One year ago today: March 12, 2016, Freddie Meyer for president.
Five years ago today: March 12, 2012, no guitarist who ever lived.
Nine years ago today: March 12, 2008, edited by Onions.
Random years ago today: March 12, 2005, interesting T-shirt.
I’m so proud of my birdbath you get a second look. This is just before I spread the manure. And that’s real manure, not the brand you other guys use on the bar bunnies. The contrast with the grey sand is unmistakable. It would cost around $200 to upgrade the whole yard. Let’s see how this works first. If I didn’t say, the product is called Black Kow. It’s de-scented but even so don’t track any into the house.
I’m working the crossword and I can hear three teenage girls yakking behind me. I swung around and asked if they knew the name of a Sesame Street character that started with “P”. Two of the gals I could see, but not the third one. Until she jumped up and ran over right beside me saying, “Let me see, let me see!” I showed her the crossword and that was it. However, let me tell you I was stunned, a man sees something that beautiful maybe once every ten years.
Living in South Florida, you pretty well never see it. That one is bound for glory. When you see something like that, you realize despite the liberal lefts plan to breed the Caucasian race out of existende, there is hope. Classy, self-confident, outgoing, and to the trained eye (myself) perfect in every way. How perfect? Well, guys, you don’t have to use any imagination. That’s how perfect.
Agt. R said 60% chance of rain so I did not take the Rebel out to Haines City for a tour. Good, I would have been stranded. But the calm before the storm was perfect yard weather. I put down some old patio blocks to get to the birdbath without trampling the flowers-to-be. Feeling energetic, I raked four bags of leaves and pounded the measuring stakes around the building perimeter to get ready for the living room floor repair. I worked steady until the rain started.
Was the rain top event? Yes, I can explain. I left the kitchen door open because now I have a screen. I put on the tea and sat down near the living room window to watch the birdbath. What an incredibly peaceful scene, the first rainstorm of the spring. Then it hit me, this was no two-week cabin rental or some pipe dream of the city boys. This was all for real and it’s paid for. It’s the real thing, and for me, it is pretty well permanent. It’s not some dude camping trip or a reversion to my childhood. Never had anything this nice back then. As I said, it hit me.
Land’s End, Cornwall, England
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This photo shows the type of window in my house. Today, the replacement cost per window is $1,636.00.
What I did do was plan ahead, so at various points in my life, I had some characteristic “un-bachelor” accomplishments about me. Examples. The day I left the phone company, I had a $20,000 college fund set away for a son that was never born. I drove a family car from age 35 to 50, the baby Cadillac. I had a down payment for a house buried in Colorado. In other words, I did many things I would have done had I gotten married. How do you like them apples?
[Author’s note: bear in mind, however, that I lost most of these items after my medical insurance ran out in 2005. Nonetheless, the investments had been there and I did not lose a moment of the tough life experience that made it possible. I know darn well the average guy who made $60,000 a year back in the 90s did not have $156,000 of it in liquid cash. It takes a rare brand of self-discipline. And you never forget it. That’s partially why I could go from flat busted broke to buying a house cash in 20 months. I certainly had the right kind of experience.]
“Why does the gynecologist leave the room
when a woman is getting undressed?.”
I took the evening off to do some planning. How you value that is kind of dependent on how well you perceive the skill level of others. My motive for some time has been spurred by the fact that as soon as I convert this place back into a two bedroom, the selling price more than doubles. Unfortunately, it is not a matter of merely moving the kitchen partition back to where it was in 1975. I had to map out not only the new electrical wiring requirements, but additionally how that would affect the wiring for the planned porch and sunroom. You are looking at the installation of 6 new switches and 20 new receptacles.
You bet I paid attention to that report of the increased age of first-time buyers. I know I could Mickey-Mouse the project and hold out for my price. Instead, there is a certain pride to the way I insist on quality. It’s not like I owe the world any more than some of the property flippers I’ve met. Maybe I just like a place I’d want to live in myself. The 26 new additions will cost me $442 in materials, but add thousands to the asking price. I’m secretly glad to be back where the decisions I make have this kind of leverage.
I’ve even redesigned the doors [where possible] so that if anybody barges into a room, the swing blocks their view until they walk past the door panel. In my day, that was plenty of time for the girlfriend to flip over and pretend you were really studying Eskimo history.
ADDENDUM
I’m halfway through the discs of “Altar of Eden” and it breaks no new ground. The entire plot is manufactured to fit known movie script selling points. It’s more interesting to me because Lorna is inside the bad-guy lab and describing the equipment and procedures. It’s easy to follow along if you are familiar with bio labs and procedures, but it goes overboard more than once. The idea is you are supposed to empathize more with her disgust at having been naked than what the scientists plan to do with her harvested eggs.
Around late chapter seven, the book changes. It could well have begun a separate story at this point. Up till how, everybody has been chasing around the swamp and falling in love with the wrong people. Now, the book takes a sudden curve into a different type of action. As if the author meant to get to this, but tacked on the rest of the plot to flesh it out into a full novel. I won’t tell you what happens, but I will give you the background on where the story is now heading.
The next step is to look at DNA itself. Most of it is junk DNA, and this audio book is the first time I’ve ever encountered that phrase except in medical texts. In humans, this non-working DNA makes up 97% of the total. It consists of long chains of dormant and mostly repetitious molecules. Recent theory says that it is not junk, rather it is the “memory” of how the cells have dealt with old viral attacks over the course of time.
This makes sense to me. Even in a single lifetime, an adult human catches fewer and fewer colds, as they build up a resistance to whatever is going around. That would mean junk DNA could be the remains of long ago virus infections that now pass their code on in a dormant fashion. I’ve read of certain creatures that live in the ocean who have as few as six(?) genes, but which repeat themselves hundreds of millions of times. Don’t quote me on that, but you get the idea. “Altar of Eden” is, I think at this juncture, speculating that some of these old viruses can reactivate.
From this point onward, the book has become interesting. For any religious types, all cultures have stories similar to the Garden of Eden in the bible. If there was a time when all human DNA was identical, a time before these viruses began invading the cells, the suggestion is that all mankind lived in blissful non-competitive harmony. This is probably nonsense, but these ancient tales from the primordial forms of the trailer court all got started somehow.
Last Laugh
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