The TV JZ gave me is one big inch too big for standard size entertainment center (yet another triumph of American savvy). So I sat it on top of the cabinet and now my living room looks like Motel 6. I biked for two hours in the heat, making sure to email Wallace about that fact. He wrote asking where all the flamingos were, since he’d not seen any. I replied maybe they had gone south for the winter.
Did I tell you how this sidewalk dining is getting out of hand in Hollywood? It is truly ridiculous, you pay city hall enough and they will let you serve food out on the sidewalk. But wait, the sidewalk isn’t good enough, you know. Take a look at this outfit near 24th Avenue. Around forty feet of indoor-outdoor carpet. What next? I can’t speculate what will happen once there is no longer any room for people to walk past. Maybe the city will have to put in some, well, sidewalks. What do you think?Again, there is something that doesn’t seem right to me eating your food out in the baking Florida heat, in the traffic fumes and dust, with strangers of all types brushing past your table. Sneezing, scratching, hairy tattooed people who haven’t shaved in a week, and you should see their boyfriends. That is just the staff.
I got over to Radio Shack to pick up all the components I’ll need to work the music machine myself. That was not cheap, and I am back to having a half-dozen small adapters to get everything working. So much for the advanced electronics of our modern society. I have phono jacks, RCA jacks and mini (1/8 in) jacks which I have to eventually buy a spare of each so the show can go on.
The car place called, they have populated their automobile database. These things take time, I advised them to continue now with entering the customer tables. I should get over there sometime this week to see the progress.
Business cards. Fred and I have decided the simpler option is just twelve cards per page, categorized by however I want to present them. He reports that Dreamweaver and FrontPage are both overkill and I agree. It would be quite different if they produced code that was understandable, or at least matched textbook examples. I have forgotten how to code html tables, so back to the library soon.
Still no word from FMU on the CLEP registration. Maria did not show for rehearsal, I made sure I expected that. While over at the plaza, I priced out some fancier DVD/MP3 players. I decided to keep my old equipment and use an equalizer. Those DVD players are over-priced.
In a rare non-original picture here, I found this contraption on the Internet today. It is not a musical instrument, and you have until later this week to identify it. Nor is it a sewing machine. No prize this time, except maybe honorable mention. Here are your only clues: it was never used because it turned out to be more complicated than doing things “by hand” and it was replaced by a unit smaller than a single brick.Now, I just found a group of pictures that have passed my “15 year rule”, that is, private pictures of people whom it is over 15 years since I last saw them. (The pictures could be considerably older.) Jen, the army brat, from a picture taken in 1991. Here she is, a very rare brunette I hung out with for a couple of years. The photo is signed, “Thanx, A. Now that’s what I call Biology 20! Jen”. You didn’t see the rug burn on her knee. She was a nice German girl. I quit seeing her over Robynette, who was six years older than Jen. Among the worst mistakes I ever made.
Here’s another gem, this is a picture of me and a friend the month before I turned 19 years old. The gal beside me is Wendy Grant. We used to push the piano against the door so her parents could not barge in. She married a man called Grant around four years after this photo. My hair was not as long as it was two years earlier, but bear in mind that even though this was the Beatles era, there were very, very few long-hairs in Montana at that time. Tons of “greasers”, though, as the cowboys were known because it was rumored they put bear grease in their hair to make it shiny.I’d known Wendy for around two years at the time of this picture. The building has an address cropped out that read “1212 17th Ave SW”, but I cannot remember where the picture was taken. It was a pizza joint or similar. It must have been early Autumn, for although we are wearing cold weather gear, it was warm enough not to have to button up. I don’t know what the blue discoloration is, and I think the picture has faded because I was wearing my favorite brown shirt which looks dark purple here.
My hair also appears a somewhat darker color. I remember that coat because I kept it at least another five years. I was wearing my “hippie” glasses, one of the first pairs of wire rims in the area. She used to visit me at my room in the college dorm over the next few years. Those were the days although I was penniless and sinking deeper into student loan debt.Her father was one of the coolest parents I had ever met, a total contrast to my upbringing. I used to be shocked how he would ask Wendy what she wanted, and listen to her. This was just not done in my family. We met when she walked into an abandoned library that was set up as a youth center for transients. I wrote an essay on the wall over the month I lived there looking for work. They fed us porridge and kicked us out at 7:00 AM. In the end, I didn’t find anything and moved away. Stick around this week if you like this kind of photo.
For you New Age types out there, here is a revealing fact: Most people who think moon rays affect people believe that they affect only other people, never themselves. Duh.
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