I’ve mentioned before the little clues that tell us the former owner of this place was just not a handyman. Here’s one more. The trees in the yard are planted 7-1/2 feet apart. So there is no place you can put a 4x8 sheet to cut it without redoing some landscape. I improvised a small area where I can prop the sheet up. Still, some people are natural born dodos.The best hat I’ve ever owned, the straw bike hat, is a goner. On the way home y’day, a train went past and pulled it right off my head. Remember, Dixie Highway goes right through town and the Florida East Coast barrel-asses down the median, setting up a good breeze for twenty feet. Sigh, that was a great hat.
I had to kick an argumentative customer out of the shop two weeks ago. I don’t need his $2 a day if it means I have to go in and watch him, which turns my otherwise handy store into a full time job. Well, he’s been working on Fred, along the lines that he’ll come back if he gets and apology. That could be a problem, since I don’t apologize unless I’ve done something wrong. I really don’t even want the guy coming around. He cheats me every chance he gets by not paying his full share. So I take away the chances. Today I found the trial computer hooked up to my Internet system, grrrr.
For the record, I pay rent at the shop. The front area contains my Internet system. Those are my hubs, cables, modems, switches, routers, computers and peripherals. I also pay for my share of the Internet service. I wired that room at my own expense. Therefore, if you come in there and connect to the Internet, you pay me. What happens is occasionally Fred has a computer set up for sale.
The said customer comes in and pretends he wants to check out Fred’s computer, but then he drags one of my spare Ethernet cables over and goes on line for two hours. I didn’t throw him out until I caught him doing this kind of thing at least six times. As of now, there are no spare cables and the ones that remain won’t reach Fred’s computer. I know he’ll try something else, like bringing his own cable, but at least he is helping me perfect my security system. I wonder, is there a product I can slip over the end of a cable that prevents it from being plugged in?
We turn now to the dinner tomorrow. Peggy will dominate the conversation and will want us to read her material on the cookbook so far. Her style is almost the opposite of mine, in that I don’t make many concessions about who reads my work. If I lose you or you are too dumb to put things into context, well, you know what you can do. Hers is geared toward Joe Average, which has its merits. I am fully supportive of the project but only have a few bachelors who may, with uncertainty, become contributors. It will be revealing to see what material is considered fit for the “bachelor profile” slated to accompany each recipe.
I will compare this to, say for instance, the “surveys” one sees in women’s magazines. Such articles are like reading a fairy tail. Do you know the ones I mean? Where they interview ten women about what qualities they want in a man. The result reads like a bunch of schoolgirls rather than grown women. Specifics about hair and eye color, height, deep voice, type of thing. The proper time to choose a man because he is handsome is when you are 16, not 40 years later.
At this time I don’t know if there is a target range for the bachelors ages, but it makes sense it would be bachelors over 45. Before then, do they even have a favorite recipe besides the one their mommy makes them on weekends? Remember Mark Holmes? This society is so screwed up, he would be considered a “catch” because like my brothers, the one thing he is good at is maintaining the façade of that fairy tail. Yes, Mark had a house, but the moment his mother quit doing his laundry for him, the place became a cesspool. Mark is 52 years old. So I’m watching for (but not insisting on) other criteria.
Things I’d like to see, because ladies, you are, after all, planning on living with the guy, include
Favorite musical instrument (played)
Favorite musical instrument (listening)
Books read in lifetime (fiction)
Books read in lifetime (non-fiction)
Favorite non-party social activity
Longest term job held (in years)
Current hobbies practiced more than 20 years
Hours of television watched per week (highest score being zero hours)
Languages (spoken)
Languages (written)
It is understood most men would not care to part with such information, but that is precisely my point. Most men are off the bottom of that scale. And that, ladies, is what you are really dealing with. If you are considering a man over 50 who can’t even play “Chopsticks” on the piano, drinks for a hobby, only reads the sports section and watches television nine hours a day, don’t come around with your sob story later. Note, IQ and income are not on the list. Most men will tell you their IQ is over 140 and they make a “hundred grand a year”. (My IQ is exactly 100 and I’ve had no steady income for nearly four years.)
I am most looking forward to dinner with Peggy tomorrow. At 5:00 P.M. What? Okay, my favorite instrument (by far) played is the electric bass, I’ve read around 85 fiction books, mostly light classics, but over 2,000 non-fiction (probably closer to 5,000 as reference books are not usually read cover to cover), my current hobby is repairing articles around the house and I foolishly held a corporate job for 15 years – a terrible mistake. I like listening to the French horn. The only language I write is English, those things I write in Mandarin are numbers. Your turn.
There is another side issue that is significant to me. I’m reminded because on October 26 this year, I will have been without a job 48 months. To those who know what is going on, I consider this experiment to be a success. It was originally supposed to be just a year’s “practice retirement” to see if I’d run out of money or resources, a frightening question to leave until the last moment. Not only do I now know how little I require money-wise, but if getting that money involves a job of any kind, then that money becomes an impediment. True, I’ve been out of the market for years now, but I had to find out the truth and I wish I’d tried this twenty years ago. As subsequently stated, I am still watching for any attitude and behavioral changes that will arise when I begin to get a steady “allowance”, that is, unearned money from a source that will never cut me off. Will I become another Mark Holmes?
“If you guys really, really, really wanted to go hop on a boat in Panama, why, you would just go do it. Wouldn’t you? I mean, I’m not stopping you. Am I? It is pretty obvious you just don’t really, really, really want to. Right?” (Mark Holmes, paraphrased.)
