Drying Out

• Pieces Falling Into Place
• A Week Since I Drank
• To Play More Hours Or Get A Job Still The Looming Choice
  

The maintenance guy came and unplugged the drain of my air conditioner in an operation using a "shop vac" which I could have done myself, 5 weeks ago. He gave me the tired old spiel about not turning off the valve that makes water course through the unit; and makes a lot of noise. Trying to blame the situation on someone else seems to be the knee-jerk reaction of an entire culture of people. I know that, if I turn the water flow off and then the unit tries to run, it could burn out the pump; and so I shut the entire unit off when I do so. Try explaining that to someone who's knowledge about the units is limited to "If you turn the valve off, you will burn the pump out. This is the same guy who at first told me that the puddle of water between the rug and the unit was "coming from the rug." How the rug was getting wet, was not explained. Now Harold doesn't have to leap a puddle then walk across an empty shelf of a bookcase and then jump from there to the bed to avoid getting his paws wet every time.

I had placed the keyboard in a spot where he had to walk over it every time, so as to make his trips back and forth from his food dish to the bed musical, at least.

What amazes me is how the staff here have been throwing "narratives" at me: "It's from the rain" "Um, it started during the drought..."

"It's from a leaking unit in the apartment above you"
"Um, that guy got evicted a month ago..."

"It's coming from your wet rug" (that one speaks for itself).
And then there was Jr. telling me I needed to cut a hole in a certain spot in the wall and pour bleach down a certain hose.

At one point the new assistant building manager, a masked up heavy-set woman of color, whom I have seen around lunch time, waddling from her car into the building, holding a large bag of take-out food, overheard me complaining about the situation to the person sitting at the front desk and claimed that the problem had already been fixed (and so, I was lying, basically?).
Were these people trying to avoid having to do any work by insisting that there was no problem, and that the water that was soaking my shoes as I walked around my apartment was not there because they said it wasn't? That is some kind of "critical thinking" taken to the extreme.

I've decided to write my own "narrative."

I could have resorted to contacting the Housing Authority and mentioned the magic word "mold" to them, whereupon the staff may have had to suspend their disbelief that there was an actual problem, then do something. But, I bend over backwards to not be a thorn in their sides. There are mentally ill residents that they have to deal with on almost a daily basis; who threaten to withhold their rent payments over every little issue. The convenience to them of having that as extra spending money might also be a factor in their grievances.

Keeping Fit

Every time you bend over to pick up a cigarette snipe, you are, in effect doing a calisthenic, equivalent to the canonical bending over and touching the toes.

I would argue that doing 20 or so of them each morning, say, would help keep a person more flexible and having slightly better blood flow, to the brain, perhaps.

Today was a day when I felt like if I had gotten hit by a car and banged my head on something, it wouldn't faze me much, and the shock would probably shake up my brain and dislodge a small tumor enough so that my, blood, oxygenated through practicing the Wim Hof breathing exercises, could transport the right cancer fighting agents to the site and dissolve the thing...

Maybe there were nano bots put in me, through the Covid 19 vaccine that in control of my immune system now and are doing a stellar job. That would be one magnificent benefit of the jabs, but one that poor Fauci wouldn't be able to advertise, due to potential public outcry over having tiny little robots injected into the bloodstream. Maybe it's for our own good that the nano bot component was kept under wraps and, in a few years, Fauci is going to go on everybody's phones (pausing automatically what they might have been doing) and make a speech, drawing people's attention to the fact that there had been no disease at all, since 2020; then produce statistics, maybe have doctors speak; and then lastly Biden will read to every U.S. citizen who has their phone on: "By now it has become undeniable that cancer and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and sickle cell anemia; and a host of other diseases; all diseases known to mankind, have been eradicated in almost 80% of the world's population!"

He would then go on to explain that, during such an emergency as the pandemic, he had to make a gutsy decision upon whether or not to divulge the presence of the nano bots to the public (and perhaps spook them away from getting the, profitable to the big drug companies but life-saving shot.

"What they don't know can't hurt them," I said...

Oh, wait...I never got the shots...

