I have discovered that my hot tub actually controls the weather. If I unplug it to save energy, the temperature will drop and become hot tubing weather. However, if I refill it and plug it back in, then the temperature climbs back up. It's really quite amazing.
I have decided that Daytona is a pretty sleazy place. This may be obvious to some, however I have never really visited their nightlife before. Saturday I met a friend down there for some oysters and drinks. I was embarrassed to find out that the Oyster place was nestled between the neon glow of not one but two strip clubs.
The oyster bar itself was filled with a variety of patrons. We sat inside for a little bit, enjoying a drink and watching the waitress ignore us. After a while a belligerent black dude seated himself in the booth behind us and started shouting at his ho's as they wandered by. That's when we decided to move outside.
So we had oysters and watched patrons file into the nudie bar. I have to say, I really enjoyed the oysters. We got a huge steamed platter of them and I was picking them out and dunking them in the melted butter. I have not had oysters in years, and the last time I did they were not very good. I was pleased. After a while out waitress came back from her meth-smoking break and we decided to check out some of the bars within walking distance.
For some reason, I thought there were more bars in the area. We dropped in one hole of a place I had been to before because my friend Emily's brother used to work there. It was not a bad place, good place to do some people watching. Some local band was playing there with the vastly originally name of 'crush'. The singer of the band was some skinny girl with a massive pile of permed hair that spilled halfway down to her waist. It would have made cousin It envious. Whenever the band was playing and she was not singing, she would bend forward and shake her hair. She did this head-shaking routine for almost every song.
Speaking of hair, I got assaulted by floozy hair. We were sitting in a slightly elevated area when a gaggle of girls came in. One of them was just below me, and every now and then she would toss her hair and it would fly bank and hit me in the arm. Each time it happened I cringed back and thought 'ew! Floozy hair!'. After a drink or two we left there and dodged some homeless people trying to sell us crosses made out of palmettos and checked out an Irish pub. It was OK, just small and crowded. Nothing to neither write home about nor visit again. Its only redeeming feature was a stuffed deer head what was wearing a blonde wig. For some reason that fascinated me.
We looked around for other places, but everything else with a strip joint or some sleazy club. One club down there was overflowing with Guido's and their women, the kind of women who snort coke off of the top of toilet tanks and who like to impress men by kissing their girlfriends. Not exactly a place to get a quiet drink. Finally we sneaked into some opulent hotel lounge. I felt almost bad drinking there and taking advantage of the accommodations when we were not guests. We sat outside and saw an amazing night ocean at high tide illuminated by the moon. It was quite a sight. Inside we sat on plush leather couches. It was pretty nice. I had a fun time.
Sunday I did a little more work on my bathroom. I got the form laid out for the shower and next week when I get paid again I will be able to lay down a concrete slab for the shower floor. It's coming along slowly but surely.
I lost my shiny new USB disk drive. It fell off the key chain already. Piece of friggin junk.
Sigh. No three day weekend this week. Let's see what the week will hold.
2026 Update
Dialing the time machine to December 13, 2006, when Ed's hot tub ran the weather and floozy hair was a public menace.
Ah, 2006: a blessed age when you could blame your hot tub for the weather, lose a USB drive off a keychain, and still call the night a success. Your evening is a fossil—raw shellfish next to neon dens, a waitress who has abandoned you for urgent personal business, street merchants selling palmetto crosses, a band called Crush that shook hair instead of playing music. We have not morally improved; we have just switched to new grime. The oyster bar would now require a reservation on an app, the homeless vendor would ask if you have Venmo, the band would be a DJ with a laptop, and the floozy hair is sold in a bottle as beach waves. A lost USB drive was a shrug; now losing your phone is a psychological collapse and a subscription nightmare. Your hot tub, if it survived, probably has Wi-Fi and sends your energy data to a service that sends you coupons. The hotel lounge you snuck into? It now sells day passes. But the deer head in the blonde wig? Eternal. That was the only true thing you encountered all night.
“2006 Ed, when the deer head in the blonde wig was the most memorable thing about your evening, did you pause to wonder what your hot tub was doing to the weather back home?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I gotta say, the deer head in the blonde wig was a solid 8.7 on the memorable-o-meter, and no, I didn't pause to wonder about the hot tub. That tub's probably sitting there unplugged, making it hot tub weather back home while I'm down here in Daytona getting slapped by floozy hair. Honestly, that deer head had more dignity than half the place, and I'm pretty sure it knew more about the weather than I do. I mean, I left the tub unplugged to save a few bucks, so by my own logic it's probably snowing in Sanford right now. But I was too busy dodging palmettos and watching Cousin It's cousin shake her hair to care. The ocean at high tide was nice though. Probably the hot tub's doing. Take that, weather.
