August 3, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 3, 2016, everything to C, D, or G
Five years ago today: August 3, 2012, 23 Apaches vs. the USA.
Nine years ago today: August 3, 2008, on the DARPA obstacle course.
Random years ago today: August 3, 2007, a day at the shop.

           Aren’t I supposed to be happy? All three motorcycles running, a spanking new laptop that runs all my pira, er, I mean evaluation software, and money in the bank? Instead I wake up with the blahs, meaning an extra day off. That tasks me with finding photos that you’ll like even when I’m home all day. How about this one? It’s not just any cruise ship. This is the one Ray-B is playing on this month.

           He’s in Bermuda. That’s the life I had in mind for myself, but never had the support system to make it possible. Let’s see, Ray-B is 25 years younger than me and getting paid to cruise the world. It seems ideal, but it is actually very similar to the lounge circuit I played back in my similar demographic. You meet just tons of the type of women you would not touch. Every time you see one that remotely makes the grade, she’s with some creep twice your size. But it’s no better anywhere else so I would have preferred a life on the cruise lines. I would have wound up destitute, but you can’t have it all.

           Anyone who cares to read up on it will know that 25 years ago I was very concerned about my situation today. I was still married and had an excellent job that I could not dare furlough. Also, I played in a band, which made it pretty impossible to hit the road. Nor did I sing back then. So, let’s just say maybe I didn’t become a troubador, but it ain’t all said and done yet. Still, I envy the guy (Ray-B) even when he’s thanking me for showing him the effect of country music on the crowd, or more specifically in my instance, on the tip jar.
           My original plan was to work six months and take six months off. I’d already reached the income level where working extra did not result in a bigger paycheck, so why work? But no way would the company hear of it. I actually had a friend who was willing to trade places for half of each year, a plan the company encouraged—but it turns out, only in clerical workers. In terms of sheer throughput of work, I was one of the best the company ever had. Once I figured things out, it was a breeze. I could fix satellite circuits in my sleep. But the Xmas before I left, I worked enough overtime to get a $3,500 paycheck only to see half of it evaporate in taxes. Fuck that.
           That’s explains the smirk on my face reading what Trump said about vacations. Get this logic, he says if you liked your job, you would not want a vacation, and if you didn’t like your job, you were doing the wrong thing for a living. Must be nice to be so damn rich you don’t have to take the best job you can get even if you hate it, Don. The job most people “like” doesn’t usually pay the bills, so your advice sucks.

Picture of the day.
Cheese factory.
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           This next photo requires a little explanation. This is Washington State, the area around Mt. Ranier. The valley to the east, Diamond Creek, is choked with forest fire smoke, which forms the skyline you see here. This is the view from my friend’s balcony and there is supposed to be a big lake for you to see. Well, I guess if you look close between the trees you can make out a bit of the horizon. It’s strange how in these days of constant satellite surveillance they can’t catch the bastards whenever it is man-made. I got twenty bucks says if you catch ten of them and line them up, you’ll have all the profile you need. We already know it’s a male frustrated hipster, so take it from there.

           We have news from the southern front. It wasn’t JZ’s back that was out. I had listened to all the relatives because JZ was not answering his phone. It is them convinced it was his back and I’m not blaming them. He’s been grumbling about it ever since the beach-tent incident. I find out from the man himself it is his leg. It was like a leg cramp, he says, but four times worse. Yeow, I don’t even want to think of that. He woke up in the middle of the night and could not walk. Crawled into a hot tub of water, nothing worked. Trust me, it takes a panic situation to get this guy to even go see a doctor.

           Then, it seems, the relatives arrived, bundled him into the back seat of a station wagon and drove him to Mercy, where they kept him one day and put him on morphine-based painkillers. As soon as the pills wore off, he was back in pain, so they gave him 24 pills for 12-hour doses and sent him home. With a bill for $28,900. But wait, there’s more news.
           His sister bought a house only 88 miles from here. Out by Port Charlotte, riverfront property. Mark my words, if there is enough space, JZ will be out of that condo and over there in a flash. We might see the yahoo up here after all. It’s been over a year. Good, I always make too much food for myself, it’s the nature of how recipes are created. Here’s a favorite I made this afternoon, it’s an old German concoction.

