One year ago today: September 3, 2015, made in Iran.
Five years ago today: September 3, 2011, “unique” domestic terrorism.
Nine years ago today: September 3, 2007, Incunabula.
Random years ago today: September 3, 2012, rainbows & sidecars.
MORNING
The storm passed, I think. I’m ready to proceed with the floor, but experience tells me to stop and think. Renovations can be frustrating so there is no sense getting lulled into a routine. Here’s that better picture of the wire mesh I promised. It prevents the insulation, which is otherwise hanging loose between the joists, from falling down over the years.
This may not be the carpenter school approach but there is no doubt a lot of research and thinking done to get this far, so I’m happy with the results. I’ve decided to put some shelving inside to clear floor space for the next phase. That would be the bathroom and hallway. That’s complicated by the presence of that massive cast iron tub. I’ve decided to insulate around that as well.
So you’ll know, there are three types of tub. Cast iron, steel, and fiberglass. The last two have reputations for letting a tubful of water get cold too fast. JZ warns me the cast iron is easy to break but I’m not planning on hitting it with a sledge hammer. Don’t presume because of the work on the floor that I’ve neglected planning on the bathroom. No sir, I want a new shower liner, I want the knobs moved up to waist height, and that double shower head is now a necessity.
Because of economies, such as not putting in a new foundation, the budget surplus for this bathroom has grown so large I’m considering having it professionally installed once I do all the framing and basics. There is a fan going in there soon because the room is not air conditioned. I’m trying to figure what to do about that. It gets noticeably too warm in there even when you close the door to shave.
I’m tinkering with the idea of two fans. One exhaust and another from the hallway, since that is part of the main air-conditioned area. I tried just putting a circulation fan in the bathroom but it is not adequate. Check back to see how I approach this. It’s always fun to watch how unskilled laborers like myself tackle problems from an independent standpoint. Hey, I figured out the chicken wire thing on my own.
Meanwhile in Russia.
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NOON
Surprise. You get an extra-long entry today. The library was closed and the nearest option is Winter Haven. Since I was out, I got the shopping done. Here, try these. They’re called Cape Gooseberries, from Columbia. They’re also breakfast since I’m not really hungry. Who remembers the catch-phrase “Living like Harry”? I may have another, called “Shopping like Judy”. These were rich kids I knew growing up who I found, once I had a steady income, my habits began to mimic theirs. I’ll remind you, Harry is the guy who could spend his last dollar on the last day of the month, because he know his allowance would be there on the first.
One thing about her when we met, she always used to go to the beauty parlor on Wednesday. Like most guys, I noticed something was different, but it didn’t seem $35 different, a lot of money in those days. Plus, I think she went to the same parlor as her mother. Judy’s hair was always contemporary, but it had something of an earlier edge to it. Since I never said anything, she finally quit going. Besides, I just mussed it up. Remember, when I met Judy, I was only 19 and constantly in super-glue mode.
[Author’s note: long-term readers may recall back in 2010 I promised to report any changes in my lifestyle or money habits once my income became secure. These “rich kid” habits, once adopted, are impossible to eradicate. While I never spend my very last dollar, I will always be aware of what I have left. If I remember, I’ll report back to you on this change in more detail later.]
Am I finding out why I got my stapler on sale? I opted for a lighter duty unit and more staples per foot. The bigger ones tire out your wrist which is not user-friendly for a bassist. It appears half the boomers must have figured out the same thing, since I cannot find any TR-45 staples in Polk County that are not sold out. A run into Winter Haven is looking more likely with each passing hour. Let me think, Plant City has an excellent library, so does Bartow. All are within 15 miles driving distance. (So does Auburndale, but unlike the other places that just glance at your ID, Auburndale puts you on file. It’s Auburndale’s business what you look at on their computer.)
No, I don’t like it when everybody has to suffer because of a minority. It is part of the old Communist manifesto teaching that you break up a democratic system by convincing people that minorities are persecuted and require special rights to protect themselves. It is called Balkanization. This ensures there will always be pushy minorities.
No way, I say. If they want to look and act differently, let them get what they deserve. Put it this way, Hillary, I don’t have a perception problem, they have presentation problem.
AFTERNOON
Taking a break around 4:30PM, here’s a picture of how I know my joists are level. It’s also a comment on the Vivitar autofocus feature. This blurry photo was crisp as could be when viewed on the LCD. Anyway, what you see is the sister joist on the left, the original in the center and the temporary smart stick on the right. If there is any variation in height, it is sanded smooth to match the outside pieces.
The boxes go in there because I have to unpack. I’m starting to buy duplicates of things I already have but don’t want to go looking for them. And you know what I wish they’d make? Safety glasses, and sunglasses period, that are dishwasher safe. Or at least safety glasses that can somehow be properly cleaned.
Almost direct lightning strike five minutes ago. I’ve got to get that dead tree taken out of here. Unlike Miami, the power was only off for a minute instead of six hours. I was listening to Garth Brooks, king of the sappy slow song. Also, the cooler weather arrives earlier above the frost line, so instead of peach tea, I’m downing coffee by the pot again. Maxwell House Dark Roast.
I knocked off at 6:30PM. Dusty, tired, but a hot shower and it was like the old days. There’s something a little nicer when it is your own unlimited hot water, and a little gospel on the radio. I’ve developed a system [to fix the joists] that works much faster, now that I know what is important to look for. Want to hear it? It’s a good three times quicker than when I started. Okay, you talked me into it.
