Uncle Ted checks out

 I'd gone to bed "early" enough that I expected to wake up at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but instead slept until 5. I guess I'd needed the sleep. 

I wanted to go to Dai Thanh though, and they close at 7. I had coffee and some cookies and got going a bit after 6. I got to Dai Thanh at a quarter to 7 and got a bag of shrimp and a couple of other things including a box of peanut butter mochi that was on sale for $2. 

The last time I was there, I'd gotten talking with an old Viet guy who was there on a bike, we were locking up our bikes. Nice old guy. This time, there was his bike still, and missing its wheels. So ... something had to have happened to the guy. Maybe he was in the liquor store and fell down or had a heart attack or something? 

I rode back to H Mart and got some things there, including a couple of cans of coffee. After there I stopped by the computer place and cleaned their trash enclosure up a bit and looked in the dumpster. I found a few things to sell and some bags and packing material so it was worth it. 

I stopped at Tom's and his wife was over for a visit, and had to wake Tom up. Tom showed up after several minutes and I gave him a can of coffee and got the mochi out and we had coffee and peanut butter mochi and got caught up on the latest gossip. 

Pretty soon James ("the lion) came by. Tom and I call him this behind his back because he customarily lets his hair and beard grow out and it looks like the mane of a lion, circling his face. When his truck pulled up Tom said that can't be him because "he doesn't play that crappy music" so when James got out I gave him shit for playing "that crappy music". James said it's techno and he doesn't usually play it but "the dog likes it". "Techno-dog!" I said with a laugh. 

More gossip was caught up on. How the sketchy scrap metal place up the street isn't really as crooked as the local press makes it out to be, and how this one business owner is calling the cops on all the out-of-registration cars he sees, and so on. I told James I have a valve core removing tool with a long red handle that I'll leave with Tom for him, and we discussed possibilities for getting some work done on a car James has parked in front of Tom's that needs some engine part "flashed" which has to be done with it in the car. 

James has plans for revenge on that one business owner's vehicles, but if it can kept to merely absconding with some valve cores, that's at least easily fixed. 

I got back in here at 8:30, the equivalent of 11:30 in the before times. 

Ted Kaczynski has left the room, or really, the planet. Found dead, they're saying on the radio. If he'd just worked on writing instead of bombing people, he'd have gotten a lot more done for his cause. For example, the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is considered to have ended slavery in the US, while the radical anti-slavery terrorist John Brown, while a great and noble guy, is almost forgotten. People read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" even now, voluntarily. People need to be reminded of the very existence of John Brown.