I was out sniping and wound up running into a Jamaican looking guy of probably about 19, who had dred locks and a blunt of weed going when he pulled up near where I had just picked up a snipe off the sidewalk.

He extended the blunt towards me. I wondered if he was giving me the rest of it (then going into the store we were at; perhaps not wanting it in his pocket smelling the whole store up like a blunt). In that case, I would have just feigned taking a hit, while he walked away, then put it out and saved it as a tuning up bud at the Lilly Pad, perhaps.

But, he was just offering one hit -it was kind of big and only about half smoked, after all.

He said that he could see (from me having picked up the snipe) that I was kind of struggling -I forget the exact phrase he used.

I then kind of defended myself by telling him that I took all the snipes home, unrolled them into a pile of tobacco on the coffee table, then rolled them back up "So I don't have to put my mouth on them..."

He lit up (excuse the pun) somewhat, and said that he used to do the same thing. I kind of felt a rapport with him in that moment; and started to daydream a bit, as the hit of the kind bud coursed through my veins and started finding the capillaries in my brain; about when I'm sitting on my couch at home and thinking about the same issues and how the only difference was that I was in front of the Goodwill Store and not on my couch; and there was a young Jamaican guy, who could probably whip me in a fight but not kill me; whom I had established a rapport with.

Then, I guess I further defended myself by adding that I planned it (my nicotine addiction) to be a transitory thing. "I just don't see me being an 80 year old guy, smoking a cigarette." I was using some of that New Age type of visualization whereby you envision a future then align yourself with it and bring it to pass.

The Jamaican kid, who had a lot of stuff like jewelry and things ties around him and hanging from his belt then said something was "like crack." It might have been the sugary cereal that I mentioned, when telling him that I hadn't gotten drunk or smoked crack for something like 2 weeks, and added, but I started eating the f*** out of sugary cereal.

"I think addicts have to have something to be addicted to, and if they stop one thing, they just pick up something else..." I said, putting those 9 credit hours of Psychology that I absorbed at Fitchburg State College, back in 1980, to use.

He then told me about a close relative to his who had been turned on by his uncle to crack at the age of 7. He said the guy finally managed to kick the addiction when he was in his 20's (By the way, I shudder to think of the uncle's motives for getting a 7 year old boy high, but that's perhaps for another blog post) but then, after only having quit for a few months, had some kind of mental braekdown, and started smoking it again.

I then told him about how my father had smoked a pack a day, but had quit after the birth of my younger brother, using that as a motivation to want to live longer, type of thing; but then had started back up again after the same brother was rushed to the hospital with about a 50% chance of surviving the spinal meningitis that he came down with, out of the blue*, and I think the doctors added; a 40% chance of surviving and being "perfectly normal." I think they had stopped short of making that "Not mentally retarded," as that was the primary danger of allowing the virus to go from the spine to the brain, type of thing (they were warned that the kid might have intense nightmares while still in a fevered state, while the antibiotics that they injected in his spine were at work.

But, it was sitting there in the waiting room, wondering if his son was going to live or die, that he wound up smoking a cigarette; then another.

The Jamaican kids said something about how "That's when it (addiction) gets you; when things are getting real (serious)." 

He had dropped his shoulders and his head and seemed to actually be dejected, or maybe dismayed, but then instantly brightened up from night to day when I added: "He quit again right after they said the kid came through and would be perfectly normal..."

So, that was my conversation with a young Jamaican man on a bike in front of the Goodwill Store.

Oh, I also had somewhere squeezed in the back story that, when my parents were leaving for the hospital with my dazed looking little brother over my dad's shoulder, my mom had asked me to water some raspberry plants that she had recently planted by our back fence; and then had begun to cry a bit.

"I was thinking that she was about to say something like: '...so they don't die," and had started crying because of that.

The Jamaican kid offered that she hadn't wanted "everything around her" to die; as if my little brother's death would have been bad enough; but the raspberry bushes, too, would be too much.

OK, so that was my conversation with the young guy on a bike who gave me a hit off his blunt...

