My solution

 My solution to the shipping + getting to the bank situation was, since it was going to start raining again in the afternoon, to stay up all night, pack everything and I mean everything, even a last-minute sale of some capacitors, and take things to the post office and FedEx right after they opened. 

It was 28 things, although about 10 of them were all in one package. So it was a good healthy load of things and this is why I wanted to get them out so much; not only did some things have to go out and still might be chalked up as late in my Ebay stats, but I like to have everything go out before the weekend.

I got back here and cleaned up and headed out again for the bank. I stopped at Nijiya and treated myself to one of my favorite bento, grilled pieces of salmon belly skin and all, with salmon eggs, on rice. Yum! 

I went to the bank and their math and my math agreed to the penny so that's nice. I had a nice talk with the guy there too. He's working for the bank because .... something like his wife is going to school in this area and they commute from kind of far away so he goes along too and works a job, this job, at the bank. At least that's my understanding. 

I went over to Whole Foods and got some macadamia nuts (1 oz. is part of my breakfast with coffee) and then rode over to the big Goodwill on San Carlos. I didn't buy anything but maybe should have bought this one North Face fleece. They had a nice Bundy, I think, flute for $33 that might be something that could be resold for a profit but I have flutes here I want to sell. 

Now the main part of my plan: I walked down to the restaurant supply place and bought a box of 200 plastic bags of the type the stores up until very recently *were* supplying with one's groceries, but now everyone's going over to paper bags. Even Nijiya and Walmart. So for less than $20 I got 200 bags, and it's only because the box was so heavy that I didn't buy two boxes. I was able to carry the box in one of the Whole Foods cloth bags I keep on the bike, so it was no problem. 

I need to go by there more often, not only to stock up on those bags (ideally I want two more boxes, giving me enough to get through the next year and a half, the time I anticipate I'll here working for Ken before I leave) and also to check the musical instruments there at Goodwill. I'm thinking I really should have bought that Bundy flute, because I looked it over and either the silver plating was *very* thick, or maybe it had silver plating over "German silver" which is how Yamaha student flutes are made, or it was actually one of the solid silver models. 

In any case it was a good use of the half-day that's not rainy and on my way back after picking up a handful of bubble mailers at the Amazon place and picking up a chashu don bowl for later, I got back here. 

I got the side-eye from one of the guys, a new guy probably, as I went in here with the bike. I'm smart enough - usually - to not leave anything out there and that was reinforced by, a couple of weeks ago, seeing a guy from next door who has a nice car, looking at my bike and trailer out front as I was bringing things in, like he'd like to abscond with it. "If I only had a van, I could make this disappear" I could almost hear him thinking. Because he has a nice car - actual poor people will steal but not nearly as often as the more wealthy, who got to be more wealthy by stealing in various forms. 

I went right to sleep and woke up at 11PM. It had been 3 in the afternoon so that makes sense. 

I turned on the radio like I do every time when I wake up, and apparently we're committing our Guernica, in Venezuela. We're bombing Caracas, which is in anyone's book an act of war. Thank goodness for the BBC which they play on NPR, because I doubt our own news sources would report on it.