First the really good news. The documentation from Tallahassee arrived today, five weeks and two days late. JP brought it to the party and within the hour we were planning to visit Panama. Dad was feeling better than he has in months and led the evening with a lot of energy. After all these years I am still conscious of being the only non-family member present. We had the usual feast of lamb, pork, chicken, beef and all types of traditional Lebanese items, such as pickled beets.This means a likely trip to Texas in the next month, but it is unwise to predict such things. I’m still looking for work although I have passed the critical age for my phone company pension. If I take it now, I get half; if I wait ten years I get it all. The difference is that my life expectancy is around twenty more years, so I would get the same amount in total. It is not rocket science to say I should dip into the money now because I don’t need it now and I do not trust the future performance of the government any more than is proper. It is not unknown for the government to fiddle with private pension money.
The blonde over at Guitar Center is starting a band with her “friend”, who she carefully avoids mentioning in any other context. (She won’t even accidentally let it slip where the friend is male, female, an ex or from Pluto.) It is a country band and she plays the washboard. She makes sure nobody takes down or covers up my ads, so I like her. I’ll take a listen even though I don’t like much country except the really old standards. New country is a little to glitzy.
Then right after I finished talking to her, I got taken by another lady today, for two solid hours of my time. The only thing worse than a lady who mentions her husband without being asked is one who fails to mention one when she should. I meet this babe at the coffee counter and we hit it off like wow; I knew she was not from Florida. Lively, enthusiastic, educated and she got me into a major conversation. To the outside observers, I was making excellent progress. A green-eyed brunette who trains horses, small family fortune, with the “up North” name of Maude.
You’ve guessed it. She thought I would make “a great new friend” for her husband. What, he’s such a zero she has to recruit his acquaintances? I suddenly remembered some banking I had to do, and in the opposite direction, as well. It was fifty-fifty whether she was interested for herself or for him, not worth the chance. I haven’t fallen for that line since my early days at the phone company and should have seen it coming. But she was so damn pretty.
Here’s Mexican trivia. Did you know the largest landowner in Mexico in 1923 appealed to the US to help him protect his land from taxation by the Mexican government? His name was William Randolph Hearst and he owned a 1,000,000 acre ranch.
Later, Jose came over and needed a ride to his Christmas party. During this process, I incurred the eternal hatred of his wife’s best friend. You see, while I said I would give him the ride, I also insisted on good information. It took forty minutes of intense, brow-beating to get that out of her, but it saved hours of expensive driving around in heavy traffic.
That Spanish quirk of avoiding saying when you don’t know does not work on me and this lady was a particularly slippery bitch. I would listen to her directions to “go west on Davie Road”, for example. Then I would have to dig out the facts. Such people do not like being cross-examined. It was sheer torment to get her to even admit that one could not turn west on the north-south Davie Road. You can imagine how badly things went downhill from there. Even when I could finally place what street she meant, she was brutally stupid about it, telling me to turn left at a certain 7/11 where I knew there was no street to turn on to because it parallels a canal for almost three miles.
She kept trying to get us to set out driving and phone her for directions along the way, where her stupidity would have the psychological advantage. At the end of forty minutes, she had told us the wrong address, the wrong road, and the wrong city. She was on Davie Blvd up in Ft. Lauderdale, not Davie Road in Hollywood. I’m surprised she got the state right.
In return, Jose is going to feed Pudding-Tat while I’m away. Merry Christmas.
