Lookie what I found. Six bedrooms, four bath, and right in the very court I was looking at the most. But this is not the one. Why not? Don’t I have $170 per month? It is not the money. This building is right on the main entrance, so no privacy whatsoever. And the court has a restriction of two adult residents per dwelling max. So what would the other four bedrooms be for?
Let me speculate. Four bedrooms: library, music room, work room, I dunno, an exercise room? Come on, say it. An ensuite? Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha. Make no mistake about it, I will find what I want and each passing month brings the goal closer.
It must be election time. I just tanked up the batbike for $14. Florida is full of invasive species, such as the yellow-striped politician. It’s one of the downfallings of the American system that even if only one person in the state votes, some asshole still gets elected. People are not given a choice to reject all candidates. Maybe people don’t want to be led or represented? Did they consider that? I presume all politicians are on the take until they prove otherwise. And that includes you-know-who.
I’m really out of the loop, my brain seeming to have adjusted to a 4:30AM cycle that I cannot shake. That means I’m reading a lot. I stumble across as much trivia as I read for its own sake. I read a Florida map to see where I could take a day trip this week and there is not a single road out there [in the country] that I have not been down a few times already. The budget for the failed trip last week is still in place, but nowhere to go.
Thusforth, I’m considering something expensive that I would not normally do. And I’m open to suggestions. It has to be clean, fun, blog-worthy, and acceptable as adventure. That rules out anything most guys would do with free money.
My weird sleep schedule has me calculating navigation longitudes in Asia, which I also read up on if I land on a city or town. Have you ever heard of Kohima? It is a nothing town in northwest India, famous only because the Japanese mounted a major invasion through there. I thought it was some backwater, but now I will look into what really went on. The numbers are astounding.
NOON
Ha, maybe I did get my trip out of town for October. Just up to Boynton Beach and just for the day, but that’s a road trip. I looked at the property above, there is nothing wrong with the place. But there is plenty wrong with thieving, lying Florida real estate agents. She purposely put the bank’s reserve bid ($34,600) in the selling price contrary to the instructions not to do that. You know these bait and switch scum, they play dumb and keep insisting it is no big deal. Yeah, let's trick them into driving 45 miles and see how they like it. They fantasize they are so great that if they can dupe you into taking a look, they got what it takes to shine you up.
On the other hand, the [park] office clamps down hard on anyone trying to operate a business from the yard. No doubt indoors is okay because it is hard to police. But outside, the neighborhood is spotlessly the way it should be. Know what I'm sayin'?
The picture shows there are single-wides in my price range, such as this rather large unit. But I’m holding out for a double-wide. I can afford to wait as something has to come up in a place that size, with hundreds of units. Purely by coincidence, there are quite a number of Romanians in the area. I recognize the lingo from hearing Agt. M talk on the phone.
I like to keep an eye on the competition, so I browsed the music listings such as are still available on-line. Sadly, the local Craigslist degenerated to a commercial site instead of musician meet-ups. I see another flurry of bass players on the market. All claiming to be pros with backup harmonies and all looking to play exactly the same music. There’s also a rash of fringe type groups into weird music you could only expect a guitar player to listen to. You watch the videos and they sound like they studied bluegrass at the conservatory. Nope, I like my music straight from the well.
And researchers say then have found the crash site of Amelia Earhart. Again. It is found anew each time sales or ratings go down and during slow news periods. Has anyone yet counted the number of confirmed islands where she went down. And please, you Jimmy Olsen types, quit calling wherever she really landed “uninhabited”. And you know why. I once dated a gal named Amelia. Damn near bored me to death. I was lucky I got away while I could still speak in full sentences.
NIGHT
Meet Alfonso, my second welding sculpture. This is some of my earlier work. As I enter my post-aluminum period. If you look closely, there is nearly a half-inch of good weld in along one of the seams. If I can do that on my second kick at the can, I can learn to weld proper. I practiced on these pieces you see here and I’ll recap what I learned from it.
This triangle looks rough but I should tell you some of the dimples and warts are from me practicing touching the wire on the flat metal. I can’t see the sparks well enough to know what I’m touching yet, so I weld kind of from memory. I also leaned close enough to the work to get a welder’s tan. Ah, that’s why they use a mask instead of goggles. Another thing they don’t tell you.
We also lack adequate cutting technology. The pieces here were clipped from a strip using bolt cutters. Nor do we have a suitable work table or enough clamps. Not near enough clamps, and vice grips are not a substitute. They never allow the work piece to lie steady or flat unless they themselves are steadied, which defeats the purpose. I also managed to spark a few times before lowering the dark lenses and have a tendency to forget to attach the negative clamp.
I spent 90 minutes welding what you see here, a rate of learning that saturates my brain. And I can feel it. I have nothing to compare this to, but since Agt. M is nearby and not saying much, possibly things are moving along. He advises me to look around and also warn anyone I’m about to weld. I believe with experience I can weld ever smaller pieces, M says ever larger. Either way, it appears we have a nice welding machine.
Afterwards I dropped into the club for a Budweiser. It’s the kind of thing we hard-working welders do at day’s end. At least if the beer commercials have anything to say about it. I hear that even though the sale fell through, the club will still be closing. The lease is up on the 10th of each month, so kiss goodbye to the last character bar in Hollywood, Florida. After this, it is sports and titty bars full of semi-married men, pool tournaments, and juke box rock you never heard of before.
I didn’t stick around much, as the noisy barmaid was on duty. No names, just the one who makes a lot of noise. Her friend was in, the lady who always attributes anything that goes wrong in life to a personal shortcoming of the victim. If somebody steals your car out of the church parking lot, she’ll find some reason you are to blame. This also makes her full of advice. Full to the gills. Like I just said, I didn’t stick around. I was not interested in her telling me my standards were too high, I’m looking in the wrong places, and I should try the Church. Seriously, she’s say that kind of junk.
Mind you, if she’d brought that up, I could show her a picture of Miss Miami in my motorcycle last Sunday. But there would be something found wrong with that, too. Simple-minded wrong. We welders get a lot of crap from all directions.
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