Alkaline Water For Harold And I

 With so much juice in my possession, I became possessed with the notion of extending the juice portion of the fast for another day or two, before switching to nothing but alkaline water.

The new derailleur; still waiting...

I keep finding darned food. There were some meals ready to eat, not M.R.E.'s but little plastic containers, with tops sealed in transparent plastic, so you could see that there was something like a meat pie, in a fried corn looking shell, on a bed of Shepherd's Pie, which might not need to be capitalized, but which surely looked tempting, as I walked past, returning from the Family Dollar, where I replenished Harold's supplies; 14 pounds of kitty litter, and 3 cans of wet food, while picking up my own dinner of 3 bottles of PH 9.5 water. Yum!

I had gotten up and crapped out what must have been the 3 avocados that I had eaten 2 days prior. I hadn't known that avocados would stay in a body that long, but it isn't surprising, given how heavy they are, in a way that bananas are heavy, in that it is really hard to eat a dozen bananas without risking some kind of abdominal pain and they ooze through you. Cheesecake is heavy, too. It would be hard to eat a cheesecake the size of a birthday cake. Maybe it would be hard to eat 2 jars of peanut butter all at once, too.

After drinking some apple juice and then heading for the dollar store on foot, I actually felt bloated and had to do a few bends at the waist. I think the prune juice and the apple juice were fermenting in my stomach, or otherwise expanding.

Then Jacob texted to say that he was five minutes away, and I went out to help him carry in a microphone stand, a 4 track cassette deck and other accessories for recording music.

He had brought his acoustic bass along and mentioned that he had, in case we decided to go out and busk.

"It is Friday, and it's Christmas time..."

I felt so physically week after 3 days of juicing, and I had only put on a light jacket to go out to meet him, and it was about 55 degrees, so my thoughts were mainly about getting back inside, rather than going in the opposite direction, into the cold.

A quick look at the webcam on Bourbon Street showed it to be pretty deserted. There is a disquieting sense that this may be the death knell for the French Quarter, as, perhaps by the time we are back to "normal" there will be no more businesses open on Bourbon Street.

Perhaps I am being premature because, what else are they going to do with the buildings, but open them back up as bars and clubs again? By then, they might be owned by the banks.

So, we stayed in and jammed on different music with no real inspiration coming to me as far as original improvised songs, but it was a good way to stay in practice...

Jacob brought some kratom and I did a shot. That, after not having eaten, had a more subtle effect on me. It may have helped me focus, but I am in the foggy minded phase of the detox, which confused things...

What seems clear though is I need to work smarter and further develop a system for producing music; using the tools I have. Nothing beats good old fashioned practicing with a metronome, although there are some video game type applications where you can plug your guitar in and play a sort of game where the correct notes, rather than being on sheet music, are represented by objects coming towards you in 3D, along six tracks, like railroad tracks, and when they arrive at a certain spot, you must play the corresponding note on the guitar, whereupon you receive instant feedback in the form of green light for a perfectly pitched note and a more reddish tone to correspond to how much "off" you were. The program keeps a tally of how accurate you were in your timing and your pitch.

The game I once played came with a huge library of songs at different levels, and it was really easy to learn something like a Tom Petty song in 20 minutes that would fly by because the game is so fun.

I played at a friend's house for about an hour, and when I went out to busk that same night, I noticed my timing was a bit tighter.

You just need some sort of USB interface to plug your guitar into your computer. It would be possible to learn a Joe Satriani piece in the quickest possible way, were you to become addicted to the game and start out at half speed; and then gradually increase it; keeping those green lights flashing as best you can...

Well, that is about all I have right now; time to sleep. The money came in on my card about 30 hours ago; hence the trip to the store to catch Harold up on his litter and food. The poor animal was about to use my houseplants as litter boxes, I think.