January 11, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 11, 2022, many birds.
Five years ago today: January 11, 2018, another quitter.
Nine years ago today: January 11, 2014, bingo.
Random years ago today: January 11, 2010, a quota of quarrelsome.

           It’s a perfect day following a cold night, so I got the gas chain saw out and sliced up the last of the logs in the front yard. About a ton of wood and an hour’s work. The saw, now a year old, behaves perfectly after routine maintenance. I’ll pile it out for firewood, it will be gone within a matter of hours. Here’s the finished work, it sure doesn’t look like a lot. I quit when the day got too hot. Now I have a front yard again. I also moved the small cactus plant further away from the door.

           Someone finally made a documentary on Amtrak that points out the problems that caused me to stop riding back in 2007. High prices, bad service, inconvenient times, lack of direct routes, poor station locations, and surly staff. For me, the clincher was refusal to sell me a window seat even on a mostly empty car. (That was the “family of one” argument.) I rode to see the countryside and they reserved window seats for families, in case any ever showed up, I suppose. It was neat to hear a 2021 video finally get around to saying something.
They had no solutions, just excuses for the problems. It seems to me if the majority of rail routes are losing money, they might consider making changes. These long empty trains that run at midnight might give way to day trips on shorter routes. If you want to ride in most places, you get one train a day. These rails go right through Winter Haven and you can see the cars are 90% empty. I recall they tripled the prices practically on the very day I had planned to see the country by train some thirty years earlier.
           I did not finish watching, as around half-way, the Amtrak spokespeople started getting into this blame COVID mode. People who still pretend the pandemic was real are not popular around here. And Biden wants to ban gas stoves because they cause heart attacks and sudden death. And insist on vanilla flavor, which comes from Madagascar. Not vanillin, which is made from Hindu cow poop. And “The Sopranos” came out today in 1999. And pro sports, who are now praying on the field again. This time for their lives. This just in, it is not prayer, but “a special moment of support”. Right.

           We have another round of are-we-alone chats from people who claim to know the universe. My take is we are not, that the universe is full of life. There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy and 350 billion known galaxies until the Webbscope finds more. The current estimate is that most stars have an average of ten planets. Let me see if I can write out the number of theoretical planets: 700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Seven hundred sextillion.
           British citizens must soon get a permit to drive between different areas of their city. The limit is 100 crossings per year, or a big fat ticket. They should instead let in another 6 million immigrants and see if that helps. Polls show Americans don’t think the Supreme Court is impartial, duh. (It’s purpose is to interpret the Constitution, not make people happy.) PsyPost, purveyor of the obvious, has found that working fewer hours makes people happier. Double-huh. And some people managed to be surprised that digital license plates can be tracked.

           I’m slowly polishing up the hot dog stand. It’s covered with the standard layer of Florida grimy dust. You can see some of the large pieces of lumber I scored in the foreground. The perfect weather means nothing is running and the silence out here is a marvel. Compared to our third-world cities, it’s almost eerie to hear nothing. Or a dog barking at least a half mile away. That’s five hours of labor today, I’m taking the evening off to watch movies, which reminds me, I’m selling my DVD collection.
           Hundreds of movies that I’ve never watched a second time. I paid a dollar each for them, sometimes more at Goodwill. As for retirement, hardly a bit of the relaxation part ever worked out.for me. A string of days to do nothing has not happened around here ever. For that matter, nor did I ever meet anyone who sat around all day. Hmmm, well, if I did, we never became friends. The Town & Country van has to go as well. Once these items sell along with the hotdog cart, I have nothing else of any substantive value around the yard. But I will have lots of tools and small lumber to keep me busy.

Picture of the day.
Antarctic krill.
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           In my scoop of $220 lumber for $38, I got three 2x12 that had a little bark. This was slated instantly for my door step. The lower panel shows the small cactus plant before the move and it’s big brother, now too large to move without hired help. I moved the table saw out into the yard and went to work on the van cabinet. Mostly, I cut more of my new lumber to make lips all around the higher shelves so things don’t fall off so easily. The day was too nice to work inside building shelves.

           My guitar player was in touch, he does not realize the importance of communication or he is naturally reticent. This struck me odd, as he was wide-eyed when he heard the combination of bass and rhythm. A real eye-opener, or is it ear-opener, you might say. They were cautious telling him he had COVID as the tests are known to be unreliable. Pneumonia they will commit to and his voice is shot. I assured him that is not a barrier to progress. And that versatility is another commodity in very short local supply. Myself, I need the odd reinforcement as I put in around three hours learning each song.

           I spent more time than intended on that van cabinet. In the process I discovered I don’t have quite the right tools to build a panel for the Yeti battery. It rests in the back of the van but I’ve run a pair of cables up to the space beside the driver. Where I can access all my travel gadgets and rechargers, really it’s the only convenient way to do this. Put any of that in the back out of reach and you have to park to get at it, always fun in the rain or cold.
           There’s emerged a problem with the laundry deck. It is covered and in a sheltered part of the yard. But it fills up with dead leaves and twigs, sometime six inches deep. This debris has to get past the fence, through the trees, and them somehow rise up nearly a foot to get even up to deck level. It must be scooped out with a shovel. Try to sweep it and it will break your broom handle.

           I finished “Butcher’s Moon”, the title was more creative than the ending. A gang-land shootout. They take over the alarm company and send the cops on a wild goose chase. Then proceed to take on the local crime syndicate and bag a quarter-million in the process. This was back when that was big money. More interesting was a boring dude unboxing a small pickup truck that sells for $2,000. It has power windows and A/C and is half the size you’d need. But the price is right. No link, look it up on your own.
           After all these years I never learned the right way to play “Walk The Line”. It’s originally in F, a key that’s not a favorite. Johnny, however, displays his genius for non-standard progressions and distinctive simple picking patterns. After delving into the tune, I see there is no bass line, but a guitar line that the new guy probably knows. That creates a conflict. I can’t play rhythm to that song and anything else is stealing a lick he probably spent major time on. I said t myself, how do I know I can’t play rhythm on it. I’m about to try.

ADDENDUM
           Caltier. No development other than another $650 transferred in last Wednesday or so. They still take their time confirming the transaction at their end. Their blurb says five days, which now looks like five working days, not including the day of receipt and day of application. That’s seven working days, or make it ten days for a each purchase. Soon as it clears, I’ve got another $1,500 lined up. That nears the limit of what I want to declare on their silly form.
           There’s more to this. I walk the deposits between banks, so I have to content with ATM wtthdrawal limits, federal reporting laws, and that annoying $500 limit on some cash deposits unless you go into the bank in person. Bottom line? In our wonder age of high-speed computers, investing even a measly $5,000 takes more than twice as long as it did back when you mailed in.

           I watched a documentary on Whittle, the pioneer of the British jet engine. I was not surprised to learn as a child he had access to a completely equipped machine shop and while still in school, enough money to build 1/4 scale working models of the era’s military aircraft. The inadequacy of piston engines was well known. I was hoping to learn where he got his inspiration but he says himself he didn’t. He’d considered putting a prop engine inside a tube. Then he realized he could use the hot exhaust to drive a turbine.
           When I was around eight, I read the theory of these engines and mistakenly thought the air rushing into the front was heated and shot out the back. It made sense to me, so I never looked further. Finally, I learned what those tubes around the outside of his famous prototype were all about. They are a series of combustion chambers, this now makes good sense to me, they are essentially a bank of blowtorches.

Last Laugh