           Apples, hand-sliced, topped with cinnamon, butter, lemon juice, flour, brown sugar, and oats. Can’t you imagine how that aroma makes the kitchen a focal point? But again, it uses six apples and I don’t eat that many in a month on my own. This tips you off I was indoors most of the day, trying to kick this sluggish whatever I’ve got. Sleeping sickness. You catch it from relatives and friends like JZ. Just kidding, I suspect I may have a touch of food poisoning from eating on the road so much the past couple of weeks. You do know the symptoms are virtually identical to the influenza?
           It’s killed my appetite except for sweets. Tell you what, I’ll put on the tea. There is unlimited sugar and lemon. Or coffee if you prefer. I’ll make some “cream” out of evaporated milk and vanilla, and you can have all the apple crumble you want. It’s out of the oven now and cooling on top of the stove. Guaranteed, it tastes as good as the simple recipe sounds. I also made chocolate chip cookies, but I used a mix. Don’t worry, I checked for bad ingredients first.

           [Author’s note: isn’t memory a strange operator? Decades after I’ve every heard any cooking ingredients called by their German names, I can’t spell automaticallly. I can’t spell words like strudel without hearing “sh-troodl” in my brain and translating. Like spelling “Wed-nes-day”. And any recipe that calls for melted butter I have to read twice to make sure. I mean, who melts butter?]

Quote of the Day:
“It’s not easy being green.”
~ Kermit.
           Here’s the lovely but shy Princess Vina. Yeah, I know. Shades of Pudding-Tat. You remember how to pronounce that, do ya? “VEE-nuh.” I’ll tell you what. If I live another ten years, I’ll consider another pet. But after losing a wife and a cat, I’m not setting myself up for anything I’ll regret leaving behind. For now, I’m happy feeding the birds in the yard. By the way, the cardinals and finches are now the only ones at the feeder. The trick was to make the landing approaches too small for anything larger. Now the feeder looks sort of like a pagoda.

           The Thrift mucked up. I’ve wanted a big screen TV for movies for some time. There was a nice unit came in for $60 but they forgot me. It was sold when I got there, but they haven’t seen the money yet. Oh well, at least we know the smaller flat screens are finally hitting the thrifts. I’ve been hearing more about television stations being broadcast again. Who recalls back in 2005 or so when I tried to train myself to watch TV. Only on Saturdays, I think it was. I lasted three weeks.

           This time I will compromise. I shall try to figure out if there are any free channels worth watching. That’s from my perspective, you know. Because not only have I never seen most movies, I have not seen any TV shows. Even then, if you looked over my growing collection of DVDs, there is a definite theme to those. No Disney products, since they have not created a damn new thing in over fifty years. Very few westerns, not many English dramas, but lots of cops and robber, action movies, similar to my taste in dime-store novels. I go to the movies to get entertained, not educated.
           I also have a lot of comedy material, again parallel to what I read. My three longest-term influences in my writing are, in any order, Lewis Grizzard, P.J. O’Rourke, and Dave Barry. Thinking that over, maybe they are in order. Anyway, these guys write for a living so I can’t compete on the comedy ticket. Then again, since this blog is published daily, I don’t have time to go over the material and re-write it funnier than first time, do I, Dave?

ADDENDUM
           By late evening, I’m still not up to par. I bought a book that sold for $12.95 back in 1985, a detective novel, hard cover. Called “Bones” and I flipped through a few pages before deciding. Books were written differently back then, but in some ways nothing has changed. That difference is what I want to read. I remember 1985 very well, it was the year things began to decline all around. There were harbingers of every problem in the world today, for those alert enough to read them. I believe I spent close to three months in Thailand that year. I’d have to check my passport, since I was also there in 1982 and 1984. By then it wasn’t really Thailand any more and I never returned.
           Books are sluggish things to change, so I’m hoping from the sample pages I skimmed that it will bring back memories of a definitely happier time. The US had not embarked on the terrible course it took in the 1990s, Reaganomics was working for everybody except its critics, there were few noisy special interest groups because the Yuppies left things alone. You see, they were too busy pretending to be liberals while one by one they sold out to the system. Things like modesty and decency were still considered attractive in a woman, even if they had to fake it.

           From 1985 onward, it was downhill. Rock was dying, fools praised the Japanese business model, the Federal government began a systematic policy of overreach, and science took a back seat to what sold best. Movies became dull and predictable, there were no breakthroughs, no next big things, nothing to distinguish the decade. I was living it up overseas while back home everything and everybody seemed to be treading water. And I was beginning to have serious doubts about the path that everyone around me was taking, they were placing far too much trust in a system that had already let them down.
           The government, which took deductions from my paychecks since day one, was now beginning to move the goalposts. I found as I reached the levels where I could begin manipulating things the way the people before me did, suddenly there were laws against it. For example, borrowing a ton of money, declaring bankruptcy, and doing it all over again. Or stashing money overseas, or establishing a complete alter-identity for credit purposes. I’m hoping this book will remind me of all those things and of how much freedom we’ve lost since then. Now, you can’t move across the hallway without somebody publishing it on-line.


Last Laugh
(What photoshop?)

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