A Dopey Half Awake State

Proving how hard it is to put drums to a piece of music that was played without having a drummer keeping "time," this version of The Carcass Song is from January 7th, 2023, or about 2 months ago already. Jacob and I maintained a pretty even tempo on this version, and adding digital drums to it after the fact was almost as easy as creating a beat and then letting it repeat by itself. But, by the end of the song we were something like 4 tenths of a second off the tempo. That's pretty steady, but finding the spots where we slowed down a hair and then adjusting the drums accordingly is an art form in and of itself...

  But, as one of my goals is to realize constant and never ending improvements, I suppose I'm leaving room for them.
It's Sunday morning at around 7 a.m. The Morning Doves just sang from the Singing Bird Clock.

I got back from busking at around 1 a.m. 

I only wound up playing for about and hour and making 16 bucks.
I had arrived in the Quarter with $2.75 on me. This represented the bus fare I would need the next day in order to go to the plasma place and back.
It was a gamble, spending it on a couple shots of brandy, and putting myself in a position where a zero dollar night would really have me up the creek without a paddle; but within ten minutes I had at least enough for the trip out there, and before 20 minutes was up, someone had thrown a 5 dollar bill, so I had bus fare, plus Harold's food money.

This living on the edge is nothing new to me. There have been other nights when I spent Harold's food money, on the speculation that I would make it back.

I always sigh with relief when the first 5 dollar lands in the jar; or the first 5 singles...

After an hour, I took the 16 bucks to the Unique Grocery store, and bought one more shot of brandy, with half a mind to go back and play some more. 

Then I thought about having to be up around 12:30 p.m. to make it to the plasma place, and decided to split my time between that and busking. There were still a good amount of tourists traipsing by the Lilly Pad at around midnight, so it was a tough call. Tanya was packing up when I went by her spot around 12:05 a.m. and that was enough to tip the balance in favor of going home. If she didn't think it was busy enough for her to make her $100/hr; then how am I going to make my $18/hr? 
She had been streaming her act on Facebook "Live," or whatever it's called; and her stream will show her talking to me for a few minutes at a little after midnight. She had been there since 11 in the morning; and would have just finished playing for 12 hours, so maybe she wasn't knocking off due to her prospects of making more money. Maybe 12 and a half hours is enough. Perhaps she is mellowing out some, now that she is around 40 years old.
Of course I always feel a bit like a slacker when I go past her, in her 9th hour of playing or something; when I haven't even started yet.

I can remember her having a black and blue mark and blisters on the shoulder where she sets her violin during the Mardi gras one year when she was playing from 11 in the morning until around 3 the next morning. Somehow she would go home and get maybe 6 hours of sleep before going right back out.
I find it hard to go right to sleep after getting home from busking.

I think I'll wait until tomorrow to go the the plasma place. Otherwise my days to go there will be Thursday and Sunday, since those are the days I went last week; and you can't have more than 2 donations within any given 7 day period. If I go tomorrow, then I will be on a Monday and Thursday schedule, which is advantageous in a few ways. I won't miss out on a 90 dollar bonus because, for some reason, they aren't giving a bonus for a second donation within the first week of March. So, if I go tomorrow, I'll get the same 40 bucks; and then I can get the 90 dollar bonus when I go on Thursday; this will reset my days so I won't get stuck (excuse the pun) having to go on Sunday, when the place can be packed with other procrastinators who've waited until the last day of the week to get the 90 or 100 dollar bonuses.
I'll have an easier time going to sleep knowing that my alarm isn't set to go off in just a few hours; knowing that can cause insomnia. I get to the point where I might decide to just stay up because getting just 3 hours of sleep can make you feel more tired upon waking up than if you hadn't slept at all -something to do with R.E.M. cycles. If you happen to be in a deep sleep when that alarm goes off after 3 hours, then you will be in a dopey half awake state the whole day...type of thing...
Speaking of Tanya being able to play for 12 hours a day at the age of 40...

I wonder if, at some point, her body will break down in some way; like her getting arthritis in her bowing elbow; or some variant of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Me being 18 years older than her, it might seem like I would wear out before her, but her 15 hour workdays might kind of even out our odds of having some kind of physical breakdown of the body. 

Just as I have started to wonder about Tanya, I have just started to have issues with my teeth that might effect my harmonica playing.
Basically, my front teeth are beginning to crack and break; as a prelude to falling out, I suppose.

Right now the damaged teeth have some sharp edges and tonight, when I was playing "draw" notes (where I have to draw air inward) I now have enough of a gap between my two front teeth that a bit of the flesh of my inner cheek gets pulled into the gap. One of the teeth has a sharp edge where it's broken. 

After playing a certain amount of notes, that bit of flesh started to become irritated from rubbing against the sharp tooth.  If I played long enough the skin might break. Maybe a callous of sorts will form where the tooth rubs. I imagine anyone who is gap-toothed would have the same problem trying to play a harmonica.

What this might mean to my harmonica playing career remains to be seen.
At some point I will probably have all my remaining teeth pulled out so I can wear a "full" set of dentures. 

Now that I've decided to blow off the plasma run I guess I'll go and get a 24 ounce beer and maybe make a food run. I'm kind of craving sugar, though, dammit...
Maybe a compromise would be natural peanut butter and coconut milk, stirred together with some honey, or agave nectar, instead of the sucrose.