Wallace and I finally made it over to the Pro Bass Shop for a few hours. My score on the indoor range was 85% hits, not bad without my glasses. I like browsing in that store just to see what is there and keep up on hurricane supplies if we ever need them. We looked at 300 HP outboard motors half the size of the car. The smallest motor is rated 2.5 HP and that is more my speed. The four-person inflatables were light enough for me to pick up, at around 32 pounds. However, to really go fishing, all we have to do is put up gas money for JP’s cabin cruiser. We also had coffee at the sports shop and viewed the fish tanks. Most of the species were from the south Pacific. For some reason the Atlantic just does not have exotic fish. Have you ever flown over it? Past the continental shelf, it is a greyish-black and lifeless stretch. But Pacific fish are tasty. I admit, I don’t know how to cook fish. It always breaks up and is overcooked by the time I sort things out. For that reason, we stopped at El Presidente and bought two fish steaks, labeled “King Fish”. As far as we know, this could be like Canadian “White Fish”. No such thing, so what are you eating?
What is an otolarynologist and what kook makes up such words? It is an ear and throat specialist, and that is where I am headed. My ears, I’ll have you know, are quite clean, but it takes an expert to fix what I’ve got. Called an impacted cerumen, it is only around the third such problem I’ve ever had in life, so I won’t panic about it. Wallace drove me the 16 mile round trip to pick up the necessary papers. These are the most sudsy events I hope to ever report here. [Author’s note: sudsy refers to the story lines in soap operas, not beer. I thought everybody knew that. Soap operas dwell on medical problems, but not petty ones like mine.]
Back home, I am finally watching “Rio Bravo”. I did not spend my youth glued to a television and thus I have not seen many of these movies. (In fact, I get a laugh out of most males who look back on their early teens as wasted years.) “Rio Bravo” is an early low budget made-for-movie script, filmed on the studio grounds. The golden days of westerns, when the cowboys had names like “Colorado”. Which makes sense, since “Hawaii” and “New Hampshire” don’t have quite the same ring. I noticed.
Pudding-Tat convinced me to take the afternoon off, so I read up on the newer developments with GPS. I see it has dropped enough in price to be included in monthly cell phone packages. While I never saw much use for the technology five and ten years ago, I’m impressed by some of the ideas now that it is affordable. Some farmer uses it to have his tractor plow his fields perfectly straight (I was unaware that crooked furrows cost up to 5% of crop yields). Another use is remote time-clock log in. This is a boon for remote job sites where it is hard to tell if your workers show up when they say.
Trust me, the phone company employees will hate such a system. We used to stop for breakfast in Tukwila until 10:30 AM every morning. It says GPS systems will quadruple in sales in four years, but not why. Can you think of how to make money with it? Unless you are tracking people or packages that agree to be tracked, I’m stumped.
The situation at the computer shop is tenuous. I am within a few days of taking a loss, which I cannot sustain more than a few days. Here’s the situation. There are so many vacancies from bankruptcies and closures in the area that we can rent a similar premise for as little as $500 per month. That is almost $2,000 less than we are paying. I have no loyalty to the landlady who doubled our rent three years ago and started speculating on beachfront property. Since that day, she’s been continually around reminding us not to be late. I vote we bail.
The final say is not mine, as my 10% of the operation means nothing. But I speak Spanish and Theresa has contacts at the car wash. We could be moved in a single day. If the landlady who used the CAM clause to double our rent looses both properties, I’ll be the first to laugh out loud. You know how I love real estate speculators. Have I ever explained why that crowd gets my goat? No?
I grew up during a time of continually rising real estate prices. Everyone I knew who bragged about the rising value of their property had one thing in common—an original down payment from their parents. They rode the crest of the wave but it was not hard to figure out they were further in debt each time they “made money”. Their continual uptrading caused house prices to spiral beyond affordability to those without a head start. Such as myself. Is it any wonder I don’t mind when they crash and burn?
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