Of all places, I got a call from myFlorida, the government employment agency. It was to check on my situation, but also to see if I might be interested in part-time. The people over there say the job situation is “just upside down” with signs of desperation. I’ll consider anything. I know how the temp agencies charge $20 per hour for somebody they pay half that. I can be a real bargain in those circumstances.I found an on-line news blog and contributed a couple of articles to see if they’d publish. The e-zine is called “Creditland” and is about people’s experiences (usually bad experiences) with the credit agencies that really run this country. However, the topics also concern economics. I predicted the date of the total real estate meltdown and commented on the demise of the American Way. Both standard rehashes for me but again, to test the water.
Speaking of rip offs, Eaton Vance is down to $5.71 (from $10 par). This is definitely a scam because they were supposed to invest in long term fixed interest bonds. Right now the 4% bonds I bought in 2003 should be worth a huge premium. Instead, the fund has managed to lose money in a declining market. Something stinks to high heaven over there. Should I get out now before the stupid thing collapses? How could the SEC overlook such an event? Fixed bonds move opposite to the stock market. Except for the ones I get into.
Yes, the winter picture of last day is Wallace’s place. That is the back yard of where he is staying. That area is not even known for high snowfall so imagine the rest of the country up there. No real concerns yet as I know the winters are quite variable and cold spells are random in duration. I recall one year a cold spell tat lasted from October until April, never getting over 15 below zero.
Say, what’s this in the cupboard? A package of mini-donuts. Ha! Those were for Wallace and now they are all mine. Five of them. And the weather is perfect, like an early Fall day out on the west coast. Just right for donuts and hot chocolate. I’m inside with the cat and a good book.
Earlier I drove up to the Hippie’s for practice. We easily ran through twenty tunes, which is more than half a gig the way he takes long breaks. As usual, he had some strangers there which made more of a distraction than meaningful progress. It does amateurs no good to skim over songs the night before they are to be played live. In fact, one of my rules is not to play the gig music for 48 hours prior so that it isn’t stale when you get on stage. This evening had to be an exception. I needed reminding of some of the idiosyncrasies of every guitarist. Like playing far too many chords and fills, the sure sign of a soloist.
Did I tell you the New Year’s gig is a vegetarian café? I’m sure I said. Fun without profit. Now that I’m more confident then ever about getting back my Friday slot, this is a one-time thing. Besides, I make five or six times as much money when I play alone. This town will not support more than a duo. The Hippie would put fifteen musicians, a choir, and a horn section on stage if he could get them to perform for free. That is why I have something he doesn’t. A steady gig with predictable tips. My act has evolved out of all recognition, while the act we do is still the same old thing. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how he even finds these herbivore restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just glad to be out playing. It is the first New Year’s gig since I got into this town nine years ago.
I’ll explain later, but I set my computer to doing lengthy searches. My filing system is arranged by date within category, so it can take hours to respond to scatterbrain requests. My home computer is also set up for serious work, not email and photos. While waiting, I used the time to drop every menu on my blog editing software to see menus that I don’t usually use. This often provides the first clues I have to what the rest of the world is doing. This could be interpreted two opposite ways.
One way is to conclude I am therefore out of touch with the planet. The other way is to realize that some of us are capable of doing things without giving a damn how the unwashed masses go about things. I have to laugh at clip art. In particular, software that includes cartoon-like samples that look like hell in the hopes you’ll order something better. Not likely, you artsy types out there, you’ll starve a lot longer before I’ll pay for icon-sized doodles. I consider most clip art to be mass-produced rubbish, and buying it amounts to paying for grafitti.
A possible explanation might be that I had the notion as a child that for a painting to look realistic, the artist had to first paint the skeleton, then the muscles and then paint the face over top of that. It was probably from viewing sketches by Da Vinci in the encyclopedia and the way he drew things in stages. (If you wonder why I didn’t just ask somebody, I wonder just who do you think I could have asked.)
