One year ago today: September 12, 2022, beam anniversary coincidence.
Five years ago today: September 12, 2018, hot dog test run.
Nine years ago today: September 12, 2014, a busy day.
Random years ago today: September 12, 2008, at the shop.
The heat wave continues, let’s go build some boxes. And a beam. We can’t afford beams so we build them, this time for the table saw lean-to. In strange news, a band I played in at age 13 has moved in down the road in a tiny western town a few miles from an even older friend of mine. Gosh, they must be in their mid-70s by now, but it only gets this mention unless they respond to a letter I’ll send them later. The real news today is this photo, it’s a ladder lying across a couple of sawhorses than I happened to have handy. It [the ladder] was positioned her for repairs, I’m going to install it in the silo permanently. It turns out the birds love it, just what you see here. So don’t change nothing, but I need my ladder.
Bryne sends an e-mail, he is my guitar-playing friend from Texas who gets the un-redacted descriptions of my band-forming endeavors. He’s been convinced for years that I have such problems as he never has, so I listen to his opinions out of incredulity. He is comparing apples and oranges in a manner that keeps me in check. I surmise the way a guitar player looks at a situation that is 99% his own fault as par for this business. (It says something that Bryne does not care for me calling music a business.) You see, Bryne is joining a band, not forming one, and when he does, he is only concerned with other guitar players, that is, his own kind. The rest of the band are a necessary evil. If he mentions bass, it is because he gave it a try and found it easy, which means he was not really playing bass in my books.
Of course, such guitar players will always blame others for bands that don’t fly. Bryne does not factor in that he’s attending gronk jam sessions and/or playing along with established musicians playing tunes they mutually already know. When he does talk about bands he was in, he never mentions whether or not they lasted, but his vocabulary reveals none of them ever did.
Like so many guitarists however, he can quote years if not decades of this type of circular experience, band after band after band. When somebody like me comes along and puts a stop to it, he sees it as having problems you should not have and I say that is because he’s never done it. I would like know what would happen if he told one of his guitar buddies that he had one week to learn a certain song that he hates for the sake of the band.
The good news is he’s moving off the farm to a small town and joining yet another group to play at a club owned by his old farm neighbor. So that’s the oil and water of the band saga. Do you waste ten years going through bands that don’t fit or do you spend the ten years finding the right person before you put too much into it? Not only have I made my decision, but maintain I’m efficient at what I do. Bryne remains my major critic. And I admit I have issues with “clone” bands because I have the identical issues with clone people.
For the rest of the morning, we cleaned the undersink plumbing. This place has tubing older and nastier than Madonna. This is the aftermath, I declined to show pictures of the auger, snake, and finally compressed air to get back into the wall. What’s shown here is still kind of wet so it can wait until after Gunsmoke, starring James Arness as Marshall Matt Dillon. Well, for at least one or two minutes per hour, anyway.
Learning English.
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Some light work in the shed but I got to repairing a shelf and counter instead of the box I wanted. The joys of having no boss or schedule are legion. I don’t have the lumber for the beam, but it’s on the agenda. One of my college summer jobs was as a carpenter’s helper and I built many beams for house basements. I’m doing nothing that heavy duty, but the formula stuck with me.
Three 2x12” planks, crown up, overlap 50% and fastened with glue and 50 pounds of nails per beam. A lot of hammer work. I sunk that fence post yesterday in about 15 minutes and was expecting backlash, but I’ve been fine all day, not even my trick shoulder acted up. I may make the 2028 Olympics yet.
Emmylou Harris. I could not name one tune by her, nor any movie or broadacast
A quick break, let’s look at the news. It says here we are supposed to feel sorry for Hollywood writers on strike. Some are evicted and living in their cars but somehow, we don’t hear America crying out. There is malicious talk that some of them may have to go out and find real work. Which is what I was leading to, did you know I sunk another fence post today? I wonder if it is the super-hot weather because I’m feeling no side effects. Here is the post, I know it is a short table prop. But the effort of digging the hole two feet into the ground is identical to any size post so I’m pleased I could make the exertion. I will sleep like a lamb tonight.
What’s more, I seemed to have an easy time of moving the lumber and shifting things around to get the work area clear. That’s often more work that the chore in an existing situation. By 6:30PM we congregated for Gunsmoke. The episode was “The Gunrunners”, and had some mighty fine actors. A bit weak on the scripting, and how old Matt could gauge the size of the explosion without knowing how many kegs must remain a Hollywood secret.
