07/27

Nothing special to report other than to note that it's been 10 days since my last post. Finally got almost all my stuff moved in. now going through boxes figuring the finer points of where things are going to go. did over 6 hours this morning requiring a half hour lunch break, followed by 10 minutes doing nothing and then clocking out. then i tutored from 10 - 2:30, i saw this coming and went to bed at 5pm last night/. now my sleep schedule is totally disrupted.


07/28
got to bed by 10:30 got up at 2:20 and comfortably made my 3am call time. got pulled off smalls for a bit to unload a truck, earning kudos from a couple of managers. floated for the rest of the shift which allowed for use of initiative which actually made it enjoyable.

i was tired, but a good tired, and i filled my cup with ice before i left, and i took surface streets home, enjoying the leisurely drive, temperature in the mid 60's, windows wide open enjoying the breeze going 40 mph, and casually eating ice cubes on the drive home. dare i call it contentment?

shoer, nap, shop for groceries. no tutoring today. maybe have fish tacos with derek and get his spare clippers. i need a haircut. it's actually been 2 months.

07-17

i've got a roof over my head again. been here almost a week now.  today was noteworthy in that i slept almost the entire day. i worked from 3:15-8:45, got home for a few and was back out tutoring from 10-12. went and got new tennis shoes to replace the new ones i bought whose uppers separated from the sole within a week and made my feet hurt more than my old shoes, which i had to wear to work last night. they're a 1/2 size too big but the toes didn't feel all that roomy. got home by 1pm, slept until 2 when i had to get up to allow an appraiser to see my room. so i made a steak salad went back to sleep at 3:30 and slept all the way until 10pm. made dinner, ate, and about to go back to sleep for a am call time - and a $3/hr surge rate bonus this weekend as NO ONE from the regular "smalls" group showed up last sunday, prompting my manager to change my sunday day off to a saturday day off - which i'm working for the surge bonus. i try not to think about the fact it comes out to only an extra $24 over the eight hours i expect to work this weekend.

i hate to admit it, but the 10-12 tutoring shifts are killing the sleep schedule i'd hoped to maintain by sleeping in until noon and than going about the rest of my day. today, i had maybe 15-20 minutes before i had to head off to tutor.  wednesdays i have a 10-2:30 block scheduled, but at least i have wednesdays off. well, i already told them i'd go in, plus i can go right to sleep when i get home tomorrow morning.

Getting by during the quarantine -with a car

Without access to the public libraries, there's few locations to access a public electrical outlet. A few places I've discovered:
1) the metro station in Arcadia - there are electrical outlets behind 3 of the benches in the park area, and another over at the west end of the platform. People have jammed things into some of the outlets. I've pulled a few out using pliers. Others are unaware that the circuit breakers occasionally trip and need to be reset. There's also a portapotty and a place where you can wash your hands using recycled water. I'm surprised more homeless don't show up there. The sun is kinda hot in the afternoon, so I go with an umbrella and a couple of bungee cords and lash the umbrella to a bench, providing shade - and if i set it low enough, gives me enough privacy to doze off while my laptop recharges. I also bring a power strip to allow others to recharge at the same time.

2) Victory Park in Pasadena: there's an outlet behind the baseball field. I have yet to use it myself, but it's there.

In the afternoon, finding shade is a big deal.

Target: the two stores in Pasadena and one in Eagle Rock all have covered parking structures, and it's easy enough to find a spot with at least 50 feet of space between you and any other car parked there.

Bathrooms: supermarkets are a good place. stick a face cloth inside a plastic bag and you can go in, towel yourself off a bit and help stay fresh.

07-12

i moved in yesterday. after getting settled in (unloading my car and getting most of my stuff from derek's) i slept until 5pm, and was asleep again before 10pm sleeping until 9am this morning. after a takeout lunch of banh mi's, asleep again until 5pm.

i mention this only because it's been over 100 degrees in various parts of LA yesterday and today. i would have been brutal, though i probably would have bought a polar pop or two and parked underground at target for the shade. timing is everything.

still i can think about how brutal it must be for those living outside this weekend.

