September 8, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 8, 2021, the van has problems.
Five years ago today: September 8, 2017, my jab was tetanus.
Nine years ago today: September 8, 2013, bass player’s cramp.
Random years ago today: September 8, 2012 Pike’s Peak by sidecar.

           Another anniversary for me, more personally meaningful, but not as flashy to the world. September 8 is the first time I was both on stage and got paid. The band I personally created, including finding and training the musicians from scratch, got paid $15 to play in the church basement for the local teens. Every kid in town was there.* We played a ten minute version of Gloria and another of Hanky Panky. It was also today a year earlier that I quit watching TV. These days you can’t avoid TV altogether, but I mean to sit down and watch a TV for more than two minutes. Has not happened since 1967 and if I recall, that was also a Thursday. Good morning, the sun is just up and it’s my second coffee. What will today bring?

           Bryne has decided to head all the way to Monterey to pick up a trailer he left there a few years back. But since he hired a moving company, I miss both the trip to Texas and to California now. That’s a 3,700 mile trip, similar to my motorycle treks. I hope he’s up to it, he still drives a Harley and the new place has a couple thousand acres so he’ll have space. He plays a decent guitar but some years ago he took a dislike to the younger crowd that shows up that never affected me. The Reb reports the lawn mower quit running so remind me to take the took kit next journey up there. Meanwhile, fix my own.

           It was five years ago today I got back from the hospital minus my beautiful Honda Rebel 450, shown here. I’ve not rode a bike on the highway since, but something tells me we are getting closer with the sidecar again. I hauled stuff out of the red shed and then set up the sawhorses for some work space. It was ideal weather but I moved fast since the rain’s always on the way. Shown here, I moved the new table saw inside the red shed. You can see along the perimeter that things inside are getting nice fixed up. This was the stage when the hillbilly crashed for a month that turned into nearly three months. Wonder what happened to the dude?

           This arrangement is just to keep the saw secure and dry, otherwise I worked outside a long time. Married guy yard work, you might say. Raking leaves, trim the lower branches, snap twigs and throw them in the city garbage can, which I pay for but never fill up. I ducked inside for coffee to find Bryne has sent some photos of his guitar work. He does not build guitars, rather he upgrades them as shown here. Most of the time, it is “lowering the action”, a big selling point for lead players. Get the strings as close to the frets as possible without any buzz.

           The blogworthy part is the photos themselves. Bryne never claimed to be a computer whiz, so he leaves his system with all the default settings. So, I receive monster pictures 4,000+ pixel on a side. You download them an Win puts them anywhere it pleases, in this case a folder that does not appear in the lists. So you open them in place and change them down to web size 640x480—but the originals are locked for editing.so yo go through the steps of saving them to your Pictures folder.
           ll told this 8 or 9 stage process takes more time than the results are worth. That does not include having to go back and delete copies that seem to appear by themselves when doing this. But don’t say anything to Bryne or you will be, guaranteed, the first person who said anything. Meaning he knows nobody else who does more than look at the pictures.

           The somebody spoils the hour by posting this link called marriage enhancements that autoplays scenes of a fat black women, fully clothed, but simulating sex postures with a male partner, also fully clothed but lying there. Apparently some people need to have lessons on these things. What I don’t see is when one is reduced to screwing middle-aged 300-pound African women how they think changing positions is going to enhance anything. By that stage, they are so desperate they’d screw the crack of dawn.

Picture of the day.
Backpacking in Canada.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here’s a closeup of why I call this plant the pistachio tree. From ground level these look like the real thing. It began to sprinkle later so I was in the work shed fixing a box. It was a nice-looking unit I built with the biscuit joiner but I never got that one right. The pieces kept sepaprating. So I took some strips of metal drywall corner bead and reinforced the corners. Now it looks like a small steamer trunk, but I’m putting plumbing tools in there which I can’t afford to replace, so it’s function before form.

           Hope for coolness tomorrow, I have another glitch in the old house wiring that means attic work. It’s that old cloth insulated brand, which still works but when there is an end-of-run light it wears out switches. The scooter was parked a week and won’t start, let’s look at that. The Reb reports the same with the gas lawn mover but I expected that. I’ve still not put my own on the bench. I’ve learned to match up the pallet lumber much nicer and I salvages the astro-turf from the mini-gold lumber. It’s ideal for the sawhorse padding and that is some kind of tough material. Shown here, I have a lot of it.

