One year ago today: January 6, 2018, not exciting times.
Five years ago today: January 6, 2014, the dead of winter.
Nine years ago today: January 6, 2010, four times Ft. Knox.
Random years ago today: January 6, 2012, Welfare is a vote auction.
Finally, some progress besides the bed and bath rooms. This is my new fence across the back yard. It is intended for privacy and the posts are not cemented in place. In a day or two, all the yard clutter will be raked or stowed behind this barrier. There is no gate, if you look closely, the fence is six feet in front of the red shed, so you walk into the back yard via that gap. That’s the batbike under the tarp, it won’t start so when Agt. R shows up again, well push it behind the barrier as well. Note that the sheds are most hidden from street snoopers now. They cannot see into the back yard without trespassing and you definitely don’t want to be trespassing.
I can see it. Guy shows up driving a Russian motorcycle, buys a house in cash, can sit in a pub reading or writing, or typing like blazes. Meets all the available single women in the first month, hits on none of them. Disappears for a week every other month, sometime gone a month. Spends up to twenty hours a week in the library, is well known everywhere, completely outclasses the locals at Karaoke, the best traditional dancer in Polk, has friends that are like, same planet, different worlds. Saves the local old boy from a mortgage foreclosure by writing three letters. Presides over people’s bank accounts, tinkers with robotics, plays bass like a demon, and seems to be able to speak Spanish without an accent. Overall, I’d say central Florida has done a remarkable job of learning to fit in with how I do things.
Yes, they are doing well at learning there is a bigger and wilder world out there, but I’d hate to be the one to tell them they are only scratching the surface. This morning as I went for coffee I saw one of the black ladies at the donut place had to bring her little boy in. No babysitter. He played a bit with some Internet game but he was restless like all kids. She kept telling him to shush. I strolled over to the mart and bought him an Avengers coloring book and some crayons. What do you know, folks, a coloring book wins out over the Internet.
He was absorbed for an hour and was obviously tuckered out. So I pushed two chair together to make a mini-bed for him. It was more to keep passersby thinking the kid was with a Big Brother and leave him alone. But, I could not stay all day. You could see the worry drain from the mother’s face when I sat him down and helped him color a bit. She went back to work without having to keep an eye out every minute, I think all mothers go through that. Anyway, he was sound asleep when I tiptoed out the door.
Remember Serra Pelada.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I pounded on Agt. R’s door at the agreed 6:00AM, then again at 7:30AM and 11:00AM. He finally showed up at noon, if I didn’t say. I got him to stay an extra ten minutes and describe what I need by way of trees. Charla said to graft the old grapefruit, Agt. R, who is trained in these matters says it is not worth the effort, to buy good “mother” stock. There is room for a mini-orchard, his advice is to plant one of each tree. I priced out the following trees at around $45 each. Orange, variegated lemon, key line, and avocado. At the spacings he’s described, I have room for ten trees, but the first ones will be kind of ornamental as well. I don’t have the 15 years it usually requires to get the fruit.
This photo shows how much I care about the real estate market going under. This is the tuber from a potato vine. They are all over my yard and they throw out this rock-hard nodules that you can trip over. To stop them from sprouting, the recommended treatment is to burn them. By the dozens. Anyway, as I was saying, I advised my friend that the better approach is to save up some hard cash. There are always estate sales and such where the offspring just want to unload the place asap. The institutional buyers are still snapping up everything under $100,000. But they have such bad reputations that some people and some banks won’t deal with them. I invited her down here to tour around for herself.
Woe to those who do not find out where the bad neighborhoods are because the real estate agent can’t legally tell you. That is wrong on every level. I volunteered to get a head start looking, on the understanding that if I find anything, it will be pure luck. What I’m saying is there are no cabins or cottages for sale anywhere in Florida, in the traditional sense of those dwellings. There’s more on Karaoke in the addendum, but I sang an unfamiliar song for the first time tonight. This is often called being a “Karaoke virgin”. The reaction was electric, it floored the entire place, including those who should be used to my repertoire by now. This happened with one piece of music before, Buffet’s “Pirate Looks At Forty”. But I knew that song long before I ever performed it.
This time, I sang the tune I’ve just been learning on bass a couple of weeks. There is a spot in the bass line that bass players don’t like so I’ve had a time of it. It’s nothing, just a position on the neck where you have to play an open string, so I use my time-old fake, I pretend to fret behind the nut. It’s that Elle King tune “Exes & Ohs”. That’s the one with the lyrics that are sure to provoke snarky comments, the opening line about turning a boy into a man. I may break with my rule and change it to sound like she did things to me and by the second verse nobody remembers a damn thing anyway.
Trust me, that song carries no personal messages for me, I just think it is a great little piece of music, one of the few truly original items available these days. I’m going now to play bass for an hour, and I’m going to somehow ace that song.
ADDENDUM
Something is happening weight-wise. I stepped on the scale and came in a nine pounds lighter than mid-December. I’ll verify this at Publix (TMOR, an American grocery store that features a free spring scale near the entranceway) but that would mean nine pounds in a touch over three weeks, most of it in the last ten days. This could be since there has not been any steady correlation between my inches and my pounds. I do know that all my clothes now fit and I feel considerably better.
Last evening after dark, I zipped over to the Fubar for Karaoke. How this ties in is the lady jockey, out of the blue, starts telling me that she lost 75 pounds. She is still probably, let me guess, 260? 270? Since she did not know me a year ago, how did she become aware that I had been overweight and on a diet? Aha, somebody told her and I doubt it was any of the barflies. Don’t even think certain things, she is so not my type. But for the record, it has been years since I put my name in for Karaoke. If I’m in the house, I will get requested by the audience or by the jockey.
Now there is one gal I kind of fancy. She has taken interest in me, and this is totally unsolicited. I’ll tell you why. She is one of the Friday people, the LBGT crowd. I’ve seen her girlfriend and that is pretty darn scary. The girlfriend with the Mohawk haircut and the American flag tattooed on her exposed scalp. I’m politely indifferent to most people, and gave the generic thanks because people who’ve seen my show regular buy me free drinks. But on a Friday? I found out later it was the gal, let’s call her Mishie. She’s a bit heavy set but nothing like the others and you can tell she was a looker at some earlier stage of life. That’s your unusual event for today.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