07-10

3:15-7:45

stopped by BMCC again but only bought 3 egg rolls and munched on them on my way to von's where i took advantage of two of their friday specials: $5 sushi and a $5 big sandwich made with a whole loaf of french bread. being mindful of the carbs, i cut away about half of the bread before consuming the entire sandwich over the course of the day. catnapped until my 10a-12 tutoring session, during which i recharged my laptop. websurfed until i nodded off, slunk back to the car (i parked on a side street under a huge tree that provided shade all day, keeping my sandwich from spoiling/melting) and slept for another hour then had to go back in due to all the food i ate yesterday completing its brief sojourn in my digestive tract, websurfed some more, did my 4p-6p session, bought my last polar pop (i hope) for a while and ate the rest of my sandwich at eaton blanche before websurfing at REI until almost 10pm at which i finally noticed that i'd gotten an answer to my text about when the floor was done. i could have dumped my stuff there this evening. but i'm content to spend one last night here in the fedex lot. call time isn't until 4am so i have plenty of time to light up a cigar, and if this battery runs out, i can use the backup battery and recharge both tomorrow at my new place.

i will call to confirm a move in time tomorrow and wing it from there. i think i'll wing it on whether to take sunday off. 

so tonight apparently is the last night of this season of sojourn. i have no profound observations to make at this moment. but i do note that my biggest apprehension of commode access was largely a non issue.  the one time i was unable to reach a bathroom in time i actually got there and was able to clean up though i had to discard a pair of soiled boxers. the other two occasions where i had to use my fallback were in the fedex lot and as far as i know i had sufficient privacy unless i was being watched by someone else also sleeping in their car here overnight. i've managed to stay relatively clean by bringing a face cloth to work and shampooing my hair and toweling off my upper body after work each morning. i wasn't my freshest, but then everyone was working hard here at work so by midshift no one was pristine.  i find that i am reasonably well rested - i hope. at least i haven't experienced the kind of lower back stiffness i've dealt with when i was younger and hadn't gotten sufficient rest. it occurs to me that i was carrying a lot more emotional tension around then. that and i've been wearing a back brace at work.

the tennis shoes wearing out the way they did caught me by surprise.  apparently the stance i use at work to get my eyes lower to the belt to make out the numbers blew out the outer sidewall of my right shoe. a temporary tape job currently provide enough support so that it doesn't hurt as much as it did earlier this week during my shift. ironically, i've found the same model shoe - possibly from the same stock as the model in question is being sold with the same discoloration issues as my current shoes - though i'm paying $10 less this time around. if it's from the same stock that shoe has been sitting in storage for at least a couple of years since i bought the last pair.  the tread is relatively unworn. my new pair of shoes have been delivered to les' address. they weren't supposed to arrive until monday - and truth be told, i didn't want to be doing a lot of unloading wearing these shoes. i'd almost prefer wearing my sandals. so that worked out.

things are working out in general. i got a total of  13.5 hours tutoring this week, which more than made up for the missed hours fourth of july weekend. but even at the fewer hours every week, if i get at least 10 hours a week from huntington, i should still clear enough between fedex and huntington to allow me to apply an extra $500 a month towards my credit cards.  in four months the BOFA card will be paid off, allowing me to concentrate on the discover balance. or i could reward myself and pick up a used glock 19 at that point.

on another note, i texted "rob" today and let him know that if he really is coughing up blue mucus he should notify a doctor ASAP. i hope he's going to be all right. going back to yesterday's phone call, i noted his concern for "wayne" as well; "rob" didn't want to risk infecting him. 

people are getting off shift now around 11pm while i'm standing outside typing on the roof of the car. so i lit up a cigar. why not? it's my last night. i wouldn't normally pair a cigar with a polar pop, but tonight, it works. the coldness of the drink cools off the smoke a bit. actually, it's a pleasant night, especially after the heat of the day. i kinda regret getting the big sandwich. i had a craving for seafood chow mein from sam woo, though i was a bit dismayed by how much prices have risen - though it also could be the location. maybe i'll drive down to the branch on valley in alhambra where i used to go 30 years ago. has it really been that long ago? it's been a heck of a road trip from there to here, that's for sure.

some bugs are coming out, but the cigar smoke is keeping them at bay. i regret that almost all the ice has melted in my polar pop while over half of my cigar remains unsmoked. it's now well after 11pm and any place selling drinks with ice are now closed.

i don't know if i've recorded anything of substance in this post, but the bottom line is that this season seems to be over, and a new one is starting. i can see that i'm allowing myself to be more approachable and this has to lead to only good things, despite all the crap that's going on with the pandemic, politically, etc.

my laptop has been on since 6pm or sol it's 11:30 now. so i probably have 1/2 hour left or so plus the 1.5 hours left on the backup battery. i think it's time to call it a night. leave me just enough juice to post tomorrow and charge for a bit.

