JP Canvass [Sunday 15]

Went to sleep pretty late Saturday night, and got up at 11 on Sunday. Was watching youtube, and barely had lunch when A. texted asking if I wanted to hang. It had been a couple of months since we last hung out, so I agreed to go down to JP. We were either walking around the Arnold Arboretum, or distributing a local election flyers for the City Council election -- we decided to do the fliering instead. We set out to push out mail to the 100+ houses in our area.

Traveling their was surprisingly not unpleasant, despite the Orange line shuttle they have after Ruggles. We got caught up, but were busy mostly distributing the heck out of those fliers. Apparently you're supposed to put those fliers on the door ledges or mail slots, but not mailboxes. My friend A. has a lot of friends around in that area -- we must have run into at least 8 people on the streets, and walked by maybe 15 houses where people she knew lived in. I finally got my chores done, by getting the lactaid at CVS. The latest consensus on whether I have a proper lactose intolerance is, it's not clear if I am actually lactose intolerance, and the Philly incident could just have been a case of delayed food poisoning. This is a developing story, more on this in the coming days.

We were done with fliering in a couple of hours, and we got a 4x4 from A.'s friend, and got to get a table from a person A. had found on Craigslist. The table was pristine and well-loved, and the seller had just discovered the beauty of selling used things online. She had apparently tried to do a yard sale, and spent hours sitting outside in the sun unsuccessfully selling it. Her daughter had help set her up with the online posting, and everything had been gone in a couple of hours for a higher selling price than she had hoped for. She was pretty excited that more than a dozen people had queried about a couple of items she was selling.

That made me wonder if the American society is changing/reorienting again. The older, wealthier generations are/will be dying out soon, and with them the ability to afford expensive things. Americans aren't really known for their propensity to buy used things. I wonder if as older people get to know online technology better, and Americans get more open to doing something everyone else has been doing forever, the market for used furniture, and other household items will go up. It's possible there's going to be one large company that'll try to extract profit by mediating what is already a pretty frictionless transaction (see: prices at Goodwill that are higher than the sticker prices). But I have my doubts there. Electronic waste is going to be a big thing, and companies are trying to make everything electronic so it can be 'outdated' and people will need to buy newer items every couple of years, but I predict a change in consumer habits that'll go the other way -- people will begin appreciating simple long-lasting items more.

We dropped the table at A.'s rental house, I got a short tour (her housewarming is two weeks from now), and discovered that they have the largest yard of anyone I've ever seen in the U.S. They're planning on turning it into a kitchen garden, and promised me a plot for next year. I'm excited about that! A dropped me at Ruggles, and I had a very comfortable and well-timed trip back. After getting back I tended my oyster mushroom and set up a new batch of soy sprouts. I had to throw out the last batch of soy sprouts because it got smelly and disgusting, and maybe only 30% of the sprouts were viable. The source of the sprouts is highly questionable -- I have had amazing results with the ones I got at BFresh, so I'll be trying it again to give them the benefit of doubt. If it fails again, I know what the problem is and won't buy any seeds from there. Almost went to bed at 11, but mind was slow from all the walking around, so it took me sometime to come up with the post from last night. I'm proud of that -- it's opening up a new universe that should be interesting to approach, as a writer as well as a reader. I've written two pieces on that Universe, should do a couple of more to get a good nerve on. Also need to write a few more on Kapardin etc., so I have a portfolio of work to start writing the character contour.