November 6, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 6, 2015, the king of sidecars.
Five years ago today: November 6, 2011, neither alone nor crazy . . .
Nine years ago today: November 6, 2007, super Sudoku.
November 6, 2014, stealth radio antenna.

MORNING
           My more seasoned readers will know that a few days lapse generally means I was out of town or on a jaunt. That was the case and you get some extra adventures to share. As usual, I stay off the standard touristy trails and reports, plus I’ll sometimes tell you what things actually cost. To many of my contemporaries treat costs like they are a secret or something nobody has to concern themselves over.

           Who remembers the wedding Trent attended? He reports the hotel has a great restaurant and he’s suggested the sausage gravy and biscuits. So getting an hour’s early start, mainly because we forgot about daylight savings time, we arrived before the crowd at the Terrance, tallest building in the city. Nine stories, there should be an accompanying picture near, and valet parking. Although across from the lake, the ground floor location is shy on view, and there was a “160 guest wedding party” that took over that section.
           Great coffee, the gravy is unique, the table service is attentive and polished, it’s a distinguished place to dine. The country air enhances the appetite, and when you crash here, that is one commodity in abundance. Sleep until you please, there are no wake-up calls allowed here most days.

           If you want to see the nicer area of Lakeland, you’ll best drive a mile into the southeast end. There are three lakes in the central residential and downtown area. The lake by this hotel, then a little under a mile south to the lake with the library, and another mile is the biggest lake, which is essentially private enough for the houses surrounding it and contains a yacht club. We drove through the mansions, the environment spells old money.

           He eventually wants to get out to this area and said any one of those houses would do. I was happy just to be the navigator, since these three lakes gave me nothing but confusion when I was first learning to find my way around town. I had driven past the hotel before not noticing the restaurant, which faces away from the spot I would normally be heading, the Amtrak station. There were three women next to us who were quite attractive; at least until you saw the disfiguring tattoos that instantly converted them into biker broads.

           It was a memorable day, indeed. On my own, I would not get to many of these places if only because I hesitate to go alone. No, I’m not timid or insecure, but once I see there are not available babes, I’m likely to taken out a book, or a crossword and ignore the décor. So why pay for it?
           Years ago Marion and I used to go dutch a lot of places and later I’d regularly go along with a date from the phone place. Now, such opportunities are not plentiful. And my habit of not taking women on fancy dates until after there is a relationship doesn’t cut it with may of these modern and tattooed ladies.
           One thing is certain, the short skirt is back in fashion. I shouldn’t be saying skirts as these are dresses. Trent wholeheartedly agrees this is a style whose time has come around again. Yes, sir, I’ve been a leg man all my life and there is nothing like a great set of dainty pinks. But may I say to the ladies of a certain age, this is a time-limited observation. Same with blue jeans. There was a point where I quit wearing them myself, if you can take a hint.

Picture of the day.
Tiergarten Park, Berlin
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NOON
           It was still early enough to take a stroll around the local college. I believe it is “Southeastern”, but it is also famous as a campus designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was deserted, as a school ground usually is on Sunday morning so we got to see most of the architecture. The original buildings have all his hallmarks and same with what little we could see through the windows. Here’s a central building that I think must be a chapel. The school’s full name contains the word Methodist. The residences appear to be non-coed.

           As we strolled around, noting how Wright often positioned his buildings to accommodate partial views, we wound up looking that the big lake. With some wonderful classical music in the background. In a moment, Trent motioned to step back and be quiet.
           Sure enough, we were right next to an early Sunday morning rehearsal of the symphony orchestra. It is likely my loud voice disturbed then as the conductor called for a short recess. Meaning I don’t have an audio recording. (What’s it like to be so rich the kids go to college to study playing the flute?)

           FYI, the annual tuition at Methodist is $40,000 with everything else on top of that. It’s been voted the most attractive campus and having a twelve month growing season helps with that. Every building is set back behind flowers and shrubberies. The newer structures, such as “JR”, the women’s dorm, have a different design, but still beyond anything I ever knew in my university days. The lack of major sports facilities suggests this is an art college, so I like that right away. I’ll keep an eye out for continuing ed courses, though every time I sign up the oldest lady in the room always pre-empts any of my own intentions.

           Sad but true, ladies, but older men do not attend adult courses at a campus because they are there to meet older women. Come on, it may happen occasionally, but grab a brain. These guys can meet all the old ladies they want for free at the bingo hall.