07-09

hopefully this will be one of my last entries for a while.

3:15-8am again. i'd done the buy two get one free  banh mi deal at BMCC, scarfed down two and finishing getting wifi at denny's and parked in a shady spot and was napping when i got a text from stephen saying the room was mine if i wanted it. i said yes. the floor still needs to be refinished, so i'll probably move in saturday and move in as help permits - i have access to my futon mattress and will be more than happy to sleep on the floor for a few days until i can get help setting up the loft and shelves.

i tutored from 1-2:30 pm and surfed the web at work until 4-ish.  before i left, i let the person now running the office have some feedback in that i was pretty sure that everyone was happier she was there vs. the person she'd replaced.  besides the favoritism the former person showed in assigning hours, the overall atmosphere had been... repressive. she was grateful to get the feedback. apparently she feels somewhat overwhelmed and not up to the task, but this is unknown territory in terms of dealing with the quarantine.

tried ranch 99 hoping they'd have some cold items on sale BOGOF (buy one get on free) especially the cold noodle & celebrate. settled for some spicy tuna roll, which, along with the remaining banh mi filled me up. but i still stopped at sam woo's thinking i'd celebrate by getting some take out there, like maybe some seafood chow mein. clearly, i still look to food to medicate/celebrate. the good thing is that there was a 168 market which i needed not to shop, but to use their restroom at 7:45pm before they closed at 8pm.  but before i went to the restroom, i got a disturbing call from someone i've referred to as rob in other blog posts. the short version is that he was exposed to the coronavirus because he took over another driver's cab who later tested positive although he had tested negative at the time of the request, and he's experiencing some of the symptoms. he says when he coughs, it comes up blue. so even though he'll be in town next week, he's going to keep his distance.

his dedication in appointing himself my bodyguard after my attack was a big factor in my choosing to continue to feed the homeless; he's almost like family.

speaking of family, i'm kinda hoping things continue to open up with not just my sister but also with the kids and their families. mike, kristin's husband, sent a couple of kind texts affirming my choice to help the homeless.  i need to follow up on that.

07-08

tutoring 10a-12p and 4p-6p today. another tutor offered her condolences which i thought was very kind. we also talked about the center, and it turns out i wasn't imagining the favoritism being exercised by the previous person in the office. since the center is looking for more people (they put an ad on craigslist) i should be getting more hours in the short term. and i'm up to 9.5 hours this week. i plan on taking the extra income over budget and paying down the credit cards.

the flip side of not paying rent is having all that cash to pay against my cards - minus the extra money being spent on food/gas.

they asked me to fill in from 2-4 today - and they still hadn't filled a 4-6 slot on friday so i guess i'm getting 13.5 hours this week. i celebrated by getting two orders of kimbap from hmart. maybe the new spot i found near the denny's lot can be where i nap tomorrow before my 1-2:30 slot tomorrow.

i find myself feeling some sort of residual emotions initiated by my co-worker christine's overture earlier today. i wonder what that's about. anyway, it's already 8:30 i guess i'm going to head down to fedex. 3:15 call time tomorrow morning, and thursdays tend to be pretty busy.

07-07

3:15-8am just in time for the start of the funeral 10am central time. i texted most of the family telling them i wished i could be there. one of them called and put me on speakerphone. i got a chance to hear my niece talk about the time she shared with my dad. it was nice.

went to denny's for wifi, found a nice spot to park in a nearby lot, slept there until about 1pm, went shopping then over to derek's to cook bathe do laundry recharge and also do a video session with dave which i had to reschedule due to getting more hours at huntington on thursday 1-2:30. also got more hours for tomorrow from 4-6 in addition to 10-12. i can basically spend the entire day in A/C comfort surfing the web. it's nice that i have that now - weekends will still be a bit weird though.

jody (the chess player) showed up for dinner. he got into an accident and is now on disability. spent some time chatting with daniel after dinner. he asked if i was accepting donations. i said yes. he gave me $2. it might been the only money he had.

some of you might wonder why i'd accept it, but i felt it was important to him to be able to do so.