I then rode home, wondering if besides asteroids and other objects with mass that might impact the earth, which scientists are keeping a look out for, there are other things out there, like huge thought clouds that can actually blow through the earth; invisible to all of the measuring instruments we have developed so far, but real. Like little balls of energy that, if they hit you; you will have them; as far as people have thoughts...

A Turd's Eye View

I was up "at the crack of dawn," and heard right away, the sounds of some of my neighbors, still up, smoking crack, at dawn.

I immediately pressed "play" on my SMPlayer, to hear what I am considering weaving into the tapestry of my "morning routine," as a morning song; an "up and at 'em" kind of little ditty to get the blood flowing:

I will have to ask my friend, Jacob, to use an app he has which, for lack of knowing the name of, I will refer to as his "Siri, what song is this?" application. That might help satisfy my curiosity about what this song is and where it came from. From there, the reason it's in my music folder might unfold.
I am not ruling out that it landed there through some amazing coincidence whereby the universe had selected the perfect wake-up-song-to-start-the-day-with for me, and then had drawn my attention to it after I had aligned myself with the positive energy that provides such things to those who are on the right path in life...

Of course it would be ironically hilarious if the translation of the song's title, which sounds very French to my ears, turns out to be something like "Life Is Futile, Just Give Up." The melody could conceivably fit that sentiment, come to think of it. There is a wistfulness to it that suggests it was written during a time of war.

A Turd's Eye View

So, yesterday, my lighter died, and I didn't have any matches. Matches seem to be becoming a relic of the past. Maybe the effort of having to strike them each time you light up a cigarette is too much to ask of the GenZ-ers. Maybe the sulfur that goes into them has increased in price to a point prohibitive of them being given away, like used to be done in motels and bars. Maybe the Bic lighter people have lobbied Congress to regulate them on the grounds of them being "dangerous," (despite the "Close cover before striking!" warnings that used to be on every book of them). 

So, I didn't even bother to go into the corner bar, The Holy Ground, to ask them if they gave away free Holy Ground matches -I just went past there, along my "sniping" route on my bike, looking for half smoked cigarettes on the ground in certain key spots. I would just have to wait until getting home to light them off my stove (since I'm also out of candles; a dereliction of hurricane preparedness, to be sure).

I had only made it a little bit past The Holy Ground, which showed evidence of having had its grounds swept of all snipes (there used to work there a bartender who would come out brandishing a baseball bat and yelling: "Get out of there!" at the sight of anyone picking snipes out of the ashtrays in front of the place. Maybe he is working there again, and has swapped his bat for a broom...)

There is a whole essay I could write about the cultural conditions that shaped the psychology of that bartender [and the rest of his ilk] but that might be the subject of another blog post.

Except to say that: I think it stemmed from his having had to work long hours at the bar just make ends meet; and he probably deemed the American Spirits cigarettes ($9 a pack) that he was thus able to afford as being one of the consolations his miserable life provided. And to see "some homeless guy," [barely distinguishable from "some guy from Sacred Heart Apartments] just reaching into an ashtray to collect the same tobacco that he has to pour drinks and change TV channels for; ((and doing so right in front of him!)) was enough to spur him to come out of the place, swinging for the fences) but, again, that might be a whole other blog post...

Ester From Israel

Just 100 feet beyond The Holy Ground bar, where I hadn't even bothered to ask for a book of matches, I espied my friend Ester coming my way along the sidewalk.

Ester is from Israel. I met her in the Quarter, where she works at a cigar shop. 

She motioned me to stop, and in her broken English asked me if I knew of any good Social Security Disability attorneys. She has a "hard working" friend, who has recently become injured or ill, and he needs to speak to a disability lawyer. "It's emergency," she said.

She had correctly assumed that, living at Sacred Heart Apartments, I would know people who know the inside scoop on all things related to that specifically, and money-for-nothing, in general...

I told her that I indeed had had certain attorneys recommended to me by well meaning friends who were trying to help me negotiate the path to getting 800+ dollars every month -you know, because the water circulating through my air conditioning unit has started to articulate phrases in English to me, that are discernible above the gurgling and hissing; things like: "Hissss-strangle-gurgle-gurgle Jackie in A -hiss- 109 -gurgle-gurgle- do it, hiss hiss strangurgle-her-gle-gurgle-hiss...ring her neck, glug-glug...gurgle!!"

