One year ago today: October 14, 2017, emotional security, my eye.
Five years ago today: October 14, 2013, NYT, soft in the head.
Nine years ago today: October 14, 2009, the fatal flaw.
Random years ago today: October 14, 2010, a lot of information.
Here’s this year’s harvest of Mitchfruit. There’s one more but it’s too high up there. Another has fallen to the ground. The poor tree has citrus greening disease yet struggles on. Another early start had me pulling the last of the cable and running the remainder of the circuit under the joists. It was too warm, so every half-hour I dipped back inside to cool down a bit. It was a one-gallon peach tea day and I got in 4-1/2 hours. That’s a big stretch for me. Bushnell radio came in clear so I now know it is deer hunting season in Michigan. I’ve not got the conduit in place and the first quarter of the trench filled in by the time the heat stopped everything.
Next good news is laying that cable was excellent exercise. Limbers you right up, and for once I was not flaked out tired afterward. That’s one thing I never liked about farm labor, it left you too tired to enjoy any time off. Also, I’ve known all my life that I don’t get thirsty like most people. Sure, I get thirsty some, but it is never an overpowering instinct. Even when I do experience thirst, I can put it off for an hour or two if need be. Has anybody studied this? If so, don’t they have anything better to do?
Instead of siesta, I watched the movie “Immortals”, based on Greek mythology. I never did take that course in college so many of the references didn’t make sense. Also I don’t know which parts were Hollywood. Is it the Immortals that learned they could, in fact, kill each other? Or was that the Gods, or the Titans? The movie was one gory fight scene after another, and back then, it seems the average guy on the street was much more concerned about being remembered forever than would make sense today. Heck, these days, take a pot shot at some paparazzi, they’ll make sure you go down in history. For sure.
According to the rule book, I should have lost weight y’day. Six hours of construction work at a conservative 300 calories per hour there is no way I gained 1.2 pounds. yet this is confirmed by two different scales (this morning). And, for the unsual picture of this month anyway, here is a shot of my “purse”. It is my computer case, containing the tablet, recharger, headphones, external battery pack, USB expander, mouse, notebook, and a supply of pencils and pens. The significance is the number of compliments I get, including from my primary care physician. I dunno, maybe people plain notice these things a lot more than I do. Mind you, it was a nice find at the Thrift for two bucks and handy as all get-out.
Oscar Meyer's house.
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Here’s that mystery pipe uncovered by the trench. I haven’t traced it yet, but the diagonal bearing goes directly from the water pipe embedded in the backyard tree toward the white shed. It’s been there a while but I didn’t want to disturb it yet. Anyway, it isn’t buried deeply enough to be much more than maybe a gardern sprinkler line or something. The service I ran in is heavy duty compared to whatever this is.
And in the shed, I realized to meet code (all my work exceeds code) I’m going to need six circuits in there. Who recalls how many outlets are in there from early 2017? Yep, there’s 24 and it is not enough. They are all used. And now I want an A/C, a washer and dryer, a larger fan, more lighting, two exterior outlets, and 240 service for a potential welder? I tell myself those circuits may not even get used, but I’ll be as wrong about that as I was about my work stations. There are two inside the house, one in each bedroom. And I’m already tempted to connect those long narrow power bars sold at Wal*Mart because I’m running short. I own, let me count, six battery recharging stations. That’s not wall warts, I mean six of those battery recharging trays. Those all need to be plugged in, preferably in one location.
Ah, but working in the shed on a day like today reminds me of how much I like my puttering space. It was warmish in there even on a cool winter morning like today. Cool as in low 80s, for you non-Florida dwellers. Tomorrow, I frame in the A/C station as the tin walls are not enough on their own. Lordy knows I have a supply of 2x6’s that have to be used for something. I treated the far back yard area with a herbicide. I’ll hunt around for a picture. The area overgrows something fierce in the late summer, kind of like a jungle, though mostly rally tall grass. Here we go, two days ago this dead yellow grass was around nine feet tall. You could not see that table or my fire pit.
[photo delayed] wait for this one.