07-06

2am to almost 8:30 with a lunch.  napped for a bit, went to ralphs at hastings ranch and picked up some lunch meat, 2lbs of strawberries and some chips. made sandwiches at eaton blanche, napped some more but woke up with some serious sweat. went over to target and parked underground sans shirt until i cooled off.  got to huntington by 2:30-ish, surfed the web until my 4-6pm, who'd had a comparable day having played baseball for 6 hours from 8am-2pm. i took it easy on him and he did pretty well.

tried to get kimbap at hmart until i saw the length of the checkout lines. headed over to arcadia park with laptop on roof of car, reading, and watching some people trying to teach a girl how to play volleyball.  she's actually progressed a bit with her passing, even though she's moving on the court with her arms locked. they've got a net set up with a giant net target for passing. they've set it up pretty high at a couple of feet above the net.  i miss volleyball, but i know i'm too old and too out of shape to play in a high level game, and i'd drive all the other players nuts by being the weak link; it would be selfish for me to want to play.
i find myself thinking about something C.S. lewis said in that the virtue of love has been replaced by unselfishness. applying this to volleyball, i would be unselfish by not demanding that i play and bring down the level of the game, while love would be shown with forbearance. being unselfish leads to self-denial - which is not the same as denying self.

i want another cold drink. i can go get another polar pop - or i could get a couple of mcdoubles and ask for a cup of ice. i had contemplated getting something at BMCC but they just closed a few minutes ago at 8pm.

i promised to review natalie's latest short story about the tango. i guess i'll do mcd's and head out to the fedex parking lot and type on my roof so i don't waste battery on the keypad.

07-05

i have no idea when the fireworks ended, but i slept until about 7:30am. there's another aspect about living outdoors i've not mentioned until now; lack of privacy. you make it where you can, like locking a public restroom door when you can (mainly in supermarkets nowadays). of course when you can't get to a restroom privacy is essential. my solution is pretty effective, but privacy is the key.
checked email and classfieds at denny's now recharging. have an appoinment to see a room only a couple of blocks from my old home in pasadena this morning after i finish recharging. hopefully this will work out. 

a restaurant/cafe recently opened by the metro. they offer wifi. i may go there later today and order something and get their wifi PW. then i could recharge AND surf the web simultaneiously. that'd be kinda sweet.

I saw the room. more than enough space for my stuff. the landlord is disabled and requires caregivers. $850 including utilities is right in my price range. eastern pasadena yet still close enough to the huntington. an extra 10 minutes to joes. eh.
i don't know if it was yesterday's banh mi's or today's carl's but i has to use the bathroom three times so far today. fortunately all before bathrooms closed for the day. i should have sufficient privacy in fedex lot if i need it again tonight. should set my alarm an extra 5-10 minutes early if i need to go again tomorrow morning.

besides sleeping, read a novel by laura lipmann called sunburn. would have never heard of this famous author except ian rankin recommended it. he also recommended a novel whose name i can't recall precisely, something like midwinter solstice about an older couple who've grown apart yet take a vacation during which they manage to rekindle their marriage. i ponder briefly the idea of fictionalizing my parents' marriage but with a happier ending.

i don't believe that my father was physically unfaithful, but during my 20's he spent time in the company of another woman who probably attracted his company by flattering him, something my mother never did. i saw my parents infrequently after i moved to california, but when i did, there was typically at least one argument, which typically ended with dad saying: "you never do anything i want to do." with the biggest grudge probably being not opening our own restaurant. but mom didn't want to see my sister and me being forced into running that restaurant as our future careers, which may or may not have been a good thing. but i would have probably never left NE ohio. gag. anyway i've digressed; would it be possible/profitable (whatever that means) to take a stab at fictionalizing an asian marriage in the 1980's?

the 24 hour fitness across from the metro is now open, but i can't seem to find the wifi for it. shame. it really would be nice to have wifi AND electricity here. i'd bring my own chair and umbrella. and since the 24 hour fitness is open, its parking structure is officially reopened and i can park there and cross the street to the metro, which i'll probably do when it's after 6pm. i think the 24 hour fitness closes at 9pm and it makes a good curfew for me to get my car out of there.

