What a sad thing this blog has become. Even a couple of years ago you got real posts, Now? I don’t know what this is.
It looks like I’m heading back to China at the end of September. It will be a quick trip but necessary. I was sick for most of the time I was there this spring, so I hope this trip is better. I vow I will be able to manage chop sticks before I go this time.
This will be my fifth visit to China I think. At this point the only foreign countries I’ve visited more are Canada (that hardly counts), Germany, and The Netherlands. I may have been to Mexico five times. I know four times for sure. It’s been a while and I am not confident but I think I’ve been to Germany six times and around 10-12 to the Netherlands.
Other than a couple of the trips to Mexico, the rest were all for business.
Anyway I will arrive on.Thursday afternoon and leave on Sunday evening so it will be tough on the body to adjust to the change in time zone (12 hour difference) and the 18- 20 hour travel time each way.
Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll complain about it some more before I leave.
So why do we need to give first time homeowners $25,000 to help buy a house when you can get a zero down FHA loan already?
More importantly, where is MY $25 grand? Why should Kamala take my money and give it to someone else? I could use a chunk of cash to pay on my mortgage.
Starting tomorrow my first novel Suburban Moon will be discounted in the ebook format. If you have not read it and want to give it a try, you can get a few hours of mediocre entertainment for less than a buck. You can even score FREE e-reader. Who doesn’t like free?
Leave a review once you finish. Please note, I’m a big boy and a tough review does not bother me.
What did you say?
Well, it is off topic but I suppose we could listen to some Friday music while you jump over to make your purchase.
I spent a bit on the road this week. I alternated between listening to podcasts and music as the boredom affected me. I like my car and it drives nice on the highway.
The boss says I need to think about my next company vehicle in the coming months. The lease on the Grsnd Cherokee is up on January. I have had a company car since 1989. This is the only company that lets me choose the vehicle. Usually, but not always, color is my only option. Rest assured I would never ever have chosen that crappy baby blue Taurus I had to drive for about five years in the past.
Yes, before you roll your eyes, I absolutely know how great it is to have a car supplied to me. It isn’t free, personal miles are expensive, but I can put wear and tear and miles on someone else’s car.
Not that you care about any of that.
You came for Friday music. I said you came for Friday music. Don’t argue with me. This is what was playing when I pulled in my driveway:
So the Biden/Harris government has been bragging for the past year that the economy is WAY better than us plebes believe. After all, they claim, they have added more jobs than any president in history.
Except it was a big fat lie. The labor department just dropped a giant “sorry about that” fart in the bread aisle and announced they over-estimated the new jobs by a mere 800,000 plus. That is a 28% reduction.
The last time there was an adjustment this big was back when Obama was president.
I’m late to the old blog this morning. I had the annual “it’s time to sign up for insurance and benefits” work meeting early this morning. As usual the meeting didn’t go well and remote users missed out on most of the content for technical reasons. I do on-line meetings multiple times a week without issue, HR needs to do it once or twice a year and screws it up every time. There is another meeting later this afternoon I will attend if my monthly sales meeting ends on time. That is a big IF.
We separated out the automotive sales group and industrial sales group monthly meetings earlier this year in an effort to shorten the meeting. Somehow the discussion still goes two plus hours. If the industrial meeting only goes two hours today I can still listen in on the benefits call. That will be three hours straight of on-line meetings.
Some days it is good to be me.
We had a great weekend despite dodging brief bouts of rain both Saturday and Sunday. We went to the granddaughter’s soccer game Saturday morning then to a concert Saturday night. We got wet, but so it goes. The concert was great. I am not sure why we don’t go to more shows. One of the better outdoor venues in the country is about 15 minutes from my house.
Sunday I mowed the lawn and generally lounged around.
I need to get a coffee refill — I’m off to the break room or what you probably call “the kitchen.”
We got married in June 1984. We spent the first night at the Hilton in downtown Indianapolis and then went to Gatlinburg for our honeymoon. If I remember right we were only there five days because that’s all the money we had. We stayed at the Holiday Inn up on the hill. I am pretty sure it is still there.
In those barely post dinosaur days, most venues had a live band as opposed to a DJ. There was a good band that served as the house band, at least that week. They played around the oool in the afternoons and in the club at night. One of the songs they routinely played in their set was this one:
I have always had a nostalgic feeling for the tune ever since.
I got a text yesterday from a number I did not recognize. The text asked “Guess who this is?”
Being me, I responded “A wrong number.”
