June 3, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 3, 2025, $56 check-cashing fee.
Five years ago today: June 3, 2021, Ron, the disappearing guitarist.
Nine years ago today: June 3, 2017, twice as thick.
Random years ago today: June 3, 2013, my most-horrible photo.

           Today it’s time to build the Fake box jig, or get some work done in that department. I’m motivated, in fact, the opposite. I awoke late with everything, including my coffee, wafting of caramel. I’ve hunted as best I can for a copyright of that “Fake” logo. Nor is it marked, so it is freeware far as I know. And instead, the whole day disappeared on me. I dropped downtown this morning to mail letters and it was game over. Tiredness hit me, hospital grade. I stopped at the Thrift long enough to buy this novelty, a metal “birdhouse” I wanted for decoration.

           And that was most of my day, so let me go on about it. The item is impressively well made for, I guess it was to me a garden or patio light. I would not have looked had it been plastic.

           That’s when fatigue set in, just as fast as you read this. From reasonably active to home again in five minutes, where I slept until 7:00PM. That’s 15 hours out of the past 24. I’m not as healthy as I’d hoped—but overall I’m fine. Trust me, being tired is a minor factor in the past few months.
           This wee house was meant to be full of flashing little lights, those LEDs you see everywhere nowadays. They must be robot built, as I remember when each “bulb” had a price tag. If I can, I’ll try to test the assembly later, but normally these consumer items are not reparable by us mere mortals.

           I could see into the box, it has a small microcontroller, a one-shot 4-pin transistor. It also had a solar cell over the chimney, which I salvaged, and a rechargeable “half-cell”, I call them. It’s a version of an AAA, but these are factory rejects used mostly for these novelties. That’s why they wear out so quickly. The cell is actually more than half-size and quite rare in America.

           Later, I did disassemble the electronics and tested it as not worth repairing. If there is a video, this is misleading, you cannot fix what is shown here, there are tiny soldering leads broken off inside the small plastic casing. All are now in the garbage as entire new units can be bought for a song.
           A song. No call from the guitar player today, though I have no reason to think he is not putting in effort. He knows well he needs only to “hang” his guitar work on my bass lines and we can be out there. The going rate is $150 for a duo and I sense he could really use the extra cash. As it stands, this new group is identical to my ancient trio, “Three Good Reasons”. That’s the one with Annie, the elephant poop lady, where everything on that stage except the other guy’s guitar and chord belonged to me. That’s where it stands again today.

Picture of the day.
Ft. Knox vault door.
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           While at the Thrift, I bumped into Wilford. It’s still old Florida so a good spot to check right after the first of the month. I got a lot of my tools there when I first moved to town. Wilford thinks I just need some art lessons to get fancy with the laser etcher. He does have art night and I was almost there last Monday. But the later the hour, the less my odds of having the energy. As for the hour, there is the new and repaired Westclox in my kitchen. Kind of lends a bit of class to what on a yacht would be a big kitchen.

           There is some gossip confirmed, but remember Wilford is much more keen on local whims and attitudes than I could ever be. Unless he wins the lotto, he’s here for the duration and has to keep everybody happy. So I was not surprised to learn Cathy is now managing the only craft brewery in town.

           You see, I like Cathy and we get along slightly standoffishly fine, doing great Karaoke duos. She does nothing actually wrong, but she ran the best local pub into the dirt, and she will do it again. Her background is big city clubs and this town cannot be made into a city. We went over the details before and she will do it again at the brewery, grab seven days business all onto her shift.
           Then the club becomes not only dependent on her to an unplanned degree, the club can no longer hire local staff because they don’t make any money. This club will take longer because it has a more upscale clientele, moneywise, but it starts all over again. I stress that I am not taking sides, only that I have seen this many times before. Another factor is she calls the entertainment and her husband runs a Karaoke show. My duo will never work there over a vast difference in good old musical philosophy. Cathy does not care a twit if the club develops a following except that it enhances her shift and income. Makes sense.

           Now, let me play bass for twenty minutes and fool around with “Hey Joe”. Can my pseudo-famous descending 4-octave walk-down bass lines be adapted to walk-ups? Non-pentatonic ascending scales are about the hardest thing to play on bass. Later, I don’t have it yet, but I played the correct notes several times while testing the run. That means I’ll get it. If you are non-musical, what happens is the popular “blues” scale is a pentatonic, which um, er, kind of mixes major and minor notes. What happens is the scales are played differently depending on whether your are ascending or descending.
           I know this sound from hearing the Reb sing and I don’t have it. That is, each time I play any new tune with such a passage, I have to relearn the scale for the correct sound. I got lucky, the ascending scale is a third on the bass slightly before or after the guitarist plays a fourth. So that’s how Hendrix did it. Most bassist would play both notes, that is a standard blues walk. It isn’t. All I need now is some time.
           My temperature temperature remains pretty constant, today’s reading was 96.6°F again. Nothing, that is, I don’t know what is wrong but that appears to be not it. I invested in an instant reader but will discontinue after the planned ten days, or at least cease recording it here. I am experiencing chills or cold spells which are not verified by these readings.

ADDENDUM
           Here is a sad reality for many folks and it is not going away. An item hard hit with Bidenflation is restaurant food. This is part of an ad that’s appeared in local mailboxes this week, running a shock through a lot of people. Meat loaf and burgers priced at what was an expensive fancy meal a couple years ago.
           I ignored the card until I heard people gabbing about it. Now I see it, how these ads are calling the $13.99 the new normal for burgers and breakfasts. Sort of, I did gripe myself, how they overcharged for coffee bringing each meal up to $20. Part of the shock is these are not gourmet meals at a swank restaurant. This is a local choke-n-puke, as we used to call upscale burger joints.
           My gas budget for Tennessee next trip is $380 and we are not 35 miles away from the Thai sushi place that had become a favorite. It was not unusual for to spend $60 taking the Reb out, but that was an altogether different dining experience than grabbing a sandwich downtown at noon. The good news is by late next month (July) I will have begun investing again. It’s a long story.

Last Laugh