One year ago today: September 9, 2017, $130 cab fare.
Five years ago today: September 9, 2013, blame it on Gretchen.
Nine years ago today: September 9, 2009, 8. Just 8.
Random years ago today: September 9, 2012, except missing the cabin.
May I have a day off? Just one day would be nice. This morning I failed to find my canister of plug adaptors, the one I’ve kept for over twenty years. It’s around here somewhere but that doesn’t help me test my gear for the bingo and the gigs this month. You remember me mentioning this collection, if you had to buy all those adaptors today, it would be somewhere between $400 and $600. I like my Fishman solo, but the only auxiliary input is a 1/4” phono (guitar) jack on the back panel. I scrounged up enough pieces to get a working set and played through my entire 2009 song set. The sound is great, but I’m woefully out of practice with that material. I have 47 songs that are suitable, more than enough to go ahead with this. Plus another 4 or 5 in the works.
Most any singer can tell you there are days when your internal ear goes wonky and nothing you sing sounds right. Guess which day it was for me. The gig is still on for Thursday and the songs will have to be played in alphabetical order. Here’s a dollar from my tip jar, I forgot it was in there. Not to be used to bribe politicians. Like we have any choice and it’s not like there is anybody else worth bribing. American politics has always been the most sordid undertaking of our otherwise great country. Last week it was all about some guy named Caine(?) dying. I never heard of the guy until he died, shows you I care about politicians as much as they care about the rest of us. They should all be rounded up.
Yeah, I’m grumpy again. Maybe I’ll rehearse bingo, that has also been a while. In the background, I played a western, some adaption of a book by Louis L’amour with Sam Elliot playing the role of Sam Elliott. I don’t care for movies that hint in the slightest that there was something romantic about farming or ranching. L’amour and his notions are so off base I doubt he’s ever dealt first hand with the labor involved. Dirty, thankless, backbreaking grunt labor that gets you nowhere. Then again, what do I really know about the guy? Remind me to do a search, there might be a reason he’s got this compulsion to portray cowboying the way he does.
And it stinks. They never tell you how bad farming and ranching stinks. The air stinks, the ground stinks, and the people stink. It’s a stink that gets in your clothes and your hair and it lingers long after you wash it with water that stinks. Even the mud stinks, they don’t tell you about the mud, either. You got your choice, mud or dust. Backbreaking hard labor that never ends. There is a reason that as soon as it was possible, Americans by the millions abandoned farms and flocked to the cities. What’s left are not farms, but agribusiness. They ride around in air conditioned combines. All those years where I labored like a mule came to nothing. A muck field that, in the end, never produced a single crop.
I know where there is a vacant half-acre of land, that, if you do all the conversions in today’s money at my going rate, is worth $484,000 in my sweat and muscle. I never saw a penny out of it. At least with Louis L’Amour, the guy always gets the girl. I got nothing.
Aussie soil conservation.
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This view may already be familiar, but it is from the main entryway from the street. I wanted you to see the corner that creates the courtyard. See the brick wall on the right side? The location is around that. What you see here is the view from maybe half-way down the main alley. This route has to be kept clear, fire regulations. We are discussing maybe some seating arrangements, since we will have the space. I’m content with the way things have been going, considering I now realize the potential problems that could have occurred if I’d rushed a single move.
What does the Almanac tell us for Friday next? Sunset is 6:56 after as 12 hour and 33 minute day. Hmmm, nearing the equinox. The moon is five days old, meaning we have a waxing crescent. In 1968, the Soviets sent a craft around the moon and back. The weather says sunny and warm, turning to thunderstorms by the 15th. Rain is 2” above average. The best day to start a project was the 10th, though that is offset by the 14th being a best day to advertises to sell. The upcoming winter should be mild and wet, or as I soon hope to be calling it, “Hotdog weather.”
The cart supply system should be tested, I see that now. It also means many more hours of sitting at home waiting for things to happen. There have already been five days this month where I did not leave the office here except for coffee. That normally happens only five times a year. I watched another DVD called “Frequency”. A freaky movie about this guy who is able to talk to his father 30 years from the future on an old ham radio. Interesting but hard to follow at times. I also got the newsletter done and all my fan mail. This Friday is a go if I have to haul it over there myself. My old formula held true, I got myself two years experience in two months. I could hire any number of people if I felt like it. But I’d rather build a robot to do the job for $15 an hour.
[Author’s note: to my overseas readers, you may be unaware of the $15 figure. It isn’t random, but the rate at which unskilled labor is demanding they want to be paid as a minimum wage. It’s ridiculous and they are already being replaced by robots and kiosks, which cost around $13 per hour to operate. Minimum wage is currently around $7.25 per hour, but trust me, that is no free ride in America. The cheapest apartments in this town will cost you around $950 per month, and forget about operating a car. My insurance just went up to $1180 per year.
Most Americans do not believe in a minimum wage. You should be paid what you are worth, even if that is nothing, and there is no excuse for not learning an occupation that pays well. Unskilled labor in America usually means fast food and store clerk jobs. Think McDonald’s and Wal*Mart. As those companies say, their jobs were never meant to be a career, rather only entry level positions for young people looking for basic experience.]
ADDENDUM
Ah, here’s something. I’ve always felt that deflation is not so bad. That’s falling prices, and if inflation is bad, why is deflation also so scary? Here, in a book published in 1938. Let’s see what it has to say. Moments later, it was no help. I understand if I build something or grow a crop for a dollar a pound and the selling price drops to fifty cents a pound, I’ve lost half my income. But I have a hard time understanding people who don’t understand you can’t always get what you want. I would still be making fifty cents a pound. I would not like it, but it is still income—unless, unless, I was foolish enough to have borrowed the money to make things. So. id the problem deflation, or the people who live on credit?
I’ve looked more closely at the purchasing process for the hotdog supplies. Unless it is set up right from the basics, it can quickly worsen to a where it becomes a lot of chasing around. Why was not a word about this said in any of the how-to books? The key seems to be buying the least perishable supplies in bulk, which requires “submarine” planning, where everything is stored in the reverse order it will be used. Next bulk item is what requires freezing and that means a reliable electricity supply in an area that is notorious for outages. What must be bought daily is best sourced locally. What I did was look at the rules for time and motion, a field which has a bad name because it is often misused to pressure worker productivity.
We have a fridge that will hold 60 small packages of hotdogs and 10 cases of soda. That’s it. Total is 480 hotdogs and 120 sodas. We would be quite happy to sell all of that, but you can probably see the built-in hindrances of keeping that stock rotated. The soda has to be pre-cooled before it is placed in the ice buckets, or it melts too much of the ice before it gets cold enough. Anyway, I’m looking at how others dealt with this so we don’t paint ourselves into a corner if by some minor miracle, this project flies.
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