They’re everywhere, its Big Brother, the corporate state, it’s a conspiracy. Actually, it is a solar-powered box I pass by regularly on the way to the shop. Anybody know what it is for? It seems to be that rectangular box on posts connected to the post, which has the solar panel around nine feet up, and if you can see it, a small yagi antenna pointed at the sky. And I am fascinated by yagis although I know very little about them.
One aspect that is unusual is my rapport with the doctors. These guys don’t have time to shoot the breeze, yet often within minutes we are talking about other topics. My guess is these guys don’t get a lot of educated patients in there and a visit with me is like an official extra break. Just a guess, though, but certainly no time is wasted.
It was another day watching “Breaking Bad”, the TV series about the chemistry professor who cooks meth. Like Doonesbury, it only makes sense once you’ve followed enough of it. For continually wallowing in sub-plots, I rate it only a B, although I would like to see the whole show now. Bored, I went over every bass line of my set list in my head several times. I often use this tactic to improve, as it is a very effective technique to deliver what the audience “remembers”.
I found quote most interesting because the speaker was an ex-guitarist turned bassist. Antonio Fernandez, “As a guitar player, I could afford to mess up and no one noticed. The bass needs to be dead on time, feel and delivery. There is no room for error; you cannot pretend and that is a challenge. I used to think I was a pretty good guitar player, but this instrument has humbled me.”
Interesting. When I was discharged, I did not go straight home. I headed directly for bingo, arriving just in time for one of the most successful shows yet. I called to a packed house and some lucky stiff won the powerball. That’s a fistful of money. There were plenty of new faces. The majority of the audience has been trained, so I have not had to repeat a number in months. I used a lot of phrases found during my research on British bingo styles. The show is more interactive than any other known bingo.
What is interactive? Easy, I have special tags used to indicate what happens next, and the audience gets to respond. This is a bingo hall where you can good-naturedly yell, “Shoot the Caller”, “You Suck” and use various spritely colloquialisms and signals to express disappointment, the caller’s ancestry, or what you would like the next number to be. Oddly, there is one strange guy out there who often correctly predicts the call. It is customary for contestants who lose by a single number to flip the caller the bird. This bingo is not for everybody and we never said it was. We pause for birthdays.
That Russian guy is still at the shoe place. All is not lost, as Bad Bob, one of my former students who originally told me about the job says, there has always been a problem keeping people. Of course, that is because the job does not pay a living wage. For all I know, this is just my annual vacation.
Last, an item for thought. When I arrived back home, Wallace was gone, but the neighbor lady came around asking for a ride for her friend to the bus depot. That would be an 18-mile round trip to Ft. Lauderdale. I had to decline if only to set the precedent. They seem to be in constant need of rides and of course, it is always some kind of emergency. Like my family, they have these little emergencies around fifty times as often as normal. You know, the people who constantly get into jams that require exactly what you have and they don’t. Get a bicycle.
I’m looking at the iPad and other reading devices. They are too clumsy to lug around, judging by looks. They claim thousands of titles, but how many is that after you delete the fiction and travel guides? I really need to see the list of books. These devices cost way to much for what they do – display black and white text. One model, the Sabre, is down to $200. I’ll keep looking though something tells me it will be years before they can appeal to me. Even Amazon, a Seattle company, doesn’t carry the type of books I generally read—books that contain knowledge as well as entertainment.
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