           The most unusual spot on campus was this temple-looking thing. I joked it was the Christian Taj Mahal. Closer inspection shows I was partially right. Some founder of the college had been a Methodist missionary to India and returned with the notion that college student would somehow meditate. So he garnered the money for this spot beside the greenhouses.
           Somebody tell him the only meditating going on was with whatever the senior class was propagating inside the greenhouse. What? Oh, from the outside, it appeared they were growing roses.

AFTERNOON
           Before we move on, here is a picture of the woman’s residence. The entranceway was actually nicer than the foyer of the hotel we just exited. Say, there was one sharp dude at the hotel working the valet. He was one of those ectomorph athletic types with perfect teeth and movie-star looks. Ha, we concluded there is no way he took that job for the money. Kind of a cross between Brad Pitt and a much-younger Robert DiNero. I figure if I was that guy, it’s the sort of job I would do for free. The women he must see every day, my god!

           It still being early enough, we voted to go see the movie “Hacksaw Ridge”. It’s the Hollywood treatment of a true incident where a medic, a conscientious objector, hauls 75 wounded Americans and 2 wounded Japs out of the hot zone and lowers them down a cliff. When you consider what the Americans tried at Omaha beach, don’t be surprised to see them assault a sheer face cliff that had to be scaled on rope netting. Ropes that the Japanese lacked the mental alacrity to simply cut.
           There is excellent special effects of a naval bombardment, though not the depiction of the exploding shells. You are asked to believe the Americans staged human wave attacks with tommy-guns blazing. Sorry, it never happened. Except on the other side. Add lots of footage of guys in flame suits. The battle scenes are gory with head wounds and dismemberments done a little more realistically than the standard war movie.
           According to one of the medics, the 2 Japs “didn’t make it”.

EVENING
           It had to happen, I was the hindrance on the day’s fun and games. I’m now the one who can’t walk around the mall forever. Trent headed back to the east coast by late afternoon, meaning there was no time this entire weekend for some home cooking. We’d planned the Dali exhibit and brunch at the Terrance days before. My new place still doesn’t have a room full of comfortable furniture, yet so we weren’t around here that much. It was nearly dark by the time I got in and grabbed a nap. Here’s a melted watch, a souvenir from the museum gift shop.

           I took the remaining daylight to poke around the yard for what needs doing. By 7:30PM, I zipped over to the Kensington for a brew. I met a gal. She’s over 30 and has been left standing at the altar. Not at all my type even when I was young but she is very easy to talk to. It’s a bit odd always to find a pretty gal who never had an easy life. It seems such a lady would always have things her own way. I think that, but I’m hardly dumb enough to believe it.

ADDENDUM
           There is a new gorgeous [new] babe there, skinny and 19, perfect body. Then you find out she has a three-year-old, lives with her mother-in-law, and has a husband doing seven years hard time. She won’t last a week in that jungle. My point is not this young lady’s mistakes or vulnerability. It’s the awful human waste in this situation. The system is backward to the way young people are hard wired.
           Here's an interesting perspective on that situation, but only read this if you understand that my biggest discontent with being old is the lack of such beautiful women. When I was a teen, all the “counseling” in the school system was pure propaganda because there was never anybody you could trust. And no, you were not just imagining they didn’t want you to have any fun. Everybody telling us to abstain were adults who were plainly bored with their own sex lives. How they loved to dish out advice on how to date the opposite sex, but with the first dozen or so teenage babes and me, the major obstacle was finding twenty minutes of privacy. It’s not so simple in a small town and the populace knows it, the bastards. For the most part, you had to get the locals accustomed to seeing you together before they’d let down their guards. Then later on, they’d all know who’d “done it”.

           Why call them bastards? Well, because while not one of them individually had the wherewithal to figure out the real issue was privacy, the collective bunch of them could take turns getting in your way. (One of the reasons I scored so often was that I was the only boy in town who had a private locked “practice shack” for my band, smart or what?) Privacy was always at a premium. This almost ensures most young couples rush into sex at the first available opportunity—and the results are predictable. All the knowledge in the world about birth control does no good unless there is time to apply it. I speak with conviction.
           I returned home, weary but not sleepy, so I read a few more chapters of “Black Fly Season”. It has reverted to pretty much another praise-the-cops story. Where they tread on people’s rights, blackmail them with threats of arrest, and interrogate them into confessions. It is accurate for the description of how police use the “interview” to update files on people they know are totally unconnected with the crime. A study on Canadian police intimidation tactics and how hard the poor souls have to work at it. Their primary tactic seems to be getting the suspect to repeat a story until he changes a single word, then pounce on him.


Last Laugh
Close enough.

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