One year ago today: June 13, 2015, dog bites man?
Five years ago today: June 13, 2011, news of the day.
Nine years ago today: June 13, 2007, APR 1095%
Random years ago today: June 13, 2013, my total Zumba instructor.
MORNING
See this unfocused clutter in my new storage shed? That’s how my brain feels this morning, not that it’s a bad thing. This is the start of my big move, with the by now familiar steel shelves and my famous Jamis bicycle. I’ll tell you more about my planned double garage though all I know for sure right now is I do not like metal sheds in this climate. It was like Korean torture putting up these shelves in the daytime, even with massive fans circulating the air every 15 seconds. Sorry, dude, I have little control over the events that make a photo of my storage shed into the most unusual event of the morning. Things will pick up.
So there, and I was also right about JZ having zero experience living in a small town. People stare at you until they get your number, a process that I carefully control but others ignore at their peril. I’ll say it once more—you may find you are stuck forever with the first gal you date in a small town.
That’s not crabby enough. Okay, how about this. If your cousin, nephew, kid brother, whatever, is a genius, or a whiz, or a chess champion, I need to know how you determine that before you believed it. Especially in cases where I’ve met this so-called prodigy. Trust me, nobody will convince me somebody is a genius, I have to see it myself. And I don’t buy that donkey that geniuses are self-destructive, characterless losers like that Tesla nobody who wants credit because somebody else with real brains and money turned some of his crackpot fantasies into viable products.
And as for academics, ha, from what I’ve seen in other people’s relatives, if that’s your “genius”, then my GPA must be 4.1. I’m not even a chess player, but give me a few hours practice to figure out what single trick he’s using, and I got $50 says I will consistently beat your “champion”.
I’m also in a mood due to jet lag. Oddly, the most common time of day it hits me is around 4:00 PM in the afternoon. I get hypercritical of everything, including my own work. Incidentally, it was back in 2008 around this time (June 12), I began to repair that rotten wall in Wally’s Folly. Gee, where’s the guy when you need him to criticize me now. If I can’t repair a wall, how am I ever going to repair an uneven floor? Guess I’ll have to just stumble along all on my own, because at least that way, some goddam work gets done, eh? I say, “Eh?”
Dymaxion map.
NOON
Here’s your Palmdale Cracker café, hardware store, fruit stand, and senior citizen temporary shelter. You know, there are occasional magazine articles about the sign in downtown Miami that says “Haines City”. I’m still jet-lagged, so I’ll give you some trivia on all that. As you wind up my chosen road to Lakeland, you will see other signs for Haines City. I think the sign near the Cracker says it is 106 miles to Haines City, and who would want to go there?
I’ve previously mentioned that fancy digital neon sign in the trees along that roadway. It is another of the few remaining businesses left between central Florida and Miami along the old highway. The other notable is a gator farm that advertises let your kids catch one. Gee, that sounds like fun, especially if you have too many kids.
Yes, that’s my bicycle piled on a random load of boxes and speakers. Remember, this first truckload carried the shelves and such, so there is no need for pretty looks. For that matter, setting up the shelves took longer than all the other tasks on this journey. I’ll take this opportunity to tell you about the uneven floors, because as usual, JZ and I have formed opposite opinions.
JZ says just level the outside. I say no, I would like to strip the one wall inside and see. Why? Because the siding is straight and the floors are not—you can see that easily. They bow upwards in the center. I’ve lived in Texas long enough to know the corners of the buildings are heavier than the walls. If that siding was put on afterward to hide sagging corners, then straightening them is going to damage the siding.
Now I would very much like to find that the corners are fine and the problem is simply that the floors in the two big rooms have somehow warped upwards, about an inch. That would be a relatively easy repair in this age of joist hangers. Trivia, do you know the motive for joist hangers? It is so that you can build things like a deck without having the exterior nail heads visible. When the hangers turned out to be stronger than just nails anyway, they were a huge construction hit.
Diasuke Inoue: Peace, 2004. In 1971, Diasuke single-handedly invented Karaoke, thus “providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.” Di, who insisted I call him that, or at least would have if we’d ever met, was the son of a railway station pancake vendor. Alas, Di forgot to patent the machine.
However, he did later make a fortune inventing a pesticide which killed rats and cockroaches that prefer to live inside Karaoke machines. You know, soundwise, I was wondering about that myself.
NIGHT
Here’s a shot of the new guest bed, clearly showing the sliding drawers and, I see, the orange price tag. Not bad for $15, but the mattress was nearly ten times that. Yes, that is plastic wrap on the mattress, the instructions said to open a corner but to leave the plastic casing on for 48 hours. I told ya, this is brand new. The secondary reason for this photo is it is the best shot I have of the hardwood floor. See it? I think these floorboards may be fastened directly to the floor joists, that’s a further consequence of what I said this afternoon about the joists.
America is a big place and I take the side roads. Yet sure enough, for the first time ever, somebody finally passed me and recognized the batbike a week ago. I went to the foreign cinema and a lady from Lake Placid spoke up. A rich lady. From Lake Placid.
ADDENDUM
Ha, what an obvious dip in the silver market when the weekend ended. There was a near-vertical plunge to below $17 right after Hong Kong opened. But this strain of manipulation is weakening. It’s effect is less durable each time and within the hour prices climbed back to what seems normal these days. However, there can be zero doubt that something funny is going on and that the watchdogs are again ignoring the warning signs. Probably too busy writing their excuse speeches in preparation for the aftermath. How were they to know it was illegal? I mean, just because that is their job to know and the fact it was pointed out countless times, how indeed?
You know what I would do on a lark if I could? Buy and sell a single ounce of silver on the market for $50 per ounce. Then sit back and watch the action.
Last Laugh
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