Yes, I crack me up.
A few minutes later I was sent a picture of an attractive young lady.
I replied “Yep, wrong number.”
I blocked her.
It was for the best. I wouldn’t know what to do with something younger than my daughter. It was a scam anyway. The real caller was probably Ethel over at the nursing home looking to scam me for a few bucks. I have no illusions. I have seen both my reflection in the mirror and my bank balance.
I was sitting on the couch last night watching the Cubs lose yet another game when the idea for a good post plopped into my brain as if divinely inspired. Then I watched other drivel and slept and well, here we are. It is quite clear the inspiration slipped away into the place where all good ideas go.
I suppose the runaway post is sitting at some tropical bar surrounded by palm trees and the gentle sound of waves climbing the beach while drinking umbrella rum drinks along with the second half of my unfinished novel. I’m sure both are sharing a good laugh at my expense. “Look at his brain trying frantically to find us! Snort!”
“Order one of those frozen peach drinks!”
“No, I want a banana daiquiri.”
My vanished good ideas are assholes. I’m just sayin’. They always disappear when I need them most.
I picked up a package of thin boneless pork chops yesterday. I trimmed the fat and pounded them with a meat mallet even thinner. After I sprinkled them with salt and pepper I dredged them in a wash of eggs and milk I beat with a fork. I then coated the pork in Ritz Cracker crumbs. I covered the bottom of a big skillet with vegetable oil and after it was hot, fried up the breaded tenderloins. A pan of homemade Mac and cheese and a can of green beans made for a decent Sunday dinner.
After dinner I put the dishes into the dishwasher. The wife was outside messing with her flowers and I plopped in a chair on the be porch to read a bit in the perfect evening air. It was in the mid seventies with no humidity. This was not August weather for sure.
I surreptitiously checked out the wife as she bent over the flowers as the cicadas roared out their “I want sex” song in the maple tree.
When it started getting dark I washed up the pans and finished cleaning the kitchen. The wife was hanging up laundry when she walked over and gave me a kiss and said she loved me and it was a great Sunday.
There is a distinct fall-like feel to the air this morning. The sky is clear, but chilly for August. The weather readers say the high will only be in the upper seventies.
The youngest granddaughter has her first soccer game of the fall league this morning and with temps in the sixties I might need a sweatshirt.
I always have music playing in my head. Most of yesterday and last night it was this old favorite:
These days I wear headphones and listen to music while I mow the lawn. When I was a kid such a thing did not exist. I broke the tedium of mowing my grandma’s yard by “playing” music in my head and the intricate melodies and melodic structure of this song often kept me occupied.
Yes, my memory was better in those days, not only could I play back long musical pieces in my head, I could recite whole pages of books I read. I remember pretty well now, but the filing cabinets in my brain are stuffed with so much worthless crap that it takes longer to get access to what I need!
God blessed me with one gift: a better than average memory. My secret fear is that I will get a dementia type disease and it will all go away. Dementia and Alzheimer’s are the cruelest of diseases. I can think of nothing worse, mostly for my loved ones.
There was a thick branch in the yard yesterday. Its mottled appearance made it look just like a snake sunning in the grass (as viewed from an upstairs window).
Thankfully there are no wild pythons in Mudsock , Indiana.
Doubly thankful it was just a branch. I broke it in two and tossed it into the garbage can.
The area kids are back to school. The temperatures are lower than the normal August scorchers. NFL preseason games are started. Fall is rapidly approaching. It won’t be long before I’m complaining about taking leaves. On the bright side, perhaps one of the networks will debut something worth watching every week. There will be no post season baseball for the Cubs barring a winning streak of historic length. Again.
It is Thursday, I have faith I can hump it through yet another work week. I was talking with a buddy a few days ago. I admitted something aloud I had barely acknowledged myself; I think I could happily retire. Always before when I took a vacation I could not wait to get back to work. This time I’m having trouble getting motivated. This has never happened prior.
Of course retirement is no option at all unless I want to live in an old van down by the river. I suspect I will work until I die.
I’m up early this fine Monday morning. I don’t know why and it does not really matter. I’m up and that is the way it is.
It is back to work after an uneventful weekend. Friday evening we watched the grandgirls while their parents went to a concert. We went to so friends house on Saturday for a great afternoon and evening. Yesterday I mowed the yard. Yawn. I know. I woke up alive each morning, so there is that.
It occurs to me, once again I’ve fallen prey to the long-gone (and forgotten by most of you) Acidman’s advice and attempted to blog on yet another day, when I should have heeded what my mother admonished— if you don’t have anything to say don’t say anything.