Use the laser level to make marks around the perimeter a known height above the joists. I use a 2x4” block because it’s handy. Next, notch the joist to within an eighth inch of level on the shy side, then slap two 2x4”s level at the center along the length and lined up with the height marks. You’ll find the joist sticks up around that same eighth of an inch, which you peel off with the circular saw at its deepest setting. Put a galvanized nail staggered every 16” to secure the 2x4”s to the old joist. Then sand the sucker smooth. Move to the next joist. No need for a smart stick, but keep one handy just in case.
In case this doesn’t work. I’ve failed on this floor twice already. Failed meaning it wasn’t perfect.
NIGHT
Nothing spells home like falling asleep your chair with a good book. Thus has my new place been christened. (I’m writing this at 2:50AM the next morning.) So much for my big plans to do the town on Saturday night. Then again, maybe I just said that because I still like to once in a while pretend I’m young.
Fact is, when I get a steady gal, I become are real home-body, but alas, I’ve been spared that situation for twenty years running. That’s how it goes once you’ve been spoiled, and I definitely sampled the forbidden fruit. It is not so much personality defects that turn me off to the average woman, but the fact that most of them can bore me silly in an hour.
Thusforth, after a good veggie supper, I plunked down and began reading a history of how politics always leads to warfare. How sad it is that America is going down the same path that has destroyed all empires through the establishment of a tiny, leisured, hereditary ruling class. A class that will increasingly use the state police to enforce their will. They can already “send armed thugs down to Texas to arrest you for stepping on the wrong snail.”
I was reading how the Greeks established a powerful state in the centuries before Rome, yet they avoided having palaces and centralized control. I would quote more Greek poets if they didn’t all have the same name, but I identify with the one that wrote, sort of, that the small city on a headland is superior to senseless Nineveh if its affairs are conducted in an orderly fashion. But what I surprised to learn is that examinations of the old Greek battlefields show that the most common cause of death was being trampled. So next time you are in a phalanx, don’t fall down.
This history should be required reading in DC, who have gotten so full of themselves they’ve lost the respect of the countryside. Mind you, Greece was hardly paradise. The small farmers had to revolutionize warfare. They had crops to grow, so they could not, at first, conduct long military campaigns. And when they did fight, they had to kill the enemy so he could not come back the next year again and again.
This is opposed to other armies of the time, which preferred to capture the enemy alive. Hence they could become slaves, hostages, or sacrifices. That practice involves an entirely different order of battle. On the times when the ancients did slaughter everybody, it was the defenders, civilians, and dogs inside a recently captured fortress. Here is where I thoughtfully don’t mention Waco.
The astute reader will also spot the heavy parallels between hostages and the American system of prisons, probation, and parole. Not confessing has become interfering with justice, self-defense is assault on an officer, and expressing outrage makes one a flight risk. The world has seen this before.
ADDENDUM
Happy invasion of Poland day. Normally and falsely associated with the start of WWII, a lot of people are unaware than after WWI, Poland had invaded Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania, and was expelling ethnic Germans within their borders from land seized from Germany in 1919. They also bombed Germany in 1919 (City of Frankfurt). Poland was aggressive and war-like, and refused to behave, especially once they had signed military pacts with England and France, effectively surrounding Germany. Poland was armed to the teeth, with airplanes and tanks and most of the world believed the Poles would win, including the Poles themselves.
It is also conveniently forgotten that on September 17th, the Soviet Union also invaded Poland. But as they were planning to bring Russia into the war on their side, France and England, did not declare war on Russia. And if you want to be correct politically as opposed to politically correct, Germany had a right to parts of Poland under the Treaty of Versailles, which stated people of the same language had a right to belong to one country.
Czechoslovakia and Poland contained large areas of German populations that were taken away by the treaty, and Germany wanted them back. A reminder to the reader that Germany did not lose the First World War. But they were treated as if they had, which humiliated the German veterans who fought in that struggle. You probably know at least one of them by name. Hmmm, suddenly these countries seem a little less like the victims they are usually portrayed. Try letting someone hack off five counties in Texas and hand them to the Mexicans and see what happens.
Austria was a different matter. Austrians speak German and were forbidden by the treaty from joining with Germany. Thus, it was not “annexed” as you have likely been told, but exercising a right that had been given to every other European nation. At the time the German motor columns moved into Vienna in the famous newsreels, the Allied propagandists forgot to also show that Austrian troops were also parading through Berlin on the same day. The famous photo of the crying Austrians has been misrepresented. They were tears of joy, you have to watch the entire newsreel from which that still was taken. Not all the pictures are faked, but that one was.
So it is a judgment call whether Germany was invading or liberating. You can invade half a country, but you can’t liberate half—the US tried that in Viet Nam. You can’t leave the enemy a sanctuary. No, once the Germans started with Poland, they had to finish Poland. The war was over in six weeks. The reason Germany did not turn around and invade France, which had been war-mongering on the west, is because Germany was exhausted, out of money and out of gasoline.
Germany simply had not intended to wage a long war, much less “conquer the world” like we’ve been told, and told. That theory is pure hogwash. But Winston Churchill, an obscure and discredited English politician whose rent was being paid by, well, shall we say “some bankers”, demanded war!
This is quite a different version than the one you had to memorize to get through grade school. But this version is backed up by historical records that to this day are still deliberately omitted from most Western curriculums and textbooks. Those same books tend to overlook the fact that Germany is and has been for hundreds of years the most highly cultured nation in Europe. Anyone who has visited France or Switzerland can testify to that.
And that is why you read this blog.
Last Laugh
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