Monday, June 19, 2023

What a miasma

 I listed 10 things last night, making it 50 things for the week. I'd been slacking off, listing maybe 30 a week and I hope this is the only reason our sales are horrible right now. 

I got all set to practice, and something wasn't right. Practice involves breathing deeply, and something stunk. I poked my nose out the door and whewf! It smelled like a million stinky craps out there. I'd been smelling something earlier, and in the last few days, but this was really bad. I was not going to breathe literal crap in deeply so I went right to bed. 

I was awakened at about 1PM by the FedEx guy delivering an order from Uline. I stashed the boxes out of the way and went back to sleep until almost 4. Then got up and put them away. Normally Ken only does an order when I tell him it's needed. We'd gotten a bill for $500 from Uline for some reason and I'd given that to him when he was over here last, and said something about their being a Trump-supporting, Fascist company and this was talked about extensively on Reddit so I tried going to one of the "good" companies and their site originally crashed so Uline it is. 

So did Ken do an order simply because he had Uline stuff to take care of? Or did Uline actually screw up and give him some credit? Or is it retaliation for my mentioning Uline's politics? I know he voted for Trump the first time around, I think like many, thinking the orange buffoon wouldn't really win, but it'd be a protest against Business As Usual. I believe he voted for some guy named Johnson the 2nd time around but voting for any Republican these days is very questionable at best. Ken's your typical delusional old guy. Somehow, in his world, one can vote for the white-supremacist party and magically nothing will happen to his brown wife and brown children. 

During the day the wind came up and originally I thought, "Oh good; someone's done something about the stink" but then realized it's just the wind keeping the air moving. 

I got cleaned up and since it's a federal holiday didn't take any packages anywhere. I left here at 6 and rode over to Japantown and got a nice eel bento and a package of smoked salmon and a bottle of coffee, which surprisingly only came to $17. I could have saved $3 by having coffee brewed and in the fridge ready to grab and go but I did pretty well. 

It was windy and the tables out in front of Nijiya are in the sun anyway, but I had a solution for that, worked out years ago. I went and sat on the steps of the old hospital building. There were people already there, theater people of some type but I just sat down and ate, and when I was done said I'd help them move stuff since I had some time before Obon practice anyway. 

I helped them move things from a lady's van into an office inside, so that was cool. I got to see the inside of the building, got to help some people, got warmed up for dancing, and got to use the loo in there. The theater company is the "Red Ladder" theater company. 

When I was done there I went over to the temple and people were gathered in the gym and milling around. The Scouts had a table set up with folding fans, kachi-kachi which are castanets by any other name, and snacks like chips and spam musubi. I bought a fan and a pair of kachi-kachi for $4. These are props you use in obon dancing and I'd left my flat fan at home, and I also need a strip of cloths that's used in one dance but it turned out we didn't do that one. I can get one of those before the next practice on Wednesday.

The dancing went pretty well, I think. There's a new Thanks You To San Jose Taiko dance we're learning and we did some old standbys. I'm glad there are four practice sessions and I hope to make them all because I can use all the practice I can get. 

When we were done it was after a quarter to 9 (we'd started at 7:30) and I rode back here. I got settled down and did over an hour of shakuhachi practice because I wanted to do it while the wind was still blowing a bit. Let the stink settle in when the air's still, by then I won't be practicing and breathing deeply, I thought. The practice went pretty well. 

Once practice was done and I was readying 10 things to list on Ebay and also there were snacks to be eaten, the air was probably still and I poked my nose out the door to asses the state of the stench. And the air was fine. So whatever it was, it's done with. 

I listed the things. Our sales are awful and Ken's operating as a loss right now. I listed some of the things Ken has great hopes for, but the things turn out to not be selling for as much as Ken seems to imagine. I priced them as I always did, not the lowest and not the highest. I'm just going to keep it up at 50 things a week no matter if they're large or small, and see how it goes. 



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