Nice dent, Karen.

 I practiced long tones on the shakuhachi last night and that was about all I could do. Watched about half of an excellent Japanese movie called "The Shoplifters" with subtitles (lovely, as I can pick up on some Japanese words and expressions). 

I woke up with time, if I rushed and I did - to pack all the things that had to go out today and I'd already packed the big ones last night. 

I took off and did my post office and FedEx thing, and a funny thing happened. At a standard intersection, drivers love to make their right turns on red. An inexperienced cyclist will wait for the light right at the curb and they get injured or killed in this way routinely. In fact one just got offed by a driver in the last day or so, who doubtless felt very proud of himself. 

So, I always way just to the left of this little island of debris, shaped like a capital F without the smaller cross-bar, that denotes where drivers don't drive - hence the debris gathering there. Drivers making their right-on-left can go on through and everyone's happy. 

Well, this Karen pulls up next to me and says, "Right in the middle of the street??" and I reply, "Yep!!" and then as this standard overweight Karen in his standard dumpy sedan goes by I noticed the big dent in the driver's side door and called out, "Hey! Nice dent!". 

The thing is, Karen would either not have been able to go by if I were not "right in the middle of the street" and out of her path, or more likely, I'd deprived Karen of a chance to injure or kill me. At the conscious level, all Karen knows is she's irritated that a cyclist is "in the middle of the street" but the 90% that's below the surface about cars is to be able to bully, intimidate, injure, or kill anyone/anything perceived as "weaker". 

I found the usual load of packing stuff at my various stops on the way back, and got back in here. Did a neatening-up job on the parking lot and found the HVAC dumpster locked. Bummer! Luckily there was a guy going through the Usually Overloaded Dumpster(tm) which was unlocked because it'll get emptied in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. 

Obviously the guy's a down-and-outer as the car he's driving is missing the rear bumper entirely and looks pretty rough. He was looking for metals, and I said my "thing" is boxes and packing stuff like bubble wrap. I handed up my bag 'o' trash and said there are a few cans in there, and also that the dumpster on the other side of the complex, mirror-image with this one, has a bunch of stuff in it, plumbing fixtures and so on. Good pickings. He was an Asian guy, with tattoos so unfortunately for him, Americanized. Nice guy.