April 8, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 8, 2018, vodka, didn’t like it.
Five years ago today: April 8, 2014, I slept through it.
Nine years ago today: April 8, 2010, beer at the Pines (Mall).
Random years ago today: April 8, 2012, smoking, overweight, 48, Catholic.

           Here’s Sparky at the marina again this moring. Top event of the day is a pickup at the airport that went entirely right. I’m from Florida, I was totally not expecting that. It was impressive and made possible by the cell phone. Airports have not been part of my life since 2003, so I was unaware what a cell waiting area was. A quick phone call and there I was in the holding area. Robynette deplaned, claimed her gear, and called me within seven minutes. How opposite to Miami, where I swear the system is redesigned every few years to maximize delays. As for a cell waiting area, that would not work either. In Miami they’d have third-worlders taking turns living there.

           While Miami is a bastion of stupidity, it has plenty of company. Take the people who designed those waiting pods at Houston International. They are holding areas for passengers between flights, but built on the premise that there would never be any hours-long delays. It’s further a really dumb system because, like too many these days, it relies almost totally on things beyond its control going according to plan. In this case, the airlines stopped serving food. So when today’s flight got behind, imagine yourself stuck in such a place with sixty equally disgruntled people and the only amenity is a tiny mobile wine and beer kiosk. The only worse design I can think of is the Jacksonville Greyhound bus terminal.

           This visit is going to result in a number of decisions, and some could be on the momentous side. For me, the big attraction is that I may finally realize my twenty year ambition to have a place out of Florida to spend the viciously hot summers. The downside is that the same twenty years have put a lot of brakes on my ability to enjoy the circumstances. It was a conscious decision on the part of Robynette and I to be at the same place at the same time again and that this arrangement is primarily based on convenience. So I won’t have to go far to remind everyone that each of us tends toward what I’d favor calling a “robust” personality, and together a lot of what we do is “pronouncedly symbiotic”.
           It’s blog time to mention food. I’ll let you put this one into perspective yourself. She is vegetarian and I’m on a strict diet, which has been even stricter for nearly the last 500 days. So in anticipation of not wanting to go out to dinner, another of my quirks, I put a big pot of potatoes on to soak this morning, flicking the burner on as we came in the door. As a rule, I will go out for coffee, but I do not celebrate by going to restaurants. To me, an entire meal consisting of only mashed potato was superior fare. The German kind, with nutmeg. But it was still a surprise to me that she likes her mashed with the skins still on, while I had carefully peeled a half a bag. I happen to like peeling potatoes. Has anyone out there had mashed spuds with the skins? Really? Okay, I’ll give it a try.

Picture of the day.
Mystery in Siberia.
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           Agt. R called again. Yep, his truck is still missing and he’d left another $100 in the glove box. Don’t snicker, it’s a small city and this is not that unusual. Not everybody locks their doors, and Agt. R has, to my dismay, always been careless with money. So now he’s out $235 and riding a bicycle. Say, remind me to buy that Yamaha scooter, which he cannot drive because he has no endorsement. Don’t chance driving a two-wheeler without that paperwork in Florida. You know what they say about Florida, arrive on vacation, leave on probation. There are compelling reasons to never get a Florida driver’s license.

           This photo has a name. I call it “The Usual Suspects”. The footy-prints of the doggies, who are fascinated by floating piers and boat ramps. I’d sent this photo, and many hundreds of others, to people with smart phones only to find out that they are often not displayed at that end. That does it, I am going to purchase a smart phone specifically to work out these quirks. No, I don’t have a smart phone and with one or two exceptions, neither do the vast majority of people I know. And they ain’t exactly behind the times.

           Trivia. Never mind what you saw in the movies and the Encyclopedia Britannica. They say only that Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist mastermind, was captured. What really happened is the French were so scared shitless of the guy, they waited until he went into the hospital for surgery. They grabbed him while he was under anesthetic. Although never convicted of actually killing anyone, the French gave him three life sentences. Has anyone besides me wondered over the purpose of multiple life sentences? Somebody out there correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it is so these people can’t get released over winning a single appeal.
           I would be curious to hear Carlos’ side of the story. He’s Venezuelan, you know, and from inherited wealth. In a sense, he’s your ultimate liberal, ready to kill in the name of equality and all that stuff. He is suspected of masterminding terrorist attacks. My interest is not his reasoning behind it all, but how he managed to evade the authorities for twenty years. It would be, to me, a fascinating account of dumb and dumber. He’s dumb, but the people chasing him were even dumber.

Last Laugh