About 25 Dollars And 72 Cents

I Shake The Bushes Of Jackson Square, But No Sue

Early Sunday morning, it began to rain hard...

I woke up well into it and only after the white noise of heavy rain hitting the leaves of the tropical plants around me became loud enough to rouse me out of my dreams about Sue. 

I grabbed my guitar and pack and galloped like a gazelle across the 80 yards or so of grass to the nearest ramp leading to the elevated memorial of Simon Bolivar. 

My flashlight and a bottle of sesame oil fell out along the way, but they would have to wait to be retrieved. 

As I scurried under the ramp, I thought about Tanya the violinist in her house. I was depressed for about 7 seconds, but wound up being too tired to stay up and brood in self pity. 

The next thing I knew, it was morning, and the sun was up over the "nine O' clock" building to the east of the sleeping spot. 

It was when the sun crested the top of this building that Howard would close the book that he would be reading and make his move towards the library; in other words 9:15 a.m., hence the "nine O' clock" building. 

The building/clock offered other readings; when its shadow was aligned with the 4th floor of the building to the west of us, 7:45 a.m, for example.  

The shadow reaches Rampart Street at 11 a.m.* 

*These times need to be adjusted for each season, but not radically, as they face almost true east or west, the effect of the tilting of the earth to the north and south is minimized, and they only needed to be tweaked about 2 minutes per week...

Look At All The Pretty Umbrellas
I started to head for the Westin Hotel with its electrical outlet, table, chair and Starbucks all within 50 feet of each other.
It started to pour down rain as I walked Canal Street.
I scurried from awning to overhang to awning and made it to The Unique Boutique, where I purchased a Rip-It energy drink, resisted the urge to flavor it with vodka, and then scurried from parking lot to awning to overhang to doorway and got to the Westin, where I posted yesterday's lengthy entry, drank two tall cups of coffee with nutmeg, cinnamon and turbinado (sp?) sugar and messed around with Linux Bash Shell scripting.
The "Songlist" Program
I am working (at the level of "beginner") on a program which stores my list of songs and will eventually have a script to add songs, maybe a database "back end" and maybe a GUI front end.
It now tells me how many songs are in my repertoire (69, at this writing, but I am constantly remembering songs that I had forgotten that I knew -like "Have You Ever Seen The Rain," by Creedence Clearwater Rivival, and adding them) -big deal -but, I am only in Chapter 2 of Bash Scripting Tutorial.
I was there until about 4 p.m. when I left there and switched from coffee to beer somewhere about half way to Sydneys on Decatur Street.

Sue Seen

Paul (standing) saw Sue "yesterday."

I took a circuitous route through Jackson Square, where Sue claims to frequent, but where I have never seen her.

There, sitting on a bench with a guitar alongside a black guy with a trombone, was Paul, from Doreen's Jazz band.

They played some pretty traditional sounding jazz standards (type stuff) and Paul told me that he had seen Sue "yesterday."  

At Sydney's, I paid $2,50 for a beer which boasted 10.2% alcohol content, and that it was good, on its label.

It was a brand called "Lawnmower" and I had the "triple IPA" variety -delicious, 97 pts.

Then, I went back inside the store, thinking that I couldn't afford another one of those, and so was headed towards the Torpedoes, when my vocal praise of the Lawnmower brew prompted a discussion amongst the patrons and employees about favorite brews, and one young gentleman who is the latter, bought me a bottle of a ginger and grapefruit flavored beer, made by Shiner's, insisting that I try it, and assuring me that my life would be changed by the experience.

Well, the Shiner's stuff was just alright. Not enough ginger, not nearly enough. (I like to buy Jamaican "ginger beer" and then spike it with powdered ginger until it makes my tongue sting when I drink it.)

So, I followed up on my original plan, got a Torpedo to wash the taste of the grapefruit out of my mouth and then headed for my playing spot, taking a circuitous route which brought me past Checkpoint Charlie's where I ascertained that they still ran an open mic on Sunday nights; and where I parted with 10 dollars for some medicinal herbs sold by a teenaged girl with purple hair and a lot of tattoos.

15 dollars and 50 cents in arrears, I sat at my spot and played for about an hour, and made only 3 dollars, but got a nice complement.

Taking a break, I launched another Torpedo and then returned and had better luck, as the sun was going down and there were swarms of tourists up and down Bourbon Street.

I wound up getting three 5 dollar tips and a total of about $25 bucks for the night, which concluded at about 11 p.m, an hour after the unspoken recommended time for knocking off in residential areas.