One year ago today: December 30, 2016, they used real agents.
Five years ago today: December 30, 2012, 2,800 miles into the wind.
Nine years ago today: December 30, 2008, remember $1.79/gallon?
Random years ago today: December 30, 2011, Craigslist.org
How much importance is being attached to the lady guitar player following through? I’ve altered the plans to as quickly as possible get the old living room set up as a practice studio. That should begin as early as tomorrow and involves some better planning. The goal is to have a temporary place to set up and practice with stage gear. One of the biggest chores in a band is hauling gear back and forth between gigs. This is why I still have my GigRack and two sets of PA speakers. While the Fishman Solo is my intended stage gear, I traditionally keep two complete sets of equipment. What I’ve never had is enough room to get things set up comfortably before this. A 12 x 12 foot room should do nicely. This is not a picture of my new guitar lady.
Who puts New Years Eve on a Sunday? Those calendar people should get it together. Anyway, I took a vote and it was unanimous to make today a bit of a celebration. That’s for later. I’m stuck with nothing to do because I’d made no alternate plans for the day. So how about a quick review? Overall, it’s been a good year with a few milestones crossed. By the long-range assumptions made when I was 28, this is also the year that my retirement and savings projections ended. Things will continue out of habit but gradually become more inward-looking. And likely more backward-looking, but in the good sense that I now know which established patterns work for me.
My working career spanned less than half of average and my final goal of buying a retirement place for cash happened nearly two years ago. There’s things I still want to do, like that elusive Smithsonian visit, but like my birthday trip, if it goes it will be likely be spontaneous. Other than forming that music duo, my perpetual quest, I have no remaining goals beyond any already in place. Fifteen years ago there was no expectation to live this long.
One item to watch for (in 2018) is speculation. At my age, no investment remains with a short enough payback except things like flipping real estate. But like this joint, unless I get another spectacular deal, I won’t budge. That in itself is akin to speculation. Is this gambling? I’d like to think so, but I take no delight from the process itself. Any profit is another matter. I have definite feelings about profit. I’m just saying I’m okay with taking calculated risks from here on without predicting anything specific. I will speculate, but with a budget.
Consider this. My worst disappointment was just as we were closing shop in 2006 (was it?) that Peruvian guy came by offering me all those beautiful cars for $1,500. He’d had a car lot and wanted or needed a plane ticket out of the country. That Mercedes alone was probably worth ten times that. I reckon I lost twenty times my money by saying no, but that was all the cash I had left in the world at the time and could not risk it. Don’t forget how that heart attack struck me down in my prime earning years. Maybe this is the year something will happen with silver?
World’s largest cemetery.
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I drove over to see Mack which shortly thereafter found us over in the Fun Bar. Both kind of broke at the end of the month, if you please. Read on, however, because being broke and having no money are not the same thing around here. For all of 2017, my entire entertainment budget averaged $292 per month. I know some who spend that much per week sitting on a bar stool. Mind you, I’ll review that budget item since it looks like the expense went up immediately after I bought that car. As far as I’m concerned less than ten bucks a day is a tiny expense for a guy who gets around. On that I managed such items as a trip to Tennessee last month. And Nashville wasn’t exactly cheap.
Glancing ahead to 2018, I see much of it as a repeat of this year. My 2017 extraordinary expenses, mostly that car, came to nearly $5,000. But they were spread around the year, with five months where it was zero. It wasn’t the constant weekly botheration you get living in Broward. Also, my repair expenses on vehicles should plummet since I’m not restoring any motorcycles in the foreseeable. If my music expenses begin to climb, that would be a good thing.
By early evening, we relocated to Karaoke. Most of us can admit that is the only entertainment in Polk County universally available without a search warrant of some kind. You know how I’ll write if there are no babes in the place. I worded that backwards. What I mean is if there are no women to hit on, sure, I’ll find a corner and do some writing. I’m famous for it. This may come as a shock to women who don’t realize they are no longer babes. So this one takes out her address book and starts writing next to me. But for them, writing looks so unnatural. She looked kind of unnatural herself, but let me go on record for suspecting she had a wonderful personality.
I stuck around, sang a few, drank a few, thought about my ex, laughed at her competition all these years later, and bought a round for the house at 10:00PM. What? Oh, alright, it came to $186, well within budget. The place was packed. Just not with women anybody would be proud to be seen with by tomorrow morning. And I was really on the lookout. Standards can be lowered, but what fool lowers them beyond the point where failure is guaranteed? I’m going to let Hector answer that one.
Happy New Years, almost, from Florida.
[Author’s note: I used an ATM to pull some cash, but examining the slip later, I noticed the charge was unusually high. This put that particular account, which drains to almost nothing every month, in danger of being overdrawn by the home bank’s fee. Let’s leave it as a test to see how my bank handles it. I’ve been a perfect customer forever. Will they zap me an overdraft fee from Christmas Eve? Let me calculate something. Yep, since that account was opened 144 months ago, there has been a regular deposit on the same day of each.]
Last Laugh
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