fedex was closed today, but the reality is that a day off when it's 96 degrees out is really a day spent looking for someplace else to be. it's why i'll probably work sundays as long as i'm still in the car. i really do hope i get this room. july could be brutal.

i saw someone yesterday who said scott was back. i guess his month was up.  someone broke into scott's car while scott was gone, but that someone left some of his own stuff in scott's car, so it was fairly easy to identify and apprehend the thief. i'm not sure whether to classify that as funny or tragic.

it's a pseudo holiday so i'm going to treat myself to another polar pop on the way to fedex. but first i'm going back to denny's check email and do a few more chess puzzles. i'm close to breaking a personal high score of 2026. i've bounced up and down from 1850-2000 over the last month. some of the problems are arbitrary, they ding you for not finding the optimal solution, but you'd think you'd still get a few points for trading a bishop for a rook instead of a queen. or winning a queen but missing a checkmate.  first world problems.

i'm glad i chose to sleep at fedex again last night even though it cost me a bit in gas. i now recall being told by some of my tuesday regulars that they seldom wander east of san gabriel blvd because that's where most of the meth heads congregate. speaking of them,  i was surprised to discover that someone i'll call paul is 53. i think i mentioned him in a recent post that he was back for dinner for the first time in a number of months. he'd dropped quite a bit of weight while he'd been hospitalized for being in a diabetic coma. even though his mother still lives in the area, he's told me that he's been living on the street all his life. he's promised to tell me his story a number of times over the years, then he disappears for months.

and i saw the guy from southern ohio who used to cook here. he said he's paying $400 a month for a room in rowland heights and that john the vietnam vet has lodging provided for him and now he doesn't want to venture far from it. so most of the folks i met here in may early june aren't here now. i regret that i'm not able to get to know any of these people any better.

07-04

Happy fourth of july.
4-7:30 at time and a half. could have taken an extra 10 for my break - an extra $3.50 which would have almost paid for a banh mi. forgot to put a clean shirt in my bag. walked out wearing just my hoodie unzipped. don't care what others thought.

i'll see if BMCC is open today. if so, will pick up 3 banh mi for the day and go from there - probably to denny's for wifi then recharge at the metro.

recharged until about 10:30, found shady spot slept in car until the sun prompted a move about 2-ish. thought i'd left the laptop on and needed to recharge. turned out i was still at 80% - and it takes roughly about a minute per percent to recharge. it was hot, so i left when i hit 90%,  couldn't find shade at the park, but there are stretches of shady spots on santa anita right next to the parking lot.  slept until about 5:45, which turned out since the restrooms closed early today at 6pm instead of 6:30. grabbed a face towel, stuffed it in a plastic bag and towelled myself off a bit.
finally succumbed and went and got another polar pop, although this time i went with a sugar free option, which will probably kill me just as quickly but in a different way, and ate my last banh mi at the park.

holidays are just an inconvenience for people living outside. it's less obvious because the quarantine - the places that close for holidays like the libraries are already closed. but it's almost cool enough that i can go back to the uncovered denny's lot and do a few more chess puzzles before one last recharge and call it a night. still not sure where i plan to sleep tonight.  actually, a completely closed fedex lot makes more sense than anywhere else. i could try the home depot lot which i've heard about for years now. basically any industrial lot should work, but then predators will know that too.

Lost track of time doing chess puzzles. recharging again one last time at 8:30. just a half hour should get me back up over 75% and i still have my backup laptop & battery.  still have to decide where to park tonight. from here, fedex might be closest, actually.

i am now at the fedex lot, and it seems like everyone in elmonte is setting off fireworks.  we're not talking firecrackers and bottle rockets. we're talking francis scott key. i can smell it. most of the display is to the south, but also no less than a half mile north of me. so the sounds and smell of gunpowder are pretty much 360 right now. earlier, some poor dog was running around the parking lot with no idea of what was going on. the sound of sirens only adds to the moment. hopefully this isn't prophetic in any way. part of me wants to sit back, watch and enjoy, but another part of me wants to pray that this is just fireworks; some of the explosions to the north are coming less than two seconds. this has been going on for almost an hour now, and there's no sign of letting up. i couldn't go to sleep now even if i wanted to.

i can see now that some of them have been launched directly on the other side of the wall on the edge of the lot maybe 100 yards away. but they're done now. somebody made a lot of money selling fireworks this year.

the enemies to the north have reloaded and have reopened fire. inside the car with the windows closed, it sounds like rain on the roof of the car, except it's occasionally punctuated with a loud bang.

