Facebook's Filtered Mail Folder

Did you know you had one? I didn't.

I was just tapping thru the FB app last night after finishing a late posting here on Steemit when I saw the tab. There were text mail messages in it that were several years old. Granted, most of it was properly identified as spam, but there were some seriously improper misdirects as well.

For example, there was mail in my 'filtered mail' from an old coworker from Dillard's that I hadn't spoken with in twenty years. I reconnected with Skip after finding the old texts. Skip is what I'd call a reluctant Republican who still considers me his favorite liberal.

It was nice to chat with Chip, but in addition to his old texts, there were SEVERAL from MY SON who I haven't spoken with in five.

He had fallen on hard times (and offline) down in Mississippi a short time after I left the US to relocate to Germany with my wife. Mississippi is famous for it's Delta Blues and hard times. They consider it a feature and not a bug. That said, I responded to one of his old texts and in minutes he responded back. Short story. He's doing fine now but he's still young and dumb enough not to realize how well off he is.

The shortest summation of my fatherly advice to him? Get the hell outta Mississippi.

Due to the lateness of the hour and the vagaries of time zones, we didn't get as much time to chat as I'd have liked, but now that he's back on his feet (and online) I'm looking forward to re-establishing our relationship as adults.

I managed to get to the Post Office today to send off for that certified copy of my marriage license. There were no birthday cards or presents in it, just a notice my box rent is due by the end of this month. I paid six months box rental and got the seventeen dollar money order for the circuit clerk fee for the marriage license retrieval. I thought it kinda humorous that there was also a letter from the Social Security admin in my box notifying me about that. The letter was just a pro forma one page document. Nothing unusual about it at all except I did find a bit of irony in the line that read "You may use the enclosed envelope to send us the information we need." There was no envelope enclosed. There's a 'drop dead' date of Dec 22nd for me to retrieve this and get it to them or they'll reject my claim so I'm gonna have to follow this carefully.

In the meantime I'll be as nervous as a lost pup at a Vietnamese barbecue. All this bureaucratic strife has my butt clenched so tight you couldn't drive a pin up my ass with a sledgehammer.

I'm suppose to visit my friend Joe tonight. The fellow that works at the cannabis dispensary. He's usually got some pretty good medicine to help relieve my clenched sphincter. He's also rigged together the hoses and adapters I need to run my Mr. Buddy heater off a standard size propane bottle like the ones they swap out at all the convenience stores. I think they are five gallon bottles. I was watching a video on YouTube about using these Mr. Buddy heaters with bigger propane tanks off the hose and it looks like I'll need a special filter as well as the hoses/adapters to keep the burner jets from clogging. It's around ten bucks and looks to be widely available. I also saw the potential of not using the five gallon propane tanks and opting for one that is half that size. It's very likely that I will be getting one of those smaller tanks. This would be a huge space saving feature but it'll mean that I'll have to have it refilled at a propane refill center because of it's non-standard size. I'll trade the inconvenience of having to have them manually refilled to save all the space. I'll probably have to bite the bullet and pony up the fifty odd dollars it'll take to buy the two and a half gallon tank though.

If this "free living" van dwelling lifestyle gets any more expensive I'm gonna have to switch to a tent.

My business cards say "Photojournalist". Ever been to a German carnival?

Enjoy.