I Fall Off (Money-wise)
$10.45 Sunday A Guy Dies Outside Uniques
Not a real whole lot to report on this early Monday morning.
Sunday was almost a day without a highlight.
The highlight may have been completing my 6th day without drinking alcohol.
I slept most of it, having been up until dawn; again.
I worked about an hour on a story that I am writing, which has about 14,000 words; and then worked for about 2 hours on a song that is going to be on my CD; playing the shaker (which I found laying by the sidewalk the other day; it is the kind that can be opened to fill the egg-sized enclosure with whatever one wants, to make the shaking sound -I use popcorn kernels) and working out a bass line on the "guitar digitally dropped down one octave."
Then, I spent at least another hour reading the newspaper. (It's important for me to know what Libya and Turkey are up to, right?)
And, to think that I am itching to get a jigsaw puzzle to put together, where will I find the time? I love jigsaw puzzles, and might look for about a 1,500 piece one; now that I have a nice large table, which I can put in front of a window, so that natural light falls upon it.
The last puzzle I put together; I did outdoors in Mobile, on a big piece of cardboard, under the holly bush where I was sleeping. By the time I had it nearly finished, I discovered that someone or some thing had stolen a few of the pieces. I suspect the birds; perhaps for use in their nests.
That was the time that Howard and I had to wait about 4 days before a train suitable for hopping on, to come back to New Orleans, stopped.
I was out the door a little after sundown.
I walked the half mile to the Dollar General store, where I returned the spotlight; bought some toilet paper and some hair repair conditioner (for overly dry hair) and then caught the cable car into the Quarter.
I only brought 18 dollars with me, leaving 60 in a jar at home in a kitchen cabinet (behind the popcorn, burglars).
I only had about 50 minutes to blog, once at Starbucks.
I left there and went to Walgreens to pick up a 3 pack of little LED flashlights for 6 bucks.
Then, it was off to the Lilly spot, where I wound up playing for about an hour and 45 minutes; making the above amount; but was very well lit; with the 2 lights trained upon me from the vines above working well.
I felt like I was leaving too early; at about 11:45; although it was looking more like an ordinary Sunday night than a Mardi Gras one.
I told myself that I was just dividing my time between busking and other things; like this.
It's hard to imagine what playing Tanya and Dorise lengths of hours (40 per week) would yield for me, financially.
If my "average" of 15/hr. held up; I guess I would be pulling in 600 dollars per week; but with very little time to do much else.
The jigsaw puzzle might collect dust in that scenario.
Plus, I would definitely need an amp, so that I could play using a lot less energy; saving wear and tear on the fingers and vocal chords.
I have spent the last hour improving my program to format this text. It is a behind the scenes fix, though.
It was crashing on paragraphs that only had one sentence with 3 words or less.
Like this one. Or this. It tried to make the first three words a random color and larger than the rest of the paragraph, but, when it ran out of words it tried to make "nothing" a different color and larger; then it went on to try to process the rest of the paragraph; which wasn't there, either.
I put in a test line to see if the paragraph had 3 words or less, and if it did, the words would be printed in a random color and larger, as usual, but then, it would execute a "next;" statement to make it jump out of the printing block, and go and get the next paragraph.
Yup. So far it is working; and the random colors are beautiful.
The next thing I want to do is make sure that it doesn't choose the same (or a very similar) random color for one paragraph as it did for the previous one.
I might get it to choose the first color randomly; and then use a fixed formula to alter each successive color, to move it a certain shade away from the last, but in a cycle that would repeat only every 255 paragraphs, or so...
This is why I am busking only so many hours per week; so I can work on stuff like that...
The payoff will come in the form of the time that I will save writing blog posts.
I might get it to choose the first color randomly; and then use a fixed formula to alter each successive color, to move it far away from the last, but in a cycle that would repeat only every 255 paragraphs, or so...
"You Might Know Him..."
On my way to take the 12:50 AM cable car, I noticed a lot of police cars with their lights flashing and pointed in every direction, in front of The Unique Grocery.
They were parked that way to shield from sight the spectacle of a body, draped with a white sheet, in one of the doorways of a closed business which almost always has someone sitting there, too drunk to stagger much further away from The Unique Grocery, nor to it, to get another bottle after successfully skeezing the money for one.
The cashier told me that someone sitting there had just died. "You may know him; he's always there," he said.
I'm not sure that I "knew" him; I'm sure our conversations, on my end were basically limited to: "Sorry, I'm pretty broke myself. I don't give away cigarettes, sorry." and "I've only got a few sips left, sorry."
"He drank TOO much," added the cashier. "Like a gallon of vodka, every day...every day!!"
The police told me to "move on," after I stopped to notice that the body, though draped in a white sheet, was still in a sitting up position and still seemed to have its hand out.
I then thought that the police were telling people to move on to preserve the dignity of the corpse, which is admirable; a skeezer is still a human being.
Next to the body was a canvas shopping bag with some stuff in it from the Mardi Gras parades. I wonder if it had crossed the guys mind that those might be the last beads ever tossed to him off of a float.
