I did my FedEx and post office run yesterday, came home with plenty of packing stuff, practiced last night, listed 20 things (I had 20 lined up that were easy) and of course got my check from Ken. That was chancy as I called him and asked if he was coming over, and he said he thought it was Tuesday.
We talked for a while and it was a nice boring evening except that Ken had "the gurgles" and had to use the bathroom a couple of times. I'm glad I always have it clean when he comes over.
I offered Pepto-Bismol, soda (which he accepted), even offered to fry up a couple eggs for him but he was OK with just the soda.
The Maui fire has been horrible. The official death count is 36 but it seems it will become much higher. The fire traveled super fast - 15 seconds to get down one lady's street for instance. Leeward Oahu gets fires now too, plus there are some fires going on the leeward side of the Big Island. When I was a kid, fires were just not a thing other than the occasional house fire (like Ross's house up the street on Portlock Road) and of course the cane field fires which were intentional as it's part of the harvesting process.
The best thing was, I rigged up a gadget to hang up my new backpack so it's up and out of way while still being "right here". I could set it up as a "go bag" as it will be once, essentially, when I make the Big Move.
I woke up in time to have coffee and do things like shine my shoes and clean up a bit, and got going first to the temple to drop off my August pledge, then over to the bank to put my pay check in (I had $10 more in there than I thought I had, apparently).
Then I went to Black & Brown where they told me the aloha shirt wasn't what they're interested in, but I might try Crossroads up the road. So I rode up there, went through their process (it's a busy place) and got about $15 cash. I'd have gotten about $25 trade but while they have a lot of neat stuff, there's hardly anything I need to buy in this "countdown" year.
I decided since I was most of the way, I might as well go to to Mitsuwa Marketplace. I rode as far as Guitar Center, used their loo, then stopped in at the McDonald's that's on the other corner from Starving Musician. I guess the dollar, er, $1.25 menu is a thing of the past now. A regular burger is $2.50. I decided on a double quarter-pounder with cheese, and a small unsweetened tea. Ordering is done using a kiosk and it's nice to see technology I used almost 30 years ago in Japan has finally reached here. It was pretty nice being able to pick out what I wanted, and the price, after rounding up for Ronald McDonald Charities, was $10.
The burger was really good too. I just ate the burger patties and not the buns. In this way McDonald's can be a good place to fuel up for the keto dieter on the go. The unsweetened tea even tasted good.
I rode over to Mitsuwa's after eating and was even early enough to go to Kinokuniya before they closed at 7. I wanted to find some educational material, maybe a poster for learning the kana or something. I got the Genki level 1 textbook and workbook and those cost me $70 so that's enough extra spending for this week.
I went into the main store and found about $20 worth of things to buy, then rode back out to Stevens Creek, and decided that Marukai Market isn't so far away, is it? So I rode over there. It *is* far away. Again I spent about $20. At least now I might have enough cans of butane for my Iwatani stove to last out the next year as one lasts me 2-3 weeks. It bugs me that places are charging over $2 for other brands when you can get actual Iwatani cans at Marukai for $2 each.
I went into Daiso to look around but their prices are crazy. Everything's overpriced! I got a little scrubber thing I think will be handy for scrubbing my head/hair and even that little piece of plastic was $2.
Now I had a long ride home but at least it was downwind and downhill, and it being almost 9 at night, traffic was pretty light. Of course there were zombies to avoid but all of them seemed to be slow walkers and pretty easy to evade.
I got back here and on the radio (on NPR) was some upper middle class lady talking about her lift, classically trained singer to astrophysicist to mother to TED Fellow, yadda yadda. I mean what's the matter with us poor people?? Why are we so lazy?? Yeah, fuck those people.
This is why I don't feel guilty about not giving any money to NPR. The last time they had a really big money-hustle going on, it turned out to be for a huge new building or headquarters or something and I think that's fine, maybe the old one was decrepit or too small or something, but why not come out and talk about it? No just hustle a lot of money from us little guys then go "Oh, yeah, we love our new palatial headquarters...".
Wikipedia's the same way - I actually donated $10 or something and then it turned out they were doing censorship or something. Never again.
No comments:
Post a Comment