Here’s that ailing condo project on Dixie and Hollywood. Years later, there is still no sign of occupancy. Those shades or awnings or suspect, they would never survive even a tropical storm.
Finally, a full day in the shop and a full night at Jimbo’s (planned). A few of the regulars have talked me into a basic rehearsal. I agreed since they actually put in work, as in setting up the drum kit and such. It is directly in line of fire of the
dart team. Either way, I put on a show tonight and tomorrow. The jam is not my affair and is just as much a bake sale.
The [trailer] title documents are off to Ft. Lauderdale as an email attachment, significant mainly because it is the first “large” business I’ve dealt with in Florida that is not still using a fax machine. If all goes correct, the money could be here in a week. My job hunt is confined to postings within ten miles, most of them repetitious and not direct hires, rather through the untrustworthy local agencies. I wonder if I could pull off the same West Coast ploy that got me in with the school board back West?Colleges always need instructors of technical material (such as computers and accounting, you know, real courses) but have a surplus in the humanities. Much like the real world, they don’t mix. If you’ve ever suffered through a programming course taught by a philosophy adjunct, you’ll know what I mean. Half the lecture time is wasted because they won’t call a terminal a “master” or a “slave”.
Due to shift work, I traditionally could not apply until the last moment. Many schools had deadline openings and I was direct hired into higher-paying positions ahead of more senior people who had been “assigned”. (I was making $29 per hour twenty years ago, a phenomenal pay rate back then.) Having already collected the student’s money, hiring boards were far more inclined to overlook minor details like six-year employment gaps, a Venezuelan passport and those silly old residency requirements.
I’m half-way through the Civil War book. It lacks maps and the author’s style is idiosyncratic enough that I regularly had to consult Wallace’s atlas. For example, the book often reveals that the paragraphs were written in isolation, so there is an uneven flow of facts. Taken literally, the book implies Sherman marched from Atlanta to Chattanooga instead of the opposite direction and places the Army of Tennessee practically everywhere except there. In another instance, a man who was “baptized in August, 1862” was “killed in June”.
Then I got talked into a DSL hookup tomorrow. Worse, I let the guy talk me down to $100 because he lives nearby. That will be one of the last callouts I do for less than $150, these coots have $2,000 to spend on a luxury laptop but don’t want to spend a penny learning to use it. (I blame the salesmen largely for that, mind you.)
Is it possible to estimate the nature of a group by what they lack? I must look up that passage about the nineteenth-century traveler in Russia who encountered peasants so backward they did not know what gold was and would not accept it in trade. Call the music stores in South Florida and try to find anyone who knows what a conductor’s baton is.
Later. This evening’s mini-jam was a complete success. People pouring in and a dozen professionals have confirmed they will be in tomorrow. Charles, the saxman, will be in and I’ve decided to set up my keyboard. Cowboy Mike cancelled out due to a new job; all are commanded to accept that at face value. I usually wrap up at 11:00 p.m. but the crowd was still roaring at 1:30 in the morning. A completely unique bass-oriented show, final proof that guitar players are optional in my bands, and Jimbo’s is beginning to see something unknown in other Florida clubs: single, unattached women.
The crowd-pleaser tonight was Hot Chocolate’s “I Believe in Miracles”. I earlier re-wrote the bass line so that it sounds more British and trained the staff to chant “Wear your bra, you sexy thing.”
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