05-20

i'd set my alarm for a 2:15 call time forgetting i was off today. people in altadena are up and about walking around by 6am, and i wanted to sleep a bit longer so i drove back to the apartment carport and slept there - to 7am.

i decided to deposit a residual check les had passed on to me last night ($23 for an hour of foreign syndication: danke, germany!) so i hit the BOFA in eagle rock and tapped the wifi at CA (also in eagle rock)

i left there after an hour or so and parked near the place i needed to go to re-smog my car (from october of last year - yeah, i know) and napped some more until 10am. got the car smogged, put the paperwork in the glove compartment in case i get pulled over again before the tag makes it's way to me. i wish the smogging had taken longer - i was recharging at their garage.

stopped at vons to use the restroom and picked up some more sushi for lunch. went to eaton blanche park (on del mar east of san gabriel blvd.) & sewed up the hole in one pair of jeans, ate lunch and the remainder of a bag of potato chips i had in the car. i need to start using up some of the stuff i have in the car. i can consolidate a few containers and keep the front passenger seat relatively uncluttered.

i'm more or less resigned to being in the car for the rest of the month. i might add a sixth day of work to the schedule, but i want to keep wednesday open after cooking, and getting caught up rest-wise. physically mainly, but this morning i spent some time on chess.com working on chess puzzles and also played a game of online euchre.

this takes me up to noon. if i change pants in the park bathroom, i can stitch up the holes in these jeans too. it's going to be a high of 75 today. i really don't need to spend a lot of time looking for shade as long as i keep the car windows open wherever i park. thanks to the brief recharge, i'm still at 42% charge.

1:45pm and i'm still at the park, having sewn up the holes in both pair of jeans (two of the three pairs of pants i have with me) AND having reorganized the car and cleaned out all the trash i could find. i vacillated on the recyclables; even though i won't see derek for a week, i decided to collect them in a bag.
i emptied one milk carton of the comforter it was holding, stashed the comforter way in back of the trunk, and consolidated all my fruit/snacks into that milk carton. it's my goal to deplete most of the snacks, especially the fruit, by the end of the week.

i think i've been more productive today than the rest of the year put together. and i've been able to do it but using the laptop for 20-30 minutes, then doing a task, and coming back. i think this is what i need to do to wean myself off the computer. truth be told, i'm probably as attached to it as others are to their smartphones.

a number of the neighborhood residents are starting to come to the park in the afternoon. one older couple are playing cards at the next picnic table. the husband isn't even wearing a mask, though the wife is still wearing hers. two older gents were playing tennis at the park, though truth be told, they spent more time talking than playing. the ones who showed while i was cleaning out the car didn't give me a second look as i unloaded the car and reorganized my belongings. i have a few things in the passenger seat, but i hope that between polishing off my cache of snacks, dropping stuff off at derek's or karl's i will eventually free up my passenger seat. that's one of the things  i look at when identifying when someone is living in their car.

there are certain things that you know from having done them yourselves; wanting to have the stuff you use most accessible and within arm's reach on the passenger seat. stuff crammed into the back seat. i've got my stuff organized into milk crates covered by towels.

i'm on novel 20 of a 23 novel series. the author died last year, so there will be no more. i think i started the series in april, and i've been binge reading them on my laptop in ebook format to kill the time - which is why recharging the laptop has been such a high priority. i get maybe 2.5 hours on a full charge, a midday charge gets me to 5pm, and a late night charge gets me through the day, with nap times thrown in. i feel a nap coming on, and the shade has finally reached my spot at the east end of the parking lot.

finished napping at the park, decided to head west towards the apartment. stopped at ralph's picked up some cold fried chicken and a loaf of bread, thinking i'd go with fried chicken sandwiches. now eating at the pool.

charging the main laptop and using the backup planning on using a USB drive to transfer the txt file; there's method to the madness.

for reasons i can't explain, i got mad at a couple of yuppie housewives which stood there and talked blocking an aisle for a number of minutes. my walking past mumbling "yak yak yak" didn't phase them. they both probably drive expensive SUV's to boot. i console myself by knowing that i'd never marry someone so oblivious - and that someone so oblivious wouldn't be attracted to me anyway.

to be fair, i get the oblivion/provincialism; i just didn't care to be inconvienced by it.

the fried chicken is ok; maybe crunchier than i have a right to expect it to be. the reality is that i'm eating out of habit/boredom than out of hunger. in some ways the day is a letdown after having spent time with derek as well as with the homeless.

someone i will refer to as wayne showed up again still wearing what appear to be 46x32 jeans where 30x24 will probably fit, the pants rolled up about 4" above his shoes. he cuts a ridiculous figure but he's a kind hearted soul. i made chicken & shiitake mushrooms with miso & oyster sauce and as a special treat i added $5 of chinese sausage, forgetting that wayne will not eat pork. he politely refused and contented himself with a couple of hawaiian rolls while everyone teased him (and had seconds/thirds on the rice). i offered him some nutragrain bars, but he declined on those as well. afterwards, he took care to thank me for coming. so while i feel good that no one talked for the first three minutes of dinner because they were enjoying the food, it's offset by the fact wayne chose not to enjoy it. i wonder if i should ever let wayne know i've used pork fat to flavor the beans he's eaten.

it's people like that that make it seem not like a burden at all. but then they know what happened to me seven years ago and that i choose to continue to do this.

on the flip side, it's made me a pariah when it comes to finding housing. *sigh* no regrets.

i haven't talked about work much - at all, actually. it's a bit different from what i originally expected from three years ago. between the emergence of e-commerce and people ordering things online due to the quarantine, they really do need people. no surprise, i am the oldest person there. there's a young kid who started a week before me and when we work next to each other we just kinda mutually agreed we'd look out for each other's packages if we missed one or got overwhelmed. there's an inefficiency in the process as i see it. i think i'm going to document them as i see it and put them in a paper i'll send up the line. more experienced workers are used to be responsible for their own stuff and less into working as a team. so be it.

i just spent an hour putting together an analysis page on the process as i see it, identifying issues and putting out recommendations. I'll probably ask Matt a few questions to clarify the process before I submit it.

Haven't smoked a cigar in a while, so I lit one up in the parking lot and waved to the patrol car when it was early for its 9pm run.

I got a lot done today. But I think I'm going to go to a six day work week starting next week. That's be an extra $300 a month. Pay off the BOFA card first.