An exciting day of maintenance and repair. But I did meet a guitarist, I know, don’t say it. This guy is established and calls himself an “instrumental” band. I uncover this means he cannot sing. He’s all about blues and classic rock and remember, I used to play all that material. Now I can avoid it by simply saying I can’t sing it, or it is “wrong” for my voice. This is a crude trick I learned from the Hippie.I’ll nickname the new guy the “Hammer”. He is local, retired on a budget and although he knows the musicians I know, we’ve somehow never met until today. He doesn’t care for backing tracks and is used to strumming or picking through his material without vocals. He recently played two weeks at the Lamp Post, though I’m having a little difficulty imagining several hours of instrumental music. I’ve decided, without giving up my own rhythm guitar practice, to do some initial follow-up and see where it leads.
Allow me to complain about prices. I had to purchase new phono jacks for my cables. I’ve long since learned to keep my old metal shield pieces to replace the plastic ones made today. But the plastic ones are now $5 a pair, so out the window went my $35 today. Thanks to robotics I’m doing a much better and faster job of soldering and I find it a reasonably pleasant task.
While this is going on, I had occasion to keep my dating club forums up on the monitor. I see that for people who don’t like the bar scene, dating clubs are the new bar scene. The most terrible types of unaccomplished men vying for a shrinking cadre of pretty women, or worse, pretending they like the old ladies as a backup plan. Room after room, each dominated by a few loudmouths running everybody down. It’s actually worse because unlike a skid road saloon, nobody can shut them up with a quick fist to the head.
In another parallel to real life, there is no competition but beta males are there by the zillions. Like hyenas and jackals, waiting for the leopard to make the kill, then swarming around for what they can nick. But I’m there to meet women, not size up the competition. What a total disappointment. Even the few that may actually have the claimed college degree, they aren’t very bright, at least nothing on the scale I’m used to. Or, used to be used to. One thing about the phone company, there was always a truly interesting woman in every department, with the exception of traffic services.
Another letter from Tallahassee, but not the one I want. My hopes were up when it turned out to be a request for a copy of another document already submitted. I had visions of visiting Savannah. Mercifully, my world-class filing and backup system made this a snap. The catch is in another month, the delay would involve travelling north of the frost line. Fred rode his motorcycle to Ft. Walton (1200 miles round trip) last week and reports numbing cold north of Orlando. And it’s still October. Please don’t make this the eighth consecutive year of birthdays in town for me.
I shouldn’t say that. The first three or four years, I chose not to leave because I was already in Florida, a place I would consider taking a vacation from other locales. Back then I drove a car and still had residual money in the bank, so JP and I would take off for the Everglades or the Keys. It’s the past three years that weren’t voluntary and I also had to deal with bad people at the 11th hour. But that was then, this is now. I’ll do a backup plan in case I can’t get away until December. I do not like cold weather, but I can stand it for the sake of adventure.
