I had a callout to a new client today, and it reminded me of the thrift store. The client has a little place, a studio apartment. But it is full of the best of everything. He is retired from the pawn business. He checks his email on a $5,300 IBM laptop. He gets first pick of everything as his son is now the store manager. They must make a fortune on eBay since they have the one thing we didn’t over at the thrift: a reliable supply of small, expensive articles.The record cold weather is slowing everything down, there was no walk-in business downtown. Like the west coast, we get the effect of the dampness. For the record, I lived north of the Arctic Circle for four years and I’ve been on kayaks, ice floes, dog sleds, frozen rivers and polar bear hunts across the tundra. I’ve trekked across barren landscapes so cold nothing grows winter or summer and I’ve waited outside seal holes with Eskimos, and I’ve lived in real igloos. I’ve seen the northern lights so close they can be heard which only happens after 75 below, and I’ve seen darkness for six consecutive months snowed in so deep we could not get outside. Yet there are people who have never seen anything worse than an ordinary blizzard who still think they know more about cold than I do. Utterly, utterly amazing.
Since the first of the month I’ve noted a major difference in available software. Far more applications listed as “free” are now requiring registration. Many automatically install tracking cookies normally associated with the more sinister spam sites. I am a non-standard user so it could be me, but I still think you’d have to be nuts to sign up for a “media pass” to operate QuickTime software. It really should not be anybody’s business what you look at in private or what software you possess. Fortunately, there are always adequate sources for alternatives.
Thanks to a standard set of always-advertised jobs on the state employment line, today I found at least 40 jobs back on the market at half the rate of pay offered last year. Many $14 per hour jobs are now $7 per hour jobs. But yes, the authorities say things are turning around. Let’s hope they don’t keep announcing such good news.
Who has seen those wooden ship models? I knew a guy whose coffee table was off limits for nearly two years, and he was still working on the hull. Today I found a kit for the HMS Victory, retailing at $1,200. You build the entire ship keel up from between 7,000 and 9,000 pieces. Not counting the little wooden pegs you push in with a special tool that gets lost the first week. If I can find a decent photo of this kit, I’ll include it nearby. [Later, here is a photo of the partially completed kit of the ship named.]No word from North Carolina, meaning things are underway. I really hope Theresa shows up because if she doesn’t, I’d hate to rent to strangers when I’m here alone this year. This place is too full of my irreplaceables. I imagine Wallace will be wanting to head back soon. I may have a line on a teaching tutorial job at the high school level. The nice thing about the shoe place is the work is totally undemanding. We listen to the radio and putter along all day. But teaching pays five times as much (I can teach the in-demand subjects of physics, math and computers).
I can also answer them there questions on that there Jeopardy show. One day I will memorize what time it starts, but meanwhile, I love to jump in and play. It has an interesting side effect. People who think I am smart are fascinated by the depth and breadth of my knowledge and are baffled when I can’t get even basic questions about TV reruns or actor’s names. People who think they are smarter than me kind of watch for around ten minutes, start making snarky comments about the truthfulness of the answers, then remember they have to be somewhere. For example, a mosquito is a type of fly even if that fact hurts anybody’s feelings.
Who was said, “It isn’t what people don’t know that is the problem. It’s what they know that isn’t so.”
That other show where you guess the word phrases, well, I like it, too. Wheel of Fortune, that’s it. The answers there can definitely be working class. Like, who in my world would ever guess “Maternity Leave” or “Fox News” faster than some ignoramus? On second thought, don’t answer that. But you know what I’m talking about. Certain subjects are just not discussed that much among the educated. There is nothing wrong with being working class, but there is something wrong if you think nobody is going to notice.
