Festivity Embracement

• New Blogging Approach Considered
• The Change Skeezer
• The Harmonica Blowout

Written Saturday;

My priority is to make it to the music store; I have one hour and 13 minutes to do so; I am to get strings; I played for a few minutes short of 3 hours last night and 47 dollars was mine, to consider using to get the laptop fixed.
Laptop Diagnosis
I am pretty sure that it is the power supply:
The day before, the circuit breaker was tripped in the room with the laptop running, and I had to reboot a song that I was editing, and had been editing for a long time, perhaps 12+ hours;
and so the thing heated up; especially since I had rotated the thing so that it was sitting on the corner of the dresser facing me, and I think in doing so I positioned the nubs on the front two corners so that they were hanging over the sides of the dresser and not propping the thing that critical eighth of an inch off the dresser.
It heated up and the breaker tripped and saved it from frying the power supply. Completely.
It weakened the power supply which then fried the next night while the laptop sat in "sleep" mode for a few hours.
One encouraging thing is that the fan never comes on and the drive never starts whirring, and, perhaps the biggest clue: The light telling me that the thing is plugged in never comes on.
If the problem was that my hard drive was crashed and all my music at risk, the computer would still at least tell me that it was plugged in.
So, I conclude that the very first stage of "power supply" is where the problem lies, if in fact the white light telling you that it is plugged in is a direct connection to the power coming in and not the function of some chip on the motherboard.
In either case, a new motherboard would give me access to my hard drive again, also, and for less than a new "cheap" laptop...I don't think it would be a drastic upgrade from the ol' Toshiba LOL!
Written Sunday
I made it to the music store yesterday, arriving about 10 minutes before they were to close, which is a time that is in constant flux, depending upon the presence or not of customers in the store. The guy arriving 5 minutes before their closing time may encounter the closed and locked gate and the employees inside not even turning their heads when he knocks on the window.
This, apparently can only be prevented by there being a customer inside, shopping and holding the place open for someone whom, at the time might be jogging down Chartres Street with a guitar and backpack on.
I spent almost all of the 50 bucks that I had made Friday night.
I had looked at the money as a possible way to get my laptop up and running as fast the arrival of some part in the mail and the purchase of the appropriate screwdriver might be.
As if the Good Lord had said: "Here's 50 bucks, get the laptop fixed so you can go back to your studio recording work, I especially like that song about your penis..." And, in the old "drinking" days, I would have been well advised to do just that: use the money immediately to solve that one biggest and most expensive problem, before the first drink is taken; especially before that.
But, I decided to have some faith in myself;
Faith in the prudence of "reinvesting" it.
Instant Skeezer
I took the 50 bucks, and some change out with me, and embarked upon my "quarter mile" run. It was early afternoon. As I started running, and the change in my pocket started chinking upon every step, I wished that I hadn't brought it with me; if I had to run more than a short distance, I think I would find some way to secure it so it wouldn't sound.

Approximately a minute and 20 seconds into my run, I came upon a guy walking towards me on the sidewalk.

He held out his hand, as if trying to stop me. "Excuse me," he said.

Here I was, jogging along, glancing at a stopwatch, and him apparently not realizing that I was busy with my exercise. It was reminiscent of the skeezers who will interrupt me in the middle of playing a song to try to skeeze money out of my tip jar. I veered around him.

As I passed, he asked: "Do you have some change?"

I had to think that, like my cat who knows the unique sound of my key ring jingling and will come running to the door, this guy has been skeezing change for so long (he was about 40-ish) that he can discriminate that the sound emanating from my pocket was being produced by change. As I approached at such a high velocity (1:45 quarter miles!) it must have excited his eye and filled him with the sense of urgency engendered by the fact that he would only have a short time to skeeze me as I flew by; and would have to match my pace with his tongue; or get me to stop.

My jogging action must have been causing the coins to crash together in my pocket, producing what must have sounded like cymbals in his ears, like a parade was coming; I guess he was caught up for a second.

But, less than 2 minutes into my day, I was skeezed, by a guy who tried to interrupt my routine. Wow.

 I bought a $4 bag of potting soil with fertilizer in it, so would gain some peace of mind, knowing that my stunted and, thinking about dying, plants could then be out of whatever soil they are now in, which came with the huge flower pot that I found one night in the Quarter. The dead plant that had been in it, which I did pull out and toss in the barrel that the whole thing was sitting next to; may have died because of that soil, my plants seem to have been telling me.

And I have been wincing every time I walked past them, knowing that the April sun should have them more perky than they appear to be. They appear to want to turn around and go back under the soil.

So, I spent 4 bucks on a bag of fertilized mix, and another 83 cents on a gourmet can of cat food for Harold, passing on the $2 bag of catnip, which I have recently discovered in that store.

I deemed the dying plants more of an "urgency" than getting Harold high on catnip. And I wasn't  deliberately trying to spend money that otherwise might fix the laptop.

I was running upon faith. Faith that my 50 dollar Friday night could be repeated the next (that) night.
I had decided that putting new strings on the Takamine and getting a brand new, albeit cheap, harmonica, would put me in the best position to do so.

So, I got the soil, the cat food, a $5 tube of flea killing goo to put on Harold, who is almost flea free, a small sack of weed and an energy drink, and made it to the music store to spend myself down to about 4 bucks, after dropping 25 there.

47 Dollar Saturday

I got to the Lilly Pad to find yet another musician playing on her other stoop..

He seemed to be in his 20's and was bearded and dressed like a traveling kid, playing an accordion and, by his side sat a girl who was holding a sign which begged for money.

I was there early, after having left the music store after it closed at 8 PM.

The guy argued that he had been there "every night" and had not seen me.

I told him that I hadn't been there that early in forever.

He told me that the only way that he was going to leave was if my "girlfriend," came out of the house and told him to leave.

I went for a walk around the block, calling Lilly while I walked. and running into the young Spanish guitarist, who is Portuguese, just like Lilly.

Lilly went out to run them away and discovered them both asleep.

"They're there, but they're asleep. Just come and play your music, and if they wake up and say anything, call me. And if they wake up and play, I'll come out and tell them to leave."

They slept from about 9 PM until a bit after midnight, while I played, and then trudged past me without saying anything. They had seen me, while they were still awake, talking to Barnaby across the street from them, who had said: "Yeah, not a very good one!," kind of loudly after I had answered: "How's it going, Daniel," with: "Well, there's an accordion player on my spot."