Everything is set up for Xmas, this year at that fancy place near Sunset Plaza. It won’t be the same as back on Arvida and by the way, the house isn’t sold yet. The place has to be maintained in tip-top shape and I saw the ad in the paper. An aerial shot showing the huge back yard and river frontage. It is surely costing a fortune in upkeep but the market is down and it has to move. So sad. On the bright side, the entire restaurant (Marhaba) is reserved for the one group.Myself, end of the year stats are sliding from estimates to actuals and there have been no surprises. What estimates? I know from decades of experience what to expect and have a complete set of pro forma books so I can make real New Year’s resolutions based on facts. The last six weeks of each year is estimated and those figures are replaced by the real thing as the clock ticks by, one might say. Except for gasoline, there have been no material variations from previous years.
However, there have been changes. As expected, operating the vehicles is chewing up 30% of my discretionary income. I knew this stat from back in my working days and I’m astonished by how few people realized the true cost of wheels. A broad system of gouging the car-owner has been invented and perfected in America. Have you seen the information “required” by strangers just for the compulsory insurance to drive the car? Buddy, they got you, not the car.
What threw my charts off the scale was the trip to Colorado. Literally, my graphs could not accommodate that level of expense. That was one costly undertaking. It ran up a tab twice the amount I paid for the place I’m living in. But it was the trip of a lifetime, totally enjoyable, and anyway it was the money that would have gone to Wallace if he hadn’t let Patsie talk him into trying to shaft me. Even so, it was the motorcycle that made it all possible, a car would have cut the party time in half.
The other change of note is dating expenses. Now that I have a budget to date, like any other such money, it gets spent to the penny. Even so, guys, it is important to focus on what works best in each situation. For anyone who has not guessed it by now, I can out-talk the next fifty guys any time I take a mind to. But limp-brain pickup lines are not my style. Let me quantify that, because when I was young, I had nothing, not even decent clothes, and did talk my way into meeting up with women. A lot of women.
That was before I was 22. I had no car and no money, having gone directly from high school into university without parental assistance. (I am the only person you will ever know who hitchhiked to university.) But I never resorted to memorized pick-up lines probably because, unlike my brothers, I never had to. I was never desperate and always had a young, pretty, blonde girlfriend. Sometimes two. And I only dated women who had their own cars, preferably a late model Mustang. Don’t wait for pictures, these are private stock.
Around that age, gaps began to appear in my music. Working in the bush to pay off student loans didn’t bring with it the same opportunities as living near a recording studio. And back then, it was a full studio or nothing, meaning nothing. I went as long as two years without playing any instrument. Generally, I was around bands in some capacity, usually booking agent or facilitator. I’d dabbled with the bass mainly because it was so difficult to find real bass players. It still is today, but for different reasons.
As time went by, I was drawn back into the music industry as a bassist. And that is where I saw first hand the changes in my dating pool. Only music ever allowed me to meet the kind of women I am interested in. You met the others through movies, dates, parties, in bars, and even dancing (I was a dance instructor). But not the ones for me and with one exception, I’ve never had a long-term relationship with any woman that was not into music. Performing, not listening.
In a sense I got spoiled early and even more spoiled up into my mid-30s. I used to win bets I could pick up any gal in the room and let the other guy pick which one. The trick is, since I was not lying, every fantastical thing I said rang true because it was. Women know when men are lying. Their lips are moving. My life has been adventurous enough that I get away with telling the truth all the time.
After my first major girlfriend dumped me for the son of an oil executive, I shifted toward serial dating rather than exclusive pairing. After a while said pool of women stays about the same size but the quality goes for a tumble. It is simply not true that a gal with standards will wait for the right man. This creates an even greater gap between myself and women my age. Most such women want to talk when I want to read.
That’s the headliner of today's blog is a bench grinder, not a little old lady.
