One year ago today: June 16, 2023, an excellent Florida day.
Five years ago today: June 16, 2019, 2x fast, 3x smart.
Nine years ago today: June 16, 2015, that project was fun.
Random years ago today: June 16, 2007, my last on-purpose steak.
Two hours, that’s twice as long as Tennessee, but I got the grass mowed. That’s just the areas visible from the street. Something is terribly wrong at the neighbor’s so I’ve been double-checking his cat feeders and noticed his front step is broken. Someone could easily have taken a heavy tumble so I got out the tools and made a permanent repair—but the whole staircase needs replacing. I borrowed the other neighbor’s big tractor for the lawn, setting the blade to the highest to be cautious. Even at high speed, I ran into the hot part of the day, made worse between the two buildings.
The 65-foot tree clean-up is about half done. This view shows the felled trunk across the foreground, now split in half showing the diameter. In the background is a barrow of pieces being carted to the burn barrel.
Sunday in Nowheresville, Florida. I live alone so the rule is to always let three people know of any travels or absent time. Since Tennessee entered the picture, my housekeeping is best described as “there appears to have been a struggle”. I know, old joke. I’ll tell you who should be nutigated. The dork who puts dry, unsalted raisins in trail mix. The profile is it’s a he, early 40s, college drop-out, married too young, hates the world and his job. Balding, closet alcholic, doesn’t know his wife is cheating, took a first year cost accounting course.
One of the first things you learn is the formula for mixing batches of dissimilar-priced ingredients. What? Ah, you didn’t read the last sentence last paragraph. I said cost accounting, not financial accounting. (Financial is easy, it doesn’t have to match any real-world situations.) Anyway, a typical question would be if you had cashews at $6 a pound, almonds at $3 a pound, and peanuts at $1 per pound, what ratio of each would you add together so the mixture costs $2 per pound. I can tell you right away, it would be mostly peanuts, which mimics real life.
The picture is today’s Washington Post caricature of President Trump. Their latest attack involves stoking concern among “undecided voters” that if Trump gets in he will never leave. They don’t explain how he’d manage that, plus he’ll be something like 82 when his term is over. The rule of thumb is the Leftists accuse other of what they are doing themselves says they’ve laid some groundwork of their own. That is, they will go berserk trying to make sure the same will be true of their own candidate gets Since the undecided by now are less than 4% of the vote, there’s no scare—unless the MSM can again play up that the race is nearly even. The 4% could tip the scales. But the mood out there shows Trump already has 65% and gaining on every arrest, trial, indictment, and rally. Now anyone had posted a similar pic for Biden, they’d likely be in jail by now.
That ugly Memphis bridge.
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Interesting. The new California tax-by-the-mile will also hit the owners of electric vehicles. Serves them right. The tax is to make up for revenue lost from lower gasoline sales and, as usual, is an increase much higher than the corresponding loss. This is Howie’s now repaired front stairs. The damage was the railings, which are untreated lumber in ground contact, so they are really for decoration. The broken step was second from the bottom. The tech name for the bad parts is the open stringer, that’s the zig-zag piece underneath that holds the stairs up. I you look closely, you may make out the clamps on the near end where another piece fell off during the repair and had to be glued back together.
Later in the day, Howie was home for a few minutes and came by to say thanks. It’s as I figured, him mom in the hospital. And it is dementia, the type that so many are coming down with. It’s not the gradual slide like before, but a sudden decline over just weeks or maybe months. Now you will never convince me it is not the diet. What else do so many have in common? It used to run in families, now it’s seemingly everywhere. Something tells me I’m going to be glad I quit eating a lot of processed food thirty years ago.
I will never buy another Samsung camera, but here
is an idea of the spread of lawn, you can just see the tires of my van in the distance. This is only the longest straight stretch of lawn, not the whole lawn. Now that the Reb has the electric, I’m wanting the old Honda mower. Howie’s about the best in neighbors but something tells me he’s not going to have a moment to himself in a long time
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Because another thing I know, in this age of word-processing, e-mail, and texting, which letters get read and which letters wind up on top of the refrigerator. Do you? If so, how so? Here’s a simple test if you know what it’s even about. What is the ratio of write to read time? That is, how long does it take a person to read what you have written? Long hand, the ratio is 6:1, that is, it takes six minutes to write a letter that the recipient will read in one minute. As for typing or word processing, that depends on your skill level.
By 2024 there are only two people remaining who get hand-written letters from me. The most common letter type has become the hybrid, and the most common recipient of a hybrid will be a non-computer person. This also means there is overlap, they get other formats as the situation warrants. But by far, most people on my list communicate by e-mail, and I do not count that as real letters. For the record, I have an e-mail addy used exclusively for personal “letters”, which average around 60 per week. These letters regularly include pictures and videos not posted on this blog. Like I said, they are personal.
The focus here is the hybrid letters, because they are the type most likely to be read. This is first-hand experience over how computers have changed correspondence and I’ve personally lived through it from the beginning. I have written at least 90 minutes per day, every day, for 45 years. The time is not a challenge, since I have not watched TV in longer than that. Around a third of my writing takes place in tandem with other activities. If Taylor is not in the coffee shop, I’ll fire off a letter. Same in a night club, you have no idea, repeat no idea, how many women I’ve met over this. (But never the right one yet, Taylor is saving the best for last.)
ADDENDUM
The blog has a mini-bloom. That’s whenever readership climbs to unexpected high levels. And this time the origin is Hong Kong. Only 4 people in all of Russia took a look, and only 2 in all of China. That’s the third one in the past twelve months. Maybe that’s how these things happen, I can certainly confirm there has been no slow steady rise that book authors consider a success.