Words: 1,171
$10.45 Sunday A Guy Dies Outside Uniques
 |
| To The Extreme Left, He Was Found |
Sunday was almost a day without a highlight.
The highlight may have been completing my 6th day without drinking alcohol.
I slept most of it, having been up until dawn; again.
I worked about an hour on a story that I am writing, which has about 14,000 words; and then worked for about 2 hours on a song that is going to be on my CD; playing the shaker (which I found laying by the sidewalk the other day; it is the kind that can be opened to fill the egg-sized enclosure with whatever one wants, to make the shaking sound -I use popcorn kernels) and working out a bass line on the "guitar digitally dropped down one octave."
Then, I spent at least another hour reading the newspaper. (It's important for me to know what Libya and Turkey are up to, right?)
And, to think that I am itching to get a jigsaw puzzle to put together, where will I find the time? I love jigsaw puzzles, and might look for about a 1,500 piece one; now that I have a nice large table, which I can put in front of a window, so that natural light falls upon it.
The last puzzle I put together; I did outdoors in Mobile, on a big piece of cardboard, under the holly bush where I was sleeping. By the time I had it nearly finished, I discovered that someone or some thing had stolen a few of the pieces. I suspect the birds; perhaps for use in their nests.
That was the time that Howard and I had to wait about 4 days before a train suitable for hopping on, to come back to New Orleans, stopped.
I was out the door a little after sundown.
I walked the half mile to the Dollar General store, where I returned the spotlight; bought some toilet paper and some hair repair conditioner (for overly dry hair) and then caught the cable car into the Quarter.
I only brought 18 dollars with me, leaving 60 in a jar at home in a kitchen cabinet (behind the popcorn, burglars).
I only had about 50 minutes to blog, once at Starbucks.
I left there and went to Walgreens to pick up a 3 pack of little LED flashlights for 6 bucks.
Then, it was off to the Lilly spot, where I wound up playing for about an hour and 45 minutes; making the above amount; but was very well lit; with the 2 lights trained upon me from the vines above working well.
I felt like I was leaving too early; at about 11:45; although it was looking more like an ordinary Sunday night than a Mardi Gras one.
I told myself that I was just dividing my time between busking and other things; like this.
It's hard to imagine what playing Tanya and Dorise lengths of hours (40 per week) would yield for me, financially.
If my "average" of 15/hr. held up; I guess I would be pulling in 600 dollars per week; but with very little time to do much else.
The jigsaw puzzle might collect dust in that scenario.
Plus, I would definitely need an amp, so that I could play using a lot less energy; saving wear and tear on the fingers and vocal chords.
I have spent the last hour improving my program to format this text. It is a behind the scenes fix, though.
It was crashing on paragraphs that only had one sentence with 3 words or less.
Like this one. Or this. It tried to make the first three words a random color and larger than the rest of the paragraph, but, when it ran out of words it tried to make "nothing" a different color and larger; then it went on to try to process the rest of the paragraph; which wasn't there, either.
I put in a test line to see if the paragraph had 3 words or less, and if it did, the words would be printed in a random color and larger, as usual, but then, it would execute a "next;" statement to make it jump out of the printing block, and go and get the next paragraph.
Yup. So far it is working; and the random colors are beautiful.
The next thing I want to do is make sure that it doesn't choose the same (or a very similar) random color for one paragraph as it did for the previous one.
I might get it to choose the first color randomly; and then use a fixed formula to alter each successive color, to move it a certain shade away from the last, but in a cycle that would repeat only every 255 paragraphs, or so...
This is why I am busking only so many hours per week; so I can work on stuff like that...
The payoff will come in the form of the time that I will save writing blog posts.
I might get it to choose the first color randomly; and then use a fixed formula to alter each successive color, to move it far away from the last, but in a cycle that would repeat only every 255 paragraphs, or so...
"You Might Know Him..."
On my way to take the 12:50 AM cable car, I noticed a lot of police cars with their lights flashing and pointed in every direction, in front of The Unique Grocery.
They were parked that way to shield from sight the spectacle of a body, draped with a white sheet, in one of the doorways of a closed business which almost always has someone sitting there, too drunk to stagger much further away from The Unique Grocery, nor to it, to get another bottle after successfully skeezing the money for one.
The cashier told me that someone sitting there had just died. "You may know him; he's always there," he said.
I'm not sure that I "knew" him; I'm sure our conversations, on my end were basically limited to: "Sorry, I'm pretty broke myself. I don't give away cigarettes, sorry." and "I've only got a few sips left, sorry."
"He drank TOO much," added the cashier. "Like a gallon of vodka, every day...every day!!"
The police told me to "move on," after I stopped to notice that the body, though draped in a white sheet, was still in a sitting up position and still seemed to have its hand out.
I then thought that the police were telling people to move on to preserve the dignity of the corpse, which is admirable; a skeezer is still a human being.
Next to the body was a canvas shopping bag with some stuff in it from the Mardi Gras parades. I wonder if it had crossed the guys mind that those might be the last beads ever tossed to him off of a float.
Words: 1,171
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