One year ago today: January 20, 2015, a soldier’s letter.
Five years ago today: January 20, 2011, the drawbridge at 65mph.
Nine years ago today: January 20, 2007, the trained eye.
Random years ago today: January 20, 2014, mining welfare . . .
MORNING
The bakery is no more. Whoever took over has enough cash to close the doors for a few weeks to make the changeover. Rumor is some big Venezuelan outfit, a chain, has absorbed the place, intending to keep it as a “Hungarian” bakery. I’d like to see that. Nobody wants bread baked on an assembly line. Well, nobody who knows any better. Here I am, working the puzzles over in Dunkin Donuts. It just isn’t the same. Even the coffee tastes burnt.
JZ called to say he’ll be here in the morning to tackle that leak under the sink. I suspect it just needs a special tool. It is those fancy chromed flex pipes that lead from the water inlet to your taps. I’ve got a pail under it to trap the water but the drip is getting progressively worse. No problem, if JZ is here we’ll just go get new parts. It’s all good. Then we have the remainder of the day to go chasing women. That’s our natural state, you know.
What’s this, some new kind of mosquito virus is appearing, this time from South America. I find in astounding that these people enter this country undetected. Has not mankind learned from malaria that these mosquito-borne parasites are among the deadliest maladies? Everybody who travels to or from these areas of infestation should be quarantined at their own expense. In case anyone hasn’t heard, it is illegal to spread contagious diseases in this country. That is, to act as a carrier or host.
And we know how these insects will attack JZ. Say, remind me to get a video of this in action. I used to think he was kidding myself. No sir. I can be standing right beside the guy without a bite while he is being eaten alive. Remember the horsefly, the thumb-sized horsefly, that was trying to get at him through the window glass. The point is, he’s one dude that really has to worry about West Nile and anything with that vector.
“If a movie is described as a romantic comedy, you can usually find me next door playing pinball.” – George Carlin
How do you like my new mini-ladder? Here’s the before and after shots. This is the ladder of many colors and it finally gave out from dry rot in the lower levels. Now I have a mini-version, equally unsafe at any height. And that is what constitutes a full afternoon of retirement activity. Don’t laugh, your turn is coming.
Speaking of movies, I seem to have developed a knack for storyboarding. Except I do it in my head, not on a chart. This is the art of arranging scenes in for a movie in some kind of logical or chronological order for the filming crew to follow. I’d link you to some, but the Frenchie-Skype Ghoul is clogging the pipes again. They tend to all phone home at 9:00AM or 7:00PM. So forget any high-bandwidth activities in that stretch.
What I was getting at was the opposite of storyboarding, but I forget what it is called. We’ve all seen them, movies slapped together from snippets and footage around the studios. Didn’t I hear there was enough footage left over from GWTW [Gone With The Wind] to produce another feature length movie.
Well, that’s what I mean—the art of piecing a logical, entertaining video together from stock or leftover material. Some people just can’t do it, but to my surprise, I can. From that, I evolved the technique of videotaping, which I may call “filming” what is convenient and working with that.
What I have not been able to hack is the Google video blog command. I showed it can be done a short while ago. But the technique appears to hinge on knowing a type of “video location code”. This was automatic in the early days, but Google seems to have removed it. It has the capability of posting videos to youTube without an account, so it was the first thing Google disabled.
The solution appears to be going over the posted videos to find the “location code”. But so far, several hours of review have not produced results. Like Craigslist, when they really don’t want you reverse-engineering their code, they run javascripts.
NIGHT
It’s a cold one, so I’m indoors with my freeze-dried coffee. The stuff is not bad if you get the right brand and don’t expect it to taste like real coffee. I’ve mentioned the best instant coffee is the Nescafe version used in the Philippines. It is different than the same label sold here. Another good brand in Manila is called JFK. It is made in India, so good luck trying to find a reliable source of it in Florida.
I’ll have food on the brain until I find another bakery. See, I should have married my Hungarian zumba instructress. But then, you’d have to get her mother deported and that wouldn’t be nice. And I’ve perfected, through years of diligent experimentation, the art of making consistently fantastic lime-ade by the glass. The tall, frosty glass. This is why it is not uncommon to see me being very picky about selecting which limes I’ll take out of the bin at the market. They have to be just right, the trick is the lime. No, I’m not going to say lime is the “key”.
I’m almost done with “Dark Matter”, but things are getting ever more sci-fi than detective. As they track down the guy, he has a special glove that allows him to reach into people’s heads and take or absorb something from their brains. All of this makes sense from a scientific standpoint, but without that background it gets far-fetched. How many laypersons study transmutation? Or nanoscience, the book was written before nanoscience, but the author nailed the facts that would fit when it came along, good job there.
On the cPod camper, I’ve done all I can on paper. I’ve planned out how to place the “jack stands” inside the inner compartment and how to drill more holes that fit those pins from my PA speakers. I never did use those pole stands. It is more convenient to prop the speakers up on a couple of bar tables. Old-school? Saving lugging equipment is old-school, new-school, and everything in between.
Another trip is on schedule. I’ve mentioned how difficult it is to find out if a property is in or near a bad neighborhood. The code used to be “quiet”, but that is gone. Now the clue seems to be telling people the house is a great rental or flip. Either way, you don’t want to live in it. Prices have been climbing, but still at a slower rate than money comes around, so I’m in no rush. To put things in perspective, I spend half as much each month living as this place cost me. I would have no qualms about walking away from this joint.
The difference is this time I want to own the land. This time, I am retiring for real. I never intend to work again, not even at a business. Unless I can find something carefree, but that is not the nature of business. I should have been in California in the late 70s, teaming up with one of the companies that pushed the software revolution. Oracle, for example, or Apple. But when I got out of school, I was so poor I could not live in California and had to go work in the bush for four years.
When I got back, I instantly scored an excellent career, but by then I was pushing 30. I’d missed the demographic boat. If you are not a partner or in upper management by age 30, so have you. There is a certain convenience to living here because I know the turf. But I could easily arrange to make it back here when I have to. Twice a year, or so. I believe I’ve already told how, if I move, I will have to operate a car again. That’s already budgeted in at $350 per month. And I keep the motorcycles.
ADDENDUM
What is this? It’s an old trick of the writing trade. I’ll walk you through it. I do about a quarter (23.3%) of my writing in public and sometimes this sparks some interest. Even more rarely, from a pretty female, but that’s another story. These are pictures of men’s fragrances, but they are the scratch-n-sniff leafs removed from "high class" magazines. Here's how it works. When you unpeel the foldover, you expose the strip of perfume, which I carefully cut around to get just the actual sample.
You are aware of the principle, no? The sample is the actual fragrance encased in thousands of tiny bubbles. When you scratch or rub, some of these burst and release the contents. The heat of your bare skin will also rupture the bubbles. Try it. I once had a book returned from lost because it “smelled like” me. How’s that for a compliment? Considering she didn't really know me.
Perfume quality? The product in front sells for $104 a bottle, the one behind is $72. Nothing’s too good for my women. Plural. Er, I mean, period.
Last Laugh
(Not one hit.)
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