One year ago today: March 16, 2014, on Mexican dentistry.
Five years ago today: March 16, 2010, on retirement compromises.
Ten years ago today: March 16, 2005, prophetic, or what?
MORNING
Did you miss me? The bakery is closed Mondays so I was halfway out to Sawgrass on the red scooter. A loverly day, that’s loverly. I stopped at the Taft Café for grits and gravy. That’s the place owned by the dude in the band that’s been together for 35 years. We always talk music and again he reports around 70 guitar players out of work. True, I thought to myself, but every one of them already has the perfect song list, so he doesn’t need mine.
You do it by thinking outside the box. I drill a hole down the very center of the cleat, then bore a counter sink halfway through. I mount the cleat with a single screw and a layer of good old liquid nails. But you’re right, it is very similar to a tank tread. Fancy that. Um, I have chrome store-bought cleats for my musical equipment. My gear is top-notch, the rube (duh-yuck) I play on stage is part of my act. That straw I chew on is plastic.
Before you knew it, I had put thirty miles on by noon, including a stop for supplies for the bakery. I donate things like stir sticks and certain spices that can be a hassle when you run out. I bought some second hand goodies at the Thrift, including a book on that wainscoting I talked about. This afternoon, if you’d like, return for some comments. Because I’m taking the afternoon off to read.
Summer is verging here, that scooter ride dried out my scalp and neck, I neglected to plaster on my aloe vera, which was plain dumb. Now I feel like I just had a facelift with some vice grips. Keep doing that and it will be wrinkle city. And there’s only one thing people hate more than their own wrinkles.
Also, I found a box of fancy writing paper. Certain select individuals still get hand-written letters from me and I don’t skimp. This was hard to find 35% cotton paper and you know it is fancy when you pick it up. What they call “resume” paper is only 25% I think. Anyway, I got the rest of my life’s supply for only $1.99.
NOON
“Even her dinner bell is off key.” (Farm wisdom)
Here, take a look at this. Ain’t that about the purdiest doorway you ever seen? The one’s I’ve lived in that were that wide were attached to barns. I learned a heap with the book on interior trim. It’s probably the cheapest and best decoration you can do on a budget. I learned that to do Victorian style, the walls have to be at least nine feet tall. If you are right-handed, work around the room counter-clockwise (from right to left). And I have 90% of the tools needed for this work.
My first pass through such books is a speed read to see if I’d like to go back and delve. I like the colonial style most and the Japanese the least. The book explains how to shape the moldings with the extensive variety of router bits available these days. I still have the super router in the shed that was only used once to build toothpick displays. Yes, you heard me right. And I used it free-hand, what did I know?
The results of using a router table are undeniable. It’s another zero-experience field for me, but I’ve got an hour here to see what youTube has to offer. It appears that you mount a fence on the router table and feed stock past it like you would working in a factory. I’ve seen the molding at Home Depot, but it must be restricted to only the few most popular styles. But now, I suddenly need a router table. Waaaaaa!
AFTERNOON
Check out Musician’s Contact. They want you to fill in your age, height, weight, and marital status. How do we just know Momma Cass didn’t use that service? It seems odd for them to ask in a medium where everybody is six-two and proportionate. Even Taylor Swift doesn’t give out those stats. Then again, according to Forbes, she made $299 million in the past five years, and apparently still has $200 million of it.
For those who follow such things, she is the most successful country artist ever, surpassing even the great Johnny Cash. True, modern media makes that an apples and oranges comparison, but even if one did all the possible conversions, she is still, well, head and shoulders above most. Especially when she wears her legendary cowboy boots with her dresses.
Now, where was I. Oh, yes, a cooler afternoon found me doing the yard work. That’s eventful, me doing yard work. I’d rather play jazz, but somebody had to do it and it is the gardener’s week off. Actually, it’s his year off. Plus I ran the batbike for the customary ten minutes, fixed the clamps on my very well used battery charger, and fastened some tie-down hooks to the trunk of my scooter. And I need a whole bunch more cleats. You don’t often realize how many will be required until they become cheap and easy to procure.
This tank tread thing has worn me out. Just when I was getting over it, I saw the way Taylor has her hair in this photo. Argh, more tank treads! Remember, in ‘Merica, all women over 21 have to go through the “hooker hair” phase. But where it really gets gross is when they never grow out of it, says Patsie. I happen to like straight blonde hair. And I'm lenient with people who failed their driver’s test more than twice. Like I did. Six times. (I literally learned to drive by failing my tests.)
EVENING
I got out late, but ran into Billie-Bill. He knows all the barmaids in town, that’s one thing you can bank on. One of them informed me I am playing tomorrow, again this Friday, and sometime during Calle Ocho. Fortunately, I kept all the tunes on file from the days when we jammed with Al, the drummer of “fewer beats than Ringo”. I reviewed them, but I won’t be ready.
It’s that Florida blurs the distinction between musician and entertainer. Anybody can bang out three guitar chords, but the admission fee to the latter is stupendous and few have cared to pay it. It’s a bit like the difference between a female and a decent, woman. There are musicians all over the damn place. Yeah, yeah, but I must be “looking in the wrong places” and “trying too hard”. Yeah, yeah.
The reality is, when it comes to progress, there is only one place to look and you can never try too hard.
Billie-Bill knows a ton of musicians, “with fairly over a quarter of that accounted for by one face alone”. Tomorrow he has a plan of two bass players, concluding they will “complement” each other. You know, maybe that could be. Having been tipped off, I know how to take advantage of what is about to happen.
What? The photo? Oh, that is just a table of haversines. In the paucity of sight reduction tables, this is one of the many lists that can be used to reduce a navigational sighting the long way around. These books are heavy and expensive. If the data doesn't make sense, you be careful, or Ken and Patsie are gonna come along and tell you that's because you are trying too hard.
ADDENDUM
As normal, looking at one construction leads to another and I finally looked at these famous “Bailey” bridges. Developed by the Brits for use in WWII, they appear to be like sections of mecanno pieces. While I could not find any footage of the design and construction, here is a video of a bridge repair in Oak Ridge, TN, in 1947. I’ll assume that’s close enough to the war. As you watch the construction crew, that could be anywhere today.
[Photo delayed]
I gather from the silent film that the bridge is assembled in sections and then slides over the gorge using a counterweight (in this case, they used a crane on the far side of the river). The span uses existing bridge pylons, but other pictures showed they often just turned bridge sections on end and used that. Did you get a load of that foreman who even looks like Archie Bunker, cussin’ away.
Well, these flimsy-looking pipes took the weight of tanks, so they were not rinky-dink. I’m impressed. Maybe you’d like one of these aircraft kits. Sounds like a nice safe hobby.
Then I followed up by taking a peek at the stats on the marine radars from West Marine last day. The radars are supposed to be for collision avoidance, but there are many references to getting fixes from known fixed “and reliable” landmarks. The implication is that there are unreliable targets, that should get the conspiracy theorist’s dander up. Range is typically 20 miles, complete working units are available on eBay in the $500 range. Almost worth it to buy one to learn to use it.
Last Laugh
It's true. I hear the evidence every day.
