Another good practice

 I got in last night and packed things to take to the post office and fedex today, and since I'd had a pretty heavy meal at Whole Foods earlier, dinner was some fried fish from Nijiya and a raw green bean salad - the beans gathered from this one dumpster on 10th that sometimes gets good things. 

It took a while to sort and label the things from taking stuff apart last night, and before I knew it, it was 5AM so I called it a night. 

Time for practice. I felt pretty tired so I figured I'd mainly work on that ro dai kan, the highest ro, with all holes closed. It seems I have to warm up before I can do it, and was not sure I *could* do it, but sure enough, once good and warmed up I could do it pretty well so I did it a lot. 

This is very different from trumpet where I could play the high notes best right away, and it was only downhill from there. As I've noted, with trumpet it was a rare day I could go above the staff when out busking, and then only early in the session. 

And I'd think that, having put so much work into trying to develop my high notes on trumpet, it'd be easy on the shakuhachi. I've got to say that it's certainly given me an advantage, but the type of breathing is very different. In trumpet you really only need a trickle of air but with the shakuhachi being a flute, some volume of air is needed also. 

I went to bed after maybe 45 minutes' practice and dreamed I was back in Hawaii gathering shells. 

I took off at about 5:30, stopped by the veggie dumpster and picked up some broccoli and bell peppers which I dropped off at Tom's, along with a little book of saying I'd found. Tom gets depressed and maybe it will help him. 

I dropped off the FedEx packages first, then went up to the post office and dropped off those, then rode up to Dai Thanh. I have to keep reminding myself that they close at 7 so I have to get going by 5:30 anyway to go there. I got some beef and ginger and cookies. 

Then I bounced back by H Mart and got a few things. I had just enough cash one me (had spent the last amount I'll allow myself to on my card at Dai Thanh) but when I was looking around I'd seen some Indomie Mi Goreng noodles for sale and decided I really wanted to try them so I went back in with change and got them, 5 packs for $3.50. 

I didn't really want to stop at Tom's on the way back because I wanted to get things into the fridge so I just rode back here. Eventually I tried the Mi Goreng noodles, with some beef and onion and a pepper I'd gotten from the dumpster yesterday. In a way they're fun to make because there are two powder packets and three sauce/oil packets and you're supposed to boil the noodles, drain, and stir-fry with all that but I just mixed the drained noodles with the stuff and then put my pepper/onion/beef mixture, cooked after the noodles, on top.