One year ago today: September 8, 2020, food, a Chinese luxury.
Five years ago today: September 8, 2016, apologizing for truth.
Nine years ago today: September 8, 2012, fantastic motorcycle country.
Random years ago today: September 8, 2008, my last mall-burger.
Who warned you about reverse mortgages long time ago? It seems we now have a crisis. Not only are record numbers of seniors falling behind on tax and mortgage payments, around 25,000 reverse mortgages per year are failing. Part of the deal is the owner has to keep up the property and pay all the taxes. What could go wrong? No matter what you call it, being in debt has pitfalls. My cabin was planned from the ground up to be a place to stay no matter what. Other people seem to view a house to live in as something other than that. Imagine, borrowing money against the place you live.
See this house? It is for sale near Nashville for $79,000. So there is something wrong with it. I e-mailed for the info because it might be something I can live with. It’s that 75% below market value could mean anything. However, remember that dog-shit house in Highland City that JZ & I looked at. The tenants were evicted for running a kennel and the place smelled too horrible. Consider the changed situation now. I could buy it, open the windows, and wait as long as it took to air out. I’ve sent what [info] I had to the Reb, she knows I can fix anything except a bad neighborhood.
Things are getting so bad for Biden, he’s stupid to show up anywhere. People don’t even want him at funerals and there is a new national chant at the sports arenas over what he should do to himself. It’s tough going, but I accept the notion Trump is playing hardball by letting the entire swamp start drowning itself. It seems some of the Democrat screw-ups are irreversible and their media bum-boys are still trying to blame it on his following, a tactic that might have worked in the pre-Trump era.
The stalled Arizona audit has yet again announced they’ve got the results, but we’ve seen nothing. A few claims, but nobody up front presenting the evidence. No legal action, no news report, this is something like 35 times they’ve done this, far diminishing the impact so important to this kind of event. By now, people are so used them crying wolf that folks like me are likely to miss the whole parade when it finally happens. What little hard info that surfaces seems hard to interpret, like what are “ghost” votes, and always presented in forms it is known the Deep State are past masters arguing against. Just damn weird, that’s all. In other BabylonBee news, Democrats fear election integrity will drastically curb ballot harvesting, the cornerstone of black voting, Trump put a free pillow and can of Goya beans under the Democrat house seats, and Joel Olmsteed can now levitate.
That Chrysler, I found the wiring to connect power directly to the fan. But it was designed by some freak who made the tolerances so close there is no slack in the wires or the harnessing. I’m going to have to strip and solder leads into place, which is always fun under the hood of a vehicle in the Florida weather. I found the plug but the spade connections are some weird metric size that fits nothing in my extensive trays of such parts.
Formerly I was going to wire fan into the van, but look at this little USB unit from Walmart. It is battery powered and proved enough to keep the sleeping compartment comfortable in 90°F weather. I forget, it was $8 or $15, cheap enough that I have two. Better yet, on the low settings, the fan keeps going all night. I have a laptop backup battery that will keep both fans going for 30 hours. These are what is keeping my office compute in use until I replace that frazzled wall A/C in the front bedroom.
Brazilian coffee plants.
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Grasping a bit for any topic that is more exciting than shelves and fans, here’s that mini-recorder the Reb gave me a while back. I intended to use it for Morse code practice because these units have two speeds. I thought it had a microphone jack, nope, just earphone, but I noticed the tape had been freshly turned to side B. So I gave a listen to side A. Ha-ha, Reb, I now have a private recording of her singing her latest album with just her and the piano. She is never getting this tape back now.
The room is quiet, insulated, everything is handy, and it has that double window facing the private green area in the back yard. Pictures soon, as it is a glorious sight to have the morning sun streaming in while it is still cool. It is also now under the canopy of the “pistachio” trees I left growing because of the huge leaves. They create shade and I purposely trimmed them to spread horizontally at around ten feet high. If this works well, I’ll le them spread to the south side as well, keeping them well away from my peach tree. Which is doing fine, but no peaches.
Not the best band news. The second consecutive rehearsal was canceled. No, that is not okay. Nobody called and told me, which does not work. Here’s the details. The rhythm player was ill last time, so we missed that week, leading me to conclude we were behind schedule. I found it odd at we did not continue without the guy, who landed in the hospital a couple days ago. Again, nobody told me, so I brought that up with the keyboard guy who I finally got on the phone a half-hour before start time. That’s when I found out, and I said to him that it might be a good idea to let people know a few days in advance.
From the response, I take it these guys are not big on advance planning. Just as fast as I’m telling you know, I told the guy it doesn’t work that way. I cannot be “on call” as a bassist. For example, since two weeks ago I put in 44 hours practice time, to get up to speed. Only to find out there was no priority. He kind of said why not just stay home unless I get a call to practice, which will not work because I still have to reserve the time in case they call. For instance, to day I was working on the van and put all my tools away at 3:00PM to be ready. He’s unaware I got up early to take my prescription and took my much needed siesta at noon instead of 2:00PM so as not to oversleep.
I’ll now watch closely how things turn out and this, folks, is why I am leery of “established” bands that I’ve never heard of. These guys gig less than twenty miles away and I’ve never seen them. Bands that don’t make money break up or lose money, and this could be the reason why. Lack of organization. Here’s how I normally deal with it. I learn a fixed list of 40 songs, but no more until there are regular rehearsals. Changes or new tunes they have to specify exactly what version, which they often don’t know themselves. That puts me the position that no matter what else they do, they have a bass player who knows their song list, but frozen in time.
I’ve also played out with bands that had a member or two missing. As long as there are people who can sing, you can get by without the full group. But I take it from their unwillingness to even practice without the full complement, gigging is out of the question. So here I sit, at home with my gear loaded in the van, my tools back in the shed, and nothing to take up the slack. I’m not happy about that, as I figure they knew the guy was in the hospital a few days ago and said nothing. This could, mind you, simply be due to the disorganization that most big bands have aplenty. As far as I’m concerned the rehearsals should continue no matter what, but, I’m just a bass player.
ADDENDUM
I wrote a couple letters, or should say word-processed. These are a trademark for me, I do not think electronic communication can ever replace the personal letter, and I do write often. This was also time to reconcile the expenses of the last trip to Nashville and wow, that was not a budget trip. There were two canceled trips this year over COVID but this round made up for it. Would you like some hard numbers?
Entertainment: $831
Groceries: $349
Household: $168
Other: $565
Entertainment includes movies, which are not cheap, and we average $20 each for meals when we go out for convenience. Groceries often involve trips to Trader Joe’s, so that isn’t cheap. Household is curious, because when I’m there, I make repairs, it is my nature. So that includes everything from paint for the shed to fixing that lamp switch in the upstairs office. That was $9.75 for the parts at Wal*Mart. Category Other is just what you’d expect, $43 in books and newspapers, $78 for new eyeglass frames, $16 for a haircut, and $190 because we like a certain vegetarian restaurant, which is not entertainment for the same reason I used to track coffee separately.
These are numbers that would have shocked me not that many years ago, simply because I had nobody I cared to go out with. I am not complaining, I have the time of my life (somewhat less metaphorically than it sounds) with the Reb. She is a rarity, as I like to put it, she came into my life paying all her own bills and half of ours. Not half of mine, half of ours. Pay attention. Hence, we have never had an argument or even a discussion about money. Ha, she doesn’t need to know how broke I am, that twice in the past twenty years, I have been down to less than $200 in the world. However, she would just laugh, because she know I’ve never been in debt. So I could spend my last penny and still be better off than most of America.
This separation of money does not extend to our business affairs, where all is open.