07-03

My laptop battery actually ran out last night in the car - but then i'd planned/expected it, knowing full well that i'd get a chance to recharge fully while tutoring at huntington from 10-12, then surf the web afterwards, which i did.

i washed up at fedex,  stopped for $5 friday sushi at vons and treated myself to a couple of spicy tuna rolls. but now i can see that the amount of actual fish is minimal compared to the sushi at ranch 99.  i scarfed it down before my tutoring, which was a mistake because it prompted a food coma i had to fight through to keep tutoring. i felt like splurging today, so i also got a couple of famous stars with cheese from carl's on a buy one get the second for $1 deal for lunch  & ate and slept over at eaton blanche until about 5:30  or so - at which point the sun was out in full force and everyone had abandoned the park and the parking lot. i probably caught the attenion of everyone by sleeping in the car, but i don't care. probably should not go there every day though.

back to last night - i got there and with some people at that end of the lot doing various things, i decided to make myself more 'legit' by smoking a cigar while working on my laptop for an hour, explaining that i couldn't smoke at home, and then i'd nap until my shift started. the weird thing was that right when my battery died, the extra glycogen in my blood from the cigar kicked in and i had a serious case of the sweats, enough so that i opened the windows even though it was a bit on the nippy side. i eventually fell asleep and woke up with no ill effects. it was probably a combo of the cigar and my first polar pop in almost a month.

went down to ranch 99 hoping to score a buy one get one free on a cold chicken noodle (also to wash up in their restroom as it got hot in the car in 90+ degree weather, but there weren't any available and settled for more discounted sushi, and then picked up another polar pop before i headed to arcadia park to eat, then headed across the street to denny's to tap their wifi. checked, email, facebook, and googled pain, hoping to find consensus on the idea that pain is not quantifable - and discovered the opposite can be true in terms of emotional pain. factors include emotional stress, emotional awareness, empathy, attachment and rejection. this is going to prompt me to rewrite a blog post i was in the act of completing. i hope to finish that tonight at fedex.

i'm getting time and a half for working on the 4th. and fedex is CLOSED sunday the 5th. and i'm up to 7.5 hours at huntington next week. if i break 10 hours consistently, i think l'll go back to a 5 day week at fedex - especially if i find a place.  with today's paycheck, i now have about 4 month's rent saved - but i still have credit card bills, gas and food to consider. call it 3 month's expenses. i haven't had that kind of cushion since early 2016. knowing that prompted the eating splurge today - i spent over $20 on food today.

i've been carefully budgeting looking to build up the savings a bit. that's not a bad thing, but splurging once in a while feels like a healthy thing, especially since i also got my state tax refund, and another residual check totalling over another $200 in the past week. it's 8pm now, maybe another 15 minutes until i'm fully recharged. "splurged" again by solving problems on chess.com and got a new high score rating before making a couple of mistakes but still remaining above 2000. the scoring is arbitrary - some problems ding you big points for not finding the optimal approach while others still give positives as long as you found a good move.

rereading an ian rankin novel just to refresh my memory. for some reason i started keeping running bibliographies on detective characters whose authors have been writing for these characters for at least 10 years. connelly's harry bosch, rankin's john rebus, hillerman's jim chee. i guess it's another way of self examination - watching someone' growth - even if they're imaginary and seeing where it resonates for me.

i used to reread jack higgin's novels featuring sean dillon - a gifted individual scarred by trauma early as a child, has a moral center, yet considers himself irredeemable - which i could relate to with my own sense of shame. asides from higgins not having written a novel in four years, and his work being fairly predictable, i haven't reread higgins since i moved out of the south pas. apt. in 2016 - when i also got rid of most of my paperbacks. i guess i was ahead of the curve - i've got all his books as ebooks now. almost all my favorite authors are now stored an external hard drive. i'll eventually get rid of all my CD's - the common ones that I can download anytime i want, but probably still keep my albums and vinyl. go figure.

a few folks choose to park at this end of the lot. i'm tired of worrying about being seen - i'm outside with the laptop on the roof and standing - this way i don't have to waste battery because i can't see the keyboard inside the car. the last two i'm used to seeing have just gone by.  that means i'll have privacy until people off the street come in and park. if worst comes to worst, i'll just use the bathroom in the guard/orientation building.

