Getting back into practice

 I practiced a bit last night, more than the night before, and I noticed if I "kept the throat open" it helped my long tones to be longer and made things a bit easier. 

So much of this comes down to the shape of the mouth cavity and in trumpet you have to shape the mouth cavity while also generating a *lot* of pressure. Yet I think it's practicing on the shakuhachi that gave me much better tone on the trumpet and led to that one summer when I was able to make decent money. 

I woke up at a quarter after 3, so I shaved and cleaned up a bit and was out the door at 5 after. I dropped off a bag of clothes I don't want by the Salvation Army place on 7th, and went over to the bank. My account balance according to them and according to myself didn't exactly agree but at least it was very close. I don't trust banks very much anyway. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got some food from the hot bar and a bottle of water, ate, then walked over to the hardware store for some felt pads to replace the ones on my desktop music stand, which had fallen off. 

Then I went over to Big-5 and returned the two T-shirts I'd bought there, as I don't think I'm going to wear them at all. 

Then I went to Walmart and got various things; a pretty oddball assortment this time. For instance, I got an inexpensive set of measuring spoons, because I want to be able to visualize how much sugar is in things. As an example, if I got a cup of any "healthy" brand of yogurt,  so for instance Brown Cow because we all know Yoplait and such mass brands are essentially candy. So I eat a nice little cup of Brown Cow vanilla flavor. Well, that's 21 grams or to put it in easier to relate to terms, it's 5 teaspoons, of sugar. So in eating this nice healthy thing, I'm doing the same as taking the teaspoon and scooping up sugar in it 5 times and putting that into my mouth. Maybe washing it down with a nice "healthy" fruit juice, containing only 35 grams of sugar, or 8 teaspoons' worth.

The historical norm is less than a teaspoon a day. The keto norm is about 20 grams of sugar/carbs a day. Since a teaspoon is 4 grams, that's 5 teaspoons of sugar a day. And that's considered an unusually small amount, some even say dangerously small. Those "health experts" are generally the centerpiece of tales on r/fatpeoplestories saying things like "Mah sugah's are low". 

I rode back, got a few bubble mailers from the Amazon place, avoided zombies, the usual routine. The group who are known for shooting up heroin in front of the 7-11 across from the Amazon place are filtering back, so that means entertaining antics are back too. Today's feature was a Black guy, shirtless, sitting on a blanket it looked like, maybe his spread-out shirt, leaning against the building and having some sort of a mental health breakdown. He sounded terrified and amongst his gibberings could be made out, "Leave me alone". A couple "normals", white girls, were filming him on their phones.