One year ago today: January 12, 2018,surprise, they are shit-holes.
Five years ago today: January 12, 2014, what waterfront property?
Nine years ago today: January 12, 2010, now he hates furniture . . .
Random years ago today: January 12, 2011, reads like a transcript.
If you like hearing about construction work, today is your post. Other than morning coffee, the only event of the day was drywall and mud. Take a gander at what got done. We are a matter of hours away from occupancy. But it is one fast and rough job. Working alone means everything takes around four times as long. None of the corners turned out square and the walls are not exactly even either. It looks okay and that is what counts for now. I may even get some of the door and window trim done. The priority is paint, and it’s been so long I can’t find my gallon of primer.
Visible are the computer outlets, some 48” off the floor. Again, these are so that I won’t have to move desks around when I need to change or add new devices. When computers first arrived, I wanted everything inside the cabinet. I wanted every peripheral slot to have something in it. Over time, I’ve changed to not put anything inside unless there is no standalone to do the job. Be aware that in the natural Florida humidity, the drywall mud shown here can take up to 72 hours to dry completely.
Here’s another picture of the progress, depicting how half the room is primed and painted a cark grey, the other is just finished mudding. The explanation is that the corner to the right, still showing as an unpainted white streak, is due to the room being leveled. That corner was the worst settled and had to be jacked up some 3-1/2”. If I was doing it right, everything had to fit reasonably well. So I mostly finished that half of the room before continuing. The window trim is also missing—but the window works perfectly again. Its main defect was fifty years of paint layers sealing it shut. I’ve learned how to fit the windows flush to the wall, which contrary to what should be, rarely happens in older houses.
I put in an actual eight-hour day, but don’t expect repeats. For me that was really burning the candle. Other than Boss Hogg radio, which I cannot hear with the door closed, this was solitary work. The soundproofing is sort of better with the final layer of drywall in place. And once a fan or A/C is humming, it covers what little noise filters through. I had to try my hand at soundproofing and the Faraday cage. Even if these experiments fail, I will still be one of the more knowledgeable people on what is practical.
As for the future, my original plan remains, I call it the see-saw renovation. This room gets fixed as a bedroom, so the other room can be properly finished. Then, move into that room until the front area is finished. While the paint is drying, I’m going to cut floor panels for the bathroom and leave the plumbing alone for the short run. There is a pipe I do not know how to replace and I hesitate to cut it in the condition it is in. For a break, I watched an epic-like movie, “Kingdom of Heaven”. It’s about knights and the Holy Land, which as far as I am concerned, for what man has done to the place, could be bulldozed over for all I care. The movie has a cast of thousands, I don’t think computer animation could account for many of the scenes. I wonder if we will ever see an end to the knights and armor movies.
McCartney selfie.
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Have you seen the political ad making the rounds, with that Pelosi woman and her Boris Karloff pal? The only thing it accomplishes is make the both of them look bat-guano crazy. They obviously are pushing a vote-getting agenda instead of addressing the very real problems the American people have voted to fix. This is one photo I have no trouble captioning. “No, we’re not crazy. Why? Do we look crazy?” These people are so whacked out I had trouble figuring out what agenda they were pursuing.
Statistically, there may already be permanent damage to the system, but it is a rotten system that needs to be changed. Let me count, it’s close to 21 days. That means statistically 60% of these government “workers” are flat busted broke. Serves them right. We had a lot of those types at the phone place, thinking the company would always provide. Zero dollars in reserve, that crowd. They think the old paycheck is guaranteed.
Myself, in the 14 years I was with the phone company, there were only three years I was not going to evening classes, often three courses at a time. I’ll always be able to get a job, though it would not pay that much at first. There is a polytech north of Auburndale my real estate lady keeps saying I should visit, if only for the architecture. Is that the place I used to see from the road when I went for Sunday motorcycle drives?
Here’s another shot of working on the wall. You’d think a two-person job would go twice as fast, but it doesn’t. Conversely, one person doesn’t just take twice as long, I said four time in my case. That’s about right if you include the times I have to stop and go downtown for a pack of T45 staples or box of drywall screws. This is solo tarpaper hanging. The maximum length seems to be eight feet at a time. The grey material between the studs is not thermal insulation, but soundproofing batts. Note how I have to wrestle with the tarpaper? That inefficiency has been a constant for years in this place. What am I going to do? Hire somebody to hold up the other end?