07-02

3:15-8:15 this morning. i got pulled off the belt and was going to be a floater packing totes  loading totes to the van lines, except the person who normally transports the large bags of packages from the trucks to our belt didn't come in today. so i filled i there  instead and flaoted between that and getting all the boxes out to the van lines. i think i created a new procedure. boxes are transported from our bin is a large cart. it's customary to place a set of totes at the bottom of the cart to facilitiate retrieving them as a whole group from the bottom of the cart. it occurred to me to put a second layer of totes on top of those topes. i think people are adopting the idea. i don't if jeff is noticing.
ready to take a nap until it warms up a bit. slept unil 11am. picked up 3 banh mi at BMCC. ate one while surfing web at denny's. battery down to about 50%, plan to recharge at metro and then head over to Arcadia park.

ended up sleeping at the park until 6pm when my bladder roused me. Fortunately the bathrooms there don't close until 6:30, so I took a walk around the park. Surprised that a lot of people there weren't wearing masks. Checked my email using Denny's wifi across the street.  With the outlets at the metro a few blocks away the park seems like a decent place to go as there's a certain amount of shade provided by the trees by the parking lot. However, I discovered what looked like three mosquito bites on my right arm.  Only need to encounter one carrying something like the Nile virus. It may seem a bit paranoid, but one of my regulars at dinner succumbed to the Nile virus a few years ago, someone I rather liked named Francisco. He was a short (I assume) Mexican (though I suppose he could have been Central American. From what I'd managed to learn about him, he'd worked in restaurants all his life and we often talked about the business. He had a speech impediment that made him difficult to understand and I suspect that that had made it more challenging to find work when he'd lost his last job. But he was quite intelligent and used to attend a lot of free lectures at USC. If I was an employer who needed a personal assistant I would have hired him in a heartbeat. I was hoping to be able to offer him a job when I'd gotten sufficient funding that would allow me to hire workers. But he's gone.

There are a number of good people like that I've met like that during my time feeding the homeless. The first one to pass away whose passing I lamented probably was Jay. He was a former vet, a pilot in fact, who owned a small aviation company, but he had problems with alcohol that resulted in his losing his business.  He died of a heart attack the summer after I'd been stabbed at the park.  The week before, one of our volunteers had volunteered to talk about love languages with the people who stayed after dinner and I volunteered that I tended to communicate with physical contact. Afterwards, I was seated at the table talking with another vet named Murph who was living in a van parked a few blocks south of the park. The van had more parking tickets than you could imagine.  Anyway, Murph had just asked me if I was worried about getting attacked again at the park, and Jay at that moment and  unexpectedly came up behind me and embraced me in a bear hug (I'm guessing he'd heard what I said) in a show of affection.  I told Murph that if I was worried about getting attacked again, that should have freaked me out. It occurs to me now Jay's show of affection and appreciation is one of the reasons I chose to continue the feed the homeless. That turned out to be the last time I saw Jay.

Jay was typically with a cheerful small Korean woman named Ono who always carried a pair of drumsticks (the musical kind). She also had a problem with alcohol. She took Jay's loss hard. At first Ono thought Jay had abandoned her. After Jay was gone, she could typically be found sitting outside the restrooms at the southern end of the park in a drunken stupor. We took meals to her for a while until she disappeared. We heard through the grapevine that she eventually succumbed to liver problems due to her drinking. She didn't speak much English, but I did learn that she had been raised in Japan. given what i know about how the japanese treat non japanese asians, i can't imagine that her life had been all that great. And now she's gone.

There are others who've come and gone over the years. Early on, we'd get visits from folks who managed to regain employment who'd stop by to let us know that they were back on their feet. That was nice.

Then there was Chris. He was a fellow believer who'd lost his job and ended up living outside and spent most of his time at the library. While he had issues with how we did our devotional times after dinner, he supported what we did and he persuaded a fellow church goer to join as a volunteer. He also liked to swing dance and occasionally showed up at some of the free dances sponsored by a local dance school. Unfortunately, he suffered a hernia, and during his surgery there were complications and he went into a coma and never woke up before passing away a few years ago.

