Wintry Tuesday

 I was up around 1.  I didn't do anything last night because after all the riding around and getting rained on a bit and not having eaten all day (and it was an honest half-hour in line at Walmart), there were three things I'd bought at Walmart that factor in here. 

One was a "Black Box" tetrapak of wine, 500ml, and one was another brand tetrapak, another 500ml, and a can, just like soda is sold in but a can, of wine also. 350ml I think. Plus in line I'd grabbed a couple of beef sticks. 

The plan had been to sit and relax, eating the beef sticks and drinking the soda can of not-soda in Japantown. I like to sit on this one long bench by the "spike" and just relax, with some coffee or something, and enjoy not being at work, not being at home, not actively shopping. This used to be called having a "third place", a thing that's almost completely unknown here. 

Traditional third places are generally social places too, but socializing is a real no-no here. If you go to a coffee shop and talk with someone you didn't come in with, or  - the horror! - get out a chess set, you will be told on no uncertain terms to leave. Again, "You're not here to make friends, you're here to work". 

Well, the big drops of rain falling on me nixed that plan, so once  I got back in here I got out the can and the beef sticks and enjoyed them here and then got into the "salmon candy" I'd also bought and one of the tetrapaks and then, by golly, the other one. In the end I'd drank all the wine and went right to bed which answers why I was up early (for me) because I'd gone to bed early (for me). 

At least the wine this time around wasn't sweet, so I felt blah but not as bad as after all the sugary wine. I had coffee and some nuts and tried to get feeling normal and eventually got around to packing 20 things and got up to the post office and FedEx, and collecting shipping materials on the way back. 

On my way back I realized it's Tuesday and that's when I get the senior discount at Ross. So I got back here and unloaded and went right back up to H Mart to lock the bike, and realized I was feeling better enough that I really had to eat something. 

By now it was about 7:30 so the hot things in the back corner of H Mart were half-price and I got some beef ribs and rice and pickled daikon slices for $4-something and ate that sitting out front. Yum! 

Then I walked over to Ross, picked out some pants and a shirt I was interested in, then realized I'd better go to Sprouts before they close so I hung my finds up where I'd found them and went over to Sprouts and got some jalepeno peppers and a cucumber, and was able to use the self checkout OK even though the peppers had no code so I had to key in the name of them. 

I also checked out the wine selection there and still can't find anything Kosher and the can and tetrapak situation is pretty limited too. Walmart's actually better. I didn't buy any. The wines there are serviceable, though, and I can always dive in there on a Friday afternoon and get what I want for my nice Friday dinner. 

I went back to Ross and ended up getting a shirt so I guess that's something. 

Then I came back here, got 15 things ready and listed them, put a big backlog of things away, packed everything that had sold that I hadn't packed already, and even did a haircut. 

Election results are in, and in some states significant numbers of Democrats voted something called "Uncommitted". Translation: Biden's not pro-Hamas. States with large numbers of "uncommitted" voters are places where the stupidity is like pea soup fog, like Southern states, states that remember they were set up as whites-only homelands like Washington, and, the state with the highest percentage ... Hawaii. 

Hawaii's had a Christian problem like they have a stray-cat problem: Far, far too many of them. In a lot of ways it's like the South - ignorant and hateful. One of my younger sisters got sucked into that cult, and was taught early on to hate Jews. They have a ton of trumptards too. And you can't swing a cat without hitting a member of some loony cult or another. 

But to have 30% of Hawaii Democrats vote "uncommitted" by which they mean, "We don't care if Trump is elected and imprisons or deports most of us for having brown skin, we've decided we hate Biden because he doesn't share our hate of Da Jooooooooz!"

I'm really beginning to wonder just how stupid that place is. They've decided to base the whole economy on tourism, and are almost entirely depending on importation for their food. Many decades ago, they actually had local dairies, local taro and rice fields, and even more recently, a shrimp farming industry and locally grown corn, and things like that. All gone now. Those Kahuku shrimp trucks are all selling shrimp grown in Thailand or somewhere. 

So they've based the whole economy on tourism, and the result is over-tourism. Apparently the North Shore is one big traffic jam and people talk about it taking an hour to get from Haleiwa to Sunset. It's shit like this that makes me wonder if I went back, if I'd just end up moping in my room all the time.