One year ago today: December 29, 2018, close encounter, wrong lady.
Five years ago today: December 29, 2014, 51 million sold.
Nine years ago today: December 29, 2010, something about travel prices?
Random years ago today: December 29, 2015, the Pringles can.
Sunday rain gives me some indoor time, so what can I come up with? That’s easy, The nearby lake has something rarely seen in Florida. That’s days with no waves, or at most small ripples. Especially when it is glass smooth, you see people out there with paddle boats. Reb and I often talk about doing that, but what about the doggies? Let’s work with that. There are two types of paddle boat rentals on the lake. Those that don’t have them and those that won’t tell you the price.
But if I did, well, the dogs love to walk. So have you ever seen a dog-powered boat? Neither have I. So I looked up circular treadmills (and got the usual tons of Internet garbage) to find there is nothing dog-sized. I began to find photos of rafts constructed with PVC floats. They maxed out at 6” but I know I’ve seen 9” and 12” drainpipes and I’ve learned to work with PVC. I see an immediate problem. The only price quote I can find for 9” pipe is $33 per foot. And my idea would require three twenty-footers, nor does this address the fact the required plastic joints and caps are even more costly. Suddenly, I like plywood again.
Agt. R has finally figured out how to send photos off his phone. But he can only do it via Google, who now have a complete copy of his private mortgage and loan details. It takes around 15 mouse clicks at my end to get each picture in jpeg format, with constant popups from Google trying to get me sign up for their “photo service”. I suppose it is progress just to have him get the photos off his phone, but he is too much of an unsophisticate to know the danger of using Google. I cannot find any way to delete the photos from Google, but so what? They are not really deleted anyway.
What catches most people is they don’t stop to think that Google also now has a record that the documents were sent to me. It’s like DNA. You can’t give yours without giving all your family at the same time—and they may have expected to be asked first.
I took time that I don’t have to review some earlier features of this blog. That’s because there is an on-going decline in blogs that feature only pictures. I wonder, is this due to new copyright activity, or less available generic content? I learned long ago to avoid picture links because of their tendency to disappear. My picture of the day is a link I know won’t last, but who has time to go check them?
There is also the condition I call “MicroSoft decay”. The longer you use their operating systems, the more unstable they become. Sooner or later there is always a crash. I consider it deliberate, but have all the original install disks for every computer I own that uses them. This tablet uses the dreaded “Windows as a service”, which if I had known what it was, I would not have bought this unit.
For sale, $3,950,000.
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Nearly food, that’s what I found just now. Reb keeps a package of Chancey’s Original Veggie Straws, so I took a handful for my home made glaucamole. Here’s my two main ingredients, followed closely by minced white onion. I had my bowl of chicken soup and one of the crisps fell into it. I thought, I’ll just fish it out in a moment. But it was gone.
I’m not going out in this weather and neither are the dogs. I made a pact ten years ago but didn’t record it, although I think it was in 2009 at the latest. That is the year I learned I could sing just well enough to fake a show. Before that, I’d done some Karaoke and could already sing and play bass, but concluded that was not viable without a guitarist. So the date is approximate. I said I would try for ten years before giving up. I know that it has been at least that. I promised to make a decision, either way, in ten years and now the time is up. Since 2016 I’ve tried out 23 guitarists, of which one made it to stage. Only four made it past first practice.
During that stretch, who knows how many times I’ve decided to lower my standards and just go play guitar. Every time I get even close, an opportunity to play bass crops up and that’s the end of my guitar efforts until the next situation fails. The usual cause is what I’ve said many a time—the average guitarist of today thinks he already has the perfect list and perfect show and all he needs is adequate backup. Thusforth, none of them are inclined to put in the necessary extra work to collaborate in real terms. I have not decided a thing.
I’ve also learned some solid lessons. The most important element is an “entertainment personality”, but careful, there’s more to it. You get people like the Hippie with a brand of it that will never sell. Musical expertise is merely one component, and it does not necessarily mean perfection. It should not surprise anyone that I regularly practice “mistakes”. The saddest lesson is that it is no more difficult to workth with a rank amateur than some
ADDENDUM
What a year, the last of the twenty-teens. It’s been generally good for everyone I know east of the Mississippi. The others, I don’t know. I would list the highlights of 2019 as first my time in Tennessee, Trent moving to Jacksonville and doing well, Agt. R keeping his house, Agt. M with his new wife and son, Alaine settling in Punta Gorda, and finally officially retiring.
But this overall improvment is not universal. For this is also the year when my prediction over the dangers of not having a fulfilling hobby began to appear in both people and situations that surround me. After the age of around 58, I’d say, boredom becomes a progressively dangerous thing. Because if you don’t have something by then, it is, for most people, too late to begin anything meaningful.
Of course, I would say the best solution is music. But that is one hobby that has to keep evolving, or you’ll hang it up for years at a time and never get back into it. Unlike guitar, which it is largely memorized patterns, you have to know notes, scales, passing tones, groove, rhythm, and harmony. The major downfall of bass is that for the first few months, it is very easy to learn, and most players stay at that level.
It brings to mind one of the best bassists I ever taught, that’s the John Campbell mentioned here over the years. Within six months, he could outplay me (at that time) but somehow, he never quite got it right. I correctly forecast that ten years later he would never rise above “plunking”, (albeit at an advanced level) and I doubt the next thirty years changed any of that. Where this fits is that I have the suspicion in the back of my brain that I’m about to do the same thing with the guitar. I already know all I care about when playing that instrument is strumming and timing.
My other real hobby is reading. That’s one that I can’t hand out much advice on. People either do it or they don’t. The ones that don’t tend toward TV addiction. I wonder in a hundred years when America is a shadow of itself if historians will find it was television that began the decline? It’s interesting how TV created the mind set that allowed everything from credit card addiction to blind acceptance of social media. Interesting because I was there and I saw it.