I told Ester that, after I got home from the grocery store (my sniping) run, I would ask my friend the name of the attorney again and would call her. She said she was going to be working that evening at the Nawlin's Cigar and Coffee place.

"Call me any time after 5, this is emergency, please!" 

Then, reaching into her pocket book she said: "Here is number," and then pulled out a nice...wait for it... book of matches with the name of the business and the phone number on it (just no warning about closing the cover before striking).

That was a couple days ago, and I am proud to say that I followed through on that and placed a call to her around 7 p.m. "Oh, I thought you forgot," she said.

This morning, I acquired a lighter in a similar manner that would warrant another 500 word story to describe but which was equally serendipitous and also seemed to be a reward for being on the right path.

Maybe for having gotten up at the crack of dawn, listened to the morning wake up song, and with it still ringing in my head, gone for a walk.

It's been years since I have started a day like that; it reminded me of Army basic training, when the whole platoon was aroused at 4 a.m by a drill sergeant clanging two Wheeling Steel trash can lids together like the cymbalist in a marching band, yelling something like: "You've got 5 minutes to be out front in formation, maggots, and God help you if I can't see my pretty face looking up at me from the toes of your boots; now, move it, you pathetic worms!!" And the day would start with a quarter mile march to the mess hall, similar to the walk I took to where I found the lighter. 

New recruits might still receive that treatment today, except, instead of "Wheeling Steel," the trash can lids now probably say "made in China," and "God" would, of course been struck from her stricture. And she probably would have been born a biological male....and, instead of the enemy being painted as the Russian Army or, in my day, the North Vietnamese Army, the focus might be upon "the enemy within," with the invective given that "If you suspect that someone in this platoon might have voted for Trump, then bring your concerns to me in private, and the Army will handle it! -type of thing...

 Oh, yeah...

A Toilet's Eye View

Today is the day that they just might come and fix the leak that is coming from a stopped up drain behind my talking air conditioner.

Seen in the photo is the fan that appeared at my door about a week ago, delivered by the maintenance guy after I had fallen asleep while pondering where I might acquire a powerful fan to blow across my sopping wet rug.

The foreground shows how I have slid broom handles under the rug to prop it up so that air can get under it. There is no telling how much damage to the hardwood floor has occurred over the past month or so, since the water started coming out from under the wall by the air conditioner. There is a squishy sound with every footfall on the rug now.

There is the laptop, playing the morning wake up song, and the flash from my phone's camera seen in the mirror, obfuscating the image of me sitting on the toilet that was there before the flash went off. It was 6:06 a.m., Wednesday August 17th; and I have a feeling that today is the day that the Heating and Air guys will come in and probably just remove a hose and blow it out, then replace it and tell me; "It should drain now.."

Putting my life together, slowly, but surely...

After almost a month of sloshing through a small pond just to go to the bathroom. I wonder if I should talk to attorney Greenbaum about benefits available to "mold victims."

I've gotten to the blog post today -check- and now must move on, before succumbing to the temptation to ramble on about the jigsaw puzzle, or the music projects I now need to get to; after cleaning the kitchen and doing the Wim Hof breathing method...

The End Of Busking For Cat Food And Toilet Paper

 

Guillaume Dufay Day

So, I'm getting to the blog, for at least 15 minutes. The problem I was having, well, there were several; but the one I am trying to tackle is avoiding spending 15 hours doing one particular thing on a given day, at the expense of the rest of the 24 or so projects that I have going.
The trick, I am finding, is to not do something until becoming tired or it, both literally and figuratively -to stop an activity and switch to another while still engrossed in the former.
This could be, for example, marking my place in a book I'm reading, despite being dying to find out what happens next; and saving the book as something to look forward to the next day. The alternative would be to decide to devote the whole day to reading the whole book, while the kitchen goes uncleaned, the trash not taken out, no laundry done, etc.

I'm listening to medieval music, but resisting the urge to load 15 hours of it into my player and survey a few centuries of it "in one sitting."

