An interesting and profitable weekend

 On Friday night I got things listed really early, and settled down for my do-nothing time. All well and good, and with some wine too. 

I woke up on Saturday and I'd already signed up for the Purim thing at the Jewish temple, and I wanted to go to the thing the next day. The first thing started at 6PM and the thing the next day started at 10:30AM. Plus it was rainy, cold, and miserable. Riding home from the first thing at something like 10 at night, in the rain, and then getting myself up for another ride, probably in rain and certainly in the cold and wind, sounded horrible. 

So I booked a room at a hotel down by Santa Clara college, stuffed all kinds of things in my CostCo backpack, and took along my trumpet and tip box, and the 46 light sticks I had gotten from the EMT training place. 

By the time I got down there, checked in, and took a thorough and very welcome shower, I knew I'd get to the thing at 7PM instead of right at starting time at 6, but  I figured tons of people would be "fashionaby late" too. It was about costumes, drinking, and partying. 

By the time I was showered and out the door of the hotel, ready to bus it down to the temple, I was pretty hungry since I'd not eaten anything so I went to Akita Sushi and got a "Philly" roll which was pretty good, great fish to rice ratio. I was glad I'd done this when I got there because the "nosh" was really lame - tortilla chips, refried beans, nothing hot or spicy at all, some guacamole, sour cream, meh. I had some, of course, but I was really glad for that fish. 

I did end up drinking three pretty strong IPA's, enjoyed the music (their band is pretty good) and once the party was starting to swing, I went around and handed out the light sticks. So now I'm the guy who handed out light sticks. 

I bugged out at a bit after 9, hopped a bus down to Whole Foods and got some string cheese and one of those little 4-packs of 185ml wine bottles. Then hopped another bus back to my room, and settled in for cheese, wine, and TV. 

I actually slept pretty well until I woke up around 7 or so, hearing crows outside so I knew it was light out. It had rained pretty hard. For some reason now I was hearing all the traffic, the buses stopping at the stop right by the front door of the hotel, etc. I brewed up more Keurig coffee and watched a bit more TV, finding some neat stuff about CFCs and global warming, a NASA post-mortem on an experimental jet crash, and suchlike things to watch. Once it was 9AM I'd gotten my stuff together, leaving tons of little snacks from the Purim goodie box I'd gotten the night before, a $5 tip for the room cleaners, and inadvertently, most of the string cheese in the little fridge. 

When I left was when I noticed the window was open about 6 inches. When did that happen? I'm pretty sure it'd not been open when I'd checked in. And I think it had been closed overnight, but then things get mysterious. Did the cleaning people open it to make sure I'd wake up? Was someone trying to break in? It's just ... bizarre. 

I went across the street and Voyager Coffee was far too hipster-y for me plus the egg fritatas were sold out, so I went to the Cali-Mex place and got scrambled eggs and has browns, and a regular ol' mug of coffee. And they had a bottle of Tapatio right on the table. After all there'd be lunch but better eat now. 

I rode the bus down there and walked over to a sort of outdoor area behind an office building, with tables, and did a bit of practice. In the telling of the story of Purim, you're supposed to make awful sounds whenever the name of Haman is mentioned. The night before, we'd all had "graggers" or noisemakers, to do this with. But there was to be another Purim telling, and I figured with my trumpet I could do pedal tones, which sound fairly awful. So I practiced pedal tones, sorry neighborhood! 

But when  I got the the temple, I learned the Purim telling and carnival were for the little kids, but it just so happened they had an open-house for adults. It was me, an older lady who plays clarinet, taught herself, can play classical and plays a Selmer R13 so a pro-level horn. The same model Artie Shaw played. And a guy who teaches high school in Los Gatos and had just learned of the temple's existence. 

So we went around, learned of the various remodels of the buildings and grounds, and it was really nice. While the kids did their little-kid thing. The best costumes were two kids dressed as Mario and Luigi from Mario KART with toy cars they sort of wore around their waists. 

We grown-ups ended up sitting around a table talking about all kinds of things, and then we got the lunch - all pretty much finger food like tater tots, these sort of egg shaped things that turned out to have pieces of hot dog inside, and that sort of thing. So I was smart to have had those scrambled eggs. 

And I got to meet the rabbi, in a dress! Not myself, the rabbi. Pretty hilarious because he's a chunky lad. I'm to talk to him a bit this Friday. 

Clarinet Lady wants to get into volunteering for various things, but also is, like myself, interested in klezmer music. I said I'm I real klezmer musician myself, in that I have a job I hate during most of my hours, and only get to play music on evenings and weekends, I learn mostly by ear, and of course I love the klezmer style. 

To be in the actual band you have to be an official member of the temple and to be a member .... well ... that's why I need to talk to the rabbi.

