The Guy Kind Of Comes Through

Travis came into the Uxi Duxi yesterday, as I was in the process of writing "shit" about him on yesterday's blog post and gave me 20 dollars, plus 4 dollars "for the cigarettes," and also handed me a 3.15 pound bag of Harold the cat's favorite dry food, the "surf and turf," variety from Friskies. Harold doesn't like the "seaside sensations," oddly enough, even though one would think that there is some overlap with the surf and turf.
Of course, if I ever start to invest more money into Harold the cat, there are certainly delicious looking bags of stuff for up to 20 dollars for the same 3.15 pound quantity, and these are grain free and look almost good enough to eat. But, for now, Harold has plenty of cat food.
Just Doomed
The 4 dollars for the cigarettes came from a time when Travis wanted to go in half on a pack of them, being housebound like he was, and gave me his plasma card, with a balance of $3.27 on it, and I went to get a pack of American Spirits, whereupon I was notified of the 5 dollar minimum that that particular store had imposed upon their plastic transactions. "Of course there's a minimum, because Travis brings disorder and confusion and every little thing turns into a saga," I thought.
I paid the whole $7.70 for the American Spirits out of my cash, and then split them with Travis. It  just seemed like yet another example of how the Travis/Daniel team is just doomed.
Worse Than None At All
It was like the time I was ready to buy honey, because I have stopped using high fructose corn syrup as part of my constant and never ending dietary experimentation and improvements. "Oh, dude; I've got a whole thing of honey you can have," Travis had started, before telling me the whole story of how and why he had bought it and the events that conspired so that he never used the honey, etc.
We got back to the apartment, where I began to make pancakes, realizing that I had would have nothing other than the honey to sweeten them, whereupon Travis retrieved from his baggage what turned out to be a honey "blend," of like 35% actual honey and the rest....wait for it.....high fructose corn syrup.
"Oh, man...yeah..... this is like... actually...yeah...a honey blend, I guess I didn't read the jar that well...sorry, man"
And sorry I was that I hadn't grabbed some kind of sweetener, as, it had ran through my mind; the whole scene of Travis standing in the same honey aisle of Wal-Mart where I have, and him seeing the "bee a cheapskate" brand ("wow, this is only like 3 bucks, I'm getting this, definitely!") unlike myself, who had been duly suspicious, and had read the label to discover that it was basically honey flavored corn syrup. I should have followed my intuition. I wound up eating plain pancakes with a little salt sprinkled on them.

The lesson that I had learned once again was that you can't team up with someone intermittently -it has to be a full comittment, like a marriage, otherwise it is better for each guy to take care of himself; who cares if there are 2 jars of honey in the cupboard; one for each of you? Then you avoid the: I didn't get water because I figured you would get water...type of thing.

Then, as I was on my way out to busk at 9:30 PM, Travis gave me a whole gram of the weed that he pays at least 15 bucks a gram for. So, with the 20 bucks and the weed and the cleaning supplies and the 50 bucks worth of food coming October 10th from him; he will have pulled his weight in a sense, and he has promised not to cloister himself away in the place and breathe the air around the clock.

I played for an hour and a quarter, and made a few bucks off of a few tourists. Travis showed up just as I was packing up at 11:45, and we both walked to the Quartermaster where I returned my milk crate and where Travis, having eaten food from there before had deliberated over getting something to eat, but had talked himself out of it.

A local skeezer had come by holding a skateboard, and leading a dog on a leash right as I had been setting up at 10:30 PM. He looked 10 years too old for the skateboard, to me.

I originally came across as sounding rude when I told him to please not sit on the stoop, and he originally got visibly angry and plopped himself down like 3 feet in front of me.

I somehow, miraculously, was able, by lowering my voice to almost a whisper and saying "Look, you're blowing up my hustle sitting there," to get him to say "That was respectful," and then to shake my hand and walk blessedly away. He had a Johnny Cash shirt on (the one of him giving the finger, the one a skeezer would chose) and I played some of "A Boy Named Sue," but then acted like I couldn't remember the next verse at a point when it seemed like he was going to sit back down to listen.
"Can you just do the 'mud and the blood and the beer' part?" he asked. So, I played just that chord and sang "the mud and the blood and the beer..." and he left.
He had no money, he had said.


So, I'm going to the plasma place on this Tuesday afternoon and it seems like I might get there once again right before they close.

This actually helps me save time. When I get there at 6:30 PM, now that the staff know me as being a very fast donor, able to fill the 600ml jar in about 28 minutes, they will whisk me in, get me on a recliner with a needle in my vein very quickly, reducing the length of my visit and getting them out of there 29 minutes later, if I'm the last one of the day.

I think I'm going over there (as soon as I post this) for only 15 dollars for my plasma. But this will set me up for a bonus on my next visit when I'll leave with 50 dollars. Then, I might consider giving plasma donation a rest for a while, as busking is showing signs of picking up. We are in the Trumpian Boom Years now, almost 2 years along the way...