I've put a few pieces in the jigsaw puzzle, resisting the temptation to spend the whole morning on that (I've gotten the thing about 75% done, and that is when the pieces become easier to fit, on kind of an exponential curve) and finish the thing by about noon.

But, then I wouldn't have washed a few shirts, washed up and shaved, cleaned the kitchen, taken the trash can out to empty it and give it a good scrubbing with Comet™ and a toilet brush, etc.

This is how things can pile up and become overwhelming, adding stress to life. It's funny how Jordan Peterson's #1 rule (out of 12) for life is to get up and make your bed every morning. He advises to only compare yourself to the way you were the day before, rather than the way someone else is. Make incremental improvements and solidify them into a routine.

That also brings to mind my old friend and traveling mate, Howard, whom I used to chide for being so set in his ways and even had a song about him that started:

Up at six o' clock he dons his socks and off he walks;

in a stupor

Coffee and the morning news, then off to the Jack-In-The-Box

to use the pooper.

Yeah, It's Howard's morning routine...Howards morning routine 

Well, I've gotten in an hour of medieval music...

I guess it's time to shut that off and leave myself hanging, as far as what came out in the next century...
I suppose I can say that I've gotten my hour of blogging in, too. And it's not even 10:30 a.m. Maybe I can become productive, yet.
Next comes 35 minutes of Wim Hof breathing exercises, then off to the Winn Dixie, where I might seek out their "hiring manager" to talk about this Great Labor Shortage that we are supposedly in, and see if I can get hired there. That wouldn't be the end of busking, but it might be the end of busking for cat food and toilet paper...

Close Enough For A Tour Guide At The Music Circus, I Guess...

 

The South Shore Music Circus

Cohasett, Massachusetts, was the latest tour stop for Lyle Lovett and his Large Band.

The backbone of Lyle's band are the members of what used to be referred to as The Section.

Leland Sklar, the bassist, has been posting videos that he has shot at each of the tour stops; mostly of him walking around the venue and surrounding area, and pointing out things.

Leland Bruce "Lee" Sklar is an American bassist and session musician. He was a member of the Los Angeles-based instrumental group The Section, who served as the de facto house band of Asylum Records and were one of the progenitors of the soft rock sound prevalent on top-40 radio in the 1970s and 1980s.Wikipedia 

Unless you lived under a rock, or are under the age of 20, you have heard Leland's bass lines. 

There have been songs that I have liked mostly because of the bass parts, ("Running On Empty," by Jackson Browne; "It Keeps You Running," by The Doobie Brothers, to name just two...) and, come to find out, those parts, and countless others, were played by Mr. Sklar. 

I guess just about all the hit records produced during my formative years were made the same way. 

An artist would be "discovered" through a demo tape or playing in a bar somewhere, and he would be spirited into a studio, after being signed to a contract; and then the same crew of musicians would do all of the playing, while the "star" would just sing over the tracks they laid down.

If you had a collection of albums by say, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Karla Bonhoff, Anne Murray, Olivia Newton John, The Association, Jackson Browne, Phil Collins, James Taylor, Diana Ross, Hall & Oates, Clint Black, Reba McIntyre, George Strait, Carol King, Lyle Lovett, or the band Toto, you might be listening to all 20 of your albums, but you would be hearing the same band on each...

It's no wonder that I always got the impression that bands typically sounded pretty lousy in concert, compared to "their" albums. It's the reason I didn't go see a lot of bands that I had the chance to, when they came to Boston. I associated live albums with sloppy playing. And, in a lot of cases, the reality was that the members of a typical band would have to try to learn, to the best of their abilities, to play the stuff that was released under their band's name, which became popular through radio play.

So, Leland Sklar and the rest of The Section are now touring with Lyle Lovett.

It must be surreal hearing the exact same players playing, for the most part, the exact same equipment that you might have heard hundreds of times before on different albums -seeing the drum kit that Linda Ronstadt stood just 12 feet away from, 30 years ago, as she belted out "Blue Bayou," or actually seeing and hearing the cowbell from "Poor, poor pitiful me." Imagine the view that that bass drum had!

