After getting things stashed away in such a way that I won't have to move them again for a while, and sorting out and cleaning and listing 10 things, and all the fussing and worrying, I decided I'd get right to sleep and did so at 7AM.
It took me forever to get to sleep and I think it's because it's warmer lately. As a rule, the office 12 or 15 degrees warmer than it is inside. It's probably time to set up a fan to blow on me while I sleep.
I woke up a bit after 3 and had coffee and cleaned up and got going a bit after 4. I rode right to the bank and did my deposit, with the money coming out right down to the penny.
Then I went over to Whole Foods and got a slice of pizza and a near-beer and ate and relaxed for a bit. When I was done there I was unlocking my bike and got talking with a gal with a young kid who had this huge electric bike with big racks on it and a trailer for towing kids. She saw the big chain I use and said, "That's the same one I use". I mentioned how bikes get stolen and described how mine almost was, and she said, regarding bike thieves, "that would be me, years ago" or something like that.
I said the closest I ever got to stealing a bike was when we kids found a little blue bike someone had left by the beach and we kept it and rode it for some years. And I said I had go to, and went. I figure this lady is your standard scumbag-ess who either has really learned to work the welfare system ("farming" kids works pretty well until the kids grow up) or has married some poor sucker. In any case, hard times come again and she'll be back on the crack pipe and stealing bikes again.
I went over to the Amazon place and got a single bubble mailer - it works out that way sometimes - and headed for Japantown. Sugar-free Lipovitan was on sale so I got a 6-pack of that and a little can of coffee and some gum and drank the coffee and had a Lipovitan out front, then chewed gum I'd brought from here to get my mouth all nice and clean for the shakuhachi practice.
I got there 5 minutes early which was about right. Everyone else who'd show up was there. One of the older ladies didn't come, and Kevin didn't come. But we have a new member, a teenager, who came with his mom? Grandmom? Rinban handed him one of his PVC specials and a fingering chart, and while the rest of us played scales for warm-ups and some pieces, sounding awful of course, the kid sat there and just tried to get a sound.
The guy from Palo Alto was there, and I'd stopped at TAP Plastics and gotten 6 of the same plastic caps I use myself, for anyone to have if they want. They're a touch big for the PVC shakuhachis but fit the guy from Palo Alto's bamboo one fine, and in the end he got two from me.
It came out that the guy started playing shakuhachi at age 60 (my age now) and is now 67 so it's been 7 years. He gets a really good sound, and it's very inspiring.
I'm going to give the new guy, named Ray, my Jon Kypros book after I copy some of the music out of it, and his mother(?) grandmother(?) said he'd been talking about learning the shakuhachi for months, so here's hoping we can get him past the early, really frustrating, stage.
After the class I decided to treat myself and was going to go to this curry restaurant I've long wanted to try, but the truth is almost everything was closed. I went to Kaita's and tried the tempura, which is quite good. That treat was $20 with the tip, though.
I rode home, stopped at a dumpster that often has some veggies in it. There were none I wanted, but some folded up boxes had an address in Kahuku, Hawaii. I cut out one of the addresses and took it back here and looked it up. Walking distance from the high school I went to for a while. Not a big farm by any definition. They probably grow a certain variety of papaya that's worth a lot, because any kind of papaya will grow like a weed in Kahuku, so a small farm can do well growing "boutique" varieties.
I make the day sound pretty businesslike but really, there was some fun. When I was buying the plastic caps in TAP Plastics, I got almost a dollar in coins in my change. I put 'em in my right pocket as usual, and all the coins went down my leg and onto the floor! It was kind of hilarious. I felt my pocket and there's a hole. Oops! So change goes in my left pocket with my keys until I get that fixed. At least it's too small to lose my wallet...
And after going to TAP I walked back to Whole Foods and coming upon the cigar store, went in because it smells good in there. I made a slow circuit of the store, looking at all the different cigars. When I got around to the counter, the guy at the counter and another guy were talking about water-cooling something. The other guy left and I got into a conversation about early computers, early cell phones and the often-hilarious vagaries of communicating on them, and such things. The guy seemed like one of those guys who can be a real grump but he warmed to me. It was a bit of fun. Maybe if I'm in again I'll tell him about my visit to Cuba.
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