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The Visit
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 132
The Son comes, Tuesday night, Tacos, then unload the truck. He's brought me some treasures: 2 chests of drawers filled with unaccountable obscenities, (the boy thoughtfully pretends not to have looked), a missing piece of a genii infested oil lamp, box of cufflinks, antique toy-trunk filled with candlesticks, and my church pew.
This, perfectly sized as a waiting area for the foot of my bed, only there's nobody waiting...
The box of candlesticks, some sterling, take them out, admire my good taste, reunite one with it's mate from a previous trip (I did strive to keep mated candlesticks together, the boy, with his troupe and their theatre props, obviously did not). The rest are all carried up to the antique shop.These are all beautiful things, but I haven’t the space, I have to make choices. And I’m appalled at how cluttered, filthy things have gotten, I’ve let it all get out of control, furnishing my place like King Tut his Tomb, after my own tastes of course…
Everything disembarked we catch up, the next morning he's up, stealthy, 6:00 AM - his efforts at being quiet making 5X the noise he would of if he’d just woken up, he's looking for a cafe, and the day begins. Searching arrowheads in Balfour, no finds, only flakes, and then lunch and he's off.
My chest of drawers, do I need this? I'm overwhelmed with the abundance of new treasures, and so I park it in the hall, a 3 foot wide chest of drawers in a 2 foot wide hall, completely blocked, and I’m at an impasse...Do I keep it? It's a beautiful thing, but - space is scarce, and my tastes have changed. I want Zen. I need the room for projects. IN any event the drawers need to be emptied before I can part with it, and where to put the emptied things?
Today, tomorrow, it will have to be moved, I'll need the real-estate for other things, time to clean the flat, pair up all the cufflinks, bowties, scarves, sort through the drawers for all the little shitty discoveries that have to be decided upon and parted with; I was so damned happy without a single material thing it the world, but my past is catching up with me...
Brittle Days
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 179
And the mornings are ferociously cold some of them, they abbreviate the first cigarette; back inside to make coffee and wait for it to thaw a bit before getting out and about. There's snow already on the low mountains surrounding town.
Found a good new series - so far (1 episode in); "Dark" - on Netflix, which I won't bother to describe here, only has a bit of that "Stranger Things" vibe. And reading (re?) Haruku Murakami "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", which is excellent and after my taste at the moment; only while it all seems new I'm suspicious I've read it a long time ago; must have been because I find no reference to it on my blog...but the bit where he goes down the well (and I'm not there yet, so we'll see) - I remember that.
***
The liquor strike drags on and I'm spending far too much on oversized bottles of premium liquor. And today there are no buses; rumour has it that Balfour & Taghum still have a reasonable selection but I might be forced to skip my medication, which is not inspiring.
The chilis indoors might still be growing, they're certainly turning red, and raining resin and pollen and leaves and flowers all over the floor. I'll need to sweep and mop after all this is done, I want them off the windowsill, but I'm not giving up just yet.
The Laundry Machine - the one that charges your card, some "Sparkle Solutions" outfit out of Ontario, it's not been working all week. A part is on order. My card has nothing on it, and I'm overdue a fresh pair of shorts. But I can't do laundry...
SO I check their website, that promises an option to charge the card with a credit card online, only there's no link. Call customer service. They can't find the link either, and can offer no options, only to have somebody reach out to me on a business day.
This is inept.
***
Facebook, nothing on, but I saw a great little ad for a magic trick that I want and so I clicked on it to see how much it is...
$100. Nope. A hundred bucks for what amounts to a $1 made-in-china "Gimmick" and 100 pages of instructions is a little steep...
But it is a cool trick...I'll see if I can figure it out elsewhere...
***
And; perusing Reddit I came across this little gem:
Which I have to laugh at, I'm sure (well, not SURE) that it's not the same one I have my own horror story about a certain stalker who wouldn't take no for an answer and made my life a living hell for 7 long years. And to this day when I hear the name, no matter how cute the person wearing it, I still cringe...
The kids laughed. When my leave of abstinence is over I'm going to be a fury getting back in the saddle, but no more of this...
San Pedro Mountains Mummy
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 130
Now, I've always been a fan of all things Fortean, but unfortunately as you get older you get a bit disenchanted. Those UFO's turn out to be weather balloons, those ghosts just infrasound, underground water, sea monsters are formidably endowed whales having a threesome, and few of the things you once found mysterious still hold any of their charm.
This one, though, is a curious case from start to finish. It's nice to know we haven't got it all figured out...
A bit of catching up...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 109
It's seemed that every day there's been a new "discovery" and I've not particularly done a good job of keeping up.
I mean, I'm interested, but I'm not in Europe where most of these discoveries are being made and so I have confined my interests to those more local.
First of all - The Great Canadian Treasure Hunt via The Northern Miner has just had it's second consolation prize found in Cobalt Ontario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKwHoMii2UI
The first was found in Dawson City: https://treasure.northernminer.com/uncategorized-en/first-bonus-prize-in-the-great-canadian-treasure-hunt-discovered-in-dawson-city/
I'm going to start having to pay attention, pretty sure there'll be a treasure someplace on the island...
***
In other news, a fisherman digging for worms unearths a copper cauldron stuffed with some 20, 000 silver coins and bits of jewelry from the 12th century: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-fisherman-was-digging-for-worms-in-sweden-when-he-stumbled-upon-a-trove-of-medieval-silver-180987524/
And a German detectorist unearths the Borsum Hoard in 2017; then takes 8 years to tell authorities about it, he was waiting for the statute of limitations to run out: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/roman-silver-hoard-saxony-metal-detectorist-2703890#:~:text=Authorities%20in%20Lower%20Saxony%2C%20northwestern,kept%20the%20haul%20a%20secret.
Meanwhile, a similar game has been playing out in Britain with the Herefordshire Hoard, first unearthed in 2015 and as of yet only partially recovered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herefordshire_hoard
The BBC has a podcast on it here: https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/p0kvsxcv
Another hoard found in Wales, up to 15, 000 coins: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd67vv66wxxo
Then there's Florida, where there's always a Galleon being dived: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI2cd20uXnE
While that hardly catches us up, it is inspiring...
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Oh, and I forgot this. The world's largest Buddha statue is made of solid gold, and weighs in at over 12, 000 pounds. Solid gold, varying Karats. It was covered in paper-mache for centuries to hide it's value, and was only "rediscovered" in the 1950's.
A little more than you could ride away on a motorcycle with...
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