One year ago today: April 15, 2018, gig number three
Five years ago today: April 15, 2014, you towed what?
Nine years ago today: April 15, 2010, DDT gets a bad rap.
Random years ago today: April 15, xxxx, WIP
No pictures of the trip back to Florida today. It is 721 miles actual, the 748 or so formerly quoted is a built-in error with the Garmin GPS. Once again, the millennial coders at Garmin know more about where you want to drive than you do. Trip took 10-1/2 hours driving time for a normally 12-hour trip. I stopped twice. Once in Macon to charge up the A/C. Once I got over the mountains, it was finally summer. I did stop twice for coffee, which took a half-hour instead of ten minutes, which I’ll tell you about later. This picture is the lily plant when I got back. It bloomed while I was away.
One does not live in the US of A without seeing an insane number of car accidents. It’s often an everyday experience. The root cause is not road conditions, but bad driving. America does not demand minimum competence behind the wheel. The driver’s exam is a standing joke for over a century and the focus of the process is get your identity into the system under the disguise/excuse of a license to drive. The American system does not care if you can drive, only if after you cause damage or harm they know who to arrest, charge, and sue.
I suspect what I’m sensing might be something like a different pattern of breakage due to lighter materials, or even an increase in head-on collisions when people trust their GPS more than their eyesight. Now, I’ll be on the lookout.
To keep it on record, all my little cold-weather aches and pains quickly vanished on my return to the warmer climate east of the mountains. By the time I got to mid-Florida I was reminded why I dislike winter. I’m scheduled with my lawyer, because one of the pains that I do have here was drastic back in Nashville. My bass-playing arm. In Florida, the pain is mostly annoying. In the sometimes bitter cold of overnight Tennessee, I was unable to play more than short spells. This adds a dimension to my claims, since I don’t know what the outcome of anything is going to be these days.
Makeup, before & after.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
This picture of my mother-in-law tongue sprouts shows they took root while I was away. These are the most interesting photos I have for you today. I got back before sunset in time to check the yard. Agt. R still has no truck, he had to borrow one from his mother. He took a picture of the lily mentioned above. If we can figure how to work his camera, I’ll share it here.
Here’s the details. I step up to the counter and ask the clerk if the coffee is already made. I’m aware Florida is not a coffee-drinking state, so I always ask. She looks behind the divider and says there is a fresh pot made. I order a snack and a coffee, and wait at the counter. My snack arrives and no coffee. I ask for my coffee and the other clerk she’ll bring it out to me.
I sit down and five minutes later, my snack is finished, still no coffee. So I go back to the counter, my break already ruined. I ask for the coffee and yet another clerk tells me they are “making me a fresh pot”. No, no, no, I said, I don’t have time to wait for you to make a whole pot of coffee. I ordered it because I was told the coffee was ready. Again, they try misdirection by saying they’ll bring the coffee out to me. I don’t want them to bring it to me. I explained I like my snack and coffee together and they’ve already made that impossible. Now I have to wait at the counter or be late getting back on the road. I specified three cream, no sugar, and repeated those instructions because they so often get it wrong.
This fat manager lady steps in. I took one look at her and knew she was a natural screw-up. But I figured she’d at least get the situation moving. She goes behind the divider and comes out with a gigantic cup. I asked her what that was. Oh, she’s giving me a double. Lady, I didn’t order a double, I wanted a single, ordinary cup of coffee. You know what the ignoramus does? She takes a small cup and starts pouring half the double into the single.
I stop her, she puts that stupid “whad?” look on her face. Lady, what are you doing, I specified three cream. She was so incredibly stupid she tells me there are three cream. Lady, I want three cream in a single cup, she’s pouring half that mix. I reminded her I’d already told them twice I like it very exact. Oh, she says, I’ll go get you more cream. I shook my head and asked her if she honestly thought, after all this frittering around that I was going to stand at the counter and wait while she disappears into the back searching for 1-1/2 more creamers?
I thought, this lady is the manager and she does not have the aptitude to serve coffee the way the customer wants it. What’s more, she is so fat she does not belong within two miles of a fast-food operation. I told her, listen lady, this place has done nothing except dance around trying to pretend any of this is my doing. Nobody has apologized for royally destroying my coffee break. Keep your coffee. I don’t want it now. I walked out, knowing they felt no remorse for their behavior because once I’m gone, they have a script to deny anything. Don’t even think I was going to waste even more time trying to get a refund out of that pack of jokers.
And that is why compromise does not work this country. They wasted twenty minutes of my time and stiffed me $1.19 for the coffee. The only thing near 50/50 equal about this situation is between the four of them, their combined hourly worth might be the same as mine. I say might be, because I was worth every penny they paid me.
