The race to the tree.
Me on bike, man with dog.
I won.

Yesterday, someone, a guy, just walked by me and looked me in the face and said, “Good man,” and he went his way and I went mine. I said “hey”
I’m not sure if I knew him, but if we knew each other, I’m sure we would have said something.
Still, it was nice to hear…

The other day I was thinking of Solid as a Rock by Ashford and Simpson, which is currently playing right now at the fruit stands where I am working at for a few days this week.

It was an enjoyable bike ride yesterday, approximately 14 miles. The weather was pleasant, very dry, and we are in drought conditions.

Sorry, I’m working at another fruit stand, the same one I was at last week for one day, and this week I’m here for 3 days. It’s very uptight. The fruit is not moving as much as they’d like, but it’s still ripe and fresh.

There’s a meeting of the fruit stand workers this morning, which I had to attend and I usually don’t have to since I am at another location most of the time, so this is not one of those times, so I had to attend. It was dreadfully boring.

I was the odd man out who somehow got through it unscathed. Bill is driving senior citizens around, and senior citizens are probably 10 years older than us these days.

Mike is still a narcissist. I hope things go well for him, but one never knows, and he does not have the healthiest skepticism that I have. He once loved, and he’s trying hard for it.
3,000 miles is quite a distance to overcome or to come over, or you can bukkake on FaceTime.
I did take photos of Mike on Saturday afternoon in Jersey City. He has over 1,000 followers (9,789 Followers), and I helped fuel that narcissism machine.

I’m listening to the fruit stand playlist on fruit stand radio, and it’s basically the same crap that I heard the other day. The playlist does not change.

The music is all pop music, and I recognize some of the songs from Girl Talk songs from 15 years ago. Come on, ride that train. Put some “D’s” on that bitch…
Motherfucker plays on the fruit stand office radio. Hip hop is the dominant music these days. I am fine with that.

Last night I watched a video of a group of ants moving a dead salamander up a potted plant. Obviously grabbed my attention, and it was fascinating. It was more than 5 minutes but less than 10 minutes.
Older men, or Daddy’s, is what I used to be after. Now I am in that age bracket where I am someone’s daddy, Mike likes to call me Dad, as it goes Bill Dad so we are his dad’s. But the Dads I was after, they’re few and far between and fading away.

I’m also reminded of the bar/bri review at the now-gone Statler Hilton hotel. Having to move a pallet of books from the van on the street to a suite inside. Parking was impossible, yet somehow I did it. It should have been a two-man job 43 years ago, but it wasn’t and now the company I worked for is gone, the hotel I was delivering to is gone, and yet I am still here, ain’t that something?

28 minutes left, that means the 28 long minutes long long long

It seems that all my anxiety over the weekend about working where I am at the fruit stand this week was for naught. I can be my own worst enemy. But luckily, I have someone like Bill in my life to take care of my messy mind and even people like Jimmy Chile, who has talked me off the ledge a few times. I really should get over it, perhaps I will soon enough.

Reels Rock and Absolute
Pretzel Logic

It is Friday, October 3rd, 2025. It feels like Autumn, it is quite cool out, and in the office they have the air conditioner on.

I got a bagel this morning instead of my usual Friday morning breakfast of a bacon and egg sandwich, since they gave me so much bacon last week, I thought I was going to die. And it wasn’t very good bacon it was overcooked.

I’ve been texting with Mike this morning his parole officer showed up when he said he was going to show up which is quite the change from when Mike and I were always trying to hang out and the parole officer could never show up and would leave Mike confined to his apartment all day long which was probably a lie on Mike’s part because I believe Mike might be a bit of a liar.
I could be wrong.

I did lie to him and told him I was hanging out with someone on Saturday, rather than hang out with him, which is fine since he had plans to hang out with somebody in lower Manhattan.

Mike has a plan to visit his beloved in California in December, yet he does not have his papers in order, basically the real ID, which Bill had tried to hook him up with in July, but of course, Mike dropped the ball and never finished the appointment.

And with someone who might owe almost $1,000, if not more, for his utilities, I don’t know where he’s going to get the money for a flight to California. I advised him to buy his tickets sooner rather than later because it would be less expensive, but he still owes $85 to his bank from an overdraft, and that’s been for weeks, and he has not paid it.

Why do I know so much about his life? Because he tells me so, though the utilities bit I had stumbled on by myself when opening up my email, which turned out to be his email. His info is on my browser. I did set him up for a $50 monthly plan with the utility company, which was last paid in July, and he has not done anything since.

Perhaps his beloved should come through since his beloved is expected next weekend, because this weekend, like last weekend, something has come up. I am relieved to be out of it. You can’t make someone love you if they don’t love you, and that is where we stand.

I fell in love, and I regret it now. I should have regretted it then. People that I know, people that I work with, they looked at me with the eyes of ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I may be smart, at least that’s what people tell me, but I’m not the brightest apparently.

It’s still true that I am not at my best when I am alone. Intrusive thoughts do their thing, and they’re not good thoughts, and they usually defeat me or at least handicap me.
And that is how the first half of the day has been, me alone just despairing and thinking of mistakes that I have made and the consequences coming down the road.

Then Jimmy Chile arrives and brightens the room and my spirits. He wasn’t here for long, but he recognized the funk that I was in and did his best to get me out of it. And he did. It is his birthday weekend, so he won’t be in on Monday.

I intend to get him the Howard Zinn People’s History of the United States book as a gift next week and perhaps have a number with him. His spirit was so uplifting that perhaps it’ll get me until 5:00 p.m., when it’s time for me to leave this fruit stand, which is a good place to work, and I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

But I am, and I have to find my way out of it. I still feel sometimes that I’m just not good enough for this position, despite people telling me that I am doing a great job.

Right now, I am sitting at my desk dictating into my phone and listening to Ibrahim Ferre,r which is uplifting in itself.