Shots from the Lip

 I got a long email from one of my earliest clients.....I believe we 'met' as T-Bird graduates way back when in my early Guangzhou days.  I'm pretty sure I also did meet him in 1993, 'years' before the 1997 market crash that wiped out his investment gains.   They've doubled the condensed game time to approximately 20 minutes.  I found this out this morning, because a subscription to MLB-TV ain't worth a damn - you need NBC & Peacock for the opening games...what's next?  Certainly not the ability to get the games on MLB-TV.....damned system is trying to milk consumers any way it can.......screw that - radio works pretty damned well!!!

 Yesterday, virtually all day long - the printer and computer would not work together......this morning, it all worked as smooth as silk....... The gate repair - ~$7,000 - far too expensive....I wrote a counter proposal for just the gate....we'll see what he comes back with...... We'll get my photos and that will determine how I will 'direct' my photo energies..... but even more important than that, I have to re-energize myself vis a vis piano!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 No real case of Monday morning blues.....the 'enhanced', 24 hour security system seemed to work the way it should last night......Katherine got a good night's sleep....I read and slept........let's see about tonight..... I already purchased milk at Trader Joe's this morning during my daily walk - sunny out but already down to 18C outside, so it will be getting cooler as the days go shorter.  And then I wrote Detective Capiro - giving him the new Incident # and letting him know we've also upgraded our security - we shall see what happens........ I have the current events class on zoom now.  It really is a lousy class - no structure and full of attendees desirous of talking.....is it my problem that I have no interest in listening??   I do have no problem listening to the lecturer - she's good......but knowing that this class is actually hybrid, I am not really interested in going to the live class...... Same with the opera class......interesting enough to se...

 Hey, doesn't that title make you a bit inquisitive?  What am I getting at????  NY Bagels and Deli - that's it!  Walking by the place on an early Sunday morning with the sun starting to come out and the humidity for the day already high, the smell of bagels baking and breakfast being cooked and served tempted me to grab a seat at one their empty outside front tables to savor the breakfasts being cooked and served - and ingest what I could through deep nasal breaths..... So I get home only to discover that a 3.6 earthquake this morning was enough to screw up my printer and its cable access - and now I cannot print anything out.....is it time to forget printing?

 Lots more urine this time.....and for the second time in a row, nothing was picked up....SimpliSafe will be here tomorrow afternoon  - something is wrong and it has to be corrected! And other than that?   I am happy to have found a mama-papa Korean immigrant shop that does film developing.....not only that, it is virtually across the street from Marukai Market and getting there now can also be by taking the #1 bus to Bundy and then the #14 on Bundy to Pico...... True, it is expensive.....and that means using film more sparingly, once I've 'verified' through developing and printing that first roll, that I brought in to Rose 1 hr photo - the mama-papa shop...... ******** But wait - there's more - and it was unexpected:  I wrote Detective Caprio as well as Simplisafe and Caprio responded - thus, I called to make a new incident report.......and we now wait for SMPD to come so we can follow through with this. ******** I am purging two books from current reading:...

 Now, without weekend bicycling and after doing Sweet Dreams last night, we stayed in bed later than usual.  Obviously, we got up......I did my morning walk.....got two different chips at Trader Joe's....perused and selectively printed and read this morning's news papers......answered UCLA Health and set up a 29 December follow-up medical appointment......and am now fully involved in procrastinating through the balance of this morning, avoiding responsible tasks that should have been done a couple of days ago.....etc, etc, etc...... And yet......true to the procrastinating spirit of things, yesterday afternoon I started binge reading.  First,  I completed this week's New Yorker for free, off of the Libby app.  Then I completed reading Closing Time, Joseph Heller's 'sequel' to Catch 22, 32 years after the original was published.  Of course it was not close to the original......perhaps I should have read Something Happened instead of Closing Time.......regard...

 Pure luck - I did something right - the right thing at the right time! I went to the new Italian sandwich shop on SMB that Katherine saw and expressed an interest in trying......I took away their most popular sandwich, pre-cut in half for the two of us....perfect to fill out lunch today, followed by a trip, first to Whole Food, then to Trader Joe's, and then to the open house at 1227 23d Street and the primary of three apartments for lease......this one 3 bedrooms - 2 ensuite....+   Interesting but for the stairs....... The sandwich? Good but way, way, way over-priced....and yet, it is probably time to sample from the abundance of what is available downtown that we cannot get here, so close-by.......\ Comedy class - we watched the first half of Tootsie - 1982.   

