Jay-Jay called early this morning. He is sure into his sports, (“I’m a doctor of Sportsology”) so much that he can’t understand those who are not. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched sports and at time participated, but always walked away in wonderment what anyone sees in it, or really in any male-dominated pastime. Like writing.
Seriously, I’m getting ready for Wallace’s arrival and one of the chores is laundry. To prove what a conscientious and homespun I am, here is a picture of my laundry on the clothesline. Ah, isn’t that just so down-home good you all want to go milk a cow? What is more, I had a breakfast of porridge with flax seeds and brown sugar, followed by toast and coffee. Is it too early in the morning for all this back-on-the-farm manure? Do I hear strains of Merle Haggard in the distance?
(For those who have already guessed, my laundry is far more colorful than yours, the twanging is my MP3 player, and did I mention, the dryer was broken? I mean, you don’t actually think…)
It is still early. I may have the day off. I said to myself, I should call Marlaine [who I met y’day] because I can’t sit around here all day shelling peanuts. When I called, just before noon, I got her answering machine.
The plan with Barry U is to take one of their evening courses. As usual, any foot in the door for me means a degree in short order. I hold the phone company record of a degree in one year. The phone company found this out when the company president sent me a letter congratulating me for doing it so fast while working part time. That is a supreme example of channelized thinking. I wrote him back that that I had never worked part time in my life.
Barry has some excellent choices. So that you know, I already have had permission to take courses at Catholic schools before in my life and some of the best instructors I’ve had were Catholic. It is no big deal after all this time, but I had to clear that up. Thinking I would change my beliefs by being nearby is as dumb as thinking because I live in Florida I would suddenly by a Jimmy Buffet album.
The trials of Florida residency. I had to trim back my palm tree. Too many branches slap against my front window in the wind. It still beats mowing lawns and shoveling snow, in case anyone thinks I’m complaining. Did I tell you I’ve created a monster? The wig database. That was a great example of planning ahead, but the downside is that I was originally told not to pay any attention to the financing. That was somebody else’s job, a situation I am only too happy to adopt. Thus, no advanced (computerized) record keeping system was ever set up to track or pay for the orders. Almost all accounting is [still] done “by hand on the computer”.
By today this has resulted in a huge gap between the two different systems. The wig database was slowly built up over months during which there were dozens of fits and starts. Add in countless improvements and fizzles. The monster is the presumption that a similar database can be created for the orders right away. The reality is that databases are notoriously bad at emulating human systems. It is far too easy to say we need an order database or such a thing should have been done already.
Wrong, and I hesitate to grapple with the whole shebang. All of us have seen the result of hastily designed databases. The ones where you get six catalogs from the same company. There is a right way and a wrong way, and it is foolish to throw together something on the fly. That is exactly what is shaping up. Like dancing, it can never be explained to those who have already learned it the easy slash wrong way. Every tweak in one area removes the flexibility in another in a fashion that has no “office worker” parallel.
Music lessons went well this evening, with complete tunes now played in a band setting. That’s two months in what normally takes a year. Ta-dah! I remember why I didn’t pursue the violin, when the family asked me to tune one. Wow, that peg arrangement is strange and delicate, which I used to think was because a fretless instrument does not need to be exact. That is not true, off-tuning causes problems with open notes. It has been 16-1/2 years since I touched a violin. Mind you, I looked up on the Internet what notes to tune where there were no such resources back then. Due to some misinformation, I had broken the G-string, sat it [the violin] down and never picked it up again.
That was also the period where I began to notice the severe difficulties, both social and musical, of bothering with a lead guitar player. I went through Tony Bek, Jeff Tasak, John Gardie and then Mike Tasak (Jeff’s bro) in 1990 alone. All acclaimed west coast musicians but all unreliable in their own ways. The first thing an unreliable person learns is that I quickly set up a system where that [unreliability] remains their problem. People without jobs go strange, and when the person can also play guitar, they get even stranger.
Tony’s wife (April) was on crack and you could not leave a guitar pick lying around. Jeff would take his cut daily and drink 24/7 until it was gone, (though he never missed a gig, there was no abiding him). John had a horribly fat wife (Louise) who interfered with everybody (“if you don’t buy a round you can’t be the leader of the band”). Mike, a super Chet Atkins clone, was trying to play in two or three bands.
I just thought of something. Roll most of those problems into one, and who does it remind you of?
Later. Bad news. I contacted Marlaine at 8:30 PM. I have to report she is the type who puts on a great show for the first while. We had tentatively agreed y’day that I would call specifically so we could arrange “a coffee date”. She immediately set about making that as complicated as possible. After 45 minutes on the phone, we were no closer than when we started, trust me after the first five minutes I was wondering what I’d gotten myself into here.
Marlaine just talks in circles. To me, it is simple (typical man that I am). If we are to meet, I need a time and place. Instead she tries to set up a massive telephone callback relay system where I repeatedly check to see if she is “having a good day and [my] phone isn’t cut off(?)” and something about how she used to live in New York, so if she is having a bad day, I can “be cheerful”. Whoa, Nellie. I clipped it short saying she could call me in the next day or two if she really, truly wants to meet up.
She repeated told she was single, but the whole circus “you call me so I can call you so you can call me” spells ten years in a bad relationship. And you wonder why men like younger women. Now I’m back shelling peanuts. Hooray. Want some?
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