Mouse pad

 Last night I'd packed tons of things, 22 of them in fact, and put them into two large plastic bags, one from Ross and one from Big-5. The things would have filled up four of my Whole Foods cloth bags. 

So when I woke up at almost 3, I was glad I had everything ready to grab and go. I left here just before 4, stopped by the temple to drop off my January pledge, then went over to the downtown post office to mail all the packages. 

Next was the bank, with my record and theirs matching to the penny. That's a nice feeling. 

I went to Whole Foods to lock the bike and walked over to Diridon Station and caught the green line to the Convention Center, then got on a #323 bus to the big mall across from Santana Row. 

I walked into the mall via the valet parking entrance which turns out to be a great move, as I discovered there are very nice bathrooms there, benches to sit on, and the Apple Store which I was headed to, was right there. 

The guy there checked the Apple gift card I had and told me there's $10 on it. They also don't sell mouse pads. They sell some expensive "track pad" gadget and I just wanted a regular old mouse pad. No problem, I told the guy, and retraced my steps except I walked across the street to Best Buy. 

Best Buy had mouse pads for $5, and when  I got home I put my old, curling, one into the package the new one came in, taped it up, and put it with the couple of printers someone's left by the trash enclosure. 

I retraced the bus and light rail routine and went into Whole Foods. I asked at Customer Service if I can use an Apple gift card there and the guy said, with the mien of someone talking to someone who might be very stupid or crazy, that it's only good for Apple stuff like music and so on. 

By now I was pretty hungry and it's very cold out there so I got some meatloaf which today had a sauce that's close to pure oil, dumped some rice in because you can't beat beef+oil+rice, and had that with a "Mocha Stout" near-beer. 

I rode away from there and took a loop by Christmas In The Park. I thought the thing runs until the 10th and maybe it did, in the past. But it was being packed up and frankly was sad as hell. Hokey as it is, it was quite a downer to see it all fenced off, everything being packed up. 

I rode over to the Amazon place and picked up a good batch of bubble mailers, and gave the Apple gift card to the gal there after asking her of she or any of her co-workers could use it. She said she thinks one person can. 

Then I just rode home. It was about the normal amount of zombie-dodging on this trip. One annoyance is a zombie camp right on the corner of 10th and Hedding, where getting past can be a delicate balance, avoiding cars on the left side and hitting a filthy zombie on the right. 

With Christmas In The Park gone, I don't want to get into the rut of just playing at Whole Foods on the Alameda all the time. Even though it was a cold Thursday night (observed around 6PM but "night" starts at 5PM in Silicon Valley) there were a fair number of people around, enough to make it look worth it to me, but not enough to be worth it to the singing lady or the preacher guy.