 They ain't there anymore....I walked there this afternoon.  They were a professional company offering pretty rapid film processing. I went there after frustrating visits to both Walgreens and CVS - once upon a time they were super slow but still did film processing.  Not anymore - their 3d party contract processor ceased.  Turns out Analog Camera was that 3d party contract processor.   Now there's no place in the entire city of Santa Monica were I could walk up to a counter and drop off a 35mm cassette for developing and prints. I have one roll waiting to be processed and two rolls waiting to be loaded into the Rollei for a photoshoot.  That ain't gonna happen until there's a solution to this film processing conundrum I am now in......

 There are 3 episodes left to be seen in Season 5's 12 episodic Fauda that I started last week.  This is strong stuff!  After season 5, I'll watch Season 4 which I do not recall having seen before. I enjoyed going downtown for a photoshoot yesterday.  I will do this far more frequently!!!  And today I both drew and water colored.....more of that for the future as well! I will read this afternoon......right now, I have a Buena Vista Social Club 2005 North Sea Jazz Festival concert on as background....nice!!

 First we had Jose.....next was Henry.....this morning Osvaldo is here to complete installation of the wires connecting the third camera in front of our house for our security system. On Monday, because  budget cuts mandated Fridays as work from home days or off days, we could not meet with City Hall to find out what we have to do to install bamboo frontage behind our front fence....then we'll have the fence repaired and set up with bamboo....hopefully, that will be enough.   Regardless, after Osvaldo completes today' s tasks, I will go out on a photoshoot, returning for a late lunch/early dinner.......

 We more or less have mutually decided upon what we want to do with our front fence but discovered this morning, after arriving at City Hall East to ask questions and confirm what we can do without permit, that the place is closed on Fridays.  Budget cuts demanded this.  So we'll go back again on Monday and then coordinate with the sub-contractor we met with...... Still no word from either Planning or Public Works and we are not about to contact either - we'll wait for them...... We got two mini-pumpkins for inside decor Trader Joe's $.99 specials......I am toying with the idea of getting a big pumpkin and carving it......I did this a long, long time ago, once upon a time...... Sketching, music, reading on my afternoon agenda.....going to go downtown on a photoshoot tomorrow.....

 15 of those I've communicated with over the years still remembered - they sent me birthday greetings - including one who sent a long email.....one who I apparently made some impact upon but alas, I do not remember him other than sending birthday greetings.....such is life..... We went to Teddy's for breakfast yesterday.....not as good as the Pantry was but hey, close enough and actually, so fucking close to us to warrant going more often! We've found someone to repair our front fence - and will do this in conjunction with raising our current fence as it is 'refurbished' and putting in bamboo dividers to raise height without needing a permit.......we now need to go to City Hall to confirm what we can legally do without permit.

 Neither of us was in deep sleep and the noise we heard out front was enough to awaken us.  Had we been truly alert, we'd have run to the front door, turned on the front light and perhaps, had a chance to get a better view of a someone in shorts and a hoodie, blocking identification, throwing a 'pissatov cocktail' of what we believe was urine on our front porch...4th or 5th time???   We should have kept the front light on at night....we will in the future.....gets a better view for the Simplisafe system.  But Simply Safe did pick this up and we did remember to call SMPD who came 15 minutes later and we do have an incident report to which we can now post the material that we did not get a chance to present in Court. We'll go to Specified Bicycles to see what they picked up on their system and add that to the material that we can now add, through the SMPD website, directly to the incident report...........

 Yeah, that is one big breakfast!  Sausage patty, bacon strip, English muffin split in two, scrambled eggs, 3 pancakes, hash brown, orange juice......and lots of butter  and a small container of syrup. whew.......burp.......but no coffee......... I was out with Edwin, formalizing the next lease....then home to sit off all that food.  I'm listening go operavore (WQXR opera station) as I type.   I'm more or less up to date...got to answer Edwin and take a couple of bike pictures.....and read....that's it for today......... Perhaps a walk to Ralphs for a half pound of spicey shrimp ceviche? 25 years + a couple of days......the World Trade Center bombing.....a generation ago.  We were in China......probably in Guangzhou but it could have been Hong Kong as we had the Garley Building apartment and I could have been spending a weekend there with Joanna.  25 years ago....and now here I am at 84.....how the fuck did I get to be this old??? Have a great day...

 Last time it was Jose.  Today it was Henry who came and installed two cameras out front.  We still need him to return with a longer cord to permanently connect that third, front camera....but we no longer will need to put on the front porch light at nights. I did a brief morning walk today and I probably will stay home all day and continue to rest as I do have brain fog to contend with. I hear and understand everything said to me...I have vision problems that should be attended to...but what concerns me is my ability for a quick verbal response.....it ain't happening....... It is time to binge upon Closing Time, finishing it before going to anything else.....and searching to see whether I have Something Happened already on either Kobo or Kindle. Happy day - Something Happened, already purchased but never read, is on my Kobo!!!!!

