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Tuesday, an unexpected day off, the text while I'm at the gym and just leaving for work, plans now that I have it free, to go the library, do some slight work, then for dinner - treat myself to a steak at the Diner on Baker, and I should have known better, the steak, it's an ordeal, not a treat, chewy, tough, with no great flavor, it's wretched really, but I suck it up and put on a happy face for the server.
Followed by the Poetry Slam, now in the Royal, busy, I always preferred poetry in Cafe's, but I must be a beatnik, the bar, this bar, it's nearly full, and the stage is a proper stage and they have some guest readers, some old faces, some new faces, and - mercifully, most of the poems are short so when quality fails you're not being tortured long.
Follow this with a trip to the liquor store, I'm in need of my medicine, the ambulance whirring across the street to Narcan another overdose, this - 3, 4 times a day, note all the new migratory homeless faces...the ambulance, it's; going 3-4 times a day, and this in a city of 10,000...
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The past week few opportunities to write, working longer hours (phew - as much as I hate it I've made no progress on any of the financial battlefronts and now, with a clear objective to work toward it's time, it's time). The weather this week has cooled, rainy, Father's day, despite the reservations a non-starter, Pa being taken for dinner by his adult children or grandchildren or wife, and always, always, it's Pa paying the bill.
Work has begun interfering with the Gym, days off are precarious and announced an hour or so before I'm due to start, the new hires, T* and H*, aren't working out, T* abandoned work due to pressing personal issues, H* is a princess who only wants to work when she wants to....
And it rains. God we need the rain, every day overcast, clouds ragged and low on the mountains, when they part you can see snow upon the peaks that wasn't there before, evenings watching movies on my phone, catching up on culture.
The cool weather, damp, humidity, it cements the smells into my vehicle, the scent of tobacco, sweat, vodka, coffee, before work beachcombing new flints and finds, the rain is good for this, every day something new...
Time passes...
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Last week, an email, that I'm up for consideration for subsidized housing. A committee interview, I'd put the application in some 8 or 9 months before, and am just now getting considered.
At first I'm thrilled, and then anxious, because what do I need housing for in the summer? And I do, there's actually a hundred reasons, not least of which living my vagrant lifestyle is far more expensive, eating and coffee out, gas, and I need a space to work on my creatives, and .... well, I could go on forever.
My lifestyle is far more trying on my friends than it is on me, than it should be.
Anxious, because it's been so long that I've had even a cupboard to call home and I need this and I don't particularly like needing anything.
Commitment to a place to live, not where I want to live, but still, economical; just a new economy I need to readapt to, a healthy economy of home-cooked meals, of nuts & berries, of creative productivity and staying up late with a book or a movie and affording a working laptop so I can do my writing and painting...
I don't know. I'm an all-or-none sort of guy, this step - it's only a step, and somehow I imagined that I'd win a lotto or all at once....and this would all be dealt with, only, well, I have to take a step in the right direction. This is how it will begin..
I bought a Lottomax and 6/49 and won both, $1.00 each draw, bloody hell, and so my intent has been fulfilled, just not in the capacity required. No cancelling the interview yet.
Wednesday morning, the interview, tour of the building, the apartments small (but bigger than my car), well kept, and I imagine myself Indoors, playing with light switches and the faucets in the Bathroom, flushing the toilet, working out all this indoor luxury living...might have to get myself a glass for my Vodka, be able to get mail and order things off Amazon, things like resin and resin molds and luminous paints and...
Well, it could become a long list.
Before the Interview I consulted the Tarot, long overdue: Single Card, drawn from the deck, Upright, The King of Pentacles...An auspicious omen.
The date, if selected, would fall mid August, and I'm reassuring them, I'm housed in my car all summer if required, I have a hard time arguing my need when there are so many people clearly in worse straights than myself, they reassure me that I "Check all the boxes"...bloody hell...
They give me a tour of the features I'd never use, the rooftop deck, the social room,...
I'd have a home.
After the interview, a trip to the Antique Shop on Baker, I'd not been for a few months, and lo-what do I discover hidden on a shelf (after umpteen perambulations, I knew I was missing something) - an Atmos Clock, Jaeger la Coulter, this, this is it, $280 after tax and while it's worn, missing it's top glass, points of corrosion on the base, this is it. This is my housewarming gift to myself, buy it, I'll pick it up in a future imperfect...