I was more than tuckered by nightfall, so I stayed home. I was invited to the second anniversary of the Fubar. But Saturday is also LBGT night. I’m not missing anything. Liberty, Beer, Guns, Trump. And remind me to go see my lawyer again. My arm does not act up when I work or lift, but when I play bass. It’s a dull pain that affects my playing. And that is intolerable. That catchy tune, “Exes & Ohs” now has a super bass line. I got it note for note but felt that wasn’t good enough. The bass line on the original has some bad passing notes. You get that with guitarists a lot, they like to start riffs more than a few notes ahead of any measure with a chord change.
Myself, I’ll do a long lead-in, often pretending to paint myself into a musical corner, then land on the right spot seemingly impossible. In this case, the bass line was too mechanical, a studio riff. By that, I mean the bassist strives to play exactly the same pattern in each chord. This rarely matches the vocals who shy away from sounding automatic. The solution, which works for this tune but not every tune, is to compromise by playing passing notes that are a harmonic third before the chord change. It’s also more fun and, if anybody in the audience is watching, it looks complicated because it is.
ADDENDUM
This battery is a fail. Purchased for nearly $11, it is guaranteed to last ten years in a smoke detector. I could not get it to even take a 75% charge. Back it goes to Energizer to see if they’ll make good on this. Shown here, brand new in the package, I still should have followed the club Florida rule of never buying the last one of anything. It’s a great concept, mind you, a weightless battery that lasts a decade.
The effect is the children develop an ear for perfect singing in harmony. Very well-written in that regard, I’m up to the part where they have been discovered singing gospel and by a local radio station. They are whisked up to Nashville, where they sign with an agent who is nothing but a crook. He has then living in motels and eating baloney sandwiches while he pockets the proceeds. Tells them most performers never see a dollar until the third year, and being novices they believe him. The trio is two girls and a boy named Jim Ed. One day a singer walks into their mother’s restaurant. His name is Elvis, just Elvis.
What happens next is the life I had planned for myself. I would have done it had the slightest opportunity arisen, but I had to go to work. Ironic, that I wound up going to a lumber mill instead of leaving one. The connection here is that I had noticed the famous bands of my era had scooped that all important “recording contract”. I also noticed that generally, their best work were the early albums, then things tapered off. They dreamed of the day they were free from the contract, but by then most of their best material and talent had been drained.
Ah, but on with “Nashville Chrome”. It was common back then for a performer to cheat on his agent by taking small gigs for cash, or maybe a tank of gas. I’ll give you a direct quote from the book, and you judge why music had such appeal to me when I was 13.
“The girls would line up all night outside Jim Ed’s and Elvis’ rooms, sometimes a dozen or more, as if waiting in line for a sale to open at a department store. Ten, fifteen minutes a girl, and Elvis and Jim Ed never sticking his head out the door to see how long the line might be, or ever exercising any real form of quality control—just grinding until he could go no more, the girls outside fighting one another to cut in line.”
Such things never happened to me, but not for the reason one might think. It was because I was all about quality control. I always had one girlfriend, but she was the best I could get. That meant, before I hit 20, I was number one for a lot of gals. After that, the supply dried up something woesome, but that is another tale from the trailer court. Blog rules generally prohibit names, since the 15 year rule mainly applies to other than girlfriends. It was always quality over quantity for me, a complete contrast to the atmosphere of the time. With music, I could afford to be picky.
Yes, I’ve had more than my share. I was never famous but I have had panties thrown at me. I have had knocks on the door I did not answer. And there were times I cheated, only a few, if the gal was particularly young and sexy. Alas, these days most of what went on back in those days would probably be illegal thanks to governmental over-reach. The path was predictable. You can read over the years how the supply of good women dried up as the worthwhile ones married off, leaving a smaller and smaller pool of horridly declining quality.
To balance that out, however, was that my love for music remained. I grew to love music in a way that would be tricky to explain. I may be the most talentless bass player who ever achieved what I did, and I realize that. Note the qualification here is a combination of lack of talent and achievement. There’s a balance I can’t quite nail down. While I likely never said, many of the guitarists I’ve met still retain teenage fantasies of hordes of groupies. That’s a guess, because I don’t discuss such things with such people, but it is a highly educated and experienced guess.
Myself, I still hope I’ll meet another quality gal, but that has become a nearly hopeless quest in this day and age. I not only have looked in the right places, I’ve usually been on the stage there, and I’m not trying to hard because I don’t have to try at all. Music puts the shoe on the other foot. But that is a topic for another tale from the trailer court.
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