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Blur...

The past few years have raced past me. My granddaughter is turning 10 this month. I remember getting the call at 11pm my daughter was headed to the hospital 'baby wanted out' so I rushed over to meet them. The nurse said 'not for a few hours, at best' so I went home to catch a few hours rest. By 7am no baby. I was working for a millwork company and had to open the factory, so I stopped in to unlock the doors and headed back to the hospital and was present to witness the birth.
Yeah, she's going to be ten.
So now, I'm working for a kitchen and bathroom remodeling company and we are seeing as many as 3 new leads a day. More than I care to take on, but the percentage of closed jobs is lower since COVID. While they have money to do renovations they are also using unrealistic budgets.
I usually take 30-40 photos for every client visit and upload them to my computer and backed up on a cloud storage so my partner can review. Names, I may not remember, but photos bring back the visit and what they were looking for.
After backing up more than 7,000 photos that are stored on my phone I began purging old photos, especially the jobs I didn't get. More than 1,000 were deleted.
In the 70's I was a draftsman for a kitchen manufacturer in Miami. One of the largest. We had a house account with a builder who did condos. Lots of them. I remember the name of a 'village' that had hundreds of units in 5 or 6 buildings.
One of the first jobs I signed last year was a replacement kitchen... for one I did 40 years earlier. It's finished and paid and the owner, who is 86 years old wasn't the first buyer of the condo, but he smiled when I told him the story.
Interesting stories along the way, but mostly things are becoming a blur...

I've expressed my dislike for my current employment situation and though I can pay my bills and have a happy life, I feel my talents are being wasted doing bathroom renovations. For now, I'll continue doing what I'm doing until another opportunity presents itself.


Thanks for reading my blog!
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More Gorilla Glue... you betcha!

A guy came into the showroom today with a part that dropped out of this drawer slide.
I recognized it as a 'euroscrew' which is essential in European style cabinet construction.
He lost one of two so I went into the warehouse where we keep a drawer of miscellaneous hinge and cabinet parts and found 2 just like the one he came in with.
He wanted to drill a hole in a new location but had no tools to do so. We talked about how it screws into a metric hole (5 millimeter if I recall) in wood and since his fell out, my suggestion was to use a small amount of 5-minute epoxy, press fit it and wait for the glue to harden.

He asked if he should use Gorilla Glue and without hesitation I said "Yes, that will work, but don't get any on your hair!"
We both laughed and wanted to pay me for the part. It was no charge, but I told him should he need a kitchen renovation he should come back and we will talk business.
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Heavy blanket...

A few weeks ago I saw a display at Wal-Mart of quilted blankets that are filled with glass beads. The theory is a weighted blanket gives more comfort and can relieve stress, decreasing movement and allowing the person more deep, restorative REM cycle.

I sleep with a comforter year round and now, in winter months have 2 layers.
South Florida had a few weeks of cold weather this season... cold by our standards with nights as low as 45 degrees Fahrenheit. It was 70 outside last night, the a/c was off and a window fan was on. Too warm for a double layer blanket, I was up several times tossing and turning. I'll make an adjustment for that tonight as I typically get better rest with blankets than sheets.
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Quality... the lack of it.

About a year ago, life changed and suddenly products disappeared off the grocery store shelves. Canned foods, rice, water, laundry soap, bleach, disinfectants and most importantly... toilet paper.
I've been through a bunch of hurricanes and this was 10 times worse.
Fights were commonplace when workers stocked the shelves then opened the doors. People literally ran to the paper products aisle and started filling their shopping carts.
Management wasn't smart enough to post signs limiting quantities at enforce it at the cash registers.
At first, some off brands began to appear. That must have been 4-6 months into the pandemic and when things slowly began to normalize nearly 8 months later I noticed the quality of the products I've been using for years was not up the the standards of a year earlier.
Paper cups for example. I've been buying the same brand for many years. Always reliable. Sometimes, I'd forget and come back in the morning and my beverage was intact. Now, I find that after a few minutes, liquids start to seep through the seams in the bottom of the cups. it's not a bad batch as it's become consistent for a few months now, even if I buy the same brand from another store.
Premium facial tissues would pop-up for the entire box and now, there are breaks so you have to reach inside and get it started again. A box of 160 tissues with 4 sequence breaks usually wastes 8 tissues.
Back to toilet tissue. They are made on machines as one really wide roll then sliced into individual rolls that we are used to using. The edges are perfectly cut... well, they used to be. I'm finding the slicing machine is off and some rolls have jagged edges.
Those machines crank out thousands of rolls per day without human intervention. Maybe it's time someone should check the adjustment of the machines!

Quality... the lack of it!

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Using the wrong Gorilla... there's more to the story!

A few days ago social media went ablaze when Tessica Brown misused a spray product named Gorilla Glue in place of a hair gel named Gorilla Snot when her normal hair spray Got2B Glued Blasting Freeze Spray was unavailable. She claimed that 'a mont' later 'it don't move' because it was still glued hard.

Amazing as I had doubts the story could be real.

Today's update: the woman goes to the hospital for help where they attempt to soften the glue with acetone but it was too painful and they had to stop.

Also reported Miss Brown has set up a GoFundMe account that's raised more than $12,000 and considering her legal options against Gorilla Glue since the product didn't specifically warn against hair usage.

Gorilla Glue made a statement they are sorry to hear about the woman's unfortunate incident and the product is not indicated for use in or on hair.

