October 4, 2025

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 4, 2024, $65 = $71 (inflation)
Five years ago today: October 4, 2020, in the trash.
Nine years ago today: October 4, 2016, out of Miami!
Random years ago today: October 4, 2018, blog standardization day.

           Up at 6:00, we are off to the pet blessing in an hour. I have included pets from out west, this should be a fun day. A coffee, a refull, and off to Punta Gorda, lunch is planned. I have the pet photos and Alaine’s mini-tool box in the van, hoping for some great photos. The trip is up to two hours, so we’ll find out who the shooter is. And give me time to assess the effect of Bidenflation on my situation. I know already that my core costs (see addendum) have ballooned from 33% of my pension to 55%.

           I’m a half-hour late getting away. While I have dropped my rule about short-sleeved shirts in church when it is over 85°F outside, I still require a tie. I have one nice blue shirt left and could not find a tie without some green in it. Took time to look and I was almost late. This policy does, at times, make me a bit overdressed in my group, but I don’t care. At 8:14AM we are away.

           The one time adequate margins were set, the traffic was so lite I arrived 45 minutes early. A chance to chat, but Alaine is the chairperson of the pet committee so no visiting until later at the fancy restaurant. Say, in that picture just now. That tray full of doggie toys and treats there. Doesn’t that look so familiar? I forget how many years this is now, but the ceremony is now streamlined and first dibs went to a blessing the pets not present. And a reading of the Rainbow Bridge.
           A new touch this year was the presence of small pet urns. Ours are in Tennessee, but pictures take their place. I could not locate a picture of Seven, but Sheba was with Sparkie, Sam, JeePee, Chooks, Lilly, and Chloe. Here’s the family portrait.

           Alaine and I are regulars and I am so, so bad at names and faces. But enough people remembered I took pictures that I was asked to take a number of portraits. The pet staff was a favorite. Those a cell phone photos, so unless they send any to Alaine, we won’t see them. The ceremony has come a long ways, they now have matching tees and the system is really getting efficient. We had the canopies down and packed in minutes.
           The order of pets is also better, they know to do the small and excitable first. Only one cat this year, which is unusual. But doggies galore. I finally met Boomer, who I’ve nicknamed Fluffy. This is the newest, still a puppy. If I didn’t mention, Snookie passed away several months ago. He’s the familiar tyke you see in the “PHOTO DELAYED” placeholder. Did you know he has a bass solo named after him? Called “Alaine & Snookie”, there is no practical way to upload MP3s to this blog. That’s okay, it was just a backing track and you can hear all the mistakes. But how many have even that named after them?

           On the radio driving home, I heard the stat that only 28% of Americans trust the mainstream media any more. That’s an all-time low. And that’s a peanut butter average, among Republicans only 8% believe the usual sources.

Picture of the day.
Miami Beach 1990.
(The pavilion is Penrod’s)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Tradition means the staff (and me, too) meet across the say for a brunch. Once again, I was the only male present but I’m used to it. By chance one lady mentioned her granddaughter had gone into biomedical engineering. It’s a career I might have chosen, had I know as teen such careers existed. She gets to actually build circuits. Design, test, and construct. At the phone place, once we isolated a problem, we just replace circuit cards in the racks until it started working again. The kitchen only serves fish & chips on Fridays.

           So, I picked the next closest thing, a breaded shrimp sandwich. To my surprise, it was an authentic Louisiana po’ boy. Not the gazillions of sandwiches with the same name, but the real thing like I have not had since 1984. Not battered shrimp, but breaded on a hoagie with only tomato, lettuce, and tartar sauce. Great fries, but the treat was the sandwich, I didn’t want it to end.
           That’s good eatin’, but it’s a 150-mile round trip and, with a coffee, $20. The King’s Den, but you have to argue with the robot to open the gate unless you let them photocopy your ID, which I won’t do. Start to back out, and they will open the gate. Another good thing about that restaurant is something unusual in Florida—they know real Americans like their coffee before, during, and after the meal. None of this aperitif nonsense. Yep, that sandwich, I was truly impressed.

           I have a few pet photos, check tomorrow. These are difficult subjects and many of the pets at the event are not used to thirty other dogs around at once. Also, as the pics are for Alaine, they are taken at the highest resolution on my equipment, something like 56k for stills on this unit. They cannot be edited on the camera memory, unless you want to wait five minutes per photo. The plan is to download them and work with copies, but the download took so long, I grabbed the bass and played until 10:25PM. Now I’m too whooped to start a big project like video editing.

           This being our only chance to visit in a year, Alaine borrowed a golf cart (the complex around the King’s Den is a golf course) so we had a tour of the super nice houses around the grounds. And a precious half-hour to visit, she knows of my aversion to driving in the dark, very sweet of her. We chatted about JZ for one simple reason, well known to the universe. He is damn stubborn about seeing a doctor when he knows darn well something is wrong. Well, this time I got a shocker. He often joked about things giving him a stroke.
           He wasn’t kidding this time. And there I was, egging him about travel and visiting. What a tough customer, all he said was he had a couple medical appointments. But, he was okay when I saw him on September 9, and did not land in the hospital until the 19th. However, he all manner of symptoms and I did say to him it sounded like a potential stroke. Okay, see this mini-clip? It was a joke, this was made from the tail end of this little ride as the camera battery went kaput. Hmmm, 500+ hits later, I guess it is kind of famous at that.
           Here’s a mine-treat for you. The golf cart trails are beautifully landscaped with little bridges. I wanted to photo one but my Panasonic battery died—after capturing just a few seconds of vide. I promptly tagged it “The Famous Gold Cart Visit”, certainly a first for us. Here’s this otherwise pretty useless video, which generated 528 hits, meaning somebody likes it, so it stays here.

ADDENDUM
           This curious calculation is something you’ve heard me call by many terms, such as “the cost of standing still”. It’s the opposite of disposable income, that is, income minus expenses. But most people only have rough ideas of those expenses beyond the fact they have a total. And that total for their month ahead is largely guesswork. Mine is not, I have a defined allocations for what accountants call fixed expenses and variable expenses. My fixed has plunged since I bout this place. It’s the variable expenses that are causing concern.
           Gasoline is a variable, the more you use, the more you pay. The price of gas to Nashville and back is the prime example. In 2017, it was $185.57. Today it averages $312.07. Numbers like this must be killing most people, but as usual they grin and bear it. Or put it on their credit cards. I put more faith in finding a job, but like what could they do? Wal*Mart greeter? For the record, there is little chance I would ever write for a living. Because most people do not realize that is a full-time job. And since it pays nothing until you win, it’s also a rich man’s job.

Last Laugh