Friday, January 6, 2017

Harmonica And Strings Arrive

On a day that is forecast to be below freezing, the strings and harmonica have arrived.

Appendix To The Bitters Story
My particular bottle of bitters is holding less than an ounce of that liquid; .35 ounce of it, as a matter of fact, now that I have taken it out of its little burlap bag and inspected it more closely.

It is so either a sample size, or is an amount intended to be added to other drinks in order to add "a little bitterness" to them.

Thanking The Lidgleys Of London

I have gotten the parcel sent by the Lidgleys of London and have had it, as a matter of fact for closing in upon a week. I haven't gotten around to sending them a thank you e-mail, but, let this be the "public" version of it: Thanks for the Christmas parcel.
Obstacles such as being saddled with Howard's tablet as my only way to communicate and deciding not to attempt to write more than a few sentences on it, running in to computer room scheduling conflicts and just plumb forgetting to get to my e-mail other times have delayed me.

I'm just an e-mail procrastinator.

But, an avid blogger, so; the Lidgleys might just see this here before getting an e-mail. I don't want them wondering if I "ever" got it.

The Parcel

I was returning from the post office, after having sent off from there the portrait that I drew to my friend Jennifer in Aurora, Illinois, so there was a karmic element to the timing of being informed upon walking in that I had received a package.

There was an excellent pair of jeans, that I'm happy to say; fit me better than most of the other pairs of pants in my "exact" size that I own.

There seems to be a little bit of wiggle room in the interpretation of, say 31W 32L.

This owes, I'm sure, to the fact that there are more dimensions to pants than the circumference of the waist and the distance from the belt line to the bottom of the leg. There is a lot of other fabric to consider...
"Harmonica Break In Song" 1:59
There was a couple packs of Benson & Hedges cigarettes. These are probably the best tasting cigarettes in the world. They must seal them in a vacuum, that must be their secret, because they are so fresh.
The only other cigarettes in their class are American Spirit and Dunhill (made in Canada, I believe). Benson and Hedges, in this country are more than even American Spirits and, just a little less than Dunhill (which are probably hit with some kind of tariff; coming in from Canada, like they are).

Of course, I smoked the cigarettes already. I should have savored them more so I would still have one now...

There was a Starbucks gift card, which is branded with "London" on it, which makes me look like I'm a man of the world as I whip it out at the Canal Street location.

It's amusing to see a noticeable change come over the face of the barista, who might have thought that I was a low life street musician, but now considers that I might be a wealthy eccentric with the means to travel the globe who just chooses to look like a low life street musician.

Of course it could also cross her mind that I'm a low life street musician whom someone from London, here visiting, has given a Starbucks card which he had gotten in his home city -after I had tried to skeeze him for drinking money, of course...

The parcel had also, these vitamin B type of pills, designed for "energy" and they actually work...

And the 20 dollar bill that I found underneath everything worked just as well. The Lidgleys send crisp ones.
They are undoubtedly shipped to the London bank fresh off the presses at a mint here in the U.S.
Then the Lidgleys obtain one, being probably only the second persons, after the bank teller, to touch it. Then the send it right back to the U.S.A. where I become the third person that the bill has circulated to.
It would be funny if the thing was minted right down the street, here in New Orleans, as it did bear the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta logo, that they mint for.

Weather

It is raining and thundering outside. I have no cash and no cigarettes. 

3 comments:

  1. When I was a kid we used to call Benson & Hedges cigs "coffin nails" mainly because my friend's Mom smoked them, and she counted them too, so if we wanted to sneak some we had to buy our own ... luckily in the 70s any kid could buy cigs by using the magic words, "they're for my mom". Then all was OK. I think the damn Bennies might have cost something like a dollar a pack, when Kool menthols, the standard smoke where I grew up, were 50c.

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  2. That is funny; the next time the Walgreen's kid asks me for ID, which some of them seem to do automatically, I'm going to say "They're for my mom," just to see if he gets it; he probably won't, being a millennial, and all...
    Now that I think of it, B&H, when they ran ads in magazines when I was a kid, before it became against some new regulation to advertise something that is decimating the population, they played up the fact that the cigarettes were long, perhaps the first "100's" to hit the market...
    So, we were so focused upon the question of whether or not that was a "value" ('cause they are slightly thinner, if you look, and that might be the same amount of tobacco as a Marlboro) to be concerned with taste; plus, we were too young to be connoisseurs...
    Later in life, it became common to get a very stale pack of some brand that might have been sitting there for over a year on the shelf (we might sell maybe 2 or 3 packs of B&H per week...Mrs. Allen the lady that works at the bowling lane buys them...).
    You had to watch out for brands like Vantage, Viceroy, Lucky Strike, or any other brand which was a little more expensive...especially if they are from a little booth at a gas station that the sun warms up to almost 90 degrees in there some days and the guy has to bring his own little space heater from home on other days. Factor in cigarette packaging technology in those dark ages, and, forget about it...
    It's a shame, because Lucky Strikes probably taste great within a month of their creation.
    But, I was outside the bar up the street, which attracts a more sophisticated clientele, and a guy I was talking to, who already had American Spirits, offered to trade me 3 of them for a Benson & Hedges.
    "These are good," I said in the way of justifying my acceptance of such a steep premium..
    "Oh, I know what they are!" said the guy.

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  3. You're right on the idea of "100's". They were thinner. The package was longer, and thinner. I think the idea may have been they took a bit longer to smoke, but their being thinner would make them burn at a faster rate.

    Where I grew up everyone smoked Kools. It was surprising to find out, once I left for the Mainland US, that Kools are sort of a "ghetto" thing, and Marlboro's were the dominant brand.

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