Another couple used to come regularly accompanied by a black dog named Romeo. Alcohol seemed to be a factor as why they were on the street. Her kidneys failed and she went on dialysis. While they were able to get medical care, the powers that be assigned her location for dialysis that took about 3 hours to get there using public transportation. She eventually passed away as well. Her husband took it hard. He now shows up maybe a few times a year, without Romeo.

One of the people  I worry about the most nowadays is a fellow I've referred to in other blogs posts as Wayne. He's very polite, and always appreciative and thankful when he shows up for dinner. He's one of the main reasons I seldom serve pork; he chooses not to eat pork and grateful just to have rice if I've made a dish that has pork in it. I assumed he was in his 40's or maybe 50's until when asked about where he was from, he mentioned that he's lived in Pasadena since the age of seven when he moved here in 1960. So he's 67 and already into what's normally considered retirement age. He's currently wearing a pair of pants that look like they measure about 44" x 36" while he's maybe 5'6" and 150 lbs. soaking wet. He also used to spend his days in the library and the quarantine has really had an impact on his outward appearance. He used to carry a number of grocery bags tied together until he suffered a hernia and was rendered incapable of carrying around much weight after surgery.

07-01

i have to admit that i thought i'd have found a place to stay by now. also a little disappointed that i got turned down by someone who then reposted his ad looking for more applicants. even more disappointed that i seem to have missed out on a great opportunity on an ad that was up for maybe 24 hours posted by someone who expressed genuine regret that the room was no longer available as she also helped feed the homeless. oh well. it just wasn't meant to be.

i'm still in consideration for a couple of other places, one less than a block from my old home on roosevelt, the other on the west side of pasadena. i'm also considering places in arcadia since i'd be closer to a lot of SGV based chess classes - not that i should expect them to re-start anytime soon.  would be closer to fedex - which i'm beginning to think might be longer term in terms of my own financial needs - but i'm seasonal.

i do want to use the time being outdoors a little more productively this time around, writing instead of reading to keep me occupied. we'll see how that pans out.

trying to be surreptitious about assembling a few PB sandwiches while at the park, but then i should i care if people see this and make the proper deduction about my living status?  i'll probably pick up more fresh fruit to keep in the car as an alternative to fast food; i find myself tempted to get a couple of mc chicken's and a couple of mc doubles for $6  tax. i decide to try a tin of chili eel i bought on sale a few weeks ago for a situation like this: wanting a alternative protein source for my sandiwiches. the current circumstances aren't conducive to assembling a meal; the lawn maintenance people are out in force, running their gas powered blowers contributing both sounds and airborne dust. then there's a kid at the table howling up a storm because he was forced to get off the top of a picnic table.  i saw this family here fairly often for lunch here back in may. i don't know if this constitutes a daily outing or they're in a situation similar to mine.  does it really matter? now a truck is passing by within five feet, the driver emptying all the trash cans between the tables and the tennis courts.

the day started off cool and overcast, but it's warmed up a bit as the sun has come out. i'd be perfectly happy if this was the hottest it got all month. i really don't want to be out here come august, but on the flip side i'll able to pay down my credit cards a lot faster.  there's a room listed for rent for only $575 rent, but it's furnished (as in would have to keep a lot of my stuff in storage) and it's definitely short term. but if i'm still looking at being in the car in august i'll defintely consider it at that point.

a lot of rooms are being listed furnished and at really low monthly rents. i'm suspicious but it occurs to me that some of these ads could be first time landlords who've been impacted financially by the quarantine. maybe i should be less cynical and make contact.

for some reason a phrase my dad used in the context of impending punishment literally translated as "eel cooked with rice"  comes to mind. probably because the dad of the family at the next time is admonishing his kids for the same things as previous days: stay out of the water, go find your missing bike/ball/skateboard/whatever.

as much as i enjoy my teaching and tutoring, i can't imagine being the father of four young kids 24/7.

saturday is the 4th. i imagine we get the day off. i could also take off sunday - which i'd do if i found a place and needed to move.

i ended up napping at the park until almost 5. went over to ranch 99 & mitsuwa for sushi and had just parked at arcadia park ready to eat when i got a text from derek asking if i was available to tutor his son, which i ended up doing for 3 hours tonight. including the two hours i tutored at huntington,  i made more $ today on my day off than any day working at fedex!  and it was fun tutoring josh. i think i want to find a way to keep tutoring going forward.