I’m looking to extend the roof of the existing shed rather than build new, as it will be impossible to tell from the street if the build hasn’t been there forever. It’s a nice large work space and there’ll be room to store materials. That’s important because there is no space at all in either of the sheds. I’ve stacked up spare pieces against one wall in the front bedroom, which I have to hunt through when I need things. It’s pieces of good quality lumber left from other projects as well as solid wood salvaged from thrown out dressers at the Thrift. They leave what they can’t sell on the sidewalk, type of thing. That wood does not need to be stored inside. That is another area that will need lighting and outlets.
It further creates a completely sheltered area in the fenced lizgarden, that’s the fenced doggie area in the north corner that has never been used. I’ve thought of making a poor man’s aviary in one corner, you know how they have a chain link fence that stops bigger birds from flying in there. That would be red cardinal paradise. As for the shed extension, it would use the lumber and as it is the highest part of the yard, a dry area for storage. I have to plan for the day when I hook up a freezer or two for hotdog operations. The plan is to frame a shed with 4x4’s and hang everything from that.
ADDENDUM
Toward that end, I took the evening off to read up on decks. The shed extension will basically be a covered deck, so I can adapt something from my now rather extensive collection of books on porches, decks, canopies, cabins, and siding. I’m not even sure I want to make a deck, as the other shed is resting right on the ground. All I did was sort of put a floor of paving bricks, which were supposed to be temporary but they’ve been fine all along. The neat robot tools are set up inside, so if the area is used mostly for storage and assembly, let’s not get too fancy. Here’s a photo of the “standpipes” of the conduit run in today. Lots of work. The unused pipes are capped, as shown here.
Him and I are a deadly band, but he’s got the guitar-think syndrome, the solo traveling troubadour concept. Then again, he’s around that age where they half-admit it hasn’t worked out and time to team up. Let me think how long I’ve known that guy? Probably 12 or 14 years now. Like all the guys who can play and sing, he tries to make it solo. Well, I should not say all, because you get yahoos like the Hippie who can’t get anything together, so he does try to form bands. But he never will because he lacks the management skills and personality and won’t admit it. The primary reason he will never have a band is the guy is a stage nazi.
I’m at the other end of that situation. Where he won’t let anybody sing one song, I can’t get people to even try to sing one. He wants complete control, I want each member to contribute as much as they can. He’s never really started a band, where I’ve started four by the time I was his age. They were (past tense):
The Ides of March
All the Kings Men
Not Half Bad
Three Good Reasons
We played for over three years. I’ve started other groups, but I define success as a band still playing with at least one of the original members a year later. All factors must be present or I don’t count it. I’ve played in other groups a lot, but I did not start them. The Campbell brothers were All the Kings Men (no apostrophe), this is the group I like to point out is still together, but more because they are related than any music they ever created. It was my brother who broke up that band and last I heard, they had not managed to do a thing since I left, even book their own gigs. This is a common occurrence in a band manager’s life. The other members forget that musicianship is only one element in the formula.
But that was also the last band I led democratically. Just like today, it took so much energy to hold the pieces together that my own musicianship suffered. That’s where John Campbell, the bass player, forgot that I was the one who taught him to play, not the other way around. He got good in no time, better than me, but I emphasize that is because he never had to do any of the chasing around. In no time he could play bass better than his teacher. Thus, he passed the test but he forgot the importance of the lesson. I don’t much talk about those days, but I’ll tell you something I did that was really mean.
Once I was not in a band, I quickly closed the gap between our respective musical abilities, and I did an evil stage skit about the way he played. He was good, but it was the same every time. Except for evident popular bass licks, it was quite impossible to even guess what song he was playing. That made it easy for me to ridicule his style. It was insulting in that it proved that once my influence was gone, he never got any better at playing the instrument. It was probably good he never saw my act. He had a bad temper and was a bit of a bully. Just a bit.
[Author’s note: when I said it was my last democratic band, that is not to be interpreted that I became authoritarian. Far from it. Instead, I changed to “pirate” management. That’s where the captain is elected and can only maintain that status by making the right decisions most of the time. However, once elected, there is little room for arguing and in-fighting like happens in the democratic situations.
The usual form of disagreement is the choice of individual songs. Even there, I am even-steven. I’ll learn one of yours, but the next pick is mine. No hissy fits, no bitchin’ over musical tastes. If you pick the song, you do the same as I. You are responsible for printing the lyrics and chord charts for the other band members, you supply the MP3s, and since 2011, I’ve added one more stipulation. You also have to sing it.]
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