I guess that is it. Have a great Monday.
Look at that, music released sometime within the past three decades.
The H Upmann Chairman’s Reserve cigar was manufactured in the late 1990s through the early 2000s. It was a light to medium body cigar, meaning it was not too strong.
At the time, it was priced on the higher end of the spectrum and was considered a good cigar.
During this period I used to travel to eastern North Carolina on a regular basis. I usually flew into Raleigh and drove over to Greenville to the headquarters of my main customer. Not too far out of my way I could visit one of the outposts of the JR Tobacco company.
JR had these giant stores that sold pretty much everything at a discount, including cigars. You could get everything from clothes to books to perfume. But the heart of the store was cigarettes and premium cigars.
I often made the trip to JRs during my layover. I flew in one day, spent the night and flew out the next evening.
During one of these trips I picked up a box of H Upmann Chairman’s Reserve. They came in a beautifully crafted cedar box. I still use the box today to store my cigar smoking paraphernalia — cutters, lighters, matches, a small ashtray. That is my box in the picture, a little scuffed and worn.
I believe I bought this box of cigars around 2002 or 2003.
I tell you this because I still have a few of these erstwhile smokes in my humidor. You see, if I really like a cigar or if they were moderately expensive, I don’t want to smoke them. I keep them, often opting to smoke a cheaper or less quality cigar. Yeah, I don’t know why.
Well today is the day. I am going to have one of these fine H Upmanns. I doubt they taste the same as they did more than 20 years ago. They have been stored loose with a range of other cigars and are bound to have picked up other flavors. Tobacco also changes flavor as it ages.
Still, it will be a good thing to smoke an ancient cigar. After I share one with my buddy, I think I will still have two of the Chairman’s Reserve left. Maybe I’ll try them again in another four or five years.
Less you think this is a one-off, I have several others that I have in my humidor for more than a decade. Yeah, I’ll tell you like I tell my wife, it’s none of your business how many cigars I have in my humidor(s). The answer is not enough. I need more.
Big storms rolled through over night. Thunder rattled the windows and I could hear heavy rain bouncing on the skylight in the master bathroom. Oh, wait, I forgot we are not supposed to say “Master” when referring to a bedroom or bath lest someone whose great, great, great granddaddy was a slave and they become triggered to think they are now enslaved or something. Yes, this is how stupid the world has become.
After the trash man came on Tuesday, I went to drag the bin back into place at the side of the house. The bottom and interior was crawling with maggots and the bin stunk like a dead critter in Hades. It was gross. I sprayed bug killer into the bin and slammed the lid. A few hours later I washed the darn thing out. There remains a lingering stink around the can.
I don’t know if it was a long-repressed memory, but the whole thing triggered me — triggered me into gagging. I blame my great great grandma who was an orphan and probably had to root through the trash of New York City to survive. I suddenly had a repressed imaginary memory of her life. Oh, the trauma!
I suggest we ban maggots from trash bins lest I get triggered again.
Sounds dumb, right?
They say music soothes the soul, so here we go with some Friday music:
A deep cut. Have a great day. Let’s work on that maggot thing, alright?
I once won 1,302 straight games of free cell. My current winning streak is 11.
I once had a sales territory in excess of $35,000,000 per year. I am responsible for about $20 million in my current job. No, there is no commission.
I have flown approximately 1,000 times in a commercial airplane. I have driven well over one million miles. I could not even guess at the number of nights I have spent in a hotel room.
I have been to 16 countries and 45 states. I am on my third passport.
I have stuck at least a hand into each of the Great Lakes.
The first two times I was ever up in an airplane I jumped out. On purpose. With a parachute. I would go again.
I love zip lining. The idea of bungee jumping terrifies me.
I am very afraid of snakes. Spiders are a close second.
I am an Eagle Scout.
I wrote and published a novel. It is not great, but I did it.
The mascot of my high school was the Hot Dogs. Seriously. My college was Little Giants. Both are pretty dumb nicknames.
My first car was a 1966 Chevy pickup truck. I paid $400 for it.
The first “big” concert I attended was the Doobie Brothers. I am going to see them again in a few weeks.
I have been a janitor, a worker in a ketchup factory, a roofer, a librarian, a management trainee in a plastics factory, customer service manager, shift supervisor, master scheduler, general foreman, and salesman.
Did I mention I once won 1,302 straight games of free cell?
