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.
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