Sometimes things don’t go as planned. Before I get to that, here is a nice picture of your typical drive to work in Florida, if you are lucky enough to work on the waterfront. This is a Catch-22. Very few jobs on the waterfront pay enough for you to live there, thus you will commute. If you commute, you will find out that Florida has drawbridges. Actually, Florida has around six times as many drawbridges as necessary.
Of course, those who own sailboats and love to make the bridges go up during rush hour would disagree. What good is a boat unless you force as much of the world as possible to take note? I should explain my logic. First of all, it is only for sailboats that the bridges go up (motor boats fit underneath. One sailboat caused the traffic jam you see here.Drawbridges do not allow for different levels of involvement, so neither do I when it comes to sailboat owners. Let’s take the four hundred cars that come to a stop for five minutes. That is just over 33 wasted car-hours. That is generous because Miami traffic jams do not clear themselves just because the obstacle is removed.
Thus, take 1/30th of that time rounded down to one hour. If they cut a channel to the sea every average of half that time, or a half-hour and required the pleasure sailors to go just that far to the nearest channel, you will have one-sixth as many drawbridges. Repercussions would be minimal because owning a sailboat is so complicated and regulated in Florida that a huge majority of people do not have them.
Well, I’ll get to it. I almost walked out of the wig shop today. A new lady came in and could not run Quickbooks (I hesitate to use the word “launch”, which is what you do with a rocket, not a program). She asked for help and I took a look. Nothing. No Quickbooks on that computer. Since I was fairly certain I’d heard it mentioned that the accounting was done on Quickbooks, I called the boss over. One thing led to another and she insinuated either I or the new lady had deleted the program. This was an insult even allowing for the recent stressful situation, so I asked to be paid as I was leaving.
Put another way, I know that I did not delete anything and I know the new lady did not. The program would have had to be uninstalled and she can’t do that. Also, I checked the recycle bin and there were no Quickbook files in there, nor had the bin been emptied in two months. I’m saying that Quickbooks was never on that computer but even so, it should not have occurred to anyone that I had deleted property that did not belong to me. There was a quick recover and apology but the damage was done.Things are back to somewhat normal and I’m going in again tomorrow. The accounting clerk that was supposed to show up today never arrived. I mailed a few letters and, still rattled by the situation, I made a bone-head mistake. All week I was looking forward to Tuesday at the movies. I had the tickets beside me on the car seat for days. I pulled up to the theater and no tickets. Flabbergasted, I went home and they were not there either.
Enter the case of the missing theater tickets. I mentally retraced my steps and I have a potential solution. On the way in to the theater, I made my bank deposit, that is, I fed an envelope through the slot on the ATM. That envelope is the correct size to inadvertently slip in that ticket along with the checks. I had been on the phone when I stuffed the envelope. Unless you have a better theory, I’m accusing you of deleting that ticket! Just kidding.
Next. I called the G and discussed in more detail the reasons I want to team up with Mr. Khe Sahn. Finally, he made the call, left a message, and I got in touch with Sahn early this evening. He really has damaged his tendons, that was not a dodge to quit playing the coffeehouse. I’ve extracted a small commitment for him to try easing back into it. Everybody underestimates band management experience and overestimates the musicianship factor. I know that solo guitar players tend to smash out the chords to get as full a sound as possible, but I also know that is an easy habit to break.
That is, with me thumping out the bass and working the drum box, he can play feather-light and focus on singing. The trick is to make him think it is his idea. We’ve missed the Xmas season. There is still hope that I can pick something up for the G and I by insisting he agree to play any gig I can rustle up, even the “Nuke the Gay Baby Whales Club”. Surprise, he agreed. Much of the “legwork” of booking a band is dialing the telephone and he is not the type to keep at it until he finds something. I’ll throw an ad on the community lists tomorrow.
[Author's note: it turned out Mr. Khe Sahn was another Florida wannabe, the type of guitarist who knew twelve songs. This seems to be the dividing line between good and bad. Any bad guitarist can learn the snot out of twelve songs.]
This gave me time to straighten out my living room so there is area to practice. I need a PA system, microphones and all the sundry interface cables. I don’t have the cash but it seems to me the equipment the G complains about all day long is just hooked up wrong. It is that eight-channel beater he bought from Cowboy Mike. He won’t part with it for free since he paid $400 for it but he may see the merit in having it “repaired”.
I had no time to work on being bored today. Plus, did I just say “sundry”?
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