One year ago today: October 18, 2024, mice will eat it.
Five years ago today: October 18, 2020, 90 dumpsters per day.
Nine years ago today: October 18, 2016, when media feels unsafe . . .
Random years ago today: October 18, 2014, bingo, Karaoke, etc..
Aha, a cool front has moved in. Let’s get under the house, you can check back later to see if I survived. Checking camper trailers for sale, this is looking well ahead to the late fall of 2026 and a two-month holiday. I’ve long convinced JZ that’s his best odds of meeting a good woman, but he remains leery of this form of adventure. You know about that, when we finally got to Naples one time (that was 17 years ago, I saw the flat tire as another adventure, where he sees it as misfortune and things gone wrong.
Let’s start with some fun. This may look, to the unblogged eye, like just another box. By now, some just know this box has “features”. Are you ready? Good, because this is all new to me. This is the “junk” box from the cedar that was too brittle (˂2% moisture). However, junk or not, can you see the improvement in the cut? This boards were all cut cross-wise on the dedicated chop saw, the length-wise (where needed) on the grey saw. Both saws are super-set to exactness for each dimension.
While the pieces are not planed, they have been “skimmed” to remove any corners where cup is most evident. The corners here are perfectly square, how I used to struggle with this, I don’t even want to remember. The fit is now watertight (I forgot a few boxes in the rain). The components are all visibly flat even though you can see how the lumber came from different sources, like the inside of the top lid. That’s old chicken coop lumber, by the way. And I cannot find my big paper slicer. How does on misplace something that size? Buy a cabin, you’ll find out.
Funny, innit, you could watch 99% of the on-line experts and none ever mention these things [detailed problems encountered during construction]. People on youTube are immune from lumber imperfections, it would seem. The grey saw sliced the lid, it has shown that it can effortlessly cut long pieces.
The bottom is a panel, to save weight. This box is destined to contain all my stray mircrophones and headphones. Yes, the panel is a very good fit because it was done by hand using trial & error. This brings us to the newest feature. In a first around here, the interior of this box was laser-measured to 11-7/16” long by exactly 8” wide. I have hopes for this, how nice it would be to make one cut per piece of wood. I want to try cutting wood-grain vinyl to cover that unfinished bottom you seen in the rightmost panel.
Still waiting for these “No King” protests to make any headlines and it is past noon. There was one live feed, in Chicago. It amounted to a couple ugly Jamaicans chanting anti-ICE and some smart aleck from Florida wondering why there were no pretty women because he thought the link was a Trump rally.
Just before noon, another crew has begun work on that strange house across the way. That’s the third crew in around four weeks, all interior work as the rest of the place is still boarded up solid. There are sounds of at least two machines, maybe one is a generator as the county is known to refuse service to condemned properties. The interior living space of that joint is twice my cabin, there were once three families living there. It’s a mystery to me. The work put into that place is now approaching the cost of bulldozing it and starting over.
Cup O Joy, Green Bay.
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Four hours. I had the floor up for that long and fitted one of the four pylons needed to get it level. Buy the usual situation prevailed, once I got the boards up, I ran the two new electric cables, one for the overhead heater I’ll need this winter. Then I ran the shoring timbers into place, the kitchen floor goes from two to four of them. The original pieces look okay and were fine in the rest of the house, but I never trusted that kithen.
Since I have to go downtown, I put the floorboards back down and decided to make a Karaoke trip of it later. Hey, who knows with Saturday Taylor is going to arrive and pick me out of the pack instantly. Until I return with those compression rings, I have no kitchen drain. Here’s a pick of the dismantled pieces. They never were cut right but I have reasons for just repairing them now [like I'm doing] rather than a permanent replacement. Note the blue bucket, that’s the one that overflowed.
In the end, Taylor did not show. I got into the old club at 8:00PM. It was dead, but I saw a few of the “new” regulars. That’s people who show up mostly weekends. They are aware something has gone wrong but don’t always connect that it is more involved than the recent change of players. The weekday business is gone and that bar cannot survive on just Saturday night Karaoke. The missing regulars have never liked recorded music.
The latest Karaoke lady is not a keeper. Too much disco-rap focused on one table of Latinas, wives night out. I stuck around and sang four tunes. Folsom, Boots, Spders, and Pirate. This brought the small crowd into focus. For reasons unknown, the Karaoke lady didn’t really care for someone besides herself working the room. When she handed me the mic, it was with a plastic sleeve, a prophylactic. Which after the first song, I began wearing as a clown nose. The only light part of the evening for most attendees.
Um, the club lost money tonight. I’m not singling out this club, rather a situation I’ve seen repeated. The place lost their clientele by the usual downfall route. Big bands to small bands to solo guitar to Karaoke to disk jockey to nothing. The solution is a small band, but the club, having lost money by now, will try to reverse the process. Worse, they start by hiring the cheapest. The two DJs last month, with their Cuba-Disco-Metal-Rap chased customers away. There is a juke box phase, but I don’t count it because it is a constant.
Thus, the club is beginning the long and slow climb back. They will eventually get to small bands and make money again. But they will fall prey to thinking if a small band brings cash, a bigger band will bring more. And once again conclude bands don’t make money, and the pendulum begins to swing back again. This cycle takes years, so I won’t be around to see it. Except for one table of Latina housewives, there were only seven people in for the Saturday night. Seven where it should have been seventy.
ADDENDUM
Last for today, my fan club lady was at Karoke. She’s had the operation with the burned nerve endings and reports it is temporary. I thought nerves could not regenerate. The thing is, while the club is again bringing in semi-country entertainment, the damage has been done. The atmosphere is gone and she stated her and her husband will not be coming out here any more.
