One year ago today: September 3, 2019, hurricanes as a business.
Five years ago today: September 3, 2015, the Prophet.
Nine years ago today: September 3, 2011, three guesses.
Random years ago today: September 3, 2004, coin anniversary coincidence.
Yes, there is nothing like a global over-reaction to a man-made virus to clean up Miami traffic. Nothing else seems to work. Deciding not to head out for breakfast, JZ (an excellent cook) made up a couple plates and he’s learned to keep coffee around the place. Predictably, he’s been back with his old girlfriend and it is no secret she just plays him for money. That’s the gal with the famous story about waiting for a check in the mail for $10,000. Could you just lend her $100 to get by until it arrives? But, who is the gauge of true love? The morning was so dull, top story is this ad for a hair band. Designed to perch on your head “like sunglasses”, gives your hair “volume”.
JZ finally retiled that section of his bathroom that had caved from a leak in the roof, what, ten years ago. And the repair is so perfect I know he has to redo my enclosure. The trick is, after three years, getting him out here. How many times have I warned him there is no chance of leaving things another five or ten years, if he wants anything out of life, he has to do it now. But, like so many men, he’s going to live forever. Then, he cuts up this red fruit called dragon fruit. A totally bland taste, by comparison watermelon is delicious. Mainly it dyed my fingertips, lips, tongue, and teeth a dull red color just before my appointment.
I easily drove the 33 miles in 45 minutes, probably another record in Miami. The bad drivers are still there, but you can drive around them, no doubt pissing them off to no end. Some of these people spend a lifetime learning to maximize their AOL skills. My appointment was over in a half-hour and there’s been a change in the payment system. I was expecting a check but instead the new owners, the dreaded Cano medical company, has decided to mail them out. Now I won’t get it until next trip, which is after Thanksgiving. To me, this just reconfirms the trend in America away from the convenience that made this great and toward what is easiest for themselves. Cancel the shopping trip.
Instead I went by Fred’s place and he’s having a garage sale. I noticed he had no computer in the office. Turns out his last unit had fried. He no longer has any spares, so I lent him my Nashville computer until he can spring for a new BrandSmart rig for $500. I never thought I would wind up not rich, but richer than anybody I used to work with. I’m myself down to two good units remaining from before the evil empire forced Vista and beyond down our throats. Every MicroSoft computer I’ve ever seen eventually clutters up and slows down through ordinary usage. And people concerned with invasion of privacy do not use Vista or anything after that. I keep a separate computer only for going on-line.
I over-paid Fred for a box of security cameras, eight of them I think. This is how the old-boy network operates, but of course when other people do it they call it being good neighbors. He gave me a big box of fresh onions, and that reminds me, JZ gave me a bag of avocadoes, the big smooth kind that nobody around here really likes. So things were going okay until I got millenialized. It was my phone. The plan was to call Bryne the Irishman and meet up for lunch. He confirms he lost another half-million bucks on another California restaurant. Says, “Restaurants are a good way to spend twenty hours a day watching your staff steal from you.”
What happened is my phone detected my call was originating from Miami and decided that Del Ray Beach is long distance. So when I punched in his number, it kept adding an international 1+ in front and the call would not go through. An hour of fiddling with it and I finally found and deleted it from the contact list. Another fine example of millennial coding.
Heavy lift, Russia.
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Bryne just got out of the hospital a short while ago. Same hospital I was in, but his experience was opposite. He hated the food and lost weight, I thought it was fine and ballooned up over 200 pounds. He’s got a house and girlfriend out near Jog Road, so we met up at Appleby’s, a restaurant I always associate with getting out of the hospital. He’s still got 4 staples and several hundred stitches, he showed me pictures. They really opened him up. Still collecting guitars, he quickly loses me on the details. But he got an original Les Paul, picked it up for $125. He’s got his own tool shop for refinishing guitar necks and often refrets older instruments to better-than-new standards.
This stop put me on I-95 for the first time in years. It’s the dullest of drives and I overshot the Indiantown turn off, having to double back on side roads. That area around Stuart is a seriously nothing stretch of terrain, just short of desolate but for the vacant farmland. It’s a stretch of two-lane where the locals make death-defying passes because they think they are good drivers. I just about got you footage of a head-on. This road widens out again near the semi-famous intersection with the Desert Inn. Remember that old landmark. I read how a semi missed the corner and smacked into the old lobby now serving as a saloon. Camera at the ready, I got this photo showing the remaining structure, now designated an historical site.
The best picture I got was this one with the crack in my windshield across the focal point. This vantage point is actually right at the fork in the road. Off to the north on the right side is a stretch of the worst motorcycle riding in Florida. It’s so back I once had to turn back after a few miles. The pavement is uneven giving a severe thumpitty-thump ride. To the left is the road to Lake Wales. So, an historical site, huh? Does that mean some day we can stop in there for a cold one again?
