One year ago today: January 10, 2025, a two-man job.
Five years ago today: January 10, 2021, 41 years, at some point.
Nine years ago today: January 10, 2017, 5 – 10 days, you say.
Random years ago today: January 10, 2012, DNA spray.
I set out the ball feeder for the woodpeckers. They have to use claws to clutch the wire mesh, which I hope will block the squirrels. For reasons unknown, there were no birds at any of the feeders this morning. If I’m smart, I’ll spend the day in the shed. After reading it was mineral oil inside those electric radiators, I drained a dead one into a bucket. It yields a quart of pale yellowish liquid the consistency of thin syrup. Some years back in Tennessee, I built some wooden dividers for my unsuccessful beer caddy. I dug them out of the shed for the pattern, which I think could be adaptable to the ZBox.
I’m a convert to pneumatic tools, but they are encumbered by a hose. Also, changing fastener sizes is a slow-down. I have a small tool allowance that has me looking for a small electric brad nailer again. Something from Wal*Mart. There’s a picture of the fritzed compressor, you may recognize this from everything from fixing porches to fences in Tennessee.
This is the situation I was afraid of. All the emergency cash tied up and things going wrong. Both compressors and my core energy. My executor out west is not answering her phone, she may be in Mexico again. Hang on, we have an intruder. It’s another of those door-to-door flyer people. They know about yard alarms and will by-pass your mailbox, then double back. They probably wonder why I always know. Because my alarm is not set to the yard, but to the neighbor’s barking dogs.
What’s with the articles featuring “leftover women” and why do I like them. These are women around 40-ish who did not marry young and now have severe bitter things to say about dating men in the only age group that they can, that is men in their 40s and 50s. They are crazy because it is a dating scenario they created. They get nowhere trying to shame older men who date much younger women. Men who are unattractive tend to compensate for it, unattractive women kind of bitch a lot. If you stand back far enough, you can see the major thing men don’t like about older women is attitude.
I’ll confirm that, I will drop such women in a wink. No, it is not because I am intolerant. It is because I know there are women out there who don’t go sour when they can’t have things their own way. True, that is just my opinion formed by the sampling of women I meet, which harks back to the hundreds of women I met at the phone company. You’d have a tough go trying to say I was imagining things. Most women don’t even suspect the culprit is their attitude.
Sadly, the best local grocery outlet, the Sav-A-Lot on Hwy 60 is closing next week. In the immediate area, that leaves Publix and Dollar Tree and I can’t afford Publix. The remaining store is in Lake Wales, too far to be economical. And that sweetheart of a cashier will be gone. She likes me that way and I gather her marriage is not that solid, but it’s too late now. She likes the way I speak Spanish, apparently I say things like numbers with no accent. It’s just the way I learned.
Tobruk, today.
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The good news is the compressor is reparable, the bad news is I don’t have the tools to do it. Even those backwards pliers needed to remove e-washers are $20 a pair. The motor and piston assembly are fine, what broke was the strongest part of the machine, the drive shaft. The closeup shows it sheared off fairly clean at the junction. I need a compressor now, so I priced out the smallest size I’d get away with. The thing is, this type of damage is caused by overheating and that compressor was never handled roughly. Yet the broken part is the most internal of the internal parts.
Disturbing news of civilian deaths in Iran as protestors rage against forty years of Islamic rule. Hundreds dead, mostly young people. The big deal about the ICE shooting is withering fast. There is more objection to the police setup than the killing. And I agree, nobody has any business standing in front of a vehicle during a traffic stop. Doing so is a setup and Trump should put a stop to it. I’m broke but the backlog of things to do can keep me for months. A typo in a date field had me looking at some youTube videos from the 1960s.
The photos of 1960s women were laughable to me, especially the “sex symbols” of the day. Then, as now, I find the media tries to project what they think ought to be attractive instead of what really is. And that image is always tarnished by the failure of most men to get the truly great babes. These men never got any when it counted and it makes sense they would push the “matronly” style, it’s the best they could do.
Great personality was just an added bonus. Talent and ambition, well, those were elusive prizes. I was still in my teens when I learned once the sex was over, how boring 99% of women become. But you know, I also realized how one day I would miss that boredom over the brand that came later.
I’m still shocked at how poor I was in the 60s and 70s, I think what kept me even trying to get ahead was I made the simplest mistake possible. I did not believe others could possibly have so much and accomplish so little. I knew kids with cars and cameras and summer holidays, but they were so listlessly empty, there had to be a catch. There had to be a corresponding lack somewhere. No way could they have undreamt resources and still become nobodies.
This may have hit me harder just now because of talking with JZ, who sincerely believes he had it rough—as do many rich kids. They don’t grasp infrastructure and consequently neither recognize nor appreciate it in others. My auto insurance is a prime example, I’ll tell you the tale but update it to today’s dollars. Say car insurance is $100 per month for $20,000 coverage, the minimum. You could go to work and just pay it, but I knew about EFR, evidence of financial responsibility. I worked at the lumber mill until I had the bond money. When I was in my 30s, the law changed. You now had to buy the insurance—and that law is still in effect.
So instead, invest $20,000 so the interest is the $100 per month. Now you have the car insurance but you don’t have to work like a dog. Because you have infrastructure. But my point is the expense of that infrastructure. It cost 200 times as much as the return, ($20,000 invested for a $100 return), and most people cannot be expected to make such a sacrifice. Note, these are made-up numbers to illustrate a harsh reality. But where do you think the $28,000 came from that I lived on for 7 years after my heart attack and why I did not drive a car for nearly 13 years. Bingo!
ADDENDUM
Behind the scenes, I’ve consulted with all the people I trust concerning my declining condition. This blog makes it easy to follow the changes and the consensus is my aches and pains are normal and there is nothing I could have done to ward them off. Makes sense, but I’ve decided to once again try to slow down—and I feel I’m already operationally minimum as it is. I’m adding an extra 10GB to my data plan since I will never be a TV watcher. And expect more boxes. My other hobbies can’t match the exercise of puttering in the shed. Electronics, navigation, and playing bass at home are all done sitting down.
Other things I can do to slow it down are more reading and more photos [which] have become an integral part of my letters and blog. After Marion, I still write around six letters per month. The next few months is a grey area, since we don’t know what’s wrong. It’s midnight and I’m still watching 1960s videos. It cost a lot of money to be a hippie. The California pad, surfboards, bellbottoms, and those vans. They didn’t insure themselves.
