Nothing to report. I took the day off. I’ll list today’s activities in any order, get what you can from it. First thing, I was at Senor Café for the breakfast special and the Sunday crossword. Or as strangers will say in these parts, “Oh, you are filling in the blanks.”
Tennessee had real trouble chewing up a turkey neckbone I left on the porch. I watched to see his approach and now I suspect he has been an indoor cat at some point. Pudding-Tat [also] hasn’t a clue what to do with real food. Thinking Mila was out, I relaxed by practicing a ton of music. She was home and said nothing. There is a parking spot and a walkway to the south on the wider street. Mila said she liked the music but listening to someone practice wears off quickly.The patio is full of tree cuttings from the trimming I’ve started. The undergrowth will be a full day’s work or more. Everything is in there from leaves blown off the street to dead trees. One supposes it is a micro-environment, but all the bushes seem non-indigenous. I’ve gotten in there far enough to see that some of the trees are planted too close to the road, others are too close to the fence. Maybe the hedge type plant should be replaced with something that grows up instead of out. There are open areas between the trees that would form secluded nooks if there was a better hedge.
The newspaper purchased was the Miami Herald, and it had the exact same news as the one I last bought a couple or three years ago. Some Seminole chief voted to give himself some Indian land and promptly resold it to a developer for an extra few million. Another dumb bastard killed somebody by driving the wrong way down the freeway. A huge fashion section in a state that is full of slovenly people. The usual newspaper.
I kept the TV section, which always amuses me because they print the channels with different numbers than they appear on your television set. That has got to take the dumb-feck prize of the century. Then they have a grid which transposes the channels to your area, provided you know which cable area you are in—the cable names don’t match the cities, either. I suppose the TV companies must do something to let their audience think they have some intellect involved in the process.
At mid-afternoon, I was able to find Hogan’s Heroes re-runs, that idiot channel of old standup comedians who can get applause just by announcing how long they’ve been married to the same woman, and that ass-hat show about loggers in Oregon that is as bad as that ice road logging debacle. Can anyone actually watch that? “Been married to my wife for almost 25 years.” Whoop-dee-friggin’-doo!
That’s as exciting as my day got, and I’m glad. I was able to get my bike ride in and my collected statistics show that the Florida room temperature averages 88.7 F. between 6:00 A.M. and midnight. The variation is much improved at plus or minus 6 degrees. Tomorrow, I start taking out that useless wall at the back. The heat wave cannot last forever. Or can it? Do I invest in a saber saw or chain saw?
My binder contains probably 110% of all the music the Hippie and I ever played. Some of it was too over-arranged which I’ve long since forgotten. More of it is the too-tired blues and none of it was chosen, it seems, with any interesting bass lines or for any crowd interaction except “listen to this”. Many are datestamped August 12, 2002.
Leif has some water damage on one of his walls, and I think it will be an easy repair. It has to be plastered over. You might say the room is already plastered. It is covered with pictures and clippings of his father. The man was, among other things, the powerboat champion of Norway, had a wife who was a helicopter pilot, and once owned an airplane factory in Canada (producing bombers, and which eventually became Avro). Not to mention walls of other awards and certificates. My father once, well, he, um, er, let’s see, um…, that is, er…
Near midnight I get another call from the Hippie. He has a gig at Marvelous Coffee out “on 595 and Griffin”, which sounds odd because the two roads never cross. Of course, he maintains Dixie and Federal never cross, but they do, three blocks north of his house near a Checkers. Another oddity is he says the gig has been steady for a year, yet he did not advertise it heavily on Craigslist. I would have noticed, although I don’t use Craigslist much once it became more trouble than it was worth. The Hippie’s car is on the blink and he needs transportation tomorrow and Tuesday. Coincidence?
