The photograph is most informative. I am not going to publish side-by-sides, but you can use your own imagination to figure out at least six things that are “missing” in this picture. Things our modern society would inject into the scene by force if necessary. And no, I don’t mean a roped off “valet parking” section.[Moments later, I am informed that the previous riddle is too tough. I keep forgetting this is Florida, where people get stumped when asked their favorite color. Ten seconds, Jim-Bob. Okay, to kick-start the questioning, look at the photo and quickly point out all the fat broads and welfare cases. My we’ve come a long way, don’t you agree?]
I’m back and it is noon. When I say there is nothing to do, I mean that like any property owner. There are dozens of things I should be getting around to, but darn, it is such a nice day. My bicycle odometer quit working. It is a simple ($9) device but it took two hours to fix by jerry-rigging a new magnet (on the spoke). The cruel heat made this hot, sweaty work, but it went many times faster than trying to fix things when it is cold outside. Trust me, I have experience in both climates. To be fair about Montana, far fewer scrounges walk up and ask you for a spare cigarette when it is 25 below.
The new place will have no work area, sigh. Well, then I don’t know because come to think of it, Wallace likes to putter around as well. He’s more mechanical-minded. In all these years I cannot recall one instance where he and I ever got in each other’s way. Contrast that with my early years. When I grew up, even to take a break, you had to pack up all your tools and carry them with you to the outhouse. (Unless you wanted your Robertson to disappear. Whence my own mother would often point to the very spot where the screwdriver was missing so I could “see for myself” it was not there.)
Lots of things are missing and not there, for instance the huge crowds that were supposed to inundate the Mardi Gras gambling casino. Mother’s Day or not, I biked diagonally across that empty lot this morning to get my clock cleaned. The Westclox alarm was losing time so I took it to the clocksmith. That’s $35 to clean a clock that sold new for $12. But they don’t make timepieces like that one anymore, I think I published a picture of it around five years ago.By mid-afternoon, this town made everyone a believer in global warming. The heat wave arrived a month early this year. I had to spend the day in Border’s studying nanotechnology until late afternoon and then get inside the Icebox (nickname for my over-air-conditioned office area). This forced me to start some of the projects I just mentioned I was putting off, which is bad news for Sony, the company we love to hate. What is the name of that hot wind that blows out of the desert in central Iran? The one that forces all the doorways of houses to face south?
I like nanotech, and I like it better than microtech for the latter clearly does not have to be an exact structure and is too dependent on electrical engineers. I learned there are two kinds, wet and dry nanotechnology. The wet is the more intriguing, as it involves biology, but the dry is more comprehensible with my background. Today, I boned up on the wet. They are predicting by 2015 there will be customized medicine, that is, each prescription matches your personal cell structure and physiology.
For clarity, rather than the generic medicine you take now, the new medicine would, molecule for molecule, match your body cells, and it would be 100% pure and 100% effective. I’ll buy that. If I only knew which of those 235 companies to invest $10,000 in right now, sigh, I’d borrow the money. I mean, good-bye world as we know it. The dry tech will even “regrow” the inside of cannon barrels washed out by the exploding gunpowder.
I also read through a few books on smaller houses to see what’s there. The trend seems to be for over-stylization at the expense of simple functionality. What good are fake dormers on a building with no attic? Thus, I will try to refer to the house I have in mind as a cottage, because when you analyze it, most parts of a cottage are based on being functional. Even the goat that eats the grass growing on the roof. A porch on two sides. Lots of shade. A garden area. We may never build one, but if we did, that is what I’d want.
