One year ago today: December 15, 2019, “collar id”
Five years ago today: December 15, 2015, typical Miami.
Nine years ago today: December 15, 2011, punishment enough.
Random years ago today: December 15, 1981, a day on the rack.
Two new tires on the Taurus, $80. That will get me to Tennessee, where I’ll decide what to do with it. I mean, I figure if it runs, it is worth $500. I stopped at the café in Mulberry, where JZ had coffee and pie one year. It’s okay, a local mom & pop, so they get my business. Careful, the clientele is older and quite selective, if you don’t want anybody staring at you, go to McD’s. Younger people will stare but that you can tolerate.
This photo shows the style I’ve decided upon, should I buy. Whaddaya mean “should”. Well, guys, I’m running the numbers. If I keep the car, which is generally in good running condition, it would only cost less than $100 to change the tires every 2,000 miles. I can easily store a spare set of rims ready and if it came to that, a used tire changing machine isn’t out of the question. Then, a while from now, I could afford any van I want. If I get my music act together, that could not be too long at all.
P3D wallpaper.
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I pulled that double window frame down and examined the rot. Yes, it got wet from that old air conditioner and I think I can rig up the old frame to work by attaching pieces to the house. I calculate even the window will slide. But it is a major project and I just got the word from Tennessee. The schedule has to be worked out. I also got some work done around the shed, which I happen to not consider work. I’m salvaging my old whirl-a-gig, the original where the propeller gave me so much headache.
ADDENDUM
Here is a redacted e-mail to a friend of mine who did not even own a computer until 2005. He thinks I’m old-fashioned because I don’t shop on-line. He talks as if he pays nothing for shipping and handling.
We who live by traditional proven rules are regularly amazed by latecomers who think they've found something "new". They are always slow to the plate, but once they finally get there, they glom on to anything, not because it is better, but because not having learned from history, they perceive it as "new". I know people who think texting was invented in 2007, when, in fact, it was the 1840s.
They finally got into the world of on-line shopping way late in the game, and being the sorts that are constantly playing catch-up, swear by these rotten technologies that are eroding their rights and freedoms. I dropped my Paypal memebership in 2003 when they brought in the bank account requirement, yet I still meet people who think if I did not "discover" Paypal by 2010, I'm behind the times. Strange bunch--they have such difficulty spotting who is really ahead of the game. If Paypal again became anonymous like it originally was, I'd join again. Stupid people always confuse privacy with secrecy, but that's just part of stupid and you can't fix stupid.
I have long recognized the danger of e-banking. One only need look at the legislation Europe is putting in place to stop the problems most Americans don't even realize they have--yet. Of course, none of this will sink in to the pseudo-millennial brain until too late. I'm reminded of all the people who answered one simple innocent question that was asked of schoolchildren in the 1930s. All the bandwagon people of the day said it is just a simple question, just answer it, what could go wrong, you see the pattern. Anybody who didn't answer it was "old-school", "paranoid", "conspiracy theorist", wow, there's another pattern. Oh right, you want to know the question. "Were either of your grandparents Jewish".
I'm reminded of a personal example of this form of backwardness. My younger brother by two years. When I was around eight, I read the tales of knights and dragons and moved on, they are just fairy tales for crying out loud. I had a band to put together. Years later, when he's twelve, my brother "discovers" Dragons & Dungeons and goes on a three year rampage that because he was "into it" "before" me, that I was slow and dull-witted and had walked right past the greatest thing ever in the universe, which was proof he was right and I was wrong.
That's what I hear when people call me "old-fashioned". It's no good pointing out I did all the things they are just doing now, years before they even heard of them. Sure, I pay in cash, but that ignores the fact that I'm very good at it and have a huge network of where to shop--and I have not paid retail for anything since 1999. From their point of view, cash is primitive. Like I said, you can't tell them nuttin'. It's not the cash, it's the lifestyle. And they've fallen out of practice, thinking they can bounce back. Ha, I've seen them try.
