January 30, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 30, 2023, working on the silo.
Five years ago today: January 30, 2019, first visit, Mt. Juliet.
Nine years ago today: January 30, 2015, four attitude phases.
Random years ago today: January 30, 2001, a typical ‘calendar’ post.

           If you are reading this, chances are I’m on the return trip to Mulberry, FL. Thanks for visiting the most unique blog in the Universe, with no sports, and no television-level chit-chat. JZ figures, once A.I. really takes over and they turn it on the general population, it will root out millions of other blogs, all dependent on plagiarism, and this will be one of the few left standing. Have a good one.

           Travel days are a tricky write because it is difficult to pick which topics are tops for that day. Although we got stuffed to the gills last evening, this morning we were famished. Must be somethng they put in the food, y’think? Or just no ostrich when it was so anticipated. JZ cooked a huge breakfast because we are going to the Pinecrest library. There he is wearing that Korean army surplus shirt because it might look sunny, but she was cold out there.

           Sadly, the millennials have hit the library and censored most of my favorite sites. But I just laugh as the world they created is already coming back to haunt them, They themselves can only see what they are allowed to see. The preferred comeback to “Ok, Boomer” is “Ok, renter”. Yep, if you can’t afford a house, it is your great-grandmother’s fault. It would appear all one need do to mind-control these people is make them feel left out.
           This photo is a winner I don’t fathom. It was included in a batch of emails last weekend and eight replies came back congratulating me on a great job. You can see it is a toggle switch in the spot where there was a three-position dial. The pilot light used to indicate if the unit was plugged it, I changed one wire so it now shows (like here) that the switch is flipped on. The OFF written at the bottom was so I could see which way to install the switch in a mirror when I had to work behind the panel. Here you go, I’m glad so many of you like it.

           Remind me to take Peggy off my mailing list. She’s on the one that confirms I arrive safely at places and the list has never been purged. People I have not seen in twenty years know about Fuddrucker’s y’day and so does Peggy. Careful not to read me wrong, I do need reminders that although I successfully avoid any Peggys in my daily circles, people like Peggy are in the majority. It’s not wrong but it’s severe to say arrested development. She simply stopped looking at things except in the most simplistic ways at a very early stage in life. So almost anything, even if is something she has never seen before (like a singing bass soloist) all gets related not to what it means, but what it means to her. And her world is very small and inward-looking by comparison. I said by comparison.
           Well naturally, this reminds me of my family. Ten years after the fact, my family still wanted to know how I fooled the entire school board into thinking I got the highest marks. How did I dilude a whole town into thinking I could play the piano? What, they wanted to know, was my trick? When they come from that direction, telling them the truth is not going to help. These people view your ability to get things done as some sort of unfair advantage you take while they are sleeping.

           Coffee at the library is now $3.75 per cup so we skipped that. JZ is convinced WWIII is immenent and that it will be a repeat of WWII. I say war has changed. Military biggies like the US will bankrupt themselves by making their own weapons too expensive. The Brits lost an empire using half a million men at a time to fight jungle wars and Boer farmers. My prediction is the next war will be fought by cheap drones against expensive men & materiel. Why develop entire systems to sink aircraft carriers when you can build enough drones in a few weeks to overwhelm any defense system. I explained to JZ how we could, if we wanted, build a drone in my shed.
           He has no concept of drone wars. Drones don’t have to sink the ship, just damage it. American crews are so low quality they have to sail back stateside for even minor repairs and rumor is they can’t even reload their own missle tubes. It’s drones, baby. Drones that can heat-seak individual soldiers through brick walls and fly though air vents and any open hatch.

Picture of the day.
Snack time in Morocco.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           On the path back home, JZ wants a lift to the lumber yard to buy a screwdriver. His furnace appliance won’t keep the place warm. He’s never lived in Montana so can’t take any cold. Foolish me, I thought how long could it take to buy a screwdriver. He says the cheap one strip the bits and I say prove it, I have never seen that happen except on the odd powered driver. But hand tools? Never, I dared him to show me this impossibility. But one thing is a fact, the day of the $45 screwdriver set has arrived. There’s JZ at the rack noticing all the popular sizes and brands are sold out. Welcome to millennial ‘murica.

           I stopped at Freds and found out the phone mixup. It turns out all of us got new phones around the same time last year. The medical emergency that had me worried was them taking a neighbor to the hospital. I renewed my prescriptions and made an appointment for late March. The pharmacy knows me well enough to advance me if they know I have to leave for Tennessee. Once again I’m amazed by medical procedures that once took an hour are now a clip that goes on your finger for a minute. That left me enough time to drive over to Agt. M. Never made it, he lives in that complex of identical apartments in east Hallandale and they got painted. The visit was unplanned so I did not have the address, the new phone has no number, and I could not recognize the building.

           An hour later I was nearing Bayshore, named for the lack of bays and shores. I was hoofing it because of approaching darkness. Seems my getaway was delayed by of all things, a lousy screwdriver. That means taking Hwy 27, that long, lonely, empty stretch of middle Florida. What’s changed? The road is very under-used, it is in new condition. Yet it is being upgraded. Why? The shoulders are being widened and new electric signals at every rail crossing and intersection. Somebody somewhere has big plans for this road.

ADDENDUM
           Here’s dumb poem joke from so long ago, you might find a use for it again.

Oh John, please don’t stop here.
Oh John, please don’t stop.
Oh John, please don’t.
Oh John, please.
Oh John.
Oh.

Last Laugh

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