$136 Saturday

 I was up all night getting 30 things ready to list, but got a practice session done, too. 

Thanks to my alarm clock I was up at 3, and out the door at 4:30. Because of the 2-hour rule, I found myself at the Sunnyvale Whole Foods exactly 2 hours later and started busking at 6:30. I played until 8. 

It was windy, but I decided unless it go so strong that the money starts flying around in the tip box, I'm going to stick it out. And commenced a session of paid practice. 

I had one guy put a tip in and then ask me how I learned trumpet, and I told him I'd taught myself pretty much, there are books and YouTube etc. He tried piano, maybe as a kid, and it hadn't worked out. I encouraged him to try different instruments and see what he likes, and besides YouTube there's West Valley Music nearby. 

It was cool if not cold, and the wind didn't kick up too much. Whole Foods has a bunch of boxes of pumpkins and squash set up, in those big boxes called "Gaylords" (for the Gaylord company that makes some of them) and wooden boxes etc., and rather than this create a barrier, it's actually kind of helpful because people stop to look at the pumpkins etc., and now that it's been there a week or two people have learned to go smoothly around it. 

As always I was tempted to think it was slow, but it was most certainly not. There were a lot of people around, and the tips were coming in pretty regularly. My plan was to play until 8, and by a quarter to 8 it has gotten really slow. I kept on, until 8 proper which is good because that meant another tip or two, and in the end I'd made $136. 

As I was counting up a bum came up who I thought was asking for money, but really he wanted to know if I had a cigarette I'd sell him. Sorry, I told him, I don't smoke. But, I said, on Murphy Street there's a head shop and they might well sell loosies. And I gave him a couple of bucks anyway. He wasn't sure where Murphy Street was so I gave him directions, and he was insure about there being a smoke shop there. But I said it's weird, in this total "white bread" area, there's a smoke shop right in the middle of it. 

I walked back toward the bus stop, stopping at Baraka Market for my yogurt drink and some celery, waited maybe 15 minutes for the bus, and had a nice uneventful ride back to my "home" Whole Foods. I got some cheese there and a couple of beef sticks for tomorrow. The cashier said something like, "There you go with your beef sticks again" or something like that, not quite so unkind sounding, and I said it's because I can eat them on the bus, going to Sunnyvale. 

This is true. I'd brought some peanuts but didn't eat them because on the bus it means chancing dropping some and making a mess, getting salt and oil on my hands, etc. So it's beef sticks if I'm going to eat anything on the bus. 

I'd gotten back to the "home" Whole Foods at maybe a quarter after 9, and it *was* a Saturday night but it was really dead. Of course a quarter after 9 in San Jose is the equivalent of a quarter after midnight anywhere else. 

I had a nice boring ride home.