I was up, sad to say, until almost 2AM last night. I didn't list anything, but carried through on my threat to take this one ... instrument ... that's big and heavy and a pain in the ass, that was on a little rolling platform I'd made years ago, and had to be moved out of the way all the time.
That ate up some time, and then I was tired and went to bed.
All good, but then I woke up at 8:30AM which is a bit suspicious. I had a scratchy throat too. When I'm catching a "bug" big or small, one sign is I get up earlier than I would otherwise. Normally I'd have slept until 10. So I think busking is off the table tonight. It's cold and windy out there, and due to get colder and windier.
I packed a few more things to bring the total up to 16 or 17, and took off at noon to the post office and FedEx. I also dropped off the rolling platform at Tom's like I told him I would (Ken would just put something way too heavy on it and break it). Tom wasn't there so I left it behind a chair in front of his place.
The latest thing on the radio is that the students and maybe even some faculty at Harvard, MIT, and other leading colleges have decided it is really cool to hold demonstrations calling for the genocide of Jews. They can't even wait until their beloved Dumpenfuehrer is elected or somehow connives his way into power again, they're going ahead and doing it now. And MIT was distinguished in not having the limits and quotas against Jews that the other leading colleges did, up into the 1950s. It's a big reason we've had so many brilliant scientists who happen to be Jewish come out of there.
But now they're doing their best to emulate universities in Berlin circa 1934.
The last few years have certainly been educational as to how awful most of this country is. I can't believe, for instance, that I once considered retiring in New Orleans. Rents are about as cheap as Hawaii, the trumpet a good instrument to play there, and being an old, pre-car city it's easy to get around. Plus there's a pretty large Asian presence.
But it turns out the politics there are far-right, and the crime rate so stupendously high that there's at least one TV show where all they do is send a cameraman out with an ambulance crew and in one evening they have enough material for an hour's show. It takes a LOT of violence and gore to actually be able to pare it down to make it interesting for TV and have an hour's show, but New Orleans provides this with regularity.
I got back here and cleaned up, and headed downtown to my bank. I'd forgotten my card with my account number on it there - again. And it turns out they had it. So that worked out but my account turned out to be $60-odd down from where I thought it would be ... hm that's the amount I paid for the trumpet gig bag ... I bet I didn't write the charge for it.
I went to Whole Foods next for a visit to the loo and some food. They have this mushroom and beef meat loaf lately that's just the thing for this cold weather. Some of that and some broccoli and I'm set.
It didn't take me long to eat, and I headed back downtown and went through Christmas In The Park mainly because I wanted to buy a "Santa hat". In the past there's been a booth just selling hats of all sorts. But nothing this time. What I did see, was a booth for caricatures. This turned out to be a couple of black guys from Los Angeles, and when the boss guy got back from his errand or whatever, I noticed the ISCA pin on his jacket and started talking about that organization, how it used to be the NCN for National Caricaturists' Network and how I'd tried to get enthusiastic about doing caricatures myself, but music's turned out to be more my thing.
I also mentioned looking for a "Santa hat, you know, red with the white...." and the guy got up and walked off like maybe he's forgotten something, then came back in a short while. He'd checked where he thought they might be selling some, but there weren't any. I thanked him and said No biggie, and I have to get my "Weekly Walmart" on.
So I rode off, going by a ton of those little stands many of which had many types of hats but nothing Christmas-specific. On my ride down to Walmart I thought they might actually have something in their "seasonal" area.
I got there, grabbed a cart, got my cheese and stuff, and checked the Seasonal area. Yep, they had "Santa hats" for $3. So I picked up three of them.
It all came to $50-odd but I'd gotten some pricey stuff - 3 cans of the good sardines are $9 after all. I took one of the hats and put it in its own plastic bag and put the other two in the Walmart bag and rode back over to the park. The guys were negotiating the price for a group portrait, it sounded like, Mom, Dad, and the kid. I handed over the bag saying "Guess what Walmart had?" They were pretty surprised but I said they'd only cost $3 and "Consider it ISCA dues I never paid".
I rode over to the Amazon place for bubble mailers, then to Nijiya for a few things, then back here. It was getting "active" in that I could see police lights in two different directions, there was a helicopter circling, and two intersections had their lights just blinking red. When I rode up Hedding there was some crazy zombie walking in the middle of the road, hitting cars with his fist, plus he had a pit bull on a leash. I veered over to the opposite lane and rode between the curb and the oncoming traffic then as the light was still green, sped through the intersection and on home.
It was cold out there and really felt cold by the time I got back, at 6 which is late for this town.
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