 I went out in the morning.  After 4pm, I will go to Trader Joe's for purple onions.  Soon I will play piano for a bit.   I've already completed an additional chapter of Closing Time and am now 85% of the way through the book.  It is insightful but there are sections that Heller 'experimented' with that I found difficult to read. I completed this week's issue of the New Yorker online today.   Libby, the public library online app is wonderful for a few magazines, New Yorker included!

 Tonight I return to do Sweet Dreams after two weeks off because of a vagrant who assaulted me.  Such was life....such is life.... I still have to get the bicycle sold! My clown nose arrived....I look funny with it and it screws up my breathing.  I also got a clown bow tie with elastic band to hold in place and a wig that Katherine did not want to keep so we'll give that away. I do not seek approval to wear this and will patiently await Halloween - hey, I get complete autonomy for Sweet Dreams because no one wants to monitor me during the evening - especially the nursing staff who do not need an extra job.  They now ask me to assist them, going to some specific rooms each time.... Yesterday, assuming my iPhone data was correct, the temperature reached 35C late afternoon in downtown Santa Monica.  Around 11am, yesterday, after class, I walked from 2d Street to the edge of the Palisades, looking out at the beach and ocean.  One could see, one could feel the h...

 Linda Jackson is a black American opera singer, closer to my generation than current generations.  Her teaching methods are definitely not academic.  There are 35 in the class - 8 men.  We are baroque this semester, going into detail for The Coronation of Poppea.  This is a long opera and since I am already downtown for my first class of the day, a hybrid live/Zoom class, I start class on my iPhone, staying online long enough to get attendance credit for the day but, alas, missing some of what Jackson has already started playing - and interrupting to comment - a really great video with the first baroque subtitles that are updated by a few centuries and make far more sense as modern language. I wavered:  do I continue with class or drop it.....I'll continue as I think I can get used to the contrasting teaching methods between John Achorn (Tuesday and Wednesday mornings) and Linda Jackson. I'm home now.....awaiting half of the shrimp dish I da bao'd from Duc...

 I cannot believe I shoveled down that which I did, yesterday, through more eating establishments than I have ever been in in one brief afternoon.......but I did, ending up with over-indulging in Danish sugar cookies to soften the stiffness of tequila, after not drinking for so very, very long..... With that out of the way, it is time to start going through all the food piling up in our freezer, purchased at various and sundry places when we saw bargains.....only we are buying faster than eating and the pile up seems to be a never ending problem..... I chose a yellow, sweet, football shaped melon this morning from Trader Joe's....and I think I'm going to have the pastrami dip I purchased from The Hat yesterday afternoon in Temple City......

 How truly misleading:  weather status on my phone shows it is raining now and will be raining all day long.  Don't assume that this is the only thing you should know in determining how you should face a day of rain as entire precipitation for the day, both before now and going throughout the entire day, should amouunt to less than 10cc's of rain that will be over by 11am. OK - I won't go out this morning....but this afternoon?? Oh boy, what a mistake to have truly relied upon the forecast going into the morning.....it was raining as we drove to LAX to exchange rental cars from one overpriced to one at half that price, far more tolerable.....and a rainy drive, the long way because Google Maps chose based upon an inaccurate thing  (which was also quite rainy) and into Monterey Park for the Duck House where we chose not to have duck but were quite happy with food and ambiance on a rainy afternoon in a Guangzhou family restaurant....it was indeed a wild, wacky, wet afte...

 Mao allegedly said that.  That's also the title of a graphic novel by a Chinese-Australian artist and a Chinese Taiwan-HK-American writer that was published by  a Brooklyn NY publishing house and was reviewed somewhere that attracted my attention.  I purchased it and am reading it now - a rarity - a real book!  Add that to three more on my Kobo reader and three more on my new Kindle.  Former is a day book.  Latter, with boldness adjustment, is great at night! Will I write more later today?  Good question!  Who knows???? I guess we'll all have to find out.....later.....

 Spectrum tried all it could do to retain me.  They screwed up from the word go.....and yet, better to have worked down to a $25 per line per month charge from a system that seems to be working with less annoyance to its customers than the other companies in competition for internet consumers..... I was there today.  Most annoying by Spectrum:  that first call from them at 7:30am on Saturday morning....and annoying additional (two) calls that were as insensitive as these could possibly get..... Regardless, things are taken care of for a year and the only other thing left is to put a reminder in my calendar for 2 September 2027 to log out of automatic renewal...... Fall weather appears to be here - it is phenomenal walking weather outside, right now!