One year ago today: November 30, 2018, two lanes, no services.
Five years ago today: November 30, 2014, drying money.
Nine years ago today: November 30, 2010, you call that an auction?
Random years ago today: November 30, 2013, yep, a taxi company.
The big dog and I decided on an early morning coffee at Dunkin over on Old Hickory. It was a warm day, I spent a couple hours in the back yard burning bamboo. It gives me time to think, resulting in a decision to leave early. I could hang around another week and if it wasn’t, according to the Reb, the coldest, wettest winter in twelve years, I just might. My rationale is that if she needs me back here, I have the resources tucked away. But my place also needs some tending. Which reminds me, this month is the first “forgiveness” point in Agt. R’s mortgage.
Yes, I played billiards. I told you that, and it took a date with the Reb to get me to even try. I’ve whacked a few shots before, but never a full game. It took half a century and the Reb to get that to happen. Here she is, dressed in black, we still cut a bit of dash in public. That reminds me, I’m reading more Time magazine and overall, the publication has suffered badly from Internet competition. Not as badly as the pro-left filler in most of their articles, where there seems to always be a slur on Trump no matter what the topic. As if he personally is in any way to blame for the mess that was there the day he arrived.
The year-end edition I bought has a piece on the fall of the rich, predicted as an awakening of a consciousness that “money is not the ultimate organizing principle of American life”. This is rhetoric for yet another money grab by the left, this one reeks of the old money-isn’t-important ploy, so you won’t mind if they help themselves to more of yours. Just you watch. The liberals have openly admitted they cannot be honest about what they intend because people would not stand for it.
However, there is a point behind what liberals are saying even if they don’t realize it. It is that the freedoms enjoyed by select human groups are not the result of the constant rebellions, despotism, famines, and wide-spread cruelty that describes every last one the other so-called “civilizations”. No sir, European freedoms are the result of something unknown elsewhere on the planet. Namely genuine compassion from the top down. That is the only instance of the ruling class ever taking pity on the masses. The trade-off is perpetual internal bickering and nobody really in charge. When those two features end, so does the democracy.
That raises another point of why I do not like liberals. I worked for everything I have, but I also stopped work at some indefinable point where I said enough is enough. After that, I did not continue to amass wealth or possessions, not because I had everything I wanted (far from it), but that busting my chops beyond that point just wasn’t worth it. The system hates people like me, and most of all, the liberal system hates us. You see, I have yet to hear a liberal come up with a plan to make the world better that does not involve them taking away a chunk of what I worked for. They talk about taxing the rich, but who do they really tax? There you go. They say they only take a small portion, but the fact they take any at all reveals their true character.
Put another way, I don’t like some stranger walking into my life and telling me that because I worked hard for what I have, that makes me greedy. I stopped far short of my personal goals in life when I realized the system was baited to make the regular Joe think he could get ahead by working and investing—but the real goal was to keep him working. Like the Swiss who used to kill strangers but finally learned it is wiser to keep them alive and buying wristwatches. And renting boring-as-hell chalets.
The Fabulous Roof Shakers.
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It’s really time for me to get back [to Florida], so today was possibly a last chance this round for some quality time. We wound up over at the Gaylord Hotel, next to the new Grand Ole Opry location. The hotel is enormous with a reputation for spectacular Xmas decorations. They skimped a little this year if you ask me, maybe they heard I was coming. The complex contains two botanical gardens. Take the walk,just don’t expect any surprises. Here’s the Reb overlooking one of the displays. It’s quite nice but tends to come across as an amusement park.
The impressive display was lighting, and that is where I got the most out of this. Flashing the lights in coordination to achieve the impression of motion is called multiplexing and who recalls my studies on that topic, when was it 2012 – 2014? The Arduino is capable of a certain capacity and we saw a progression of ever bigger “dancing cubes”. I studied the code of one that controlled 64 LEDs. The Xmas display was many thousands times greater, but works on the same principle. I’ll see if I can put together a short gif of the largest display, a series of hanging LED “curtains” that pulsed and spun. Not an Xmas theme, but they were programmable for color as well as motion. The Xmas trees shown here are not part of that display.
Be prepared for miles of walking just to walk the lanes. You want prices, well, there is a reason they are not that advertised. We were not on a shopping trip but this is the land of the $12 martini. We had two rounds, her the martinis, me good old Budweiser, and a small snack consisting of five or six tiny vegetable strips and a thimble of dip, around ten small bites. The total rang up to $71, including tips. The place was packed with family groups and an unusually high proportion of old people in electric carts, I mean, everywhere. This, folks, is the reason the Reb & I are talking investment. We are not dating, we are each dealing with somebody we can trust.
I admit it, the two hours of walking tuckered me out and we had to stop for the odd three-minute breather. Mercifully, the place was well-stocked with park benches because I was far from the only one. Think lots of toy stores and clothing outlets. Souvenirs by the ton, a lot of it Elvis-themed. A lot of the displays were giant replicas of famous guitar brands. Very authentic. That’s another set of photos I’ll have to dig out, since my Sony chose to act up. (It will delete pictures, but will not free up the memory space unless you reformat the card, an all-or-nothing proposition. Smooth move, there Sony. Assholes.) And Sony MP4 isn’t MP4, bunch of jerkwads.