The networking becomes even more intricate when, say, Linda Ronstadt would cover a Warren Zevon song -then you would be hearing the same musicians and the same gear on both songs, just different albums...

I'm not sure what I set out to write about here; but it had something to do with the fact that, when Leland walked into a room that's walls were lined with posters commemorating some of the notable acts that had played the South Shore Music Circus, the first poster was one of Johnny Mathis, and the second one, Liberace. Two gay guy's right off the bat. It seems like a sign of the times for there to be an implicit "push" for LGBTQ "awareness," or whatever the hell was the motivation of whoever decided to feature two queers right off the bat, as soon as you walk into the hall of fame...

Somebody Get Me A Doctor

But, the most fascinating part of Leland's video was when he went by the Tony Orlando & Dawn poster, and someone off camera noted that "That was the night his friend killed himself and he (Tony) broke down on stage."

Well, if whoever said that was a tour guide, then he wasn't the most informed one.

I had to Google "Tony Orlando breaks down on stage" and, at least tour guide guy had the right venue. First of all, as per the poster, he and Dawn played six shows, so he didn't really specify "the night" he broke down.

Google led me to July 22nd (the 5th out of 6 shows) as being the night he stopped in the middle of the performance and said "I'm just saying 'Help me,' I'm going to find a doctor," before walking away.

He had started to use cocaine heavily after his friend, Freddy Prinze Sr. committed suicide, but that self inflicted gunshot happened about three weeks before that. Close enough for a tour guide at the Music Circus, I guess...

What kind of surprised me was that Leland hadn't said: "Tony Orlando; I played with him," as he had at the Anne Murray poster, the George Gobel one, and a few others. I say this because Tony's early records were produced by Carol King, who was a frequent member of The Section. Leland must have been busy doing TV show music when Tony was singing his #1 hit song "Candida," over music supplied by the same group that is heard on James Taylor's first album...

For One To Have Shown Up At My Door

 

A 4-Pronged Mission

• The Benefit
• The Stamps
• The Blood
• The Rug
  

It was Tuesday, August 9th, and like the Manson Family, back in 1969, I decided it was time to get busy and knock a few things off my "to do" list, before the list became overwhelming and put me in a state of paralysis, from knowing that I couldn't get them all done in one day; then not being able to decide which was most important, and so tackling none of them.

First, I called the Department of Labor about a notice that I got back in 2017, which I had decided to end 5 years of procrastinating about; and just call the number listed on the back of the thing, to find out if I was eligible to get the $160 listed under "benefit amount" on the thing.

I had been procrastinating, I believe, because it was better to live under the impression that I might have 160 bucks sitting somewhere, as if in a bank; and that it might come in handy at some future time. I also always thought that the Department of Labor would be staffed by lazy people and everyone put on hold for long periods, while being asked to stay there, since their calls are important, type of thing.

Within about 20 seconds an English speaking female came on, and informed me that I should have already gotten that 160 bucks when I left whatever company that had established a 401K in my behalf. "If the amount is less than $3,000, they give it to you when you leave," she said. 

Fired For Cause

So that must have been part of my "severance pay" when I was fired from Langley-Ford, a company that manufactured equipment that measured parts-per-million of various things; probably municipal water supplies, which kind of ties in to the rest of this post...

The reason I was fired, was that I had hung a warning notice, I guess it was, in my work area, where other employees might have photos of their children or framed awards for "employee of the month," or whatever.

I was 2 weeks into reading Unlimited Power, by Tony Robbins and had been following the principles laid out in that particular book. This had led me to send a box of chocolates to a female employee named Melissa, on Valentine's Day. I'm not sure which principle that was congruent with, but it was probably within the first 4 chapters of Tony's book; maybe as part of "The Morning Question," that he suggests we all ask, upon waking up, which I paraphrase as: "How can I contribute, today?" and might have elaborated into: "How can I bring joy to someone else, today?" or something.

Earlier in that book, I had completed a worksheet which involved dreaming of the optimal life for yourself. Imagining that you had "unlimited power" and could dream anything into reality; what would your life look like? Where would you live, what would you wear, what kind of relationships would you have, etc. etc. The reader was asked to dream "big," as if everything would indeed come true, so spare no extravagance, type of thing.

