JZ was on the line for an hour. He missed out on St. Augustine. And he’s not well, I mean for a guy that loves food, he gets bad heartburn. And not the kind you can cure with a couple of Tums. He names fancy meds but I never remember any. Most brand names sound to me like anti-depressants. Any rate, there is another real estate project in the works. Neither of us wants to miss an opportunity like 2003. We passed up a good one that time.
Putting me on the spot, JZ announces he is going to diet down 20 pounds. If he does it, I have to do it. (I got lucky, he didn't do it.) I was always the skinniest guy on the crew and hate to lose the title. As soon as I get reliable transportation, we can resume our MPMs (monthly planning meetings). Remember, we have collaborated on money projects before. It is only the small-town bullshit artists that I’ve had any trouble with lately.
Remember the grocery clerk Alaine introduced me to, the one with the “nice personality”? I was right. That’s not a career, that’s a sort of transition job getting back into society. She flipped out, though I’m not supposed to know. Whack-o. Nut case. I’m not saying such people are bad, rather that life has enough problems without taking on more. But I am very familiar with how women introduce you the worst possible people they know, you're a loser, or you wouldn't ask if they have any single friends. So you don't mind meeting another loser, see. I don't mean dear Alaine, whose heart is in the right place. But I'm not running a rehab clinic for leftover wallflowers.
But it is not like I can say to Alaine, listen, babe, I want a sexy gal who can sing and dance, like I can. How about a guitar player with nice bongos? And a butt I can still look at in another six months. And forget these divorcees, I'll get around to those if I ever turn 65. And forget these old ladies. I'm not into post-menopausal women who can't do anything else. I just can't say that to Alaine.
I mentioned the brunette doctor that Alain didn’t hook me up with because of my “bad teeth”. JZ says he’ll take care of the honors next chance. I was right about that as well. The reason a 35 lady doctor with a dynamite shape is stag at the festival is because she is sick and tired of the pretty boys. She wants someone to relate to on an academic and emotional level. Um, that would be me. (True, my teeth need work, I have malocclusion and discoloration noticeable if you get up close. But for a well-adjusted woman, that is usually so close there is no turning back.)
This was a quiet Thanksgiving for both JP and I. No dinner, nothing fancy, I don’t even work the soup kitchens any more. There’s more to that story, I quit volunteering twenty years ago (Frontline, California). I didn’t have a guilty enough conscience to stay with it, know what I’m saying? In no time you discover most people don’t want help once in a long while. Instead, they quickly adapt the lifestyle of always being in need. After that, I stayed to meet women, but found out women who volunteer generally have totally weird agendas.
Not to sound jaded, but the reason for today is I am, for the third time in my life, going to trust the people who say I am looking in the wrong places. Well, trust them just long enough to put it to the test, that is. There is one major area I have not done my scouting, and that is events with a big admittance fee. This was understandable for the past few years—I hadn’t the money and I’m not the type to go to a bar and use pickup lines.
Since I broke up with the Reb 15 years ago, I’ve never really patronized any place. Entrance fees mean gold-diggers, but they also mean women who know the fee blocks the door to most losers. This holiday is dedicated to planning where I will meet women over the next three months. It is worth a try. I really, really, really like the opposite sex, but there are limits. A good woman creates good times, a bad woman creates problems. No names mentioned.
This changeover (from relying strictly on music) is not as simple as buying tickets to the next local play. You need the wardrobe, the haircut, the shoes and the attitude, to name a few. No Ma & Pa Kettle showing up at the opera. At this point, I am just looking, so no, I’m not going to run out and spend $3,400 capping my teeth. That’s in February. That is the quote, by the way, for 8 uppers and 8 lowers, to give me the perfect smile. But mark my words, changes will begin to accelerate now.
What can go wrong in paradise? For me, this was to be a quiet day of study. Instead, I ran out of propane, the super computer crashed, and the rubber hose on my tire pump cracked beyond repair. So I had the day to putter around fixing everything from frayed rope ends to the A/C outlet in the master bedroom. I had an unscheduled day of robotics labs. Anyone that tells you they can do robotics without a computer is probably a grocery clerk.
I built a step motor simulator, which isn’t working right yet. I took out the Ibanez semi-acoustic and ran through my top ten songs, pondering if I should use the existing drum machine and waste all that time when I finally get a better one soon. Then, I discover my only remaining DVD player is overheating around half-way through my movies.
The parking lot is starting to fill up as the Frenchies arrive, but it is now past the window for long term and the grounds are only a third full this year. I hope so, because they are not being replaced as they die off and this court has no contingency plans. It is not swank enough to attract locals although I commend them on how well they’ve kept the undesirables off the property.
I finished reading an interesting but unique tale called “The Last Ambassador”, Kale & Kale.. It details the American skedaddle out of Viet Nam from the perspective of the intelligence and diplomatic personnel. It’s a great critique of how the US government lost touch with reality in 1975 and never recovered. Curiously, this 1981 book presages the shift in from IndoChina to the Middle East and their oil. It is an excellent lesson book about that constant gremlin—the inability of Americans to mind their own business.
The best part of the book is the surprise ending. Totally surprise. One sentence. You experience frustration how these diplomats do nothing but attend parties and waste tax dollars. Diplomacy: the cause of WWI. Embassies are the first things I’d shut down if I was in power. I just don’t feel the world revolves around the rarified air of people going to war because a third rate ex-politician offended some obscure tribal custom.
The ambassador in question is cute, in that he times how long it takes other diplomats to get to the point, but not to the extent of endangering his career by doing anything about it. Embassies are a dinosaur from the age when distant governments had no other way to communicate. Today, they are removed from reality.
So happy Thanksgiving. I was busy all day. The one remaining big project is to replace the thermocouple in the oven. And soon, very soon, I can see an Apple computer on my desk, finally getting rid of all my IBM junk that has never worked right in the long run. It was a fulfilling, if somewhat quiet and lonely day. In fifteen years, I have not gotten used to being a bachelor, although it really has only been a bother the last six years. That’s how long I’ve lived in a trailer.
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