It was actually great. There were a lot of people, we started on a new song which we're terrible at but once I find it on YouTube I can get a handle on it. One of the ladies made sure to thank me for the tip on cleaning the shakuhachi, as it really cleans up the sound.
I'm not sure if I'd have gone if it was rainy, but fortunately it was dry. It's a real act of defiance to go to these things, since this is a "You're not here to make friends, you're here to work" area. And being working-class, I'm not supposed to have vacations or much in the way of time off at all.
It's all the more depressing that I've decided that the best tactic is to retire and leave here in mid-2027 instead of mid-2026 so I'll transition from being covered by Medi-Cal here, to Medi-Care back in Hawaii.
Since Ken wants me to help him move stuff out of the two units in the nearby storage, into one unit in another storage place he's found, any fun, what little fun, I'm allowed to have for the weekend I figured I'd better have today. So I packed 8 or 9 things, took them to the downtown post office, took my pay check to the bank, and went to Whole Foods for pizza and a fizzy water, and then some macadamia nuts, getting cash back so I've withdrawn from my account my "allowance" for the week. I'm right back to the plan of saving half of each pay check.
After that, I rode back downtown far enough to get onto San Carlos and start riding along there, first checking out a packaging place which turns out to be closed. Then "Smart & Final" which doesn't have packing tape.
Then I went through the antique stores, not finding anything interesting. I'd wanted to go through them for a while, and this sure got that out of my system. I went to the Teen Challenge thrift store last, and got a copy of "In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck, a somewhat rare book I've wanted to read for a while. That was a dollar.
I rode back over to the Amazon place for bubble mailers, then down to Walmart for the "weekly Wal" and got a lot of things. I also was able to get Ken on the phone and he finally, since was still at his house right in front of a computer, order packing tape. I said mainly it's the brown kind which is really hard to find, so that's coming in on Monday or so.
I got back here and was able to see what all the noise was about on the other side of the shop, not the side occupied by the cleaning place but the other one. Which is also going to be occupied by the cleaning place. I had a nice talk with the one guy who speaks English OK, and among other things talked about the illegal night club. They'd been told a story by the criminals that I'd been waiving a machete around trying to ... hit them or something? I said I don't even own a machete.
The cleaning guys are OK. They play loud music but not all the time and not late. They run a pressure washer but that's part of their job, cleaning things. It's an industrial area after all. What they don't do is pound on the door here at 2AM, have drunks pissing on the front of this place, etc. They're just basic good neighbors, with perhaps more music that has a lot of accordion and tuba.
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