One year ago today: September 26, 2018, identical opinions
Five years ago today: September 26, 2014, gold talk.
Nine years ago today: September 26, 2010, Denny's.
Random years ago today: September 26, 2998, another disappearing guitarist.
Dang, I missed a good one, but my decision stands. There was the ideal stove (kitchen range) at the Thrift. Overhead convection oven, self-cleaning, the whole bit. But it had those ceramic burners I don’t like. When I turn down the heat, I want it to start cooling immediately. I take a certain pride in healthful home-cooking and I’ve had sub-optimal results because ceramic takes so long to react. This is a Malleluca shake. Malelucca? The Australian tree species they can’t kill. It is also a MLM Ponzi food outfit, except they say they are not. The Reb has gone over their product line to find the items that meet organic non-GMO status. The ones that pass, but she doesn’t like the taste, usually wind up here.
The fan event was not a moment too soon. A hot spell is moving through and all movable fans in the house are now in the bathroom work area. Four fans, including the industrial unit just to make work possible. And the noise. Can’t hear Boss Hogg. Can’t hear the doorbell. Can’t hear the chickens. Can’t hear Tampa radio. What? Well, if the doorbell was hooked up, you still couldn’t hear it. You know what I mean. People shouldn’t take journalist blogs too seriously anyway. For siesta, I threw on the DVD “Without A Paddle”, some boyhood chums go on a treasure hunt. Corny, but filmed in a part of the northwest I know very well. An interesting novel theme but too few laughs, lots of clichés. “Suitcase this is Whiskey Dick. Come in, Suitcase.”
Shown here is the floor almost completely removed, resulting in this photo known as “The Floating Closet of Lakeland”. Actually, it is quite sturdy in place resting on cast iron pipes. I finally had to rip the whole section out. I’m about to spend several hours under there with the 30-ton jack getting this thing level. What I really need is a second man with one of those 8-foot pry bars for leverage.
The radio station drifted onto some station I am having a hard time figuring. It stands to reason it must be a pro-life outfit because any other point of view would be labeled hate speech. Or something. However, the speakers are using such convoluted arguments that they wind up hurting their cause. They are on about some court case in California where a reporter is charged with recording a private conversation. This law exists in America, but it is rarely enforced. Even when it is, the result is not to punish the offender but to prevent the recordings from being entered as evidence.
So the station has been on that for an hour already, that the reporter be put in jail just for the recordings. Not their usage. Hmmm, it just makes us wonder what he got. But the tapes are under seal, which is a questionable practice in a free society. (Then again, I’m against the practice of using fake charges to get a defendant to reveal under oath information the cops can’t get any other way.) I’m pretty sure they are pro-lifers and they don’t know how slimy they sound. Like they can’t get a prison sentence for the reporter, so they’ve had their lawyers change tactics from trying got a conviction to trying to set up grounds for mistrial or something.
It’s like left-wing politics, if they can’t get their way legitimately, they start playing the system. Again, these people are talking out of both sides of their mouths so it is hard to tell which side they are on.
House of dreams museum (London?).
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By 1:25PM even the fans, including the attic fan, can’t keep up. Inconvenient as it is having no bathroom floor, the work is shifted to the new laundry room plumbing and electric, which are conveniently situated on the wall right beside the bedroom A/C. However, this problem of no A/C in the bathroom is going to give trouble in the future. There is no place to put one that doesn’t involve cutting and major duct work. I’ve even considered one of those room units where you run the hose out the window, but there isn’t even space for that. There is a solution, I just have to find it.
This will also be the first timber framed structure I’ve ever built. Nine uprights sunk 18” into the soil and three 16-foot beams. I have no idea what the span requirements are. To have the largest possible open work area, I intend to have one of the beams supported only at the ends, although I may buttress that somehow. It’s a flat top structure 16’ x 16’. The roof with a slant will be simply placed as an independent unit on top of this arrangement.
Here’s a practical tool that finally dropped below $10. I’ve tried other types but this one from Wal*Mart is the handiest. I don’t care for the rocking trigger mechanism, since it is counter-intuitive for me. It requires overnight charging and won’t loosen any tight screws, but just carry a real screwdriver for that. Nor will this drive any screws into wood. All it saves is the effort of using a regular screwdriver, which is often the most work of some jobs.
I miss all the fun parts. Apparently last night at the old club, there was a fist-fight and a half. Two tough women went at it, one getting knocked out cold. I ran into Shel, the new server who took quite a shine to me. She was on duty alone and each of the women outweighed her by close to three times. I know how she felt. No cat fight, she says, but fisticuffs and a first rate barroom brawl. Something to do about one of the women dating the other’s recently divorced husband. At that point, I lost all sympathy for both of them. I mean, what kind of crap is that. Myself, I tend to avoid divorcees altogether. This gives you a rough idea why.
ADDENDUM
Progress picture late in the day, after sunset. These are the replacement joists. This is a simulation only, the joists are not fixed in place. This is for show, they are not even in the correct positions. But it is progress, so you get this update. Long and tedious work, leveling buildings by yourself. It gave me time to formulate a plan. I’ll be in Miami next week, planning only a day trip. How about this. Instead, I zip down the extra 33 miles to JZ’s place and without consulting the family, kidnap him back here. In my car, so he has no way back except to hop the train. The terminal is a five-minute walk from his place in Dadeland. No vehicle would be the key, but he’s certain to want to bring his truck, purportedly to visit his step-sister in Punta Gorda. Anyway, just a plan.
My records aren’t exact for the period but this was the day back so long ago I began to suspect the worst. The deal was, as many of you know, that my parents would pay for my university. I had worked all that summer and saved up (if memory serves) some $190. I had spent most of it on college tuition—but that is another story. What was I doing in college when I had been promised university? It’s all in here somewhere but basically it was around a year previously that I had last asked if the promised money for my schooling was already put aside.
Wrong move. There was an explosion of accusations that I did not trust them to keep their word. It may sound funny now, but I had long learned how quickly these people would back out of deal by claiming you were “pestering” them. They were obviously sizzling for an excuse, so I dared not ask again. I had been told if they thought I was “serious” [about university] it would make a difference. I felt spending my last $190 in the world on it was plenty serious enough. Another mistake. I had no choice but to apply for a student loan.
Student loans were something I’d only heard about the morning I applied. I did not know what I was getting into. Since I had been promised payment, I had zero plans for borrowing money. Plunging into debt was something unheard of my family. To this day I don’t even own a credit card—by choice. Debt was certain to show them I was serious. It had the opposite effect and did not shame them. Not only did they pay nothing, they were quite content to watch me and snicker. Look how stupid I was, borrowing money for school instead of dropping out and going to work on the farm for the rest of my life, like they told me.
For the record, I never asked for money that did not already belong to me. I never asked for my parents to put me through university. You heard me. I had been promised a university education for working on the farm. So it is easy to confuse the two and assume I was asking for tuition. No, I was asking to be paid for the work I had done as my end of the bargain. For that work I had been promised enough to go through university. I quickly learned most of my fellow students got free money from their parents for school, but that is not the situation here. We are talking about non-payment of wages owed to me, wages earmarked for university, which is why the sums are identical—it’s entirely because I never asked for anything else.
And of course I have an example. The Hippie. He forgets past mistakes and also the lessons learned. We know about this type of individual. The same set of mistakes over and over for life. And doesn’t understand why, if he wants me in his band, things have to change. I invite change, and here is a picture of the type of custom box my tools are now appearing in. This is called a pecan finish, which I didn’t like at first. But it grows on you.
