One year ago today: January 9, 2020, I have that frame.
Five years ago today: January 9, 2016, fearsomely expensive.
Nine years ago today: January 9, 2012, see the small light.
Random years ago today: January 9, 2011, it’s JeePee’s cousin.
Talk about cold, because it is better than being out there. I spend the morning packing. I bring my music gear along, so that takes time. It was not getting any warmer by late morning so I got out there with the wrenches and had a go at getting the seats out of the minivan. No luck, they were clinched to the frame by an impact wrench. But I did get the bolts exposed enough to confirm the seats are not the original. They were a sightly different size and I could see how the bolt holes did not completely line up. Out they come, but not until I see some warm weather.
The big chill meant no lon walks for the doggie, who is (I might add) your total indoor pet. On days like this, he knows the meter is running. He’s right over to the bushes and back in no time, heading straight for the door. Good, because I’m not going to be the one to tell the Reb this is brutal, but I’ve survived walking to school when it was forty below.
Mostly we rehearsed music we will never play anywhere, though I maintain this is different than ordinary jamming. It is quality time of the highest degree. She says I’m good enough to play out but doesn’t always accept that I have an ego. She has no motive to exaggerate, so she means it, but I can’t overrule my personal standards. This drum box is going to be more of a compromise than I’d wanted but still represents the shortest distance between two points. Nor is it stage fright for the simplest of reasons—I have utterly no problem making mistakes while I’m in the hot-seat. Usually hilarity reigns instead.
Junk yard dog.
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I’m not sticking around. The Reb has some upcoming shows and virtual presentations, but these generally take place in the mornings. This is the inaugural voyage in the minivan so if anything goes wrong, I would like to have as much daylight as possible on the road. My gloomy decision is to pick an upcoming morning and leave at dawn. We had planned on a restaurant dinner, she likes Japanese, me not so much. Then again, she can eat wasabi like it was ketchup.
Naw, we thought better of it and spent the day at home. Many years ago, we adopted the hobby of jigsaw puzzles from her mother. It clears the baffles, and here is the project of the moment. A panorama of birds sitting on a fence, I’ve got all the easy parts done, thank you very much. Eventually these make it all the way back to Florida to be mounted in frames.
Leftovers here can be quite the adventure. I’ve learned to like kale, so has the turtle. We dined at home. Veggie spaghetti, spuds, and for me chicken and turnips. What? Doesn’t everybody love ‘em. I rather do, it was a staple in my day and I’ve always like vegetables and have no favorites. We also did the cryptogram in a few minutes flat. She does not do them when I’m not here, making it impossible to convince her the way we do these is real synergy. I frequency count, she checks for conflicts in letters I suggest. I spot patterns, she has a knack for short words, me the longer ones. And we both play excellent hunches. Isn't there some contest we could enter?
We found a bottle of champagne in the fridge. I vaguely remember buying some, she says I bought two bottles and we only drank one. But, being in the mood for other things, we left it in the fridge. She doesn’t care for it, I find it tastes like flat, sweetened beer. I rigged up the full test gear as I intend to use it on stage. Yep, it needs a lot of work but the basic sound is already emerging. As expected, only 8 of the 200 built-in patterns are of any use. If only they put that wasted effort into a set of say 40 generic western music drum sounds. As it is, the setting for “Rock” is ninth on the list.
A good navigation web-site is still elusive. No matter how refined my search terms, I keep getting pages of places that work backward. They want you tell them the address and they’ll display the coordinates. Gee, Brandon, that sounds really useful. Is that the kind of thing they teach you in school these days? And you know that watch I bought to track Greenwich Mean Time? At 13:00 every day, it switches back to beeping on the hour. If I can’t disable the speaker, I’m throwing it out. I worded that wrong. On the hour (no, it is not the alarm), it keeps beeping until you stop it. Way to go, Brandon.
They have even given this useless process a name. Geocoding and reverse geocoding. Site after site that rejects standard format input (the least they could do is insert the degree sign for you) and gives no example of what they want.
ADDENDUM
Politics. A big question is why, with Joe Biden confirmed, is the Democrat party tripping over themselves doing things like trying to impeach Trump? Or do the XXV Amendment thing? It harks back to their earlier plan to change the Constitution. They made an announcement they had to prevent anyone "like Trump" from ever becoming President again. As usual for the Left in America, this will backfire on them. The Democrats are organized but the thing they are not exactly very good at is fair play. And what do they mean by "like Trump?"
Around a week ago, I drew my conclusions on this. You get to share them. Trump ran on a platform to “drain the swamp” and they [the Left] know they are just that. In 2016 he was a novice, this time he knows who and where they are, and importantly, has exposed their methods. Back then he ran as a Republican for reasons that seemed impossible at the time. But mostly because no Independent candidate has ever won. This platform is often called a Third Party to cover its many variations, such as George Washington who was a Federalist. If they can get Trump on the Amendment, they will scream he is "incompetent". Why is this suddenly so damn important?
The past four years have also shown America how narrow the margins are, with Democrat candidates often taking an election by a few thousand late-arriving votes or the Senate thing this week in Georgia. Couple this with the completely unAmerican action of trying to ban Trump from the Internet (which is a publicly owned forum, by the way). To me, it adds up to one thing—the Democrats have to, at all costs, stop Trump from forming a Third Party. Because this time Trump knows 85 million people will vote for him.
That makes him the tie-breaker, not Kamala Harris. A moment’s thought shows in such a closely contested two-party system, even a minor third party could force all legislation to be passed only by coalition. Both Democrats and RINO Republicans would have to cater to that new entity to form a majority. This means Trump does not even have to be elected President to act as one. The XXV (twenty-fifth) Amendment has a clause that the President can be removed over incapacity to lead. That is why, with 10 days left and Trump already declaring he will step down, we get all this double-barrelled mayhem. Stealing an election is not good enough, they have to stop him entirely. They must silence him, but I think they will fail at it.
This is only my opinion, I am not an expert on politics. But I have studied military strategy. Um, for the record it has been my software changing RINO to rhino in my other correspondence, so you may see it here. TMOR, RINO means Republican In Name Only, such as the people in Georgia who were elected as Republicans but are solid Democrats. Trump has repeatedly issued statements that the voice of his supporters will not be silenced. The radical left were always prepared to conduct a coup, now they are doing their usual of claiming the other side is doing what they were doing, but some 85 million people are on to them.
There you have it. They have to crush Trump before he can effectively form a third political party. Because if he does, he will win in the sense of becoming the real power, which is what this is all about. If he does, both the Democrats and the RINOs are up shit creek and they know it. It's a new game they were never prepared to play. I personally think they will step over the line on this one. They may have to just to survive. They've met the enemy. Even with Puerto Rico and DC as states, plus letting11 million illegals and 16-year-olds vote, it won't be enough.