More information gathered from Miss Brown's TikTok account states that she's a 40 year old teacher from Louisiana. That should rule out a lack of reading comprehension.
Maybe not...

Blog Category HowTo because NotHowTo isn't one of the selections.
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Which side of the zipper does your Ying Yang hang...

I wore tight jeans when I was a teenager and the placement of my family jewels was significant. Make the wrong move (like getting out of a sports car) and the pain was eye watering.
If I bought a few pairs of the same style jeans, it was easy to determine the safe side of the zipper. With a different cut of pants and I'd have to rearrange the location of Fred and the twins. As the jeans faded (note: I'd wear clothes until there were rags) you could see wear marks on jeans near the bottom of the zipper and know where the jewels resided.
This wasn't of much importance until my band played a few times at a local pub and the waitress made note of it. I believe it was her hobby and the size of the wear mark was a determining factor if she was interested in a guy or not. Looks to her weren't important.

Anyway, it's been years now that I'm wearing relaxed-fit jeans and 'placement' is no longer an issue. I stopped drinking juice and drinks with sugar, cut out cakes and donuts and my weight is 10 pounds less. My jeans are noticeably baggy. I'm opposed to wearing a belt and suspenders are out of the question... that means I'm constantly pulling up my jeans. It's not 'hip-hop' territory yet, but I'm working on a plan. I ruled out a strip of Velcro on my backside but there is merit to stitching some elastic on the inner waistband so no one can see it.

If I lose another 10 pounds I'll be shopping for new jeans with regular fit. The fear then is having to worry about which side of the zipper to hang my Ying Yang.

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Think before you ink...

I'm watching a Youtube video of tattoo competition on the show Ink Master.
This episode is a collection of the worst tattoos in the event.
Think before you Ink is the name of one of the teams who failed in a middle round.

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Your axe defines your sound...

This is a blog I've wanted to do for a long time.
Some famous guitarists have used the same old instruments for years. Why... when they could have anything they desire? There is no one answer for this but some guitars have the 'magical' mix that their owner feels that they cannot get with another guitar... even if it's of the same model.

Fender guitars come off an assembly line and technically should be the same for ones made in January to the ones made in July. There are small variances in the materials. The thickness of the neck being the same, but one neck has a slight difference in grain or density of the lumber it was machined from. The same with the body parts. All kiln dried lumber most likely harvested from the same forest. A guitarist trying out 10-15 guitars in a music store wouldn't know if the neck wood came from a tree that faced sunlight or grew in the middle of the forest. He just knew that one of those guitars had a slightly different resonance, enough to make a decision to buy it.
I've seen lots of YouTube video interviews with musicians who discuss their trademark style and sound that comes out different when they play another model.

Players like Joe Bonamassa has a never ending collection of Gibson Les Paul guitars, each special but favors a few that he tours with. I've seen him play a Fender Stratocaster and it's a slightly 'different Joe' with the Fender.

Pink Floyd's guitarist David Gilmour used to play a Fender Telecaster that was lost on his flight to an American tour in 1968, ended up with a black Stratocaster he purchased at the (world famous) Manny's in New York City and kept it for over 40 years.

In the short video David explains some guitars that spawned a few iconic riffs and songs that came about from these guitars. Axes that define your sound.

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Leon Spinks R.I.P.

Boxing legend Leon Spinks died Friday at the age of 67 after a long battle with prostate cancer.
His final years were clouded with physical ailments and in 2017 when inducted to the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame he struggled to walk and was pushed in a wheelchair by his wife Brenda.

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Alignment...

In my world, the moon and starts are not in alignment today.
I had a restless night seeking resolutions to seeming never endless issues.

Checking corporate email, a quartz countertop recently installed has a structural crack.
Quartz doesn't crack. Not in any installation I've done.

I'm bidding a $35,000 kitchen renovation and the new client is asking for a menu of options. That's a few hours (extra) work.

My associate has diarrhea this morning and won't be coming in... We've got 3 client meetings scheduled.

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No signs of rejection...

22 year old Joe DiMeo survived a car accident but his face and hands were severely burned. Doctors at NYU Langone Health in New York successfully performed a face and double hand transplant in August 2020 and so far there are no signs of rejection.
The surgery lasted more than 20 hours and he must remain on medicine for life for his body to avoid rejecting the transplants.

Note, the video is graphic so you may want to avoid watching if you get queasy with things like this.




Yahoo! picked up the story this morning:
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Hanky-Panky...

I was listening to a local oldies radio station on the way home from grocery shopping and the Tommy James and the Shondells song Hanky-Panky was playing. Tommy must have repeated Hanky-Panky three hundred times and my better half said "What is Hanky-Panky?"
Knowing thee are several meanings to Hanky-Panky, I told her his girlfriend plays around. It's a slang answer and she wasn't sure what I meant.
I have a language translator app in my phone and see it only gave the word (from English to Chinese) Shouyín that sounds like show-yeen. Usually translations have synonyms to words, especially if they don't have a perfect translation. I was expecting to see something like promiscuous, but Shouyín was the only word and she was very surprised the singer repeated Hanky-Panky so many times!
When I got home I tried the translation into Google and it had the same word Shouyín. But, when I reversed it from Chinese to English, the definition was m**turbation.
Depending on the source several online dictionaries had different meanings.
Fooling around, monkey business, shenanigans, flirtation, questionable or underhanded activity... all but m**turbation.
So, for two decades Tommy's baby did the m**turbation and was naive to the whole thing. Not only me... the censors of the recording industry seemed to have missed it too!

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