January 7, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 7, 2021, on-line navigation woes.
Five years ago today: January 7, 2017, the tea is on.
Nine years ago today: January 7, 2013, because they’re “want” ads.
Random years ago today: January 7, 2008, been repeatedly mistaken for . . .

           Another early morning and a corresponding increase in coffee consumption. Today I get the back yard bird feeder aimed at the northern cardinals. I can hear their feeding chirps, so they are out there and you can expect pictures. I hear two pairs, one I recognize the female, so keep those eyes peeled. I have to rig up the squirrel guard, I’m semi-planning to hang the unit close to the window, as at feeding time the sun will stop them from getting spooked through the window.

           Aha, just as I keyed that, I heard the unfamiliar chirp. I grabbed the camera in time to snap this gorgeous young female, almost dead center in this view. Follow the diagonal brown tail and there she is, gone half a split second later. So fast I did not know until I downloaded the picture. Definitely the latest generation, shiny and new. The older pair are still around and that is who I hope to attract in the back. They were looking dusty and tired last time I saw them. Maybe time for that second bird bath as well, now that we have a little shade around the back yard.
           A nearby photo shows the five-gallon bucket of seeds meant exactly for these cardinals. The front yard is the usual playground and we have a new pair not yet recognized. They look like a robin but are slate grey, with a white breast.

           Once the freeze thawed out of the air, I was out in the yard for hours. That’s a welcome break since early morning had me scanning lists for several hours. That is the first job I plan to farm out. When you make a list that has no particular order, where would add a couple new entries? At the bottom, correct? Then you don’t work for any Georgia outfit. They actually scroll a few pages back, insert a row, and add the newest info like that. There is a method to this. The harder it is for a potential recipient to become aware of a refund is to make that information as difficult as possible to find. In this instance, one of the amounts was over $200,000. Wow, we need to do this business on principle alone.

           You can read of the gig below, right now blog rules say I must report any superlatives. Maybe it’s the climate, but on the way there, I get myself a nice inflammation flare-up normally associated with what my doc says is a normal reaction to a changed environment. I thought how I did not need this right now. Sure enough, it was intense, this time not just my outer thighs, but my face. Nothing shows and there is no actual hotness, but it feels like a tough case of sunburn. There, I’ve fulfilled the rule.

           Tomorrow I look at fax machines. Laugh all you want, I have not used faxes in something like 15 years, and even then jut for job hunting because Florida is a backwater. I must relearn the technology, hear me out because I’m making some wild assumptions here. Last time, faxes used an analog modem which required a telephone land-line. They would not work on the digital Internet links. I’m guess that has changed. I will need a plain paper fax unit because of contracts. I’m hoping for a standalone unit or adapter for my regular printer.
           Sure, I looked on-line. And all I got were cucks, on-line services that said they would do the fax for you if you would only be so stupid as to upload your documents. Is anybody really that loopy? The few places that mention on-line faxing, like CocoFax have contain pages of information that barely mention the connection they refer to is an expensive telephone company land-line, I used to get dozens of clients calling because they could not fax over their router. So don’t tell me it isn’t misleading.

Picture of the day.
Red corn.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           How did our first proper gig turn out? It was great musical practice with many of the worrisome aspects I’ve already mentioned. One is how their PA makes me sound like I’m singing down a rusty pipe and once again, on a tune I sing (“Memphis”) Parson managed to play the whole song in the wrong key. I’ll pause to explain how that works. He uses several different keyboards, all with different settings. This one had a dial to transpose the key, which he often does instead of switching patterns.
Occasionally on stage in the dark, he gets it wrong and does not appear to notice unless he is singing that number.

           Sometimes he hits the “crossharp” key, like tonight, which makes the tune sound like minor blues. Over the years, my road gear has devolved. One amp, one bass, one microphone, not much else except with this outfit, a music stand. These guys are still in the 1960s big gear era, with a trailer to haul it in. All I can do is stick around to help load. The club we played had recently been fined for allowing smoking, so they enforced the rule and lost 2/3 of their membership. Once again we performed for a 90% empty building. By now you’ve notice my three new cactus transplants, out of a total six taken from the big original. These are fertilized and watered, their ultimate purpose being to divert foot traffic away from the wall of the shed onto the nearby footpath.

           Musically, things are tighter as can be expected. Like an army unit, they learn to expect each other’s mistakes. As with other loose bands, I’ve already learned there are items I can play that cause predictable responses and I can lighten up a lot of the rough spots. It was fun, and important to me, a three hour gig. After hauling all that road gear, these guys were tired at the two hour mark. Makes me wonder how we will do on the 29th, forty miles from here and four hours. And we are lucky, it has not yet rained on any of our endeavors. This operation was not our best, so much so that I did not even set up the camera.
           It also reveals the band is never going to get any better in a technical sense. One or other of the guys gets the chords wrong in every other song, I mean usually playing the turnaround. We have the usual drumming speed problems. The tip jar garnered five bucks, which we gave to the guy who had to haul the trailer. I had fun. One development is similar to the Reb and I. Our voices are just different enough that we can sing in unison without clashing. If I sing just a little behind, it gives a smoothing effect, which worked really nice on the slower numbers.

           I took Hwy 60 back to the cabin, stopping at the old club. Who do I see there but the remnants of the mother-daughter band. You know the one where the daughter got knocked up the day she turned 16. Don’t get me wrong, I like these two, maybe they remind me of how things can go if you don’t watch out. I don’t really know the daughter, but I chatted a minute with, well, I guess it is grandma now. It’s a baby boy. Shall we say, she has turned forty since we last met and she is beginning to look, what’s the word, “matronly”. They expect to be playing again soon, and I also expect they would say that no matter what the situation.
           Let’s talk a moment about other really important stuff. Like how I’ve met with another batch of bad coffee. The sampler pack I buy contains a portion of “breakfast blend”. A better title would be “coffee so weak you may not realize it is coffee”. As I root around my coffee drawer this blend gets left until last and sometimes I get caught with nothing else left. In other things to watch out for, here is the reason why, if you like your ankles, you don’t wander around my yard at night. You can’t see this foot-deep hole that well, but that’s Cash the doggie’s handiwork. He does not like moles and can make this brand of sport from it. That hole is also a foot wide. Enough to put you out of commission.

ADDENDUM
           Allow me to explain the smoking rule in Florida. This was the original in-your-face rule in the USA. The first of many where the minority, instead of developing their own parallel economy, which is what once made America great, they pressure the government to force others to do things their way. It’s a logical outcome to the droves of liberal shitheads the education system has churned out.
           So the rule is that instead of people who don’t smoke going to a non-smoking place to eat, they enact a rule that a place that serves food cannot allow smoking. So much for Florida claiming to be the “Freedom State”. No, you cannot just have separate rooms, or a smoking area at the opposite end of the building. It is not about smoking, it is about insignificant little people gaining the right to tell other people what to do. It brings a delight to their faces that defies description, it’s like watching staff at the DMV when they get a complainer. Back when I was a kid they called it power-tripping.

Last Laugh