I'd bought one before, it ended up at the Boys Mothers, this one will be for the daughter...
And so the day passes in the celebration of things that may not come to pass, but - fingers crossed.
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driving, leaning out my car window, a pinched nerve, left arm. It's able to move, work, but for some reason it's become tingly and clumsy, as if my brain doesn't get any feedback as to what it's handling, I'm unable to efficiently pick up anything with it, holding a cigarette with it and it flips out of my fingers, trying to tie a balloon becomes an effort of will, this is bizarre and I'm getting a good foreshadowing of what a stroke will feel like if I don't mend my ways...bloody hell...a peculiar sensation this, when your limbs don't respond to your will or accurately report upon their senses...
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Having worked the early shift Saturday I'm off to investigate a few prospects out Kaslo way. Archeological surveys suggest there's a Neolithic quarry north of Kaslo at the headwaters to Milford Creek, and so I find the appropriate logging road and I'm off...
This logging road, 10KM long, rough and what's left of my exhaust is scraping the dirt about to fall off...slowly slowly up and up.
It makes it, surprise surprise, and I get out to explore. Milford Lake, headwaters of Milford Creek, thick brush, more a small pond than lake, solitary campsite with a sign-in book that complains largely about the road...
Exploring is brief, the mosquitos will be overwhelming come dusk and so I head back done, stopping at the roadcuts along the way.
The rocks, heavily metamorphic mudstones, and in the veins of quartz I find the chert nodules. Quality varies, I collect a few with some hard banging then continue down the mountain. When the trees break there's great views of Kootenay Lake, I must be a KM above it at least, and no trace of snow.
Back in Kaslo I head on the highway North West to spend the night.
***
Night spent, morning is spent gathering coffee in town, French Toast, 2 slices, $13.00, coffee $4.00 per cup, and people say we're expensive...
Then off to walk the banks of the river, collecting more flint nodules, better quality, the water has polished them much like the arrowheads I've found, how long does it take? I mean, I've found flakes with sharp edges, but the longer they lay in the sand and waves the more they come to resemble just pieces of Chert, no longer discarded tools erosion has smoothed all their rough edges and knapping marks...
Other rocks, none of interest other than for possible mixed media projects that hinge upon me finding a time and place to get them started...
***
Sunday night, slow, working with T* who is not so competent I'm discovering, and she's having a rant about the tip out, thinks it's too much, unfair, and I hate to break it to her but it's literally half of what anyone in town is paying to the house, but she doesn't get it and the squeaky wheel may soon be replaced...
Customers, a couple of good ones, the rest, well, should have hung a wreathe of garlic on the door and sprinkled it with Holy Water...
***
Monday, up and ready to go to Gym, days off, only now H***** is texting me, 7:00 AM, she's sick, heatstroke, too long in the sun yesterday, could I please, pretty please, work her shift for her....
This is fucking annoying. I'm working 6 days a week now, 4, 5 hour shifts, no chance to go anywhere, she's working two and this is the second time this month she's dropped one..."I really need this job" she'd told me in confidence, nope, she doesn't, and yet - here we are, her second absence, 2 shifts a week and she's 50/50, next time it'll be a bee-sting or Lyme disease or the blueberries need harvesting or a favorite laying hen needs to go to the vet...
The excuses are a bit much and I'm getting pissed, here on a day off when I should be off on a hundred other adventures, and this is not going to be the pattern for my summer...
Subcategories
Dating
OK. I've been on a few internet dates. I confess this with the same reluctance I would admitting to masturbating, adultery, or excessive drinking and drug use.
This is a list of some of my best -- AND WORST -- dates ever. Note that you gotta go on a lotta dates to get this kinda list, this kinda discouraged. And my online dating thing has been sporadic - an every few years kind of thing at best. Some of these dates go back 10 years, others are a little more recent. And to answer any people who might argue "It beats hooking up at the bar", well, you don't have to hook up at the bar, and at the bar you can see what your getting...
Anyways - apologies to the countless normal, decent dates that I went on but just didn't hit it off with. Memory is selective, it tends towards the extreme, and in this you will find the extremes...
Dear Osama
In which I write everyone's favorite advice columnist.
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