meat case and there were a few strips of sugar-free bacon there that looked lonely so I bought them - $2.50 for 4 oz. I cooked 2 oz. with a couple of eggs. The flavor of this bacon is less intense but then it's bacon not candy. I could get to like it. 

I packed things up and took off at a quarter after 5. I went by the veggie dumpster and fished out a large bag of salad mix, the nice stuff with the "wild" looking varieties of lettuce leaves, and a dozen limes. I stopped by Tom's to drop that stuff off and knocked on his door but he didn't answer so I went on. 

I dropped off one small box at FedEx and by then it was raining again. I put one Whole Foods bag on top of the stuff in the other Whole Foods bag so the packages would stay dry-ish, and got over to the post office and dropped those off. Duty done. 

I went over to 99 Ranch and looked around, just buying a little bottle of Tapatio hot sauce and some pork rinds, and some cooked chicken legs. I had the good fortune to be behind a crazy lady at the checkout. Said lady was engaging in some complicated financial whizz-jiggery that seemed to involve stamps and coins and bills and who knows what else. It was OK, I was not in a hurry, and took the time to examine the label of some bags of Vietnamese coffee by the checkout. 

The crazy lady kept going on and on with whatever it was she was doing, and the checker, being a 99 Ranch checker and thus always on the ball, actually did my transaction somehow in parallel with that of Ms. Crazy. Ms. C. had already managed to try moving her cart'O'stuff making some mysterious stamps fall out, which she just had to back it up and get, and in place of the stamps leaving a single pineapple leaf on the floor. I didn't see a pineapple on her cart. Next it was a lemon that fell out, which a guy picked up and returned to her. It must be a complicated life she leads.

So the checker and I got our stuff done, and Ms. Crazy was finally done and left, and I said softly to the checker that the last customer was a little bit ... (made a swizzing whistling sound with my mouth while twirling a finger in circles by the side of my head) and that got a laugh. I laughed too, and said you have to laugh in your job, and we wished each other a good weekend. The crazy lady was still there, only having progressed maybe 15 feet in her perilous journey from the checkout counter to ... wherever her mission took her next. Oops. Still funny though.

I was going to go up to Dai Thanh after this, but it was raining pretty hard out there so I got a can of Boss coffee and some chestnuts on sale and sat at a table outside the boba place that had a guy in a safety vest already sitting at one chair, intent on some show in Spanish on his phone. One guy in a safety vest, two guys in safety vests, who's counting? I took the other chair and had my coffee and chestnuts and watched the rain. 

It did not look like it was going to stop so I decided to just head back. I stopped at H Mart for a few things also, then the computer place's dumpster to pick up bubble wrap and some nice plastic bags and such things, and did some neatening up too, then headed back to Tom's. 

He was there and we talked for a while about various things. A bit too long a while, it turned out, because I said I should get going and just then it started raining more seriously. So I got a bit wet coming back here. I got back here at 8:30, the equivalent of rolling in at 11:30 in the before times.