The photos from my bike tours seem to be a hit. I’ve mentioned that screwed up fascination with sidewalk cafes in south Florida. Here is a good example where pedestrian traffic is blocked down to a single lane. This trend, since it inconveniences more people than it serves, is likely to get much worse. These are not like real European sidewalk cafes, which are built facing the sidewalk, not right out on it.
Marion called, another set of transcripts has arrived, including courses from City University in Washington. This is the school that sold my phone number to telemarketers. The school maintained it was their information and they had a right to do so. The judge disagreed. I now have over 210 credit-hours.[Author's note 2017: that last passage is not clear. The school had to forgive the tuition I owed them for 40 credit hours. I refused to pay for the hours because they sold my student data. I took them to arbitration and they had to forgive the tuition and grant me the hours. After that, they made it part of their rules that your personal information became their property.
I forget what they had to cancel, but I think it was around $1,700.00]
The good news is that Marion and I may be meeting up in Colorado in a year. Alistair has a job offer and I’m looking to get out of the Third World—but not until I have some local teaching experience. The tale of how Marion and I have managed to keep meeting up is a book that needs writing. She’s only been in the United States for two years, you know. I think I’d like Colorado and it is a lot closer to home. The joke is that it is only a hundred miles to Miami. [There is a Miami in Texas, northeast of Amarillo.]
Now the really good news. A breakthrough. I got up in front of a crowd and sang a Karaoke song all the way through by myself. Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska”. People who know me said I did a great job of it. This could be a major turning point, even if I can only do a few tunes. I didn’t hit any wrong notes although it is by no means natural for me. A few minutes later, a lady and I sang Cash and Carter’s “Jackson”. I got a huge round of applause and many sincere compliments, and that is good enough for my purposes.
The job hunting is not going well because I am not begging. I need to work for a larger company that has a constant turnover, or an agency like Accountemps (the Robert Half service that dominates the temp market). Otherwise you get too many small firms who don’t have enough people to take care of things so you can get on with your job. The phone company was great for this, there was always somebody whose job it was to do what you didn’t like or want. I am very leery of make-busy jobs, where if there is a gap, they want you to sweep the parking lot or something.
I obviously missed the teaching semester this time around. I teach only adults, that is, I don’t babysit. That leaves only jobs on myFlorida for teaching retards and ex-convicts. There is just enough room here for a sick joke about guitar players but I’ll avoid the temptation.
In other music news, I found this fantastic site on the web that has videos on how to play harmonica. It is a riot because it is some old redneck complete with ball cap who says things like, “you all learn that part on your own, we ain’t here to mess around.” He uses this tiny little harmonica he got in a box of Crackerjack Whenever he does something incredible, he waves it in front of the camera and says it is the “most darndest instrooment ever”
By popular request, I’ve invited Tony, “that guy with the Gibson” back for a jam set any Friday I’m playing. He says he’s a hobby guitarist and he seems to know all the local blues musicians by name. Enough of the Jimbo’s blues crowd asked for him that I called to see if he’d do a set rather than a jam. He’s okay with that. He is heavy Hendrix and Clapton. Myself, here’s a clue of the tune I’m working on: “Hummala bebuhla zeebuhla boobuhla”
Watching the history channel with Pudding-Tat, I learned why airplane windows are round, or oval-shaped. I knew the original British Comets had crashed from metal fatigue but not any details. They had square windows which provided a place where stress cracks could begin. End of trivia.
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