A single cooling fan

 That's all that's sold since yesterday afternoon. A single little cooling fan. 

I'm really hoping things get better after the election. I've told Ken that I think that's what's going on, that people are uncertain because of it. If that's the case we can hold out for a few more months. If that's not the case, then things get interesting. I may have to take a cut in pay, if my pay goes down by 1/2 I can still live OK and busk for what more I need. I won't be able to save any more, but  I can live and do the work I need to here. I'll wait for Ken's initiative on this though. 

I installed the new toilet seat, which took about 5 minutes. It feels flimsier than the old one but it was about the cheapest that's American Standard brand at $35. The nicer ones were $50 or so. But hey, new is new and it's pretty nice. It even has this feature where the lid closes slowly when you put it down so there's not that "clunk!" 

Yesterday I got better at using the self-checkout too. I'd seen that the total for the light bulb and the first toilet seat was about all I had and I wanted to hang onto my cash. So I figured out how to "back up" in the process on the self-checkout and use my card instead of cash. 

I packed the one thing to ship, then gathered together a batch of books, and took off a bit before 4. I got rid of trash, dropped off the one package at the post office, then went over to the used book store to get trade credit for the books. What inspired me to do this is, on Reddit someone mentioned their reading "Hasidic Tales Of The Holocaust" every Tisha B'Av and I was sure I'd seen that title in the book store. 

So I traded in my books, and got the Hasidic tales book and a Primo Levi book I didn't have yet, and after buying those and combining my trade credit on one little card, I now have a bit over $31 in trade credit where I had $20, plus the "new" books. Pretty good deal. 

I doubled back to Whole Foods for some food and a beer, then I rode over to Shasta Street where there's a little free library that has a lot of room in it. I put the books the book store didn't want into there and sure enough, Karen with her two little dogs came out of the house the little free library is in front of. She asked what I was putting in there (she'd seen me put the now-empty plastic bags into there for people to use to carry books home) and I said, "Books". She said something about plastic bags and I said, "To put books in!" and rode off. 

I rode to Central Computers and found a USB DVD drive I'm going to just give to the folks at the temple. Then they'll be able to deal with any DVD they get. 

Now I just had to ride all the way down to Beth David but at least I knew what I was doing this time. I stopped at Sprouts for a $4 bottle of wine because I'd forgotten to get one at Whole Foods. Then on down there, where I was about a half hour early. 

The movie was really good. It was all a sort of storyboard with really good artwork for each scene. This makes it sound lame but it was most certainly not. It was about the destruction of the 2nd temple. Then we had a discussion session afterward and coffee and juice and snacks. I had black coffee and 4 madelines. 

The guy who's retired from Adobe wasn't there. He really was fixated on the idea that the movie was being shown at Temple Sinai. 

The ride home was pleasant but there's no getting around that it's a long-ass ride. And it seems Shabbat next week is going to be held at .... Beth David.

At least one cool thing: On my way down there I noticed a sign: SLAVIC SHOP. This is a place I'd looked at on Google Maps but had decided was far out of my way. Well here it was. I got a can of "Icelandic" codfish liver and a package of "Burgery" seasoning for ground beef. They had a sign by the register saying that any profit from any products from Russia will be given to Ukrainian charities.