I ended the event with buying some hamentaschen which were 3 for $2 but I gave them $3 and said keep the change, then went into the gift shop and bought a book, Abba Eban's autobiography, for $5. The gal working in there I'd seen before, in the past. I think she's Israeli, or something, and English is not her forte'. She was overjoyed that I had an even $5 and an even 50c for the tax. 

Now I was really all done and went out to the bus. My plan, the plan I'd had for last weekend but didn't do, was to try the waters at the Campbell Whole Foods. I'll be kicked out of there, I was sure. I'll be kicked out of there or it'll suck. So I got off by Diridon Station, and got on the Green Line train to the weird, elevated, Hamilton station and walked over to the Whole Foods. 

The place is huge. There are something like 4 in/out doors. I set up at the one next to the main one, and started in playing. All kinds of Whole Foods employees went by and no one said a thing or even gave me a sour look. No security people said anything. I played, and tips came in, and it all went pretty well. At the end of an hour I was done, packed up and went inside for a $4 can of black coffee and drank that up, and counted up. $51, in an hour. That's OK. 

I decided I'd go to Sunnyvale, my plan for if Campbell sucked, anyway. So I hopped back on the Green Line train, and took the CalTrain to Sunnyvale. 

I walked around Murphy Street, mainly looking for a place I might get something to eat and also use the loo. I went into The Bean Scene, and asked the gal what spreads they had for their bagels. That pretty much short-circuited her brain, and I said Look, I need to use the bathroom so badly I can barely think, and she said something like how she was going to go around back and open it, or something.  I went back there and it was open so I used it and left. 

All the places on Murphy were really high priced. Plus, some placed called Fuego or something started up this loud canned music that covered the whole street. So much for playing on ol' Murphy. 

That left Whole Foods, so I walked over there, and got some roast beef and pastrami and broccoli, and a can of carbonated water, mainly because if I could not find implements and had to eat with my hands, the water could be used to wash before and after. But an employee told me where they were, so the can of fizzy water turned out to be well worth the price as a weight to keep my tip box from blowing away. 

After eating and using a toothpick and chewing gum, I set up in front where people going to the theater and Target would hear me too. That went OK, and I got handed $10 from a car and I hardly ever get handed money from cars. The wind was awful though, and after half-hour I decided to set up at the other front door, where the carts are and where people go in/out of the massive parking structure. 

That went OK too. Only OK as it was a bit slow. When I had maybe 10 minutes left to play of my hour, a lady dropped a tip in almost apologetically, and it was a $100 bill. This was the third time I've gotten a $100 tip, and this is the second time the $100 tip was from a smallish, swarthy, probably Indian, lady who is almost furtive about dropping it in. I'm thinking it might be the same person. 

I played a bit more, then my Lawrence Welk "Goodnight!" sign-off tune, then I was packing up and an Asian office-worker type guy came up. "Are you packing up?" he asked. "Yes I'm packing up". "Well can you play 'Fly Me To The Moon'? Something cheerful?" I got the horn back out of the case and plugged the mouthpiece in and was ready to say that the song is actually called "In Other Words" but the guy had already dropped a couple dollars in the box and turned to go inside. So I played the tune and gave it some real effort, *then* packed up. I'd made $129 which with the $51 earlier, was $180 for a couple of hours of playing. 

I walked back to the train station to find I had something like 45 minutes until the next train, so I walked out to El Camino Real to get on a #22 bus. I got off at the Santa Clara transit station thinking I could get on the Airport Flyer and not have go to all the way downtown just to get back here. 

But the next #60 wasn't due for ... 45 minutes. Bugger! I had a solution though, I'd just hop on the CalTrain, because the one I didn't want to wait for should be coming through in about 5 minutes. So I checked that and nope ... next train was an hour out. So then I ran back to the bus stop and a #522 came through and I ran and got on it. Funny thing, an Indian guy ran and got on it too, and neither of us were sure if we were on the right bus. I was afraid I might be on the one heading to Palo Alto, which is turned out not to be. The Indian guy however wanted to go to Palo Alto, had run and got on because he was following me, and a friendly gaggle of Indians told him he had to get off and take a #522 from the opposite spot to get to Palo Alto. 

I got off by the SAP Center and walked to my "home" Whole Foods. I got another 4-pack of those little wine bottles, some olives and marinated artichoke hearts and mushrooms, and a can of IPA. 

I went upstairs and had my marinated goodies and the IPA, then sat at the bar and got a half-glass of some coffee beer called "Coffee And Cigarettes" which was pretty nice. I was nice to just relax. 

Then I walked over to Diridon, got on a train back here, and walked in. At least it was a matter of disengage mine, put feet in motion, and pretty soon I was back here. I got on Ebay, made things happen, and the numbers are happy.