July 1, 2025

Yesteryear
One year ago today: July 1, 2024, remember the fence.
Five years ago today: July 1, 2020, advertising, the American Blight.
Nine years ago today: July 1, 2016, England’s going crazy.
Random years ago today: July 1, 2004, my bank balance.

           Looks like I got here just in time. It’s 9:30PM and I’m Tennessee. Thanks to a two-hour standstill on the freeway south of Dalton, GA, it was the last two hours driving in darkness. You know how much I love that. Here’s just the highlights. I left the cabin just after dawn, driving the beautiful KIA, what a treat. Most everything works. And it’s got a great sound system, allowing me to listen to my audiobooks. I’ll tell you what was wise, spending extra to get the alignment and tires balanced up to 88 mph. Crank up the sound, crank up the A/C, hit the cruise control and I was in Valdosta by 10:30AM.

           Here’s me following Tonio to the steak place. He’s not the owner of two boxes, one Z-box and the latest T-box. We went over the construction in some detail while catching up on the past 11 months. I reported the sad tale from the trailer court, about the $4,666 quote on the transmission and the months-long consequence of that. He’ still in the towing business, which I view as highly competitive.
           We stopped at Austin’s, a Georgia chain. And I opted for the steak burger upon learning it is ground from real steak trimmings. Tonio got himself a porterhouse this big. Here’s pictures of the huge portions. What? Gone? You must have blinked.

           Nothing else to report, I took the same beaten path, with the usual needless delays around Atlanta. I mentioned Dalton, where I’d normally stop, but traffic was blocked. A semi-trailer had caught fire south of town. No casualties just the center of the truck and it was off to the side of the road, no apparent reason to block all three lanes. I appreciate first responders, but that fire had been out for an hour, earning them the finger from me. Nobody was hurt, there were no ambulances, just the frame of a semi-trailer in the ditch and fifteen people standing around moving very slowly and ignoring the 23 miles of backed up traffic.

Picture of the day.
Hotel Lucine, Galveston
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           Did I say just in time? No coffee, no Carnation, no paper towels, and not even one beer in the fridge. She was not home, so I supposed she had the dog, but it turned out sleeping upstairs. Yep, folks, you know when you become furniture, the signs are everywhere. The only thing to greet me as a jar of holistic natural Feline Greats. That’s not a cup of coffee, it is some crystals a found and tried to fake a coffee. Coffee’s what I missed not stopping in Dalton and I was crank and desperate, so desperate that I poured this out and drank tea.

           She’s had company, see, so all my razors and coffee pods were gone. And there is a pet Mexican black snake in JeePee’s turtle home. However, Tennessee is great for my sleep patterns and I fell into a the first deep sleep in days. Zonked. Nothing to eat in the house except health food. I found a can of beets with sea salt. And that, folks, is what I got for my midnight snack. And Lillie, the cat, knowing I’d break down, got me to share a can of tuna. Beets and tuna, that was my welcome home.


           The dog finally came downstairs. Oh, wait, there is come good news. Later, when she got home and woke me up running the carpet sweeper over my chest for crumbs, I went upstairs as some of the mail was in the office. The point is, I went up and down the stairs with zero pain. Just like that, and I did find the missing $100. The bank I use treats each CD as a separate account and they move through their system at differing rates.
           Not only that, the company uses my gear and doesn’t remember to clean it. There was a crust in my coffee maker, took be fifteen minutes to clear. But not another cup of tea, Actually, I like tea but it does not have enough oomph. The neighbor reports the doggie is getting out of the fence again. Sigh, the handyman’s work is never done. But a carpet sweeper, this is the thanks I get? It’s a good thing I like playing bass a lot as I shudder to think other people’s destiny could be even less. Yep, drinking tea and eating beets. Never mind, get some sleep.

Last Laugh