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.
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