Headache woke me up

 I didn't do much practice last night other than a scale warm-up, up and down. I did notice that after I wiped the blowing edge on the shakuhachi on both the inner and outer side I got a nicer tone, but I may have simply placed my chin in a better position the 2nd try. 

I was starting to get a headache so I figured I'd go to bed. My headache woke me up at about 1 in the afternoon. It didn't help that I got called by a scammer who, although he was right here in San Jose, wanted to "paypal me", somehow, both payment and a shipping label for one of my Craig's List things. 

So far I've put tons of time into craig's list listings and made $30. The reason I didn't list any Ebay things on Monday is, I found something I thought would be a winner and spent time counting the things out and boxing them up in 100's, resulting in 4 boxes of 101 each. Sure winners, I thought but I haven't gotten a nibble. 

What I'm saying here is, I'm coming to the conclusion that Craig's List is an utter waste of time. Yes, I sold my nice silver flute, but surprise surprise, I'd kept all of its packaging and papers and so on, and it was still under warranty, I believe. This is a very Asian way of keeping things and in fact on YouTube there are videos about how great used-goods stores in Japan are because Japanese people tend to get, say, a video game machine or digital camera or what-have-you, use it for years and then it's still like new. That's how I am with things and that paid off - the nice Chinese man and his daughter were very happy to get what essentially was an off-the-shelf flute for about 1/3 off and that's not counting the difficulty of finding one. 

And the Craig's List listing helped me sell the trumpet in a way as the guy from my temple found it listed there and the photos I had up pretty much did the selling. But still, I could have gotten the guy's email and sent him photos anyway. That's kind of a Craig's List win but only kind of. The guy might well have come over anyway, heard me blow a few high C's and some noodling around and decided it was good anyway. 

The same time I've spent finding things and dragging them back here, photo'ing and listing them, dealing with scammers, etc., spent out busking with any of my flutes, playing even the simplest tunes, would have paid far better. 

Now I have to try to get things done with this lousy headache. 

I puttered along doing things, and tried some elderberry extract, taking some aspirin, all sorts of things even a big mug of strong coffee. Then I remembered that I used to take spoonfuls of hot sauce to get rid of a headache. I took a couple tablespoons of Cholula sauce and it worked very quickly. I was able to work normally, and I got out of here a bit after 5.

I left early because it was sprinkling and I reasoned that as it cools down, it will rain more heavily as cold air can hold less moisture than warm air. I stopped by the medical place and found a couple of good things, packed those onto my load, and rode through the sprinkle of rain to FedEx where I dropped off the FedEx packages and was able to set my load up better and a bit more waterproof. 

Next was the post office, no problem, although leaving an hour earlier has its drawbacks. I had to wait in the very slowly moving line of cars to leave the complex FedEx is in, as the cars don't leave enough room to go around, and I had to turn left at the light anyway. 

I dropped off the post office stuff and came back to that same complex to buy a couple of chicken thighs to go from the "Krispy" chicken place. They seem to be back to charging me about $6.50 instead of $8 so that's nice. 

I took a look at the EMT place - nothing but a couple of boxes - and got back here. 

I listed 15 things I'd photo'd last night and did a lot of cleaning and re-arranging in the office, putting this big metal thing with drawers up on the top level of the tech bench so it's out of the way and can be used to store things. 

When Ken came by I gave him one of the diabetes things I'd found and listed on Craig's List, getting nothing but scammers. He didn't want the other thing and said it's best to just donate it. So once Ken was gone I put it, along with a bunch of other stuff, out for the bums. In reality is wasn't a bum who got the stuff but a guy who come by with a white pickup truck and loaded everything up. The "good things" I'd found at the medical place today turned out to be under a product recall so I just plain give up. 

Ken had also brought by a package for me - the shinobue from Mejiro. It's pretty nice.