Wednesday, May 31, 2023

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.

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