           These sawhorses got nicer with experience and I’m seriously taking a look at building them as a hobby. This would not be much anything new because except for the final assembly. I already clean and stack all but the roughest 2x4” pieces. I have enough used paint but some turn out naturally quite great-looking and if I sell any, one could really push the recycled lumber angle. Hey folks, do your bit, suddenly I’m a fan of climate change or something along those lines.

           I took a break when the church bells said 4:00PM and received news that the Queen has died. She must have been close to a hundred because she was around 30 when I was first old enough to remember seeing her on Canadian money. I’m no fan of heredity as a determinant of rank, but I think she did a good job all told. She did see more upheavals than most in a world that for her changed out of all recognition. Alas, she will be remembered as the Monarch under whom the waves of brown-skins took over their cities.
           Sad news, it is in many ways, and a reminder of my own mortality right when I need it least, you might say. The Blacks are already celebrating this “blow to white supremacy” which the MSM will completely ignore. The scary part to me is that that inbred creep Charles will now be King. He’s as stupid as they get.

           Sure enough, the scooter will not start, or shall we say it won’t stay running. Now we know it is the carburetor and those things should be replaced rather than repaired. Isn’t that something, 2022 and the millennials have not come up with a good, cheap, self-adjusting carburator that by default runs just fine. Instead, if you go to the motorcycleid, you will find listing for every part on the Yamaha 50cc Zuma—except the carburetor.

           And how about that reporter that walked through the crowd protesting fracking. He asked twenty people what fracking was an not one got it. For their benefit, I’ll give the quick version. Gas and oil are often trapped in layers of shale deep underground. Instead of drilling a well hoping to hit a big deposit, fracking takes advantage of the fact that shale is brittle and cracks easily. Drill one hole down, then turn the bit sideways through the layer of shale. Then pump high pressure fluid down until the shale develops cracks, which release the gas and oil. It’s old technology, at least 70 years old. It produces waste no more dangerous than other drilling. Some say it causes earthquakes, but folks, if single borehole eight inches in diameter can cause problems, you are living in a danger zone to begin with.
           It’s this technology that causes me to question why Israel has no oil. The entire middle east is on an ocean of oil except, we are told, Israel. I say the country has plenty of oil but are satisfied with keeping it in reserve. And if they had no oil, they would only need one super long fracking operation to steal it from their neighbors.

ADDENDUM
           That was Tennessee on the phone. I’ve more phone time per month now than in any year 1996 to 2018. “That was Tennessee” is now common in the spanse since then. And I just learned “spanse” is not a valid word. Expanse, maybe? Here’s one of the pictures Bryne sent. I’ve never seen frets being placed before but I imagine this is what it looks like.
           Do you remember the movie “Escape From New York”? I don’t, somehow I missed this old one. I’m an advocate of locating prisons far from civilization, as in the Alaska barrens. Prisons should not be located near cities, and released prisoners should not be allowed to live in cities or large towns. Just places with populations less than 3,000. Where everybody knows everybody and who is supposed to be where and doing what. I’m a half hour into the movie and only one familiar scene, the guy with the eyepatch.

           Gradually nearing the end of “The Yellow Admiral” and I’m getting along better because the war, in this case a naval blockade, is entering areas that I’ve studied. They discuss the possibility of the Admiral going to Patagonia to command a “surveying” vessel rather than risk being assigned to some shore duty. Ah, I know this war and locations, and the capture of the Cacafuego by a much smaller ship. The relative inactivity of sailing up and down the coast of France is boring. For history buffs, it was the beginning of the illegal practice by the British of intercepting all commerce by sealing off the entire coast, rather than only certain ships and only the ports as permitted by international law.
           The description of life at sea is priceless. How they run out of most food and have to buy a net full of fish from French fishermen under cover of fog. Or the time a whale decides to scrape off barnacles against the side of the ship. And mention of the medicinal use of rhubarb or how quick the doctors resort to opioid treatments, believing one of their primary chores was to calm the patient. The book otherwise remains slow and difficult reading, the improvement I mentioned is only because I’ve studied the places they discuss.

*except my family, or course.

Last Laugh