One year ago today: January 7, 2018, mankind's most contrived.
Five years ago today: January 7, 2014, producing top quality.
Nine years ago today: January 7, 2010, free lances.
Random years ago today: January 7, 2008, out-of-state plates
Now I do not recall if you’ve seen this picture. It’s one of my original compositions that went missing a year ago. I found it in the corner of an old flash drive. It has several proposed names, none of which stuck. You can come up with your own or choose from this list. “At the Donut Shop”, “One Too Many Muffins”, or “Two Ton Annie Was Here”. I was never any good at that contest where you add a caption to a cartoon. I kind of excelled at spreadsheets (pun intended) but there’s lots of things I can’t do. Only a few of them bother me, though. Read the addendum.
I’m still recovering from November 2018, when I got hit with $2,862 in extraordinary expenses. That includes everything from that $481 water bill, the $760 thermostat from Cheyenne, and $440 in property taxes. You cannot win, but at least I had the resources to pay without plunging further into debt. It just irks me that people who do that can sometimes get away with it, just to start over on the same path again. Some people never learn, the problem is, the liberals have created an absurd environment where those who never learn are still “equal”. Kind of a no child left behind program for terminally ignorant adults. Notice how I did not use the term “millennial”, ha!
But as yet another example of collective ignorance, those of you who keep proper control of your finances will recognize this piece of millennial dog-shit. They’re going to be real rebels and “improve” on the cash register receipt. You know, make it more artistic and appealing. Form over function. Spray their scent on it. Besides, what did anyone born before the Internet know about social justice. Take a look at this sampling of receipts. I know you are busy, so I highlighted what you are looking for. The date.
Folks, the date ALWAYS goes in the upper right-hand corner. You cannot improve on the upper right-handcorner. Do the amount of time taken for the accounting firm to sort the receipts is minimized. But this requires not only understanding what is really going on, but to place that element above one’s own personal preferences. This passes the cost on to the next department, but that’s okay. In millennial-think, you can protest and vote for more money rather than making or saving any for the company you work at. The date goes in the upper right for the same reason postcards say place stamp here. So the person that has to work with the material can thumb through quickly. But millennials are more interested in equality than efficiency, and besides that system “offends” left-handed people. So scatter the date all over the receipts, be a rebel.
As displayed here, finding the date goes from the easiest to most difficult part of processing the receipt. That’s correct, in a random pile of receipts, the way they usually arrive, it takes twice as long to find the date as to key in the data. Please don’t suggest presorting the receipts because that takes ever longer. I’ve resorted to going through the stack with a highlighter, then going through a second pass to gather the figures. And receipts are but one of a million thoughtless millennial “improvements” that contribute so much to the failure rate of new businesses.
May Day in England.
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Another day of fairly good yard work, it’s as aerobic as bicycle riding when you start leaning into the chores. This the third wagon-load of wood taken out of the front bedroom, I want to at least get some of the drywall finished in there by tomorrow. I’ve already put in a half-day and I’d say that it’s fairly clear my heart troubles have abated. I won’t push the issue, but y’day when I dug those post holes, I was keyed up to watch for any trouble. I started as soon as it was clear I wasn’t going to get any help and I was as cautious as possible.
Sad news. One of the four ladies I escorted to the bell choir concert last month has died, apparently an auto accident. I did not know her that well, but she was a close friend of Alaine’s. I found her charming, her and I and Alaine walked around Punta Gorda. I just got the news late this morning. I had taken a series of really professional photos for my friends, and some of them turned out to be the last photos of Mavis. It seems just a moment ago we were in church together and now she’s gone. And due to scheduled irreversible plans, I may not be able to attend any services.
Also, I had forgotten my 2018 scribbler under a pile of books at the Winter Haven library on December 28th. I called and they said it was in the lost and found. But the library was closed all through the holidays and I could not get there on 4th, the next open date. So I went in this morning to discover they had thrown it out. A hand-written book. They did not mention on the phone anything about only keeping things for 7 days. When I pointed out they had been closed most of those days, the thick-heading bozo behind the counter just shrugged. I called him a moron and walked out. Um, I’m going to make a phone call and get that sumbitch, don’t hand me any crap about just doing his job. If you don’t spot a hand-written book as more valuable than stuff usually forgotten behind, you need waking up.
ADDENDUM
Regrets. Who doesn’t have them? One of my worst is that I never learned a trade. That’s not strictly accurate so if you’ve heard that tale from the trailer court in other forms, they are just variations on a theme. But sure, I’d be glad to tell you about that. To me, a trade was something you learned while you were young, with the guidance and support of one’s parents. The trade was a fall-back, a job you could always do if times got bad. Or, if you enjoyed it, a career that paid better than labor. It was an inestimable asset for an ambitious youngster. I was definitely that.
The other major reason was in my childhood, you learned very quickly not to show any aptitude for anything. If you dared to do that, you’d find yourself farmed out around town. That’s correct. My parents would start “volunteering” you around town. This happened so often with grunt labor, you certainly did not want anything that was in real demand. If there was any money involved, they confiscated it. You know about the potato patch. One time I got talked into some wallpapering because my siblings always made a mess of it. Utilizing a nimble tactic they’d collectively overlooked, called reading the instructions, the room came out pretty darn nice. I never made that mistake again.
A trade was, to me, more than met the eye. Our town was full of kids my age whose father taught them all kinds of neat things. By the age of ten at the most, Brock M. could run a newspaper machine, John M. knew how to fly an airplane. Dave B. could fix guns and reload bullets, Mike Z. was an expert artist and illustrator already winning major art contests. Most of the others at least had basic mechanical or carpentry skills, so when it came time for a summer job, they got some of the highest paying positions while I got minimum wage for sweeping up after them.
[Author’s note: I’ve just dated myself. I’m plainly referring to the days when it was possible to get a summer job. That was before they let 30 million illegals across the border. Back then, a lot of guys were able to buy their own cars by age 16. I walked until I was 21.]
The accompanying picture says a number of things. To this day, I still read carpentry how-to books and lament that lost opportunity. You already know about the broken chisel episode, or you can use the search box at the top of each post. My original plan was to learn a trade specifically so I could make enough money in the summer breaks to put myself through university. But everything I tried attracted too much attention and my parents put a stop to it. Their plan was to keep me on the farm. Hence, when I did get into university, what summer jobs I could get barely paid the cost of my rent and food over the summer. And believe me, I lived in some pretty rough settings. In the end, I resorted to student loans, that’s why I know so much about the situation of today.
T his picture shows a guy hand-cutting dovetail joints. That’s something I failed at even with my fancy jig a few months ago. Some day, a bizarre thing for a guy my age to be saying, I may give it a whirl. Today, I have a room to drywall, tape, mud, and paint. I have to clear the room out first, but I now have a fence to put all the stuff behind.
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