One year ago today: December 7, 2019, perfect size holes.
Five years ago today: December 7, 2015, 50% longer, my eye.
Nine years ago today: December 7, 2011, by page 25.
Random years ago today: December 7, 2017, they want it first.
Another perfect day by dawn, the Reb got a tin of box turtle food from Thailand. JeePee likes it. I read the ingredients, it’s a real can of worms. Saturday is recycle day, we’ll make an adventure of that. There is an empty field beside the bins. This photo is a sample of the doggies when they get a chance to romp. Look at the ears on Sammy. Check back later, we’ll be out there at least an hour. I like that part of town and might do some touring. That’s were the Blue Turtle Marina is located.
Things are getting back to up speed here. Tennessee is a lot of fun when the weather is nice. I’m getting adapted to being here which has for consequenies for my constitution. Nowadays, I have to adjust to the time zone when I’m going back the other direction. It’s looking like a ride to Miami and back again later this month. Walking the dogs three hours got me tired and now the Reb, who knows my usual Saturday schedule, wants t head out later. Sigh. Don’t get me wrong, anything is better than getting old and sitting around.
There’s too much of that going on in this country. My concept of the average family around here is the single mother whose pushing 30 daughter has moved back home with her brat, eating drive-in take-out three times a day, a dog they never walk who then wrecks the furniture, with the whole bunch on welfare. This was very rare behavior in my day, now it is everywhere. Sigh again.
Time to talk about me and us a bit. The upset from the death of my life-long friend out west defenestratates a lot of my former arrangements. Gimme that calendar, how long have I been here this time. Twenty days, which includes the travel time of each trip as she is the entire reason for even leaving home. Nor is it just the dogs that get a lot of walking every day. I tend to sleep much more soundly in cool weather, that’s a plus for me. The Reb is far from helpless, but the pace tends to pick up when I’m around, same as so many years ago. I just don’t know if that is helping as much any more.
Let me describe an incident, you can read into it your own angle. Ready? Okay, this morning we put on a chapter of the dill pickle story and she goes upstairs. In a few moments she calls down from the balcony to turn it up, she wants to listen while running the dryer. Ten minutes later, she can’t find her smart phone. I call it, there is no ringing. This causes the big search, she is looking over and under and behind, while I’m sitting on the sofa with the dog. Why am I not helping? Because I am. She’s looking, I’m thinking.
Where did you last see it for sure? On the dryer. Was that before or after you called from the balcony (the house has an indoor balcony). Before. And so on, to which I concluded the phone was under or behind something where she could not hear it ring. I checked the fridge and freezer, no dice. Turn off the dryer, sit in the middle of each room in silence. Wait for me to dial the phone. Aha, the bedroom. What did you do besides run the dryer? Made the bed. Make it again. There it was, between the mattress and box spring. Now, doesn’t that bring a warm fuzzy into the equation? Shucks, makes the world seem a better place.
She thinks I might yet have a career in writing light comedy. Er, is that an observation of my guitar playing? It would be a light and a short career at most. Can’t dance for a living any more. I say it is the guitar thing or nothing. The guitar guy still has not got me that list. When I get back
to Florida, I will find my drum box or invest in a new unit. There will be no more delays due to equipment logistics.
Wedding rickshaw.
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This is a lamp for sale at the restaurant last day There were dozens of them along this general design. Tagged at $420 it’s not something I thought all that fancy to begin with. They are well made and the one with doggie paw shapes made an impression. We had plainly arrived at the restaurant much earlier than their normal crowd, a point everybody in town that recommended the place forgot to mention. We even arrived at 3:15PM. Hang in there Smithville, for recommending tourists have lunch at a local restaurant that doesn’t even open until 4:00PM. I checked out vacant lots in the town. They start at $76,000.
But the bass line, that was unique enough that I had to learn it. To play it, a hard old habit has to be broken. If you have the time, listen to both the live and the studio versions, listening for certain differences. That sequence of octave notes is not quite the same on stage. Every video version I found on youTube never once showed a closeup of what that bass player was doing. That’s enough to get me suspicious by itself. Part of getting good on bass is learning to play runs that are already in the next chord before the guitar changes.
If you don’t do that, you are playing the same uninteresting blues walk-ups so beloved by guitar wankers. It’s this technique of telegraphing the chord changes that spurred my tactic of pre-empting guitar riffs on the sly. To play this Jennings song, I had to break the habit for a third technique. The obstacle is playing the walks in the “wrong” octave. Easy in the studio (overdubbing), tricky on stage. The question becomes, will I be able to get this down before driving the Reb & the doggies up the wall?
I declined a dinner invitation to stay in with the doggies. For you pet-lovers, I don’t have the best news. Sparkie is stable but has still taken to wandering around in a fashion similar to a puppy. He needs and gets constant assurance, which seems in order these days. He used to only nudge me when he wanted out. No dinner, I’m staying home to read with the critters. The option to head out later remains, it’s the outside socializing I’m not interested in these days. Other than the Reb, it all becomes a chore. How goes it for you?
Spending time inside with the pets, I’ve watched several of the latest decumentaries on Erwin Rommel’s battles in North Africa. Downright strange after nearly 80 years the wartime propaganda colors every report. They still show him attacking in overwhelming force, which he never had. There is little mention that he succeeded while vastly outnumbered and constantly short of everything, often existing on captured stores. I would like a video that takes stock of his actual supplies. The fact he was able to win anything at all speaks volumes for the incompetence of the British.
Nobody tells how the Brits had an estabished miitary presence in Egypt and a huge logistic support system. The Germans had none of that and were fighting at the end lf long and insecure supply lines. I’ve read enough to suggest that overall, the Germans were effectively outnumbered 30 to 1. The British newsreels show bombardments on a trench warfare scale while the Germans had to count every shell. Nor do I believe any nonsense that Rommel did not suspect the English were reading his coded messages. He must have known, with convoy after convoy attacked and only the fuel ships being sunk. I’m not buying any of the Ultra story at face value.
ADDENDUM
My school of thought is that the shutdown of the robo-callers was just a pause for the debt collectors. If I had the technology, I would immediately begin marketing a phone that you can program to accept certain callers. No, not filter them. Filters programmed by millennials don’t work any better than millennials which is generally not worth a shit. They either let some calls through or block things you want. Of course, abuse will be rampant. I still get fake calls for Daniella on a phone I’ve had for 17 years.
The thing is, think of a way to cash in on this new law, which becomes effective in around a year. How about this one. George owes $10,000 he can’t pay and he’s getting fifty calls a day. Since they will be using robo-callers, there is opportunity there for the clever. Remind me some day soon to sit down and list what we know is going to or got to happen for this system to fire up. If they have robo-callers, do they have robo-answerers?
American phone technology has always been on the pushy, intrusive side. At one point, the phone company claimed they owned anything you said over their lines. What this country needs is an organization of telephone owners to lobby for their rights. Make it a privacy issue. After all, if I could make a phone that only accepted certain calls, it would be a short step to forwarding those calls to politicians who are not paying attention to th needs of their contstituents.
