Who remembers Suzie, the French-Canadien lady from a few months back that I couldn’t find? She’d left a message at the shop for me to get in touch, something about a double-wide trailer. Yeah, the masseuse. She was difficult to find, so upon hearing that she was well over 60, I didn’t follow up. She called again today. Want to see her picture?
Yeah, that’s me strolling toward the camera, and compared to her I positively look like a tub of lard. She is in perfect physical condition [considering], and of course those shorty-shorts let the world inspect all that in quite some detail. By end of the day, there was nothing I could do to salvage her computer. It had been easily hit with lightning and the motherboard was fried. That tricky computer would turn on for her every third time, so she kept it until it was a total problem. This means her and I went shopping for a few hours, then on to her place to set all this new equipment in place. She was flabbergasted to find somebody who knew how to do everything from start to finish, and who would explain every step along the way in plain English. The way I naturally do. She was frenetic when I arrived. I insisted she make a pot of that Amazon herbal tea on her counter and just sit still for a while.
What really seemed to impress Suzie was that I knew how to shop. She got on her cell to tell her friends about it. That includes a TV producer lady in Ft. Lauderdale that may be looking for a writer. Within a half hour, another one was over to check me out. Suzie was blown away by how sales pitches just do not work on me no matter how incessantly the salesman tries, that none of it makes any impression on me. I was unaware some women find this an attractive skill. Then, maybe it just shows you what they are used to.
There’s more. She did enter into a deal to buy a double-wide. With the land. However, something about the paperwork was not quite right and she refused to hand over the bulk of the money until it was corrected. Sure enough, the seller had been previously convicted of selling property that did not belong to him. She walked away from a $3,000 deposit and back into her place up the road here. Only 2/3 the size of mine and no room to turn around. It has frilly curtains but you could spit from one end to the other. (That an exaggeration, it is about a foot smaller all round than my place, but it gives it a cramped interior, where in my place only the passage to the bedroom is not normal size.) I say she was lucky to only lose [the] three grand.
It was also busy in the shop all day, but it is well known that only happens when I’m there. All the computers were busy till closing time, so I made good rental money. I also got the entire network back up and working like it should. This Vista is a long install, and a long boot-up sequence. It takes up to two minutes just to get to the desktop. I have no idea what MS was thinking, unless it is the old IBM trick of later offering a “fast boot” option for another $100.
[The shop was so busy that] the guys were again joking that it gives me the wrong idea of what happens when I’m not there. I was interrupted often enough to consider adopting a fee for “15 minutes”. Give me say, ten bucks, and I’ll give you a total of 15 minutes counseling on the computer, but all in one stretch and only one topic. Just a thought.
What is more encouraging is the [number of] repeat steady customers. Every one has tried the other options and come right back here. Options like the library, where it takes ten minutes to log on, you get one hour max even when it is not busy, and the last ten minutes is full of pop-ups telling you to log off. Or worst, that ice cream parlor downtown with the keyboards that have never been cleaned. Ever. I mean.
What? More about Suzie? Okay. She used to work for the president of Air Canada, and she was married to a Dutchman who became a millionaire and left her. No cash on divorce, you see, other countries are not as advanced as America concerning alimony or on paying women to be good wives once they cease to be. Even within the confines of marriage, women in other countries are supposed to plan ahead. So that’s the second woman I’ve met here that was married to a Dutchman, the third one (Kayla) I met in Venezuela. Anyway, for stable marriages, these Hollanders are batting zero. What else do I know about Holland? I’ve seen it on the map. It’s purple.
I’m heading over tomorrow, as she needs a bracket installed for her Florida room air conditioner. The space is correspondingly smaller than mine, so I think she can get away with an 8,000 btu unit. Without that room, she is going to get claustrophobic in there. It was formerly just a screened in porch area that somebody covered with corrugated fiberglass, but they did an extraordinary job of it. I’ll lug my tools over there before daybreak in case tomorrow is another scorcher.
[Author's note 2016: I was soon to find out why Suzie was a single woman in a single-wide trailer. She doesn't like to pay the agreed-upon fees and likes to think because she used to be pretty, men should do things for her free. Like a lot of these types, she gets explosive when that doesn't work on real men. Like me.
Eventually, in Florida, I was to find the majority of divorced older women I met shared this ugly personality trait. It is not unlike the "aging hooker" type that you get at the phone company. The ones who never learn you cannot spend your charms more than once each. Or the ones who don't grasp that for whatever grand theories exist, some men just plain don't like the way old women look and act because such men know that is not a natural outcome. You have to work at being a bitch.]
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
