Last night after work I dropped into ‘World Market’ to look around. Sure enough I found myself some more ginger chews. Different brand but pretty much the exact same stuff. These come in a spiffy green tin. I ended up buying three of them. That should keep me busy for a little while.
I also checked out the wine selection while I was there. World Market has a great selection of exotic wine. I picked up a bottle of ‘crushpad’; a red wine I have had before. It has some nice cherry overtones to it. I also picked up a bottle of some red wine that was simply called ‘red’. It came in a cool little jug bottle. I tried some last night and it turned out to be pretty tasty
despite the screw-off cap. The bottle claimed it had cherry and blueberry tones to it
but I did not taste it. It was just a nice red wine that was not too heavy and not too light. I think it was a mix of shiraz and zinfandel with a bit of cabernet.
I need to hurry up and finish my outdoor shower this weekend. I came home last night and a couple of tiles had popped out of my nasty shower
disgorging the crap in the walls behind it into my tub. Once one tile comes out
the others start falling like dominoes. It’s high time that entire bathroom was ripped out and rebuild. Because the shower has to last just a little bit longer
I ran out into the garage and grabbed a board and screwed it to the bathroom wall to keep more tiles and the crap behind it from falling out. It just about the most redneck white-trash looking thing ever. A big board bolted to a nasty bathroom wall. However
it will last for a little while
and once my outdoor shower is built I can start ripping the entire thing out. It’s going to be a disgusting job
but it needs to be done.
I went for a bike ride around town last night. My weird high handlebars gathered a few odd looks
but I am used to off looks. The weather was really nice and I pedaled around river walk. Some guy was fishing with a net. He seemed to be pretty good at it
he would gather up the net
spin around a couple of times
and then cast it into the air. While airborne the net would blossom into a perfect circle and splash down into the water. I was curious to see if he had caught anything
but I just rode on by.
I rode into town and checked out the new coffee shop they had put in. I am not sure if it’s a ‘real’ coffee shop or another cheesy Christian clone they try to sneak by. It was closed so I peeked in the window. They had a lot of books inside and they had some hip chairs and all in all it had a cool funky atmosphere. Seems to me it would be a neat place to drop in if it did not have stupid hours. 9:30-5:30 is simply the most ridicules hours for a coffee shop. It opens too late for any morning people to get any coffee
and it closes too early for any sort of interesting night life. I predict a quick demise.
I rode home and watched the season’s premier of ‘ghost hunters’. It was a pretty good episode and the building they were in was fairly creepy. The thing running by they caught on the thermal camera was interesting as well. However
once again they caught another 3 foot tall ghost. Every ghost they seem to catch seems to be about 3 feet tall. Either scifi is hiring some midget to run around and be captured on film
or the ghost hunters are truly gathering some weird evidence about ghosts. Or what we think are ghosts.
I might take an early lunch today. Get myself some crab ragoons and MSG.
2026 Update
Dialing the infernal machine twenty years back to watch Ed hoard ginger chew tins and bolt a board to his shower wall.
Ah, 2006, when a man could buy three tins of ginger chews at a physical World Market, judge a wine by its jug bottle and screw cap, bolt a scrap board to his collapsing shower wall, and call it home improvement. The world has changed, Ed. Your ginger chews would now arrive in a subscription box with QR codes and wellness language. That anonymous little red jug would be a viral phenomenon, but wine back then was allowed to just taste like wine without performing calm luxury. Your coffee shop with books and hip chairs would either be a museum piece or a content creation space, and nobody would peek in the window because they’d already seen twelve videos of it before stepping outside. The three-foot ghost wouldn’t just be on Ghost Hunters; it would be livestreamed, clipped, remixed, and probably sponsored by a mattress company. And that board? That board is a perfect artifact of the era: a temporary fix held together by spite and self-awareness. In 2026, we call that content.
“2006 Ed, when you screwed that board into the bathroom wall, did you honestly believe it would hold back the disgorged crap until your outdoor shower was finished, or were you just determined to out-white-trash the entire neighborhood?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you’ve got me dead to rights there. Honestly? I knew that board wasn’t fixing anything, it was just postponing the inevitable while I pretended I had a plan. The thing is, when a tile pops and the crap behind it starts sliding out into the tub, you don’t think, you just grab the nearest piece of lumber and screw it on like that’s some kind of engineering solution. It’s the same way I approach half my life, really. And yes, I was absolutely determined to out-white-trash the neighborhood. A big board bolted to a nasty bathroom wall is a statement, even if that statement is just “I give up for now.” It’ll hold long enough for me to finish the outdoor shower, unless the shower collapses first. Either way, I’m not winning any awards for home improvement. Take that, foul tile grout.