So, I wrote about being able to stay home in my apartment and work on music from sunup to sundown every day; and to get paid to do so.

The very next day after having placed the box of chocolates, along with a card on Melissa's desk, and then slunk off, I was called into the office of the head honcho.

Melissa, Melissa, Melissa...

He was a bit apologetic and told me that he was bound by rules that he didn't particularly agree with, to inform me that I had violated the company's policy on "sexual harassment," and then read to me from a clause in such that referred to the giving of "unwanted attention," to include "unwanted gifts," to someone else in the work place.

He told me that I wasn't in trouble or anything and seemed to indicate that the definition of "unwanted" was entirely at the discretion of the recipient of anything, and that, since Melissa was a Jehovah's Witness, and that they deemed Valentine's Day to be a pagan and unholy observance, that I had offended her, at a deeply spiritual level with the box of chocolates. "I'm required to notify you of this; that's the only reason we're having this discussion," he added, almost with a roll of his eyes.

He then handed me a neatly typed one page notice that outlined the company's "sexual harassment" policy, then went on to state that, upon February 14th, of that year, I had given one Melissa A_____ the gift of a box of chocolates and that Melissa A_____ had taken offense at this and that, in the future, I would give no more unwanted gifts to Melissa A____ etc.

Since I had recently written and recorded a song that had a chorus of "Melissa" in it, repeated 3 times; and since the warning letter I had gotten had mentioned her in 3 different places, kind of symmetrically; I wound up using a yellow highlighter to highlight the 3 instances of her name; and then hung the thing on the bulletin board area of my little work area. Ostensibly, this was to remind myself that Melissa, Melissa, Melissa was trouble, trouble, trouble. Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! type of thing...

But then, the very next day, the second biggest honcho, named Pete Lincoln, called me into his office and fired me, saying that my hanging the thing in my cubicle was "exactly" the type of unwanted attention that the thing self-referenced.

Well, the Labor Board, or whatever the unemployment benefit division was called in Massachusetts, disagreed with Mr. Lincoln's assertion that I had been fired "for cause," and awarded me unemployment benefits in the amount of half of what I had been averaging working at Langley-Ford; and since the company had been in a production squeeze and we were being forced to work at least 60 hours per week, this had been a pretty nice amount.

And so, about 2 weeks after having completed the worksheet in Tony's book, I was living the dream life I had described by penciling it into the space provided somewhere in chapter 2. I was staying home and working on music all day (the discipline of having worked 60+ hour weeks over the past year or so paying dividends in that regard) and I was getting paid for it.

Before I was done with "Unlimited Power," there would be at least one more relevant incident that I might as well add here.

After a while, the unemployment benefits expired and I was working at a Domino's Pizza place, back in my home town. Langley-Ford had been in the college town of Amherst, Mass., where I had been attending U-Mass, but had taken "a semester off," to work full time (+) in order to bankroll some money, so that, when I returned to school, I could do so in more luxury*

But, I was still slogging my way through "Unlimited Power," having stalled somewhere around Chapter 12, which covered the biochemistry of the brain and advised that, if a reader was currently using alcohol and/or drugs, she should pause her reading, then return to the book after having succeeded in removing such from her life.

Through a blessing out of the "Doctor Christopher's 3 Day Fast and Cleanse and Mucous-Free Diet" course that I had embarked upon, I had finally arrived at an alcohol and pot free life, by the time I was back in Gardner, Mass., which had been my community college town.

So, having been seen with my copy of "Unlimited Power," at the Domino's Pizza, one of my co-workers made the comment of "So, I guess pretty soon you'll be pulling up in a Rolls Royce, huh?" as, I guess, a cynical commentary on "self-help" books in general.

About a week later, I was in downtown Gardner, and along its one main street, not far from the music store was parked a genuine Rolls Royce. Had it not attracted a few gawkers, I might not have even recognized it as such. To me it was "luxurious" the same way the most plushly appointed coffins are in any undertakers show-room; but, there the thing was, with an "RR" ornament on its hood (or it's side, I forget).

Then, soon was approaching an elderly looking man with white hair and a pleasant smile on his face.

I said something to him along the lines of how "I had to laugh" when I saw his car; and then told him about the Tony Robbin's book and what the other employee at Domino's had said.

"I'm a huge admirer of Tony Robbin's," said the affable old guy, then added that he had been to some of his seminars etc.

"I'll tell you what," he said, holding his set of keys out to me. "I get the sense I can trust you; how would you like to pull up in front of the place in a Rolls Royce, and give them something to think about?!"

I was able to park directly in front of Domino's, then hop out and kind of skip into the convenience store adjacent to it, buy some sundry item, then give the gaped mouthed crew a little wave before riding off. The old guy was sitting in front of a cafe by the music store, reading a newspaper, when I returned his keys to him. The parking spot I had left out of was had still been unoccupied.

So, Langley-Ford must have already given me the $160 bucks when they fired me. Well, that's better than thinking I might have it waiting for me somewhere; now I can let go and move on.

Eliminating Bacon

The second order of business was to call the plasma place, which I did, and was informed that the second blood sample I had given had also been under the limit of "6" and had even been down from the 5.7 that had gotten me bounced, to 5.6. 

I had a feeling that might happen. I was feeling pretty depleted when I gave the second sample. I should have waited. I felt the way I usually do after donating before I had even done so. It was like whatever proteins I was eating weren't "sticking to my ribs" around that time. I feel much fuller now, which might have to do with adding bone broth to my diet and eliminating bacon...

Then it was off to the food stamp place, rather than trying to sleep first. I had forgotten to call them, or go online, before the date specified on a letter that had sat in my mailbox until it was almost too late.

Oddly, rather than my account having been closed, as per the dire warning in the letter, it was open, and for then next 2 years, rather than the 1 that is normal. They couldn't understand how it could be open all the way to 2024. The agent I was dealing with soon had all of them looking over her shoulder at her screen in bemusement.

One explanation I can come up with, with regard to that, was that I had called the FEMA people after the hurricane last year, and wound up talking to a young lady, with whom I seemed to strike up a friendship. We wound up laughing and joking about this and that for almost an hour. 

I could hear her poking at a keyboard as she really seemed to be trying hard to find some benefits for me. Alas, she had to sadly inform me that I had already gotten the maximum hurricane relief funds, for sitting in a dark, 99 degree apartment for what amounted to an 11 day power outage, a year ago.

After our friendly conversation, though, I started getting $347 a month on my food stamp card, instead of $247. And now it apparently has been green lighted for 2 years. The power of human engineering cannot be underestimated. I might just be pulling up in a Rolls Royce in a couple weeks...

"A Fan Would Help"

And then, the 4th and last matter of the water seeping into my apartment, I was able to talk to the heating and air guy, who just happened to be taking a break in his truck when I returned from the food stamp place, about. He said that my apartment was "on the list" that he is working on; and the problem of the air conditioner draining onto my floor, rather than down some hose, should be solved soon.

In the meantime, he suggested that I get a fan and direct it at the wet rug.

I went inside, and was thinking "a fan, huh?" when I fell asleep on the couch while some ground beef was heating up on the stove in some flax seed oil. I woke up in a place so full of smoke that the cliche of it being hard to see your hand in front of your face, applied. Enough smoke had gotten out into the hall to set the alarm in the elevator off, which I could hear. The ones in the hallway were silent, though.

Then there was a knock at my door, which turned out to be the maintenance guy, holding the nice fan, seen in the picture above. He positioned it, so as to draw smoke out of my place, and then put another large one at the end of the hallway to push smoke out through the door to the parking lot. 

I suspect that there has been a tacit agreement made between a fire department sick of showing up in full gear every time a resident leaves something on the stove, and a maintenance crew willing to shut the alarms off as soon as they start yapping.

They used to be required by law to show up every time an alarm went off. I think there is now some common sense, and some cooperation, going on between the two parties now. I wasn't berated at all for having fallen asleep and smoked the place up.

And, it had only taken me a few minutes of sleeping on the problem of how to get a fan for one to have showed up at my door...

*that was in 1989, and